Keywords

In order to understand the whole context of party system change it is important not only to analyse a narrow political context and the evaluation of democracy in Slovenia over time. Democracy literature also stresses a broader context of changing democracy as a set of factors impacting on democracy. The five main subsets of these highly recognized factors are: economy, social inequalities, institutions, actors (particularly citizens and civil society entities) and external factors.

Political Context and Evaluation of Democracy in Slovenia Over Time

Among the post-socialist countries joining the EU so far, Slovenia has been most consistently evaluated as a liberal democracy since the transition to democracy. Not only had the liberal democracy index risen rather swiftly in the first half of the 1990s (Fig. 6.1), but it had also appeared quite constant. In contrast, a critical decline in democracy has so far only occurred in the period under Janša’s third government (2020–2022) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic when the constitutional system was eroded by the executive’s actions.

Fig. 6.1
A double-line graph compares the liberal democracy index of the E U and Slovenia versus the years from 1988 to 2022. The Slovenian line starts at 0.28, rises to 0.8, then remains flat until 2019, followed by a small decline and rise. The other line starts at 0.6, rises to 0.7, then remains flat.

(Source ‘Variable Graph—V-Dem’ [n.d.])

Liberal democracy index—the EU and Slovenia compared (1988–2022)

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Although evaluations of democracy have varied slightly over time, it was in the period of transition and in the years between 2019 and 2021 that democracy was evaluated at lower levels, and there are considerable differences between the two periods. The transition period was in fact the start of building democracy based on the deconstruction of the socialist political system, holding the first free elections in 1990 and adopting the 1991 constitution.

Slovenia’s transition was a result of the bottom-up pressures of civil society and the emerging oppositional political organizations and top-down activities of the adapting old elite (Linz 1990; Lijphart 2000). This combination and graduality, including the liberalization, has been theoretically recognized as being supportive of democratic developments.

Political gradualism offered the opportunity for political learning of both the adapting old elite and of a newly emerging oppositional party elite. The opposition had enriched the intellectual potential of the newly emerging political elite. This is why the transitional elections brought many intellectuals into political institutions.

However, the old political elite had not only been adapting under the pressure coming from the bottom by Slovenian civil society (both liberal and more nationalist) and newly emerging oppositional political leagues within, at that time, the Socialist Republic of Slovenia (part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). The pressures on Slovenia’s transforming old political elite had also been coming from the Yugoslav political and army elite interested in maintaining the old socialist federal system. In the end, Slovenia’s political elite opted to legalize party pluralism and ensure its own legitimization within Slovenia during the second half of the 1980s, as well as among the voters in the first Slovenian Republic’s multiparty elections in 1990.

The adaptation of the old political elite also involved following the widely supported (at the national referendum) option to declare an independent Slovenian state, which was initially only favoured by the opposition and later also supported by a majority of citizens at the referendum. The multiple transitions had not only involved political, economic and social changes, but also the creation of an independent state (Fink-Hafner 2006). It had been the Yugoslav context that had contributed to finding the common political grounds of both the old and newly emerging segment of the political elite. Conflicts over transitional reforms had gained less importance than achieving peace in Slovenia in relation to Yugoslavia’s war, independence and joining (at the time) the European Community, and to a lesser degree NATO.

Slovenia’s adapting old elite had taken special care to ensure that transitional changes and paving the way for an independent state had taken place in a legalistic manner (Grad 1997). Numerous amendments to the socialist constitution were adopted in the period 1988–1990 in Slovenia (at that time still a republic in the frame of former Yugoslavia). The amendments not only legalized political pluralism and the private ownership basis for capitalist development, but they also traced the path for an independent state. The first free elections held in April 1990 were a political act contrary to the Yugoslav constitution and in line with Slovenia’s amended old constitution at the time. Only the new constitution (1991) was actually a constitution of an independent Slovenian state.

In Slovenia, neither transition nor consolidation of democracy involved political lustration due to both the power relations between the old and new elite (Pečar 1997) and internal differences on this issue within the new elite. Research has shown the vitality of the reformist old elite, which was already a result of internal differentiation of the old elite taking place during the 1980s as the liberal stream within the Slovenian League of Communists won over hardliners in the mid-1980s. But it had not only been the liberal stream prevailed within the League of Communists of Slovenia. Opposition within the regime had also evolved since the first half of the 1980s—the transforming socialist youth organization, which later developed into a social-liberal party dominating the governing coalitions for most of the first post-transitional decade. Besides, Slovenia’s anti-system opposition had not been fundamentalist.

