Slovakia

Early elections took place on 10 March 2012 in the wake of the fall of the previous government in October 2011 due to intra-coalition disagreement over the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which was strongly opposed by one of the junior coalition partners. Freedom and Solidarity (SaS). Prime Minister Iveta Radicová of the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ-DS) linked the vote on the EFSF to a vote of confidence in the government because she perceived the rejection of the European Union scheme as a threat to the European single currency and hoped to force SaS compliance by linking it to the survival of the government. With SaS abstaining and Direction-Social Democracy (Smer-SD) withholding its support, the three remaining parties of the ruling coalition lacked the votes needed to win the confidence vote. Once the government fell, Smer-SD quickly offered to support the EFSF in exchange for early elections, and the measure passed two days after its initial failure (see Malová and Ucen 2012). Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers