ABSTRACT
This chapter presents San Marino profiles of longstanding democracies and of the European Union, and provides essential detail on history, electoral system, political parties and cleavages, and governments. San Marino is a microstate entirely surrounded by Italy. For many decades postwar San Marino used a party list proportional representation electoral system with the entire country serves as one constituency using the d’Hondt method. Postwar San Marino, even more so than Italy, initially involved polarized competition between socialists and communists on the left and Christian Democrats on the centre-right. Until the 2000s San Marino had three main types of governments: Sammarinese Christian Democratic Party (PDCS) with socialists or social democrats; all-left governments of communists and socialists; and least commonly grand coalitions of the PDCS and Sammarinese Communist Party. The PDCS was formed in 1948 but was first part of the Sammarinese Popular Alliance.