Quite a lot of the reforming old elite succeeded in keeping their power positions (Kramberger and Vehovar 2000; Kramberger 2002), which makes Slovenia’s elite reproduction rate among the highest in East Central Europe. Nevertheless, the openness of the new-elite structure for newcomers was the strongest in politics among all sections of elite sectors, such as economy and culture (Kramberger and Vehovar 2000). However, elite members had highly adapted their social networks during the transition: in 1995, the old elite only kept about a third of their old social ties, so it was old by origin but new by contacts (Iglič and Rus 1996). Such an elite had been effectively having an important say in political managing of economic privatization and other transformative processes. Over time, it has been particularly the new political elite that recognized political gradualism as a way of creating losers and winners. The new segment of political elites appeared to be losers as they has participated less in the newly created economic redistribution.

The animosities within the elite of the mid-1990s had also been additionally fuelled by the heritage of political violence among a fifth of the 1995 elite—personal experience with violence particularly during the Second World War, during the 1966–1975 period and during the 1987–1992 period (Kramberger 2009). According to Kramberger, 25% also experienced parents or grandparents having property or other assets confiscated. The factor of parents’ violent experiences in the past, their personal experience of violence during the 1987–1992 period, also became important in Janez Janša’s political role in Slovenian politics. However, it was not the only key element of Slovenia’s politics.

Soon after the first free elections, the new parties ideologically differentiated and even dismissed DEMOS—a form of collaboration among the parties opposing the old regime. After 1992, the long-term party of the Prime Minister (the successor of the reformed League of Socialist Youth of Slovenia, transformed into the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, or LDS) succeeded in managing socio-economic problems and leading the broadly supported process of Slovenia’s integration into the European Union and (less enthusiastically) NATO.

As we will show in more detail in the next subsection and in the next chapter, the achievement of the transitional main political goals (independent state and joining European integrations) has not been amended by Slovenia’s new developmental goals. Governing has become ever more challenging due to the increasingly turbulent domestic and international context. Increasing problems of party governing through institutions of parliamentary democracy have, among other things, also been expressed in the extensive use of direct democracy (referenda) since 2003 (Fig. 6.2), often on parties’ own initiative.

Fig. 6.2
A triple-line graph compares the L D I, G D P per capita, and popular referendum index versus the years from 1988 to 2022. The liberal index line first rises slightly, then remains flat. The G D P line falls slightly, then rises. The other line first remains flat, rises, then falls gradually.

(Note As shown in the text, GDP per capita had fallen during the COVID-19 crisis, but later returned to a slight increase. Source ‘Country graph—V-Dem’ [n.d.])

Evaluation of democracy, GDP per capita and popular referendum index in Slovenia (1988–2022)

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Slovenia’s full integration into the EU in 2004 became a critical point in the country’s development in general, and in politics in particular. As we will show in the next section and in the following chapter, the paradigm of gradualism, neo-corporatist exceptionalism and policies taking care of maintaining rather low levels of social inequalities has been quite radically challenged. The economy and socio-economic characteristics radically changed in a rather short period of time due to domestic and external factors.

At the same time, a bipolarism has been increasingly determining Slovenia’s politics. On the one hand, the success of the transformed League of Communists of Slovenia in winning the elections and taking over the executive power in a peaceful manner based on the 2008 elections had fulfilled Linz’s (1990) indicator of democratic consolidation. On the other hand, this period was already mixing with elements of the emerging challenges to Slovenia’s democracy. The year 2009 brought about not only an additional push for polarization, but also a more systematic articulation of the alternative political system—Janša’s programmatic idea of the Second Republic (SDS 2009).

Particularly in the context of financial and economic crisis, the critical domestic political actors have been the Slovenian Democratic Party led by Janez Janša and centre-left parties. The centre-left, lacking programmatic responses, have been increasingly taking a populist personalistic stand and the stand of anti-Janša politics (Fink-Hafner and Krašovec 2019). Since the 2011 early elections, political representatives in the parliament and in government have been radically replaced by ‘new faces’ lacking political competence and experience (Fink-Hafner et al. 2017).

In this political context, big external shocks hit Slovenia, including the international economic and financial crisis, the international migration crisis and the global COVID-19 crisis. Problems in managing their impacts nationally (as shown in the next subsection and in the following chapter) had been accumulating and led to several early elections. As the centre-left coalition government led by ‘a new face’, Šarec, was dissolved after the Prime Minister stepped down, an opportunity for Janez Janša’s party had opened up. In a very idiosyncratic window of opportunity, Janša’s programmatic orientation was intensively implemented after the change in government without holding parliamentary elections. It was only during the period of Janša's government (March 2019–June 2022) that Slovenia’s democracy significantly declined (Freedom House, n.d.; ‘Variable Graph—V-Dem’, n.d.).

Initially, the illiberal alternative had not been formally adopted as a fully developed Slovenian Democratic party platform. Rather it was published as Janez Janša’s speech at the 2009 party congress including ten proposals for constitutional changes under the slogan the ‘Second Republic’ (Druga republika). Nevertheless, among the public it was received as a programme that resonates with ideas of illiberal democracy. However, in September 2013, the SDP published the article on its web page under the title ‘Predsednik Janez Janša: “Bo Slovenija druga ali socialistična republika?”’ (SDS 2013)—‘President Janez Janša: Will Slovenia be the second or socialist republic?’ With such personal exposure, the political orientation developed and practised by Janša was nicknamed janšizem (Janshism) and was used in political slogans against Janša's ideology and practice (‘no to the politics of janšizem’; ‘death to janšism, freedom to the people’) (Balen 2020; ‘Zaradi napisa “Smrt janšizmu” policija vodi postopek proti osmim osebam’, 2020).

However, later Janša’s party further developed the practical programme based on the idea that Slovenia 2.0 needed to replace Slovenia 1.0. In December 2012, it had been the Executive Committee of Janša’s party that presented a renewed list of proposed constitutional changes to other parliamentary parties together with the proposal for political agreement among parties.

The SDP proposed the following 11 elements of political system reform (SDS 2013): (1) direct elections of MPs based on an absolute majority of votes; (2) inclusion of the possibility of recalling an MP during the mandate based on new elections in an electoral district; (3) inclusion of the possibility of recalling mayors and limiting the mandates to two consecutive mandates or indirect elections of mayors (mayors elected and removed by a local community council); (4) elimination of the parliamentary upper chamber (National Council); (5) inclusion of a trial mandate for all new judges; (6) maintaining a judicial tenure mandate after the trial period. All current judges are to be re-elected. The judiciary council is to be additionally equipped by legal experts from international judiciary institutions and supreme court judges from other EU states; (7) a new specialized course to be established for judging the most difficult economic cases, including bankruptcy and other organized crime. Judges for this court to be named in a special procedure by public voting in the lower parliamentary chamber (National Assembly) on the proposal of the President of the Republic of Slovenia, and to be elected by a majority of two-thirds of the votes; (8) a financial police is to be established with powers comparable to some EU member states; (9) all state and para-state institutions that don’t exist in comparable EU member states are to be eliminated (Ukraine); (10) all privileges of elected or named officials are to be removed after the end of the mandate; (11) simpler procedures for calling early elections and government formation.

This list of suggestions had been accompanied by the SDP’s suggestions for political agreement among parliamentary parties: (1) ensuring sufficient parliamentary support for the 11 elements of reform; (2) inclusion in the constitution of the golden fiscal rule; (3) changes in the legal rules for referenda; (4) adoption and implementation of reform and anti-crisis laws; (5) agreement on the freezing during a crisis of all privileges and transfers to individuals (with the exception of social and family transfers) that come, based on various legal bases, indirectly or directly from the state budget in cases where all these payments, together with the basic income, extend beyond the average salary. The money saved in that way shall go towards increased financing of scholarships; (6) the government coalition is to be enlarged or early elections to be held within two months after the acceptance of these proposals (possibly in May or June 2013).

Constitutional changes were not well received by other parliamentary parties. In spite of that, in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, Janša’s government, formed without holding elections, governed in a way that led to the decline of democracy in Slovenia.

