Although the variety and diversity of the issues faced by the 29 democracies included in the Yearbook always make it difficult to discern any general patterns, developments in 1994 do nevertheless indicate a certain communality of concerns crossing different groups of polities. The most obvious of these concerns involves, of course, the economy, with most of the key issues of national politics revolving in some way or other around problems of economic growth and the fiscal balance. At one level, these concerns are almost mundane, and often fail to engage much public attention.

A change occurred on 21 December 1994 when Senator John Devereux (Tasmania) resigned from the Labor Party and became an Independent. The issue on which he resigned was Labor’s environmental policies, which he believed to be too weak. From that point onwards, the Senate numbers were: Labor 29, Liberal 30, National 6, Democrats 7, Greens 2, Independents 2.

At the start of the campaign the polls predicted no major changes in the strength of the parties: SPÖ and ÖVP would lose slightly, and the opposition parties would gain slightly. The SPÖ, which had an early campaign start, first ran into trouble when, in an interview, the wife of party chairman Franz Vranitzky revealed personal preferences which ran counter to the slogan on the first wave of SPÖ election posters.

In 1993, two reshuffles of the Dehaene I cabinet had already occurred (see Political Data Yearbook, 1994, 248-249); in 1994, there were no fewer than five others. The first of these occurred on 23 January, as a consequence of the Agusta corruption affair which involves three Ministers (one Federal and two of the Walloon Region) belonging to the social-democratic party (PS) (see Political Data Yearbook, 1994, 254).

This was a year marked by political quiet. The new national Liberal government, well aware of the extent to which Canadians were tired of politics and their politicians, determined to do little to attract attention. In this they were remarkably successful.

The main issues dominating national politics during 1994 were the change in the cabinet in January, the election to the European parliament in June, the general election in September and the subsequent government formation.

For the first time in Finnish electoral history the president of the republic was elected directly in two rounds (see Political Data Yearbook 1992, pp. 397-398), thus creating a totally new political framework for the competing candidates. As already discussed in the 1994 Yearbook, the three biggest parties nominated their candidates in open primaries. The biggest surprise was the SDP nomination of the top UN official Martti Ahtisaari who defeated the veteran party chairman and former prime minister Kalevi Sorsa. In the Centre Party primary the former party chairman and foreign minister Paavo Väyrynen was elected but two of his competitors could not accept their defeat.

Two main issues dominated French politics in 1994: the forthcoming 1995 presidential election and the judicial investigation into political corruption.

In such a context, the European Elections held in June did not allow the reopening of the debate initiated in 1992 with the referendum on the ratification of the Maastricht treaty (see Political Data Yearbook 1993: 432-433). The European Union and its future were less at stake than the future of all the potential candidates to the presidency. The governing RPR-UDF coalition, hoping to demonstrate the high quality and the necessity of its alliance, decided to run with a single list where the UDF and the RPR candidates would be equally represented. D. Baudis (UDF) was promoted, after months of bargaining, as the leader of the list because, as mayor and deputy of Toulouse, he had no national ambitions and did not appear to subvert either Balladur or Chirac. Known as a ‘federalist’, however, but now heading a list with Europhiles, Euro-sceptics and Anti-Europeans, he had to change his mind and to temper his European credo.

Undoubtedly, 1994 should have been an exceptionally interesting year in the history of the Federal Republic. First, an unprecedented number of elections were scheduled for 1994, which bore the potential for major shifts in the distribution of power on national, Land, and local levels. Second, four years after unification, the major question was whether the seemingly smooth extension of the West German party system to the new Länder, which had staggered most political observers in 1990, was to prevail. There had been warning signs for the formerly West German parties that their success of 1990 may have been owed mainly to the enthusiasm of unification and, subsequently, PDS candidates in mayoral and local elections scored remarkable results. However, despite the large number of elections, there was never a real sense of potential change in the Federal Republic, let alone of a fundamental reorientation of German politics. Like 1990, none of the political forces managed to capture the imagination of the German public.

The PASOK cabinet suffered two great losses early in the year. The death of Melina Merkouri (6 March) was followed by that of George Gennimatas (25 April), who had seemed best placed to succeed Papandreou as party leader. Otherwise, the long-awaited cabinet reshuffle in July was ludicrously limited in scope and inadequate as a response both to the party congress in April and to the outcome of the European election in June. By upgrading the government’s (in fact Papandreou’s) spokesman E. Venizelos as Minister for the Press, it confirmed the existence of an ‘inner circle’ isolating the prime minister from his own ministers, and actually worsened the ensuing dysfunction of the PASOK government.

