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Understanding Pre-electoral Coalitions in Central and Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2015

Raimondas Ibenskas
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Abstract

While pre-electoral coalitions have important effects on the functioning of democracy, their formation has only been systematically examined in the context of established democracies. This study examines the patterns and factors of electoral alliance formation in eleven democracies in Central and Eastern Europe by focusing on joint candidate lists. It finds that electoral coalitions are more frequent in newer democracies than in established democracies. The formation of alliances is systematically related to their potential costs and benefits. On the one hand, coalitions can provide small parties with legislative representation and larger parties with important government coalition partners. On the other hand, parties face costs related to their electoral compatibility and the sharing of election candidacies and office positions.

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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 743 - 761
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© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Department of Politics, University of Exeter (email: r.ibenskas@exeter.ac.uk). I would like to thank Adriana Bunea, Linda Berg, Sofie Blombäck, Lorenzo Cecchi, Michael Donnelly, Julia Fleischer, Sona Golder, Katarzyna Jerzierska, Rutger Lindahl, Gail McElroy, Thomas Metz, Daniel Naurin, Jonathan Polk, Marina Povitkina, Jan Rovny, Rik de Ruiter, Linn Sandberg, four anonymous reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments. The research leading to this publication has been undertaken mainly during the author’s post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for European Studies and Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, funded by the Swedish Institute (Visby Programme, grant number 00445/2012). The research has also received funding from the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Programme (Intra-European Individual Fellowship Grant No 330446 PARTYINSTABILITY). This financial support is gratefully acknowledged. Data replication sets and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123414000544.

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