Decline in democracy had been related to types of actions that illiberals in power take in their subversions in liberal democracy (Pirro and Stanley 2022). When compared to the illiberal practices of governing parties Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, Janša’s government only partially, and for a rather limited time, succeeded in implementing several of them (Table 6.1). However, a more thorough analysis of the post-2022 election system characteristics remains to be conducted.

Table 6.1 Illiberalism in Poland, Hungary and Slovenia
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The executive’s actions under Janša eroded the constitutional system of 1991 in several ways within a very short period of time, but potentially with some longer consequences. While some measures during the COVID-19 crisis were comparable to other countries, many of them were publicly perceived as a misuse of the health crisis for implementing illiberal politics. The critical activities were: the government’s attacks on the judiciary; limiting citizens’ political rights, including the extraordinary use of physical violence not experienced even in the old system; the political pressures on the police; the political subordination of the national public TV; attacking Slovenia’s press agency; taking over the state apparatus (particularly within the police) and positions in economy. There was also criticism that the government favoured the functioning of the economy over protecting the health of workers and creating nursery homes for the elderly as closed places with an extremely high mortality rate.

Unlike Hungary and Poland, a rather swift pushing back of Janša's illiberal politics took place under the pressure of liberal civil socitey. The anti-Janša alternative—the 2022 parliamentary elections bringing the centre-left party majority into the parliament and the formation of the centre-left government—had been demanded and crucially supported by widespread centre-left civil society activities. Without such broad support for establishing the Freedom Movement as the anti-Janša force, a shift again towards the more centre-left understanding of liberal democracy would not have been possible. As shown in Fig. 6.3, V-Dem noted that democracy changed in a direction of former long-term liberal democracy values.

Fig. 6.3
A multi-line graph compares the V-dem liberal democracy indexes of Europe, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia versus the years from 1990 to 2022. All lines start between 0.5 and 0.7, remain almost flat until 2009, then decline. The line for Europe starts near 0.6 and remains flat close to 0.7.

(Source ‘Variable graph—V-Dem’ [n.d.])

V-Dem liberal democracy indexes of Slovenia, Hungary, Poland and Europe (1990–2022)

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In the next section we look at a broader context of democracy in Slovenia over time.

Broader Context of Slovenia’s Democracy: Economy, Social Inequalities, Institutions, Actors and External Factors

Transition in Slovenia had been taking place grounded on, comparatively speaking, a very solid financial and economic basis (Mencinger 1997). This enabled Slovenia to reject the externally suggested shock therapy and take a gradual path of capitalist transformation during the first decade after transition. The reaffirmation of neo-corporatist traditions allowed for compromises paving the way for socially inclusive development (Bohle and Greskovits 2007; Stanojević and Krašovec 2011). In spite of multiple complicated transitions, GDP per capita had been growing (Fig. 6.2), and unemployment had been declining.

Privatization of state enterprises had been delayed and gradual. Nevertheless, privatizations had enabled a particular small group of people (mainly managers of privatized companies) to take over former social ownership (Lorenčič, n.d.). The OECD suggests that Slovenia’s model for economic growth has suffered from both corporate governance weaknesses and a heavy reliance on state involvement in the economy. Slovenia’s degree of state ownership in the economy has been among the highest in the OECD, accounting in 2012 for almost 11% of employment—more than triple the OECD average (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) 2015). Currently there is still a substantial segment of majority or at least partially state-owned companies in Slovenia, mostly in the fields of infrastructure, banking and insurance. Such a privatization and ownership structure has allowed for political interference in the economy. Parties with executive power tend to control publicly owned companies by placing their people in these companies’ top leadership positions. As a result, more long-term winners and losers of privatization have proliferated. Party division of the ministries (sometimes also nicknamed ‘feudalization’) has also allowed parties to prioritize access and financial gain for particular interests, leading to scandals (Fink-Hafner et al. 2002; Novak and Fink-Hafner 2019).

Socio-economic circumstances had been improving, particularly during the 1990s, in spite of some transitional challenges (GDP per capita had been constantly rising during the 1990s and social transfers had allowed for persistently low social inequalities and a constantly increasing Human Development Index (HDI) up to the year 2008) (Hanžek and Gregorčič 2001; United Nations Development Programme, n.d.). At the same, during the first decade since the transition (1990s), the high levels of social equality had been ensured by social transfers and a delay in the implementation of externally suggested flexibilization of the labour market.