The parliament held its last meeting on 7 April, concluding an unprecedented period of parliamentary government with 219 new laws and 213 amendments having been enacted. The date of the election was scheduled by the President, Árpád Göncz, for 8 May, based on a 6-party agreement.

Changes in the composition of the Cabinet resulted from the turmoil in the Social Democratic Party in 1994. In June, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir resigned as Minister of Social Affairs (a post she had held continuously since 1987), following her unsuccessful challenge for the post of party leader. At the SDP party convention she received 39 per cent of the votes against 60 per cent for the sitting party leader, Foreign Minister Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson. Sigurdardóttir left the SDP in September in order to form a new party. Gudmundur Árni Stefánsson, who at the party convention had narrowly beaten (52 per cent of the votes) Minister of Environment Össur Skarphédinsson (44 per cent) for the post of deputy leader, replaced Sigurdardóttir as the Minister of Social Affairs and left the Ministry of Health and Insurance, where he had served for a year, while Sighvatur Björgvinsson, Minister of Trade and Industry, added the Ministry of Health and Insurance to his responsibilities, thus reducing the number of SDP ministers in the coalition from five to four.

For once the issue that dominated Irish politics in 1994 was Northern Ireland as the government played its part in a process that culminated in a ceasefire by paramilitaries of both sides in the autumn and won approval both nationally and internationally for its activities. However, while the ceasefire saw out 1994 the government did not, largely because of deteriorating relations between the leaders of the two parties and the coincidence of a number of very minor issues which provoked a major political crisis in November. The government fell, Albert Reynolds resigned as Fianna Fail leader and, eventually, a new coalition of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left took office just before Christmas. This was the first time a government had been changed in the Republic except as a consequence of an election.

The Rabin II cabinet became a minority government following the withdrawal of the Sephardi-religious Shas party in September 1993. In spite of this, the government quite easily survived a number of no-confidence votes in the Knesset due to the pivotal (median) position of the Labour party. Two Knesset factions-Hadash (three Knesset seats) and the Arab Democratic List (two seats)—supported the government almost automatically. They did so because of their political positions which are considered to be more ‘leftist’ (i.e. more ‘dovish’) than those held by the two formal coalition partners-Labour and Meretz. This provided the government a workable ‘blocking majority’ of 61 out of the 120 Knesset members.

On March 27 and 28 Italy underwent its first experience of the new electoral system which merges elements of the majoritarian principle and proportional representation. As a result of the 1993 referendum on the change of the electoral system for the Senate (from PR to plurality for three-quarters of the seats), which passed with an overwhelming majority (82.7% in favour), a new electoral law was approved for both the Lower and the Upper chambers. At the risk of over-simplifying what is actually a very complex mechanism (see Yearbook 1994), three-quarters of the seats were allotted on the basis of a single-ballot first-past-the-post system and the remaining quarter on the basis of a proportional formula. The system applied to both chambers with some minor variants.

The Hosokawa cabinet, which had been formed on 9 August 1993 by all opposition parties except the JCP in order to end the long-lived one party dominance of the LDP in Japanese politics, collapsed on 8 April 1994. From the beginning the primary function of Hosokawa cabinet had been to bring an end to the LDP's absolute majority one-party rule which, since 1955, had lasted for 38 years. In August 1993, when the LDP split into two groups, all opposition parties except the Communist Party gathered together and formed a coalition government, notwithstanding all the differences in their ideologies and policies.

After an uninspiring electoral campaign and elections that did not provoke any dramatic changes, the Luxembourg political landscape manifested once more a remarkable stability. The same coalition (CSV-LSAP) was returned to power for the third consecutive time (it emerged for the first time in 1984). The main opposition party, the liberal DP, was frustrated once more in its ambitions to return to power, despite the fact that it could claim to be the only winner of the elections in terms of the share of the vote. But its gains were not significant enough to impose its return to governmental responsibilities.

With the retirement of Dr Vincent Tabone as President of the Republic, the government nominated in his stead Dr Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, the Minister of Education and Human Resources, who took the oath of office on 4 April. In filling the cabinet post thus vacated, the Prime Minister effected a minor reshuffle which, inter aha, introduced into the cabinet as Minister for Youth and the Arts Dr Michael Refalo, formerly Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism in the Ministry of Economic Services. With the resignation in July of Mr Lawrence Gatt as Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries (see below), the ministry was given to Mr Censu Galea, formerly Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Social Security.

On March 2, elections were held for municipal councils in The Netherlands. For many voters, the local elections provided an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with the national government: both governing parties, CDA and PvdA, suffered heavy losses, whereas all opposition parties, large and small, increased their number of municipal councillors. Several new national and local parties gained seats as well.