ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Macedonia profiles of longstanding democracies and of the European Union, and provides essential detail on history, electoral system, political parties and cleavages, and governments. The 1994, 2008, and 2014 elections in Macedonia each did not meet democratic standards of fairness. Macedonia was ruled by Ottoman Turks for five centuries. In 1913 it was divided between Greece and Serbia – known as Aegean Macedonia and Vardar Macedonia, respectively. For the 1998 election the electoral system was modified so that only 85 of the seats would come from single-member districts and the remaining 35 would come from national party lists using a proportional representation calculation with a threshold of 5 percent. The party for democratic prosperity was in the first two of Macedonia’s governments despite its participation in a boycott of the legislature from February to July of 1995 by Albania parties.
