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C e n t e r - R i gh t Pa rt i e s i n S l o va k i a…
A government of three parties – the HZDS, SNS, and ZRS (Association of Workers of Slo-
vakia) – was formed after the elections in 1994. In addition to the two national-populist
parties, the newly founded, radical-leftist ZRS became a member of the ruling coalition.
The binding force of this unusual coalition was an authoritarian approach to the execution
of power that contradicted the values of liberal democracy. From the first day of its term in
government, the authoritarian coalition focused on concentration of power and on limit-
ing opportunities for free and democratic political competition. The government stopped
all socio-economic reforms. The only reforms it supported were those that strengthened
its own power positions (i.e. the non-transparent privatization of state assets to the hands
of entrepreneurs politically loyal to the government). In the years 1994-1998, the conser-
vative, Christian-democratic and liberal formations (KDH, DÚ, MK, and DS) formed an
anti-authoritarian alliance. Its primary aim was to preserve the democratic character of
the state. On one hand, these parties solidified their ideological positions (their member-
ship in international party organizations played a significant role in this process); on the
other hand, they tried to cooperate with each other in order to create broader groupings,
whose main aim was to defeat the dominant national-authoritarian force, the HZDS.
After the government of Vladimír Mečiar thwarted a referendum on direct presidential elec-
tion in July 1997, the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) was created with five constituent
members: three non-leftist formations (KDH, DÚ and DS), the leftist Social Democratic Party
of Slovakia (SDSS) and the ecologically oriented Green Party of Slovakia (SZS). The main mo-
tive of this political alliance was to bring an end to the rule of the authoritarian forces.
Before the parliamentary elections in 1998, the SDK had to change its organizational sta-
tus and formally register as a separate party due to an amendment to election law ap-
proved by the ruling coalition shortly before elections (this amendment in fact prohibited
electoral coalitions). Actually, the SDK was an “electoral party” with a limited membership
– i.e. the 150 people on its candidate list. The candidates on this list were representatives of
all five constituent (“mother”) parties, the five ideological platforms within the SDK. The
parties which formed the SDK in 1997 did not formally participate in the 1998 elections
(the party called “SDK” ran instead of them), but they did not cease to exist. The Hungar-
ian parties – MKDH, Coexistence and MOS – preferred another organizational model.
Under the pressure of the discriminatory new election law, they fused into a single party,
the Party of the Hungarian Coalition.
VI. The Center Right Heads the Reform
Bloc After the Principal Change In 1998
The 1998 elections were a turning point in the country’s development. The center-right
formations SDK and SMK won a total of 35% of votes. The success of the SDK was a result
of the following factors:
• effective coalition strategies chosen by center-right parties (These strategies helped
center-right forces to overcome the highly fragmented center-right segment of the po-
litical spectrum and to prevent the possibility of losing the votes of center-right party
supporters, as happened in the elections in 1992 and 1994);
