Coping with the new party challenge: patterns of prime ministerial survival in Croatia and Slovenia

ABSTRACT

The recent surge of genuinely new parties (GNPs) in Central and Eastern Europe has made the political environment of prime ministers (PMs) more difficult, by increasing uncertainty in coalition governance. We explore the survival strategies of PMs when dealing with GNPs in government. Focusing on cases from Croatia and Slovenia, we demonstrate that patterns of PM survival do not systematically differ depending on whether the PM comes from GNPs or established parties. Rather, PMs employed various strategies of cabinet conflict management and reshuffling party governments, with effective party leadership identified as the crucial factor for PMs to remain in office.

KEYWORDS:

• Prime ministers
• survival strategies
• genuinely new parties
• Croatia
• Slovenia

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Florian Grotz and Marko Kukec for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Contrary to the argument that leadership can be seen as a resource, some scholars argue that position-related resources are not possessed by a leader, but rather have to be successfully used in order to bring them to bear. In other words, a leader has to use particular leadership skills to benefit from the leadership position itself (Helms 2019).

2 Almost all Croatian governments since the mid-2000s have been supported, usually on a contractual basis, by ethnic minority representatives, which significantly contributes to their stability.

3 This empirical evidence is extracted from 13 interviews conducted with former ministers and PMs from the Račan I to the Milanović cabinets. In addition, we also analysed three coalition agreements for the Račan I, Sanader III and Milanović cabinets.

4 Our analysis is supported by evidence from interviews with six ministers in the Orešković and Plenković I–III cabinets, supplemented by examination of two coalition agreements and one government programme presented in the parliament.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dario Nikić Čakar

Dario Nikić Čakar, assistant professor of comparative politics at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb. His current research interests include political leadership and coalition governance in East-Central Europe.

Alenka Krašovec

Alenka Krašovec, professor of political science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. Her main research interests are focused on studying party systems and coalition politics in new democracies of CEE.