We are currently in a period of two cheerful weeks within which it is necessary to submit candidacies for representative bodies and executive bodies in counties, cities and municipalities. At the end of that period, when the full inventory of all the lists and running candidates is published, there will certainly be those that the public has not yet had a chance to hear about during the pre-campaign, and it will also turn out that some have stumbled already on the first step, since they haven’t managed to collect the minimum number of citizens’ valid signatures.
The State Electoral Commission made an effort to adapt this process to pandemic conditions, so that citizens in isolation or self-isolation will be able to give their support to a candidate and send scanned forms to the respective candidate, without the intervention of volunteers who normally collect signatures in public areas. He will join them with the total signatures that he will submit to the electoral commission in charge. It remains to be hoped that this possibility will not be misused by some to attempt to falsely collect signatures of support.
All those hoping to succeed the late mayor of Zagreb will have to collect 5,000 valid signatures. For the Split-Dalmatia County Prefect, 3,200 signed supports of citizens will be enough, and for the mayor of Civljane, in the vicinity of Knin, only 35 signatures will be enough. Such a wide range of required signatures testifies to the poor demographic situation, but also to the uneven population of the country and the fragmentation of local self-government.
However, in the process of running for representative bodies, i.e., county assemblies, Zagreb assembly, city and municipal councils, not everyone has the same starting position. Namely, the legislator explicitly prefers party lists (either individual or coalition) to independent lists, i.e., lists proposed by groups of voters, since only the candidacy of non-party lists requires the collection of signatures, while registered political parties do not have to do that. The list proposed by a group of voters for the Zagreb City Assembly will thus need 2,500 signatures; for the assembly of the second largest local and regional self-government unit, Split-Dalmatia County, 1,800 signatures, and for the Civljane Municipal Council will need to collect 25 signatures of support.
Despite the need to collect signatures, the number of non-partisan lists, as well as non-partisan candidates, has risen sharply since the direct, popular election of county prefects, city mayors, and municipality mayors was introduced in 2009. In Germany, the practice has developed at the local level that citizens who want to participate in elections and oppose established parties gather in registered associations (electoral associations) which then seek office with so-called citizens’ lists (Bürgerlisten). In Italy, the different character of local elections is manifested in the fact that they are called administrative elections (elezioni amministrative), while parliamentary elections are called political elections (elezioni politiche).
Where does the privileged position of the candidacies of party lists versus non-party lists come from? What effects does it produce? How do non-partisan actors adapt to this “unequal treatment”?
Behind the legal preference for party candidacies lies the understanding of modern representative democracy as party democracy. In other words, the legal framework accepts and emphasizes the role of political parties as specialized legal entities that aggregate the political will of citizens and carry out the process of nominating candidates for public office to participate in policy-making and decision-making in public interest. The understanding of modern representative democracy as party democracy (Parteiendemokratie) is especially manifest in the German political system, where it is expressed not only in the law on parties, but also in the Basic Law, i.e., the Constitution, which in Art. 21 states that “parties participate in shaping the political will of the people.” There is no such description of parties in the Croatian constitution, but the first article of the Law on Political Parties states that “Political parties (…) by their free establishment and permanent participation in building the political will of the citizens are an expression of a democratic multi-party system as one of the highest values of the constitutional order of the Republic of Croatia.”
In Germany, there is no exact minimum number of signatories required to form a party, but the authorities are examining much more closely whether the newly formed political organization is of a permanent and serious character, with a clear program and a developed organizational structure. In addition, the system does not favor political parties en masse, but established parties. Namely, the obligation to collect signatures for candidacy is not restrained to civic lists, but it encompasses all lists of parties that did not win seats in the federal or provincial parliaments in the previous elections. In contrast, in Croatia it is enough to gather a hundred people for registration who will give their signature for the new party and hold the founding assembly and present the statute and program to the Ministry of Administration. Once a party is registered, it can run lists at all electoral levels without special preconditions, even if it is a party that does not operate at all in practice between the two election cycles. This situation results in the fact that, for example, in the last parliamentary elections, in 2020, the average share of candidate lists in ten constituencies that were below one percent was over half, or 52.9 percent, with an average of 29 percent of all the lists receiving less than 500 votes. In the 2017 parliamentary elections in Zagreb, 12 of the 21 lists were below one percent, with five lists receiving less than a thousand votes.
During Milanović’s government, there was an attempt to rationalize the electoral supply, i.e., to introduce the obligation to collect signatures for all running lists. According to this model, 1,500 signatures of support would have to be collected in each constituency in the parliamentary elections, which would mean an increase from the existing 500 for lists proposed by groups of voters (the number of signatures required for independent lists is 5,000 for European elections) and a test of seriousness for the non-parliamentary political parties. However, by a ruling of 24 September 2015, the Constitutional Court ruling of 24 September 2015, the Constitutional Court abolished such a model, emphasizing the constitutionally particular position of political parties as specialized legal entities participating in the electoral process. However, the inconsistency of this interpretation of the candidacy conditions is reflected in the candidacy rules for eight representatives of national minorities. Namely, in that case, the law states that political parties, citizens and associations of national minorities have the right to run, but for each candidate it is necessary to collect 100 signatures, regardless of whose support the candidate has, party or non-party.
Thanks to lax and simple regulations for the registration of political parties, from the beginning of 2021, Croatia is “richer” for 18 more political parties, so the total number of active parties on the day of conclusion of this text was 390. From the register of political parties, some further curiosities can be extracted. Namely, some politicians who recently left their long-standing political parties or decided to re-engage in politics, this time in local elections, registered ad hoc political parties with their name, but also with the designation “independent list” in the name. Thus, for example, under the registration number of party 373 in the register there is a party called “IVAN PENAVA NEZAVISNA LISTA”, and under the number 377, the party “MATIJA POSAVEC – NEZAVISNA LISTA”. The non-party candidate for the mayor of Zagreb registered a party called “VESNA ŠKARE OŽBOLT – INDEPENDENT LIST”, and under the number 385, there is also the party “INDEPENDENT LIST OF ANTE ĐAPIĆ”. In other words, the obligation to collect signatures for independent lists, not for political parties, produces, as we have seen from previous data, inflation of electoral supply involving parties with almost no voter support, while at the same time independent candidates skillfully circumvent the legislator’s intentions by registering personalized parties, which in their name suggest that they are independent lists, but in legal terms are registered as political parties, and therefore have no obligation to collect signatures for a valid candidacy as “real” independent lists do.
Ultimately, if the legal framework is not changed and the constitutional interpretation is not modified, in these local elections, as well as in other future elections, we will continue to witness a flood of bogus parties (akin to bogus companies with zero employees), which will serve to comply to the form, and not to create content that serves the political representation of the will of the citizens. For the quality of democratic political representation in Croatia, it would certainly be better if the conditions of registration were made more serious, and if all candidates could participate under the same, appropriately demanding conditions in determining the validity of the candidacy by collecting a minimum number of signatures.