From Formation to Breakdown: Local Government Coalitions and Technocratic and Right-Wing Populist Actors

Recent literature on populism has increasingly shifted its focus to local conditions and the local level of politics. Most studies have concentrated on the performance of populist parties in local government, leaving several important issues unaddressed. This paper aims to fill one of these gaps by analyzing coalition formation and duration in cities where populist parties gained representation following the 2018 and 2022 local elections. Specifically, the activities of ANO, a technocratic populist party, and SPD, a right-wing populist party, are examined. In the first step, the analysis investigates dyads between populist parties (ANO, SPD) and other parties to identify patterns of coalition formation and the conditions under which parties entered governing coalitions. The main explanatory variables include the number of mandates, party type (local or national), party positions, and the political experience of candidates. The second step focuses on analyzing the duration of these coalitions, exploring factors that may lead to their breakdown. In this context, municipal crises covered by national media, the ideological diversity of coalitions, and events in national politics (e.g., elections or intra- and inter-party disputes) are of primary interest. The analysis is conducted on a sample of 250 municipalities where either ANO or SPD won at least one seat in the 2018 or 2022 local elections. The data are analyzed using multilevel regression analysis.