The Rise and Fall of Primaries in Slovakia. The Case of Slovak Democratic Christian Union - Democratic Party.

The paper deals with the case of Slovak Democratic Christian Union – Democratic Party (SDKU-DS) as the only Slovak party which adopted primaries for the process of selecting its candidates. The party adopted this mechanism shortly after its creation in 2001 and it announced it as a step towards stronger internal democracy. The real development however proved otherwise. Our paper concentrates on consequences of primaries in SDKU-DS for parliamentary elections since their adoption to present time. We argue that their introduction had no effect on the internal distribution of power as the party leadership kept its strong positions. The same counts for the unity of the party. Although SDKU went through a secession process which led to creation of new parties in the last decade, the party’s cohesion remains very strong and primaries have no real influence on it. The external dimension is also interesting. It is presumed that opening the selection of candidates for wider groups of members may inspire other parties to follow this trend. In Slovakia this had not happen at all and this paper shows some clear factors why SDKU could not create any motivation for other parties to adapt primaries.