Can you tell me a bit about Croatian political parties?

20 comments

1. Criminal organizations that use political ideology for personal enrichment

2. ~~I would maybe add the Bandić Milan 365 – Labour and Solidarity Party. On paper, it’s not exactly right-wing, but Bandić was the epitome of populism, and if I remember correctly they supported the center-right coalition of MOST and HDZ in the 2015 parliamentary elections giving them a minimal majority of seats in the parliament.~~

   Edit: disregard this, I made a mistake while reading your post.

3. You can freely remove all parties written so far, because none of them are current, that is, they do not exist or are inactive. And none of them are specifically populist.

   Can you describe to me more concretely what you mean by the term populism, since you included nationalism in that context, and that is not clear to me, because if these nationalists stick to their principles and deal with them more than platitudes, that is not populism? Are you looking for nationalist or populist parties?

   Edit: I will try to list for you parties that take advantage of national pride and participation in the Homeland War to get votes: Domovinski Pokret, Odlučnost i Pravednost, Autohtona – Hrvatska Stranka Prava, etc..

   You will probably see proposals like MOST, Hrvatski Suverenisti and HDZ in the comments, but don’t be fooled because the first two are not populist parties (that is, people who don’t understand that populism lacks balance between their own promises and institutions, flattery towards the people would say that) and the third are ideologically not to the right.

4. Money, bitches and coocane.

5. LOPOVI

6. None of those parties you identified are relevant anymore.

   The ones I can think of are:

   * MOST (right-wing populists)
   * Domovinski pokret (right-wing populists)
   * Hrvatski suverenisti (right-wing conservatives)
   * SDSS (Serbian right-wing nationalists)

7. We barely have what you’d consider far-right.

   There are many Party of Rights spinoffs, I suggest you look for them. The Party of Rights is more divided than Christianity.

   In the current parliament, there are also:

   – Domovinski pokret (en. Homeland Movement)
   – Hrvatski suverenisti (en. Croatian Sovereignists)
   – MOST (en. BRIDGE, not an abbreviation)

   All of them are populist, but some are closer to the center than the others. All of them are considered right, but I would not say any of them are far-right. Far-right parties in Croatia are fairly irrelevant due to their agenda often being tied to extremist one, and therefore niche. Croatia is not as polarized as you might think, so the right-center has more success getting votes by simply not alienating some of the less far-left votes, while keeping all the important right ones.

   Also, the center-right is, despite all its scandals, at this point too big to fail, and the left is too weak to actually challenge it. There is no strategical need for a far-right, we still do not have a considerable antifa problem, the greatest challenges to conservatism from the left are basically LGBT or pro-choice events here and there. Aside from the official prides, the other events are poorly organized and often cringeworthy.

   So far, the right is focused on dealing with the greens that are increasing in popularity rapidly, and they still do not have a good answer to them, as they are preoccupied with keeping their majority intact. The answer to the greens is not the far-right, in any case.

8. Not that many of them actually (surprisningly?), most vote for the center-right HDZ. Pro-european and demochristian. Standard EPP party similar to the CDU.

   Domovinski pokret is the largest and most relevant right wing party, but still with almost 10x less MPs than the leading center-right HDZ. Formed in 2020, with many members being former members of HDZ. They’re more euroskeptic and nationalistic, and somewhat more conservative than HDZ. A go to for former HDZ voters who don’t like the EU.

   There are no extreme right wing parties in the croatian parliament right now, though they do exist and have members. Probably the most popular is HSP, and their smaller clones HČSP and A-HSP. They’re ultranationalist, protectionist and conservative. HSP was formed at the end of the 19th century in Austria-Hungary standing for Croatia’s indpendence. They became relevant again in the 90s, during the Croatian war of independence.

   Edit:

   Forgot to mention Hrvatski suverenisti, they have some seats in the parliament. Not that much to say about them, they were with Domovinski pokret but split up. They’re similar but more right wing. They fought against Euro replacing the Kuna and the Istanbul convention. Currently the most right-wing party in our parliament.

9. Good enough list. Though I struggle to find any party here that isn’t populist.

10. None of the ones that you identified are relevant anymore.

    When it comes to far right to fascist parties they are a dime a dozen in Croatia and barely any get more than a thousand votes. The big right wing parties right now are MOST – Bridge (Conservatives with a pronounced clerical and pro Putin stances) Domovinski pokret – Homeland movement (fallen from their peak and right now I’d say they’re more aiming for rural voters), HS – Croatian Soverenists (Relatively small and marred by infighting) and certain parts of HDZ, but ever since Plenković took over they’ve mostly been marginalised.

11. If you’re asking only about parties that ran and won some seats in the 2019 EP elections, then only 3 parties would be categorized as far right:

    1 – Coalition Hrvatski suverenisti (HRAST – Pokret za uspješnu Hrvatsku + Hrvatska konzervativna stranka – HKS + Hrvatska stranka prava de. Ante Starrčević – HSP AS + Ujedinjeni hrvatski domoljubi – UHD)

    2 – MOST – Most nezavisnih lista

    3 – Marijana Petir – Independent Marijana Petir

    ​

    Some of those parties have little (or none at all) representation in the current Croatian Parliament.

