Coalition behaviour in new democracies is an unexplored area of investigation despite much rich material in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. Established coalition theory is relevant to such research, but it needs to adapt to special problems found in new regimes undergoing transition and not yet consolidated. In general, coalition politics is a vital indicator of the ability of new democratic elites for compromise and consensus formation, with obvious implications for the prospects of democratic consolidation. In the pertinent case of Slovakia, there are limits to applying the ideological criterion, while other dimensions of political space, including the ethnic, should be taken into consideration - which is true for many post-communist democracies. In other words, parallel transformations other than political democratization have a bearing on coalition politics; and these include nation-building as well as economic system change.