Ever since the seminal contributions by Riker (1962) and de Swaan (1973), the scholarly literature on coalition formation has focused on government coalitions that form in the aftermath of parliamentary elections. Only recently has the analytical focus been broadened to accommodate coalitions that form before parliamentary elections. Both theoretical and empirical considerations drive these authors’ interest. First, pre-election pacts have been shown to exert considerable influence on government formation both directly, by constraining the set of viable coalition partners (Debus 2009; Martin and Stevenson 2001) and the allocation of portfolios (Carroll and Cox 2007), and indirectly via their significant impact on the outcome of parliamentary elections.
Given the omnipresence of pre-electoral coalitions in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as well as the prominent role they are ascribed in the development of the party systems (Olson 1998), it is surprising to find little comparative research on the determinants of pre-electoral coalitions in these new European democracies. The present paper aims to narrow this gap. Based on an original data set of pre-electoral coalitions in ten CEE countries, it explores the key explanatory factors of pre-electoral coalition formation in CEE, both at the institutional and the party-level.
By expanding the geographical scope, the paper’s contribution is threefold. First, it enriches our general knowledge of the new European democracies that emerged after the transitions of the 1990s. Second, by shifting the analytical focus to CEE, it tests existing theoretical accounts developed for Western Europe in a different social, economic, and cultural context. And third, it extends existing theoretical accounts by incorporating additional explanatory factors that are particularly relevant in CEE, such as parties’ role in the ‘ancien régime’, party system instability, and electoral volatility.
