ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Croatia profiles of longstanding democracies and of the European Union, and provides essential detail on history, electoral system, political parties and cleavages, and governments. In the twelfth century Croatia came under the personal rule of the Hungarian monarch. In 1918, Croatia became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. In 1945 Croatia was again part of the Yugoslavia. In 1991, Croatia became independent from Yugoslavia. Croatia fought a war with the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army, which occupied a third of the country until finally driven out by Croat forces in 1995. The 1992 and 1995 elections to the Croatian parliament used a mixed system which combined single-member plurality districts and multi-member proportional representation districts using the d’Hondt method and a 3 percent threshold in 1992 increased to 5 percent in 1995.
