Project title: Coalition governments and coalition governance in Southeast Europe
(Koalicijske vlade i koalicijsko upravljanje u Jugoistočnoj Europi), Acronym: KOKUJE
(FPZG-IP-09)
Thematical area of the project: Comparative politics
Duration of the project: 48 months (start date: 10/2025 – end date: 09/2029)
Total cost: 55.209,82 EUR (100 % EU contribution NextGenerationEU)

Principle investigator (PI): Associate professor Dario Nikić Čakar

Research team members:
Full professor Davor Boban
Full professor Goran Čular (FPZG)
Full professor Ana Petek (FPZG)
Associate professor Višeslav Raos (FPZG)

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
In the last few decades, significant research advances have been made in the field of coalition
government studies, especially in terms of understanding government formation and their
duration. Nevertheless, there are significant research gaps in understanding coalition governance,
especially due to the complex approach to understanding the internal dynamics of coalition
governments, what happens in the governance 'black box' ; as well as the difficulties of collecting
data on decision-making processes in multi-party governments (Bergman, Bäck, & Hellström,
2021).
An additional problem in coalition government research relates to the geographical
concentration of most previous studies on 'old' democracies in Western Europe, while the
research focus on understanding coalition governance in 'new' democracies in Central and
Eastern Europe has remained extremely limited, with more important advances in comparative
research made in the last few years (Bergman, Ilonszki, & Müller, 2019; Bergman, Ilonszki, &
Hellström, 2024).
This project aims to further fill the gap in research on coalition governance in countries that
were affected by the third wave of democratization, shifting the geographical focus to the
countries of Southeastern Europe, especially those that began their political transformation in
the 1990s after the breakup of the Yugoslav multinational community. This project applies the 'life cycle' model of coalition governments to the cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro,
Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Slovenia and Serbia, exploring three key phases of the
coalition cycle – the 'birth', 'life' and 'death' of coalition governments.
Contact: Associate professor Dario Nikić Čakar (dario.nikic-cakar@fpzg.hr)