Abstract
This chapter examines whether centralising tendencies in Croatian parties can be described in terms of presidentialisation of political parties. Analysis starts with the assumption that party genetics, as an independent variable, explains the variance in party presidentialisation in Croatia much better than institutional factors. Croatia seems to be a good case for testing the presidentialisation thesis because it has had a rather stable party system, and also experienced a regime type change from the president-parliamentary form of semi-presidentialism to the premier-presidential, allowing for variations in the independent variables. In-depth analysis shows that political parties in Croatia are very similar organisations in terms of their centralised party leadership and leader-dominated structure. Party leaders enjoy great autonomy and independence from their parties, and rely on broad institutional and informal resources, which have been at their disposal ever since the period of the parties’ genesis. Therefore, this chapter concludes that presidentialisation of the political parties in Croatia can be explained mainly by taking the parties’ genetic approach into consideration, mostly because the parties had already been presidentialised when the institutional impact could have made a difference.
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- 1.
As Tudmans charisma was institutionalised within the party as a structure of obedience and undisputed position of party leader, it was possible to avoid breakdowns in the party after the leader died.
- 2.
For other types of transformations of communist parties in the post-communist world, see Kuzio (2008).
- 3.
Interestingly, the same party leader (Ivica Račan) who ruled the SKH for several months prior to the first democratic elections was also the first and longest-running leader of the SDP.
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Čakar, D.N. (2019). The Presidentialisation of Political Parties in Croatia: Institutional Change Matters. In: Passarelli, G. (eds) The Presidentialisation of Political Parties in the Western Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97352-4_2
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