HZDS: The Ideology, Organisation and Support Base of Slovakia's Most Successful Party

Abstract

IN ELECTORAL TERMS the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) has been Slovakia's most successful party since its formation in 1991. The clear winner of the June 1992 elections in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia with 37.26% of the vote, HZDS's founder and leader and three time Slovak Prime Minister, Vladimir Meciar, led the final phase of negotiations with his Czech counterpart, Vaclav Klaus, that spelt the demise of the common state. Although a cluster of defections brought down independent Slovakia's first HZDS-led government in early 1994, the party won the largest share of the vote in the autumn 1994 elections (34.96%) and formed a coalition government with two smaller parties, which held power for the length of the four year electoral cycle. During the 1994-98 period Slovakia became the black sheep of Central Europe, excluded by both the European Union and NATO from their respective first wave applicant groups for eastern enlargement. Blame for both exclusions has been laid at the door of the HZDS-led governments. Despite its central role in Slovak politics since its formation in 1991, HZDS has received scant attention from scholars. What attention it has received has tended to