Coalition government among different political parties is the way most European democracies are governed. Traditionally, the study of coalition politics has been focused on Western Europe. Coalition governance in Central Eastern Europe brings the study of the full coalition life-cycle to a region that has undergone tremendous political transformation, but which has not been studied from this perspective. The volume covers Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. It provides information and analyses of the coalition life-cycle, from pre-electoral alliances to coalition formation and portfolio distribution, governing in coalitions, the stages that eventually lead to government termination, and the electoral performance of coalition parties. In Central Eastern Europe, few single-party cabinets form and there have been only a few early elections. The evidence provided shows that coalition partners in the region write formal agreements (coalition agreements) to an extent that is similar to the patterns that we find in Western Europe, but also that they adhere less closely to these contracts. While the research on Western Europe tends to stress that coalition partners emphasize coalition compromise and mutual supervision, there is more evidence of 'ministerial government' by individual ministers and their parties. There are also some systems where coalition governance is heavily dominated by the prime minister. No previous study has covered the full coalition life-cycle in all of the ten countries with as much detail. Systematic information is presented in 10 figures and in more than one hundred tables.
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Torbjörn Bergman is Professor of Political Science at Umeå University, Sweden. His books on representative democracy, government formation, and political parties include Political Parties in Multi-Level Polities: The Nordic Countries Compared (with N. Aylott and M. Blomgren, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), The Madisonian Turn - Political Parties and Parliamentary Democracy in Nordic Europe (with K. Strøm, University of Michigan Press, 2011), Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining: The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe (with K. Strøm and W.C. Müller, Oxford University Press, 2008) and Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies (with K. Strøm and W.C. Müller, Oxford University Press, 2003). He has also published in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Legislative Studies, Party Politics, Government & Opposition, and Scandinavian Political Studies.
Gabriella Ilonszki is Professor of Political Science at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her English language publications include three edited volumes: Opposition Parties in European Legislatures: Conflict or Consensus (with Elisabetta De Giorgi, Routledge, 2018), Post-Communist Parliaments: Change and Stability in the Second Decade (with D.M. Olson, Routledge, 2012), and Perceptions of the European Union in New Member States: A Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2010). She has published articles in journals such as the Journal of Legislative Studies, East European Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics. She has also authored several chapters in volumes on representation, parliamentary government and political elite, gender, areas that constitute her main research interest.
Wolfgang C Müller is Professor of Democratic Governance at the University of Vienna (Austria). Previous appointments included Chair and Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim. He is currently Speaker and Principal Investigator of the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES). Since 2013 he has been co-editor of West European Politics. His research interests include government coalitions, political parties and political institutions.
Andrzej Antoszewski is a professor of political science at the Department of Political and Administrative Systems, Institute of Political Science, University of Wrocław.
Anders Backlund is a PhD candidate in political science at Södertörn University, Sweden.
Ilse Balcere is a researcher at the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute at the University of Latvia.
Alejandro Ecker is a postdoc fellow at the MZES, Mannheim, Germany.
Janis Ikstens is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Latvia, Latvia.
Alexander Karvai is post-doc in political science and working in commercial market research in Slovakia.
Rumyana Kolarova is an associate professor of political science at St. Kl. Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria.
Joanna Kozierska is an assistant professor at the Department of Political and Administrative Systems, Institute of Political Science, University of Wrocław.
Alenka Krasovec is a professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana University, Slovenia.
Tomaz Krpic is an editor and senior administrative officer at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana University, Slovenia.
Tomas Lacina is a junior researcher at the Department of Political Sociology at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic.
Zdenka Mansfeldova is a senior researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic.
Irmina Matonyte is a professor of political science at the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania (Vilnius), Lithuania.
Thomas M Meyer is a researcher at the Department of Government, University of Vienna, and a member of the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES) research team. Previously, he was a PhD student at the Center for Doctoral Studies in Social and Behavioral Sciences (CDSS) at the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences (GESS), University of Mannheim, and received his PhD in Political Science in 2010. His research focuses on political parties, party competition, voting behaviour and coalition governance and has been published or is accepted for publication by Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Party Politics and West European Politics.
Vello Pettai is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu, Estonia.
Maria Spirova is senior lecturer of Comparative Politics and International Relations, University of Leiden. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and has previously studied political science at the Central European University and the American University in Bulgaria. She works in the area of comparative politics and her research interests include political parties, party patronage and corruption and the democratic representation of ethnic minorities.
Laurentiu Stefan is a senior researcher at the Center for Public Policies at the West University of Timișoara, Romania and a regular visiting professor to the University of Bucharest and the University of Cluj-Napoca.
Sona Szomolanyi is a professor of political science at Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia.