Full membership of Slovenia in the EU (since 2004) and in the Eurozone (since 2007) has had important consequences for Slovenia’s economy. Easy access to foreign finance had enabled Slovenia’s economic growth until the impact of the international financial and economic crisis. The public debt had risen fast as initially the government decided to use it for social transfers to ease the impact of the crisis while at the same time Slovenian banks, citizens and the non-financial sector (beside the state) relied on loans from abroad (Mencinger 2012, 77). Slovenia lost its position as the least indebted new EU member state and its belonging to the least indebted EU member states in general, while negative investments by banks and the extraordinarily high share of enterprises in credit impacted on economic activity (Mencinger 2012, note 25).

As Slovenia became dependent on international loans it also became subject to pressure from international organizations in favour of neoliberal policies (Fig. 6.4).

Fig. 6.4
A line graph traces the trend of Slovenia's foreign debt versus the years from 1995 to 2023. The line first rises gradually, then rises sharply with fluctuations.

(Source Trading Economics [n.d.a])

Slovenia’s foreign debt (1995–August 2023)

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Soon after Slovenia joined the EU, the relatively rapid ‘flexibilization’ of the Slovenian labour market opened a window for the flourishing of ‘precarious work’—including an idiosyncratic ‘student work’—and a swift increase in the number of self-employed (in the period between 2006 and 2018, the share of the self-employed increased by nearly 20%, while in the EU it shrank by a few per cent) (Domadenik and Redek 2020, 194).

Slovenia—like other post-socialist countries—positioned itself in more downstream stages of value chains than old EU member states in the 2005–2015 period (Zajc Kejžar et al. 2020). In implementing the EU's policies for managing the impacts of the international financial and economic crisis, many socio-economic circumstances had worsened in Slovenia. GDP per capita had declined during the financial and economic crisis, and again, after some recovery, during the COVID-19 crisis (it declined from USD41,970.4 in 2019 to USD40,782 in 2020 but rose again to USD43,815.9 in 2021) (World Bank, n.d.a; World Bank, n.d.c).

The implementation of EU policies (as elsewhere within the EU) prolonged and deepened the impact of the crisis. Unemployment had reached unprecedented levels in Slovenia (World Bank, n.d.c and Fig. 6.5) while the welfare state had been shrinking. This had led to a decline in equality and an increase in poverty (Lindberg 2019; Intihar 2023; Trading Economics, n.d.b).

Fig. 6.5
A line graph and a positive negative bar chart of the Slovenian unemployment rate percent and annual change versus the years from 1991 to 2023. The line has a fluctuating trend, peaking at 11 percent in 2013. The highest annual change is in 2009. Values are estimated.

(Note Unemployment refers to the share of the labour force that is without work but available for, and seeking, employment. Source World Bank [n.d.b])

Slovenian unemployment rate (1991–2023)

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Despite Slovenia ranking among the OECD countries with the lowest level of inequality, with a Gini coefficient of between 23 and 27 for most of the last three decades, this increased significantly in the context of managing the 2008 crisis (Trading Economics, n.d.a), while the HDI radically declined. In Slovenia, the impacts of the crisis also overlapped with the last big privatization wave, adding to the growing inequalities (Lorenčič, n.d.).

These processes were in sharp contrast to the relatively stable and low levels of inequalities in the period from 1991 to the end of 2008 (placing Slovenia in the late 2000s among the most equal of the OECD countries, with a Gini coefficient of 0.24 [Filipovič Hrast and Ignjatovič 2014]). However, the tradition of equality had been shaken in the process of managing the financial and economic crisis. In the period from 2010 to 2016, poverty and social exclusion had risen (Keuc and Križanič 2019).

A significant increase in poverty was noted in 2008, when the at-risk-of-poverty rate rose from 11.5% to 12.3% (Leskošek and Dragoš 2014). The net personal wealth share of the top 1% has increased sharply since 2009, while the net personal wealth of the bottom 50% has significantly decreased (World Inequality Database, n.d.) (Fig. 6.6).

Fig. 6.6
A screenshot. It displays a multi-line graph comparing the percentage share of net personal wealth with the top 1 and 10 and the bottom 50 percent share versus years from 1995 to 2021. The lines for top shares first remain flat, fluctuate, then flat again. The other line remains flat, then declines.

