Evaluating Croatia’s Political and Electoral System – Identifying Fault Lines and Reform Prospects

Evaluating Croatia’s Political and Electoral System: Identifying Fault Lines and Reform Prospects

Matej Hittner, President of the Centre for Public Policy and Economic Analysis

Ever since Croatia declared its independence from the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, it has strived to embrace democratic reforms and emulate Western democracies as it seeks to align and integrate itself with the European Union. The early political system of Croatia was marked by the authoritarian, strongman-style style of Franjo Tuđman as President within a semi-presidential and bicameral parliament system. After the political reforms of the late 90s, Croatia reformed its system into a unicameral parliamentary republic whereby the democratically elected members of parliament vote on, that is, approve and empower the members of the executive branch, the prime minister, and his suggested ministers that head the government departments (ministries). The President of the Republic is elected by direct vote.

To summarize, the political system in Croatia is as follows:

1. President: The President of Croatia is the ceremonial head of state. They are elected by popular vote for a five-year term and have limited powers. The president represents the country internationally, appoints ambassadors, and plays a role in the formation of the government.
2. Parliament (Sabor): Croatia’s legislative body is called the Sabor. It is a unicameral parliament, consisting of 151 members elected by proportional representation for four-year terms. The Sabor is responsible for passing laws, approving the budget, and overseeing the government’s work.
3. Government (Vlada): The Prime Minister leads the executive branch. The Prime Minister is typically the leader of the political party or coalition that holds the majority of seats in the Sabor. The government is responsible for implementing policies and running the country’s day-to-day affairs.
4. Political Parties: Croatia has a multi-party system with a variety of political parties and coalitions. The political landscape has evolved since the country’s independence in the 1990s, with various parties representing a range of ideologies and interests.
5. Judiciary: Judiciary: The judiciary in Croatia is independent of the legislative and executive branches. The judicial branch includes the Supreme Court, administrative courts, and county courts. The Constitutional Court is responsible for ensuring that laws and government actions are consistent with the Constitution, but it is not considered to be a part of the formal judicial branch but, sui generis, a special institution of its own kind.
6. Local Government: Croatia is divided into counties, municipalities, and cities, each with its own local government structures and elected officials. Local governments have responsibilities for various aspects of governance, including education, healthcare, and infrastructure within their jurisdictions.
7. Elections: Croatia holds regular elections for the President, the Sabor, and local government officials. Elections are generally free and fair, and citizens have the right to participate in the democratic process.

With the former said, Croatia seems to have an enviable and vibrant democratic system; however, the system hides in itself certain flaws that either:

1. Inhibit the proper functioning of the state
2. Skew the system in favor of „old“ parties
3. Demotivate the populace from political participation

With that said, here are several problems in the Croatian political system and policy suggestions on how to remedy them:

1. Friction between the president and prime minister

As both the parliamentary and presidential elections are free and open to the public, it might occur that the president and the prime minister are heads of opposite parties or, better said (due to the president being forced to abandon party membership), representatives of different ideologies, and with that, conflict ensues. While the public has the right to elect different people with different ideologies and goals, as is expected in a parliamentary election, the problem arises due to the president having significantly less power than the prime minister while also being designated to cooperate intimately with the government in the areas in which he has power, namely, foreign policy and issues relating to national security and the military. This operational flaw has manifested itself overtly during the presidential term of the current president, Zoran Milanović, as his conflicts with the prime minister are a weekly occurrence. Apart from it being a form of celebrity drama entertainment, the opposing views on foreign policy and spiteful refusals to cooperate on national security and foreign policy issues are significant sources of vulnerability for the country.

The answer to the mentioned problem is to reform the political and electoral systems in such a way that the president is elected by the majority of parliament instead of the popular vote. With that reform, whoever has the majority in parliament can both approve the executive branch and the president, significantly decreasing the odds of friction occurring among the positions and assuring the coordinated functioning of the state in terms of foreign policy and national security. Although that might seem like a degradation of the overall principle of democracy in Croatia, the fact is that many positions are decided by the discretionary decisions of elected officials. In the same way, it is considered a good thing for a functional system that ministers are appointed and approved by the prime minister and members of parliament. It would not be a good idea to have each minister, the governor of the national bank, supreme court judges, generals, etc. elected by popular vote. This way, Croatia would actually become a full-parliamentary democracy.

2. Minorities and diaspora shaping the parliament

The Croatian parliament has 151 seats, of which 8 are reserved for national minorities and 3 are for Croatians from abroad. There is a wide perception that the mentioned 11 seats serve not as a proper representation of the mentioned groups but solely as political bargaining chips. Suggestions have been made for the abolishment of the mentioned 11 positions under the excuse that the interests of national minorities and Croatians abroad can be promoted through maintaining their culture, etc.

