Political parties can
establish collaboration agreements on a wide variety of issues, including;
joint participation in elections, joint government formation after the
elections, offering external support to
an existing government joining forces
with several parties to overturn another
party, to modify elements of the
political system or to jointly determine specific policies. In this framework,
it is interesting to examine the features of political alliances in view of an
electoral process. Alliances between parties can take very different forms and
degrees.
First of all, political
parties can form coalitions, whose lists include candidates from each political
party or are independent, identifying themselves as a coalition and no longer
representing themselves independently in the constituencies affected by the
coalition.
Another option is to
alternatively submit lists of either of the parties in each constituency, in
order to optimize the expected electoral support for each party. This is common
practice in mature party systems, thus ensuring maximum effectiveness of their
campaigns and prevention of the negative effects of vote dispersion on
themselves or on the parties from which they can expect certain support or co-operation.
Finally, they can agree on the
withdrawal of the candidacy which has received the least votes in the first
round and request their voters to support the candidacy of the allied party.
These agreements can be
applied to different areas; to all the constituencies or only to some, to
presidential, general or municipal elections or for a given or undetermined
period.
The legal effects of these
agreements are generally limited consistent with the freedom that should govern
the strategic and political actions of the parties in a democratic system.
As a rule, however, coalitions
formed for a particular electoral process and registered as such at the time of
the nomination do produce legal effects. These effects are basically related to
two aspects of the process; relevant state contributions and the prohibition on
the nomination of candidates independently by the groups forming the coalition.
Further, there may be a higher electoral barrier than the one applying to
individual parties in some Eastern European countries, such as Croatia or the
Czech Republic.
On the other hand, agreements on the withdrawal of candidatures
that received the least number of votes, and even more so, agreements
concerning post-electoral conduct of elected parties or candidates have only
political importance and parties or representatives cannot be forced to comply
with them.
