New Parties and Democracy in Slovenia

While no stranger to new political parties, Slovenia’s party system became much more unstable after 2008 with the constant arrival of electorally very successful parties. Further, while the citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and trust in political institutions has never reached the heights seen in Western Europe, the crisis years saw them drop to historical lows. In these circumstances, one may expect successful new parties to assure greater responsiveness, or a balance between responsible and responsive politics, and to bring improvements to citizens’ opinion on their satisfaction with democracy and trust in political institutions. In addition, new parties are usually more prone to democratic innovations, which can be associated with the popular idea of introducing stronger intra-party democracy in their internal functioning. The analysis shows that in 2014 Slovenia experienced both the nadir of public opinion on democracy and the political system, and the most electorally successful new party. Nevertheless, improvements in satisfaction with democracy and the political system only slowly emerged after 2014, to a considerable extent coinciding with the return to economic prosperity, while even these improvements left enough room for yet another successful new party at the 2018 elections. Concerning innovations in intra-party democracy, we are only able to identify some smaller democratic innovations. Given this, it seems that the new parties themselves have had a relatively limited impact on democracy in Slovenia.