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.