(Source World Inequality Database [n.d.])

Wealth inequality, Slovenia, 1995–2021

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The sharp breaking of Slovenia’s tradition of low-level inequalities had been seen by many people as an injustice. So while Slovenia had still been among the OECD countries with quite low levels of inequality, the share of people believing that the cause of poverty was too much social injustice had risen from 42% in 2007 to 61% in 2010, while the proportion of people believing that the main reasons for poverty were personal (e.g. a person is unlucky or lazy) had halved from 2007 to 2010 (Filipovič Hrast and Ignjatovič 2014, 609–610).

However, the additional pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular brought about additional pressure on the welfare state (as in other countries) (Hrast Filipovič and Dobrotić 2022). Various already mentioned factors, including recently the effects of the war in Ukraine (particularly the rise in energy and food prices), have recently impacted on the rise of inflation and living costs (European Central Bank 2021; ‘Zakaj se vse draži? To so vzroki in posledice inflacije’ 2021; Viršek 2022) (Fig. 6.7).

Fig. 6.7
A line graph traces the trend of Slovenia's inflation rate versus the years from 1995 to 2023. The line first declines until 2020, then rises gradually with fluctuations.

(Source Trading Economics [n.d.d])

Slovenia’s inflation rate (1995–September 2023)

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Institutional Factors

The circumstances of quite strong political opposition and adaptive old political elite were not favourable for institutional choices other than the parliamentary constitutional choice with only a ceremonial role for the President of the Republic (1991) and the proportional system. These institutional choices opened the way for citizens’ decision on the transfer of oppositional and old elite strength in political institutions based on elections. As they have not changed much up until today, they have produced a stable institutional context for over three decades.

Although these institutions have been believed to ensure the development of a democratic political culture based on seeking consensus rather than authoritarian governing, they have also contributed to a fragmented party system and difficult coalition governing.

One important institutional addition has been neo-corporatism. It has been partly incorporated into the upper chamber (National Council), including indirectly elected representatives of territorial interests (22 out of 40 members) as well as representatives of functional interests, including trade unions, employers’ organizations and some professional interests. Even more importantly, neo-corporatism in the form of social partnership (Socio-Economic Council) evolved on the basis of neo-corporatist traditions has impacted on redistribution policies. It has enabled the keeping of social peace for quite some time even in Slovenia's adaptations to European and Eurozone conditions for integration. However, it has been in decline since the early 2000s (as presented in the subsection on actors).

Like neo-corporatism, also other institutions have changed in practice over time. The national executive has been increasingly gaining power in relation to the legislative (the highest lawmaking institution according to Slovenia's constitution) due to the combined effects of (1) the domestic consolidation of democracy in post-communist EU member states, (2) the pressures of international economic liberalization and (3) Europeanization (understood as the adaptations made to the domestic political system in order to manage EU affairs). Even when compared to Central European post-communist countries, Slovenia’s executive-legislative relationship has been exceptionally in favour of the executive in setting the agenda of parliament and parliament’s policy outputs (Zubek 2011, 173). The national parliament has predominantly shifted to monitoring, representative and legitimizing roles (Rangus 2012, 243). In managing the financial and economic crisis and the COVID-19 crisis, the trend of the executive’s strengthening in relation to the parliament has continued and even allowed more radical changes in these relationships in a relatively short time frame.

Actors

Here we focus on several key groups of actors recognized in a democracy literature (but not parties, which are covered in a special chapter), incorporating civil society entities (interest groups in general and trade unions in particular) and citizens.

Slovenia’s civil society has been strong and the country’s interest group system has been found to be the closest of the whole of CEE to its Western European peers (Kolarič et al. 2002; van Deth and Maloney 2014; Novak and Hafner‐Fink 2015). Its peculiarity in comparison to CEE is also that in Slovenia there has been no significant ‘artificial’ element dependent on external donors, but it has rather mostly reflected domestic socio-economic and political characteristics (Novak and Fink‐Hafner 2019). Nevertheless, interest group-party relationships have been particularly evident in periods of polarization. A particular interest group-party closeness has also become a factor in the professionalization of interest groups based on European funding disseminated by national decision-makers (Maloney et al. 2018).

