Abstract

This study is comparative exploration of minimum-winning coalition governments in Central European countries. The principal objective of this article is 1. to provide a general overview of the essence of minimumwinning coalition governments 2. to show the short history of formation and termination minimum-winning coalition governments since. 2. to make classification of Central European governments and define the prevailing type of cabinets. 3. Define the minimum-winning governments with dominant party and equal parties. 4. To define and to evaluate index of government stability. Minimum-Winning Coalition includes only those parties needed to obtain a majority position, coalition Considerations of the motivations of the gaming actors to form coalition governments divide spatial models in two main groups, those assuming that the political parties are concerned above everything else with gettinginto the office, and those assuming that thefundamental motivation of political parties to come into power is to implementcertain public policies. According to the first approach politicians will say and do everything that will bring them into power. According the second approach politicians must to implement their program into life. On the first approach is based minimum-winninf coalition. Minimum Winning Coalition includes only those parties needed to obtain a majority position, a MNC consists of the minimal number of parties that can form a majority government. Mainly minimal winning coalitions in Central European countries were based on cooperation of ideologically distant political parties. However ideological part of motivation to form coalitions was not excluded. The division construction of minimum-winning coalitions governments based on the assumption of presence of one dominant party that is evident in such countries as Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary, where one party considerably prevails other partners of governing coalition. In this model the party force that is expressed in an amount of mandates obtained on parliamentary elections. Only in Slovakia the participants of minimumwinning coalitions had equal coalition, when political parties have approximately identical amount of deputies. The index of government stability for minimum-winning coalition governments was evaluated for Czech Republic 100%. It is the highest index of government stability among minimum-winning governments in all Central Europe. The lowest index has the cabinet of I. Radicova in Slovakia with 31% of stability and cabinet of J. Kachynski with 35% of stability.