by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Bulgaria will be having a new government after President Georgi Purvanov formally asked Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov to form a cabinet on Thursday, July 16. Voters in the Southeastern European nation gave a clear victory to Borisov's right-of-center Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) in a parliamentary election held last July 5. While the election to choose members of the Bulgaria's unicameral Parliament, the National Assembly, was the country's second vote in less than a month - last June Bulgarians elected their representatives in the European Parliament - the parliamentary poll nonetheless had a 60.9% voter turnout rate, up from 55.8% in 2005.br /br /Bulgaria's general election - the seventh since the country peacefully moved away from single-party Communist rule in 1989-90 - was held under a new electoral system which established 31 single-member seats, chosen by plurality voting. First-past-the-post seats were ostensibly ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /An election is currently taking place in the 27 member countries of the European Union, to choose 736 members of the European Parliament for a term of five years. Some countries went to the polls on June 4, 5 and 6, but most are holding the election on Sunday, June 7. In addition, one of the smallest members of the EU, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, will hold a parliamentary election simultaneously with the EP poll.br /br /The European Parliament a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2009/default.htm"2009 elections website/a bills the event as "27 countries, one election," but it would be more appropriate to speak about 27 separate elections that happen to be held simultaneously across a four-day period. Even though all EU countries use proportional representation to allocate EP seats since 1999 (when Great Britain proper switched from first-past-the-post to PR), the rules vary from country to country, ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Contrary to exit poll findings and widespread expectations of a closely fought race, India's ruling Congress Party - formally the Indian National Congress - and its allies won a clear victory in the general election held in April and May of this year, emerging well ahead of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In all, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won 261 of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha - the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament - and came within eleven seats of an absolute parliamentary majority, while the BJP-headed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured only 157 and the Third Front - composed of leftist and regional parties - captured 80 seats. Meanwhile, the new Fourth Front also fared poorly, obtaining just 27 seats, while the remaining 18 seats went to other parties.br /br /The Election Commission of India has ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /The Czech Republic will be holding an early general election later this year - nearly a year ahead of schedule - after the center-right coalition government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek was brought down last week in a parliamentary no-confidence vote. Topolánek, who submitted his resignation last Thursday but remains as caretaker head of government and leader of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) - the largest party in the Central European country's bicameral legislature - subsequently reached an agreement with former Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek, the leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party (#268;SSD) - the main opposition force - to hold an early poll next October; a specific date remains to be determined.br /br /Prime Minister Topolánek came to office following a closely fought general election in June 2006, which left the Chamber of Deputies - the lower house of the Czech Parliament ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Last Saturday's announcement by Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány that he was stepping down after almost five years as head of government may have come as a surprising turn of events, given that he had stubbornly clung to office despite his growing unpopularity over the course of the last three years. However, what turned out to be completely unexpected was the method he chose to end his mandate: a constructive vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly (Parliament) against his own government.br /br /Under a constructive no-confidence motion, Parliament votes to replace a sitting prime minister with another person, rather than simply bring down the government. This mechanism was introduced in the former West Germany after World War II, in order to prevent a recurrence of the parliamentary deadlock that contributed to the demise of the 1919-33 Weimar Republic.br /br /Constructive votes of no-confidence ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Voters in Slovakia went to the polls today for a presidential election, but the outcome will almost certainly be decided in a runoff vote next April 4. Normally, a second round between the candidates arriving in first and second place would be held if no candidate won an absolute majority of Bvalid votes/B in the first round of voting, but last February the Slovak Central Election Commission (UVK) ruled that an absolute majority of all Beligible voters/B was required in order to secure a first round victory.br /br /Election results links are now available at the bottom of this posting, under BUpdate/B.br /br /Like most European countries, Slovakia - which attained independence in 1993, following the peaceful dissolution of the Czechoslovak (or as the Slovaks had it, Czecho-Slovak) federation - has a parliamentary form of government, under which executive power is exercised by the ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Voters in Slovakia went to the polls today for a presidential election, but the outcome will almost certainly be decided in a runoff vote next April 4. Normally, a second round between the candidates arriving in first and second place would be held if no candidate won an absolute majority of Bvalid votes/B in the first round of voting, but last February the Slovak Central Election Commission (UVK) ruled that an absolute majority of all Beligible voters/B was required in order to secure a first round victory.br /br /Election results links are now available at the bottom of this posting, under BUpdate/B.br /br /Like most European countries, Slovakia - which attained independence in 1993, following the peaceful dissolution of the Czechoslovak (or as the Slovaks had it, Czecho-Slovak) federation - has a parliamentary form of government, under which executive power is exercised by the ...

As my readers may have noticed I am pretty much letting my colleague Edward running the show at the moment in terms of detailing the fall from grace of European economies. It is funny to think about how it is under a year ago that the notion of decoupling was fiercely debated. What a difference a couple of bust economies and banks make eh? In any case, what follows will be some semi-random observations on last week’s and the coming ditto’s events. As a common theme I think it is safe to say that in the context of the European economy as well as in a more wonkish theoretical perspective on the global economy push, as it were, looks very close to becoming shove. 

 

Towards a Common European Answer?

As I mentioned last week, Q4 was an absolute horror story in terms of European data with an aggregate Eurozone contraction of

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by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Just two years after holding a A HREF="http://globaleconomydoesmatter.blogspot.com/2007/05/iceland-2007-parliamentary-election.html"parliamentary election/A, voters in Iceland are likely to return to the polls next May 9 for an early general election. Normally, the poll would not need to be held until 2011, but these are anything but normal times in the Nordic island nation, whose economy has been devastated by the ongoing global financial crisis.br /br /With all of Iceland's three major banks under receivership since October; the national currency (the krona) having lost over half its value and the stock market over 90 percent of its value; inflation and unemployment on the rise; and the GDP expected to contract by ten percent this year, public discontent over the perceived mismanagement of the economy by the coalition government of Iceland's two major parties - the conservative Independence Party and the left-of-center Social Democratic Alliance - has fueled mounting ...

by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Voters in Romania went to the polls on Sunday to choose members of both houses of the South-eastern European nation's bicameral Parliament, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. However, voters cast ballots for candidates in single-member constituencies - 137 in the Senate and 315 in the Chamber of Deputies - under a new electoral system introduced earlier this year, which replaced the party-list proportional representation system in place since 1990, following the downfall of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu the preceding year.br /br /Romanian expatriates also took part in the election, with six constituencies (two in the Senate, four in the Chamber) set aside for them.br /br /Romania's Central Electoral Bureau's A HREF="http://www.becparlamentare2008.ro/"2008 parliamentary elections/A website has partial results in Romanian only.br /br /Although the election took place in single-member constituencies, it should be noted that the new system - introduced to make Romanian ...