Coalition Governments in Croatia: First Experience 2000-2003

The author analyzes the formation, functioning and termination of the mandate of the first coalition governments in the history of Croatia between 2000 and 2003. She suggests that the parliamentary system of moderate pluralism after the elections, as well as the pre-electoral coalition agreements, contributed to the building of coalition governments, but that this process was undermined by a lack of a developed coalition political culture among the creators of the coalition as well as among the public in general. The coalition governments operated on the basis of a written coalition agreement that identified the mechanisms for coalition management among the coalition partners and implicitly introduced voting discipline in the parliament and the patterns of the distribution of posts in ministries, parliamentary bodies and public companies. Its main drawback were sketchy public policies which means that these were policy blind coalitions. The first coalition government (2000-2002) was terminated due to the feuding among the key coalition partners, and the second coalition government (2002-2003) ended due to the regular parliamentary elections. Though the government of 2000-2002 was the first coalition government in Croatia’s history and an oversized coalition government to boot, it nevertheless lasted longer than the average similar governments in other European countries