Prekletstvo številke 45: konstituiranje slovenskega državnega zbora in vlade v letih 1996–1997
The Curse of Number 45: The Formation of the Slovenian National Assembly and the Government between 1996 and 1997

Summary/Abstract: The formation of the Slovenian Parliament and Government in the 1990s was deeply marked by the transition from socialism to liberalism (in Slovenia, this process began with the acceptance of the amendments to the Constitution in 1989 and concluded with Slovenia’s accession to the European Union in 2004) and by the polarisation of the Slovenian political arena. This paper spatially and temporally frames the historical events and then focuses on a case study of the formation of the Parliament and government. It analyses the formal perspective of this process and the informal arrangements that crucially shaped it. This kind of research reveals the depth of the parliamentary parties’ polarisation. The political discourse was checked for identifications that manifested the polarisation. The left-leaning parties – the Liberal Democratic Party (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije) being the most dominant – understood themselves as pro-Europe parties that would bring about the Western-type normality; while the right-leaning Slovenian People’s Party (Slovenska ljudska stranka), the Slovenian Christian Democrats (Slovenski krščanski demokrati), and the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka) named themselves the “spring parties”. The former group understood the opposing parties as hindrances to the normalisation process; while the latter feared the continuity with socialism and characterised the left-leaning parties as the “old forces”. The repeated defeat of the right-wing parties (except for a few months in 2000) reinforced their negative discourse, which fully emerged after the end of the transition.

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