There are two groups of actors that have played a particularly relevant roles—trade unions (representing the employed) and the Catholic Church (an institution with big stakes in denationalization processes).

Trade unions have succeeded in establishing social partnership due to their extraordinarily high membership in the transition period. In 1989, 69% of the workforce had been unionized, dropping to 58.6% in 1994 and then to 42.8% in 1998 (Stanojević 2000, 39), while the share of the unionized workforce gradually dropped further to 29.7% in 2008. The decline in trade union membership together with other factors led to a decline in neo-corporatism after the first democratic decade (Stanojević 2012). Nevertheless, today trade unions still have big protest mobilization power, which may be used in struggling for the rights of the employed. While during the transition, new and old trade unions had ideologically somewhat diverged and had been closer to different political parties, they later learned to collaborate on common issues. In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, they didn’t enter into an ideological-political struggle with particular governments; they also only joined protests related to trade unions’ goals (Fink-Hafner and Bauman, 2023).

The constitution determines the division between the Church and the state, however the agreements between the Vatican and the Slovenian government created the basis for the Roman Catholic Church getting back nationalized property. At the same time it has been very generously supported by the Slovenian state in the long term, particularly under centre-right governments (‘Bogastvo katoliške cerkve’ 2010; Utenkar 2012; Maček 2017). It has also been increasingly involved in capitalist economic and financial activity, including the negative impacts of the international economic crisis of 2008–2010. While it has been inefficient in dealing with paedophile scandals, it has been increasingly campaigning on moral policy issues, particularly in referendum campaigns to repeal the Family Act of 2012 and the Marriage and Family Relations Act of 2015 (Rakar et al. 2011, 19); the 2012 Act legalized the adoption of children by same‐sex partners and the 2015 Act, among other provisions, legalized same-sex marriages. The Catholic Church’s involvement in politics has traditionally been negatively evaluated by citizens.

Last but not least, citizens have played a very important role, especially in critical times. As we will show, the persisting low tolerance of income inequality (Malnar 1996, 2011) has been one of the key factors in playing that role (Filipovič Hrast and Ignjatović 2014). Since the 2000s, the gap between citizens’ expectations and real-life policies has been increasing. Indeed, citizens have been more satisfied with policies favoured by trade unions and social partnership than with policies created by liberal–democratic institutions (Johannsen and Krašovec 2017).

In spite of citizens’ dissatisfaction with transitional governing problems, which had been expressed in protest waves during the first half of the 1990s, and in low trust in parties and the parliament, even bigger dissatisfaction emerged after the first post-transitional decade.

Citizens’ dissatisfaction with the quality of political representation has been expressed in declining trust in parties and parliament—below the EU average (Kmet Zupančič 2021)—a significant decrease in election turnout and voting for ever-new parties (presented in more detail in the next chapter), leading to substantial replacement of MPs with inexperienced new faces. A vicious circle of party system destabilization evolved—a sequence of citizens’ disappointment with each new winning party of a promising party leader outside the national political elite and new enthusiasm for supporting new parties. The rise of personalist politics, the radical renewal of the party system since the 2011 elections and a generation change in the political elite based on elections have persisted until now (a new party, Movement Freedom, won the last elections in 2022 and created an anti-Janša centre-left government).

After a decline in social partnership since joining the EU, it was particularly in the context of managing the COVID-19 crisis that Slovenians not only experienced Janša’s government’s disrespect of social partnership, but also perceived a sharp change in their social status. This was expressed in relative deprivation (evaluation of one’s own material status as worse than that of other people), feeding into the radically increased protest potential (Hafner-Fink and Uhan 2021) and actual protests.

However, it is of critical importance to note that citizens’ attitudes towards democracy as a value significantly changed only in the circumstances of democracy’s sharp decline under Janša’s third government. In the past, dissatisfaction with democracy had been occasionally combined with an increase in the support for a strong leader. However, this changed after the experiences with Janša’s last government. They have contributed to the unique higher support ‘for democracy as the best even if democracy sometimes doesn’t work’ compared to the support for ‘the strong leader who would sort things out’ (Slovenian Public Opinion 2002–2022, 2003–2023).

Citizens had little trust in political parties and the parliament during the 1990s when parties agreed on party state funding and had been competing over taking advantage of the significant parts of the state-owned economy. However, the overall estimation is that during the 1990s, citizens benefited economically.