12. The DEEZ party

13. There used to be two but there’s only one ..

14. AP, zar opet ti? Ne bumo ti rekli kaj mislimo

15. There is no true big right spectrum parties in Croatia, only those that say are right wing but in truth are enemies of the people the same as left. It is not much different in other EU countries since parties are led by interests that are not national but global in favor of companies ruled by people who give directions to governments. Democracy is dead in Croatia like in other countries, as we entered corporatocracy, communist based governorship where human rights are slowly taken away more and more in favor of most rich individuals that control monopol companies all over the world and whos goal is even more global monopol and centralization. Its sad somehow that majority still think in terms of nationalism and how they believe actors in power care about people or nation.

16. That’s the problem with Croatian right-wing parties. They extremely fractured due to narrow self-interests and constant judging of who is a “real Croat”. For example HSP (Croatian party of rights, traditional right wing party) has been around (on and off) since late 19th century and today it has at least 5 spin-offs. I think not a single one of those spin-offs gets enough voters to cross 5% threshold.

    What I wanted to say is that there’s constantly new parties forming and then splitting on right end of the spectrum. Nowadays most “prominent” ones would be MOST (Eng. bridge – Christian right wing conservatives / bordering reactionary) and Domovinski Pokret (Homeland movement, classic right wing patriotic sovereignty focused party). Maybe even Hrvatski suverenisti (Croatian sovereignsts, also classic right wing).

    Parties you mentioned in your post are irrelevant at this point mostly due to HDZ (current ruling party), declaratively center right/liberal conservatives, but actually big tent conservative party of political careerists. During the 90s they did a couple of assassinations and intimidations to weaken the croatian right which still hasn’t recovered. HDZ is also a convicted criminal organization so you see where I’m going with this.

17. As you might have noticed, the political scene in Croatia is kind of volatile, so people are responding with parties or coalitions that did not exist in 2019.

    I’d say your list of parties is right. The first three parties had joined in a coalition for the 2019 that has been working together since then, so much that I’d say people don’t differentiate them at all, so I’d be inclined to think of them as a single political entity. Also, they had an incumbent MEP in 2019 so their campaign was kind of synonymous with being her reelection campaign.

    NHR is also a far-right/right-wing populist party. They supported Bandić in Zagreb, but by that time Bandić’s only ideology was keeping himself in power, and he gave them a culture war win (renaming a major square in Zagreb that had been named after Tito) in exchange for their support.

    The other main right-of-center parties in that election were:

    HDZ – the major center-right party, they have a right-wing populist faction (who even got the party leadership between 2012 and 2016) and so I assume they get votes from the right-wing populists who are party loyalists, but the leadership in 2019 and now is not right-wing populist.

    Marijana Petir’s independent list – an independent incumbent MEP, quite conservative but not in a right-wing populist way, but instead very much based in Catholicism (like CSU in Bavaria I guess), pro-EU (unlike usual rw populists)

    Most (Bridge) – They are right-wing (used to be more big tent) and they are populist, but they don’t behave completely like a typical right-wing populist party. They tend to focus more on corruption.

18. >I am interested in voters who would generally be classified as right-wing populist or far-right.

    I would say there is around 15% of voters on Croatia that could be described as nationalist voters. Almost half of them still vote for HDZ even though HDZ cannot be described as a nationalist party since 1999.

    Also, keep in mind that right wing in Croatia has little to do with classical liberalism. Right wing in Croatia basically means nationalism and conservativism. That is probably because of the strong Catholic influence and communist past.

    >The parties that I identified so far are the following:

    >Croatian Growth/HRAST
    Croatian Conservative Party/HKS
    Croatian Party of Rights dr. Ante Starčević
    Independents for Croatia/NHR

    These parties today exist only on paper, maybe not even that. But in the 2019 elections, there were two far right coalitions, “NHR-HSP” and “suverenisti” (made up of HKS, Hrast and some even smaller parties) that got a lot of votes.

    >Would you agree with this placement of the parties?

    Yes

    >For example the NHR seems to have split from HDZ after it entered into a coalition with the more centrist HNS-LD, but it supported Bandić as mayor for Zagreb? He does not seem to be especially right-leaning to me. But maybe ideology was not the primary concern in that decision.

    NHR was far right, and some leaders of the party came from HDZ, not all of them. They did support leftist Bandic for a while, in exchange Bandic re-named Tito’s square in Zagreb (which is now the square of the Republic of Croatia), and NHR gained some political power in Zagreb. But very soon they withdrew support from Bandic because of his ties to some Serbian nationalist politician and businessman.

    >If you think a party should be removed or added, it would be great if you could give me just a short explanation.

    Most could be added, they attract right wing voters even though they are mild in comparison to other parties. They are quite shy, especially the leadership, but their supporters and members could also be described as nationalist and conservative

    HSP (Hrvatska stranka prava) has roots in 1861, historically they were the main and the oldest nationalist party. Not very significant today, but they have some power in local governement and they participated in EU elections in 2019. Basically, HSP was the source of ustaše movement in the 1920s, they were also powerful in the 1990s when they even had their paramilitary (HOS – Croatian defence forces). They were the biggest threat for HDZ (from the right spectre) from 1990 until 2011.

19. Yes they are all stealing

20. Did you have met our Lord and Saviour AP?