Although the abolishment of said seats has been touted as a potential referendum topic, the rights of minorities to participate in parliament are enshrined in the constitution and further clarified in derived laws, interpreting the mentioned constitutional clauses. With that said, changing the aforementioned legal norms would be exceptionally difficult. Furthermore, any talks and intentions aiming for the abolishment of the mentioned parliament seats should be done with great care, as it might be perceived as a form of majority attack on minority rights and a violation of several international treaties, declarations, and memoranda, although a counter-argument can be made that such a position increases the overall level of democracy as it distributes voting rights equally among all of the people living in Croatia, regardless of ethnicity.

3. Local and regional self-government structure and funding

Croatia has 20 counties (županije) plus the highly autonomous city of Zagreb and an additional 127 towns and 428 municipalities. It is widely believed that the current organization of local government subdivisions is highly archaic, with a great number of municipalities having too few residents and being in close proximity to an urban center for their autonomy to make sense. Even more so in the current year, as most of the administrative requirements of citizens from the government have shifted online and more people than ever own personal transportation vehicles. As of the time of writing this article, there have been no major pushes from the ruling governments to decrease the number of cities and municipalities by merging them into larger units. A large-scale merger project would have two important benefits:

1. Consolidating local government bodies and optimizing their performance by eliminating superfluous staff
2. Consolidating the population pool and increasing the odds of high-quality, educated candidates becoming political leaders as they are more likely to be elected on merit than on familiar and neighborhood ties

The added benefit of having approximately 150 towns and municipalities (together with the 151 MPs) would be that it would allow them to participate in high-level political decisions such as voting for the president and thus serve as a de facto lower house. Such a move would increase democratic and regional representation and make the position of mayor more appealing for potential candidates, thus boosting political engagement among the populace.

Another problem with local government is the way it is funded. Due to the absence of a general property tax (targeting land value or total value of real estate), the majority of the income of the local government comes from income tax, whose aspects are crafted by the Croatian parliament. In other words, local government has very little influence on its main source of revenue, and any changes regarding that source of revenue must be approved by the Croatian parliament, which is a significant limitation of fiscal decentralization.

The problem can be simply mended through the introduction of a property tax (of which there are many flavors) and setting the system in such a way that:

1. The property tax becomes the most significant source of income for the local government, and its revenues as a whole go to the local government.
2. The local government has the authority to increase or decrease the property tax according to the framework set by the central government.
3. Income taxation is greatly decreased as more disposable income becomes available for property purchases and improvements, thus shifting tax revenues to the local government.

 

4. Parliamentary election system and electoral districts

Croatia’s division into 10 electoral districts has been a source of controversy. As of the day of writing this article, the latest electoral division had been contested by the parliamentary opposition and submitted for evaluation on the basis of unconstitutionality. The proposed division is as follows:

The main criticism is levied at the exceptionally elongated shapes of the 4th, 5th, and 7th districts, which are accused of not following established county or geographical borders. The government has stated that the electoral districts were shaped according to the constitutional requirement that electoral districts must contain similar numbers of the populace, while the opposition claims the electoral districts are a form of gerrymandering and an attempt to shift the voting power away from the more left-leaning capital, the City of Zagreb.

It can objectively be said that the main benefactors of large and incoherent electoral districts are the parties with the strongest brands, and in the case of Croatia, those are the center-right HDZ and center-left SDP. The larger the electoral district, the lesser chance regionalist-focused parties have of succeeding, as catch-all politics is encouraged.

A proposed reform of the electoral system that would be fair for smaller, regionalist parties and also fit into the constitutional framework of a comparable population would be to reshape the system into fewer but more compact districts, following regional political and geographical lines, allowing smaller parties better coverage for ground-level political advocacy. The neighboring country of Slovenia uses one electoral district for its parliamentary elections, for example, but that is possible due to its more cohesive geographic distribution and overall national culture.

There has been another suggestion floated recently by the political analyst Žarko Puhovski on the N1 television channel, and that is of intruding into a mixed-member proportional representation system. In it, approximately half of the MP positions would be voted on a party/ideology basis, using the whole country as a single electoral district, while the other half (approximately 75 MP positions) would be voted based on 75 electoral districts corresponding to urban centers with a first-past-the-post type of election system. The intention is to factor MP accountability into the overall workings of the parliament, as those MPs would be under the direct spotlight of their constituencies to deliver results for their constituencies—something that is lost and blurred in a system with few large electoral districts, as most voters do not even know which MPs correspond to their electoral districts. The proposed system would have the benefits of a vibrant, multi-party, D’Hondt-style system, representative of ideologies, while also having the benefits of territorial accountability towards its constituencies of a first-past-the-post type of system, without the prospect of turning the country into a two-party state and without the bureaucracy of maintaining a bicameral legislature.