In contrast, not only dissatisfaction with the economy but also perceptions of injustice have spread more widely in the context of managing the financial and economic crisis (Filipovič Hrast and Ignjatovič 2014). At the same time, the perception of corruption has risen above the EU average in 2022. According to a special Eurobarometer on corruption (Eurobarometer, n.d.), 87% of the adult population are convinced that corruption is a widespread problem in Slovenia; 67% believe that giving and taking bribes and the abuse of power for personal gain are widespread among politicians at national and local level, while 65% believe the same for political parties and 59% believe that corruption is widespread among officials awarding public tenders.

Based on the European Values Study of 2008, it has been revealed that Slovenia stood out in terms of the volume of voluntary work in interest organizations and political parties and political (protest) activities in Europe (Novak and Hafner‐Fink 2015). It is also obvious that during the last decade the political and socio-economic dissatisfaction has also fed into the radically increased protest potential (Hafner-Fink and Uhan 2021) as well as actual trade union, NGOs’ and broader citizens’ protests.

The impacts of the financial crisis and political parties’ adaptation to externally favoured neoliberal public policies (Johannsen and Krašovec 2017) had not only contributed to the increasing citizens’ dissatisfaction with the economy and democracy. They also contributed to an increase in distrust in political parties and the government in particular (Fig. 6.8). Low trust in parties (below the EU average) (Kmet Zupančič 2021) had resulted in a significant decrease in election turnout and voting for ever-new parties (as presented in the following sections), with the exception of the last (2022) national elections.

Fig. 6.8
A multi-line graph compares the trends for dissatisfaction with democracy, economy, government, and political parties in Slovenian public opinion versus the years from 2002 to 2022. All lines have fluctuating trends, with a significant trend for political parties.

(Source Slovenian public opinion 2002–2022 [2003–2023])

Dissatisfaction with democracy and economy and distrust in government and political parties in Slovenian public opinion (2002–2022)

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External Factors

External factors have played various roles in Slovenia’s socio-economic and political developments. Multiple crises mattered particularly in the transitional period and in the post-2004 period.

International political events of the 1980s had impacted on Slovenia’s old elite behaviour. Its learning from the particularly seriously challenged socialist world fed into the old political elite’s calculations. On the one hand, Slovenia’s old political elite had particularly kept track of political pluralization and round table negotiations in Poland and Hungary, including the laws adopted for legalization of political parties. On the other hand, the old political elite had also learned a lesson from the suppression of the opposition in China, particularly the impact of the widely spread news of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Additionally, the economic and political crisis in Yugoslavia in the 1980s had not only contributed to the dissolution of the old system, including a war in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, but also to creating a common ground for collaboration between the transformed old elite and oppositional parties.

However, Slovenia was not seriously affected by involvement in a war in the territory of the former Yugoslavia or by living close to a war zone in the period between 1991 and 1995, except for dealing with refugees from the war zone during the 1990s. The key reason was a quite swift international recognition and extended economic integration based on a previously signed agreement between Yugoslavia and the EC on special treatment of Yugoslavia compared to other socialist countries at the time.

The important external factors supportive of early democratic developments were quick international recognition of Slovenia as an independent state and expansion of the previously existing integration of Slovenia’s economy into the international economy. However, the refugee crisis and temporary worsening of socio-economic problems were already feeding populism during the 1990s.

Slovenia’s full EU membership (2004) has not brought about the social-liberal practice citizens and trade unions expected based on the EU institutions’ discourse (Canihac and Laruffa 2021). On the contrary, the EU’s discourse has evolved more in the direction of favouring the economy over social aspects—which is the opposite of the prevalent values of Slovenians who favour high social equality.

Slovenia slid into the EU economic periphery (together with other post-socialist EU member states) (Podvršič 2023). Neoliberal integration into the EU was enforced at the expense of the European periphery especially in managing the 2008 financial and economic crisis (Hermann 2007; Jäger 2018).

Since 2008, the multiplication of international crises—financial and economic, migration, COVID-19, the rise of energy and food prices with the war in Ukraine has contributed to the democracy’s non-friendly socio-economic and political trends.

All in all, Slovenia’s exceptionalism from the 1990s has gradually eroded since 2004, allowing for the development of democratic backsliding potential.