En el caso de Arauca, la Comisión funcionaba por convenio, en el caso del Casanare, cómo es su funcionamiento.

Unlike in the period of the absolute dominance of the Communist Party, political parties are essential subjects of a modern democratic political process, since their activities and the relations among them largely determine the institutional structure of the political system and the formal procedures of the decision-making process. Furthermore, it has to be underlined that the institutions in democratic countries derive their legitimacy from the legitimacy that the political parties earn in the election process. Therefore, for a very long period of time, the multi-party system has represented the main ‘institution of mediation’ between the society and the state, i.e. between the citizens and the government.

The formation of parties in new transitional countries undoubtedly represents a special phenomenon, especially with regard to their significance for the process of democratic consolidation. Namely, unlike in the political processes in the South European countries a few decades ago (Greece, Spain, Portugal), where the transition began with the reanimation of the old political parties, in the case of the ex-communist states, the parties emerged only in the late 1980s. This happened due to three main reasons:

In most countries there was no pre-communist pluralist political tradition, or it was very weak and unstable;

In the case of the appearance of a pluralist transition, if any, communism was dominant for long enough to neutralise them;

Communism did not tolerate the existence of new political parties.61

61 _{For details see Mirjana Kasapovic,Hrvatska politika 1990.-2000. (Zagreb: Biblioteka Politicka misao,}

The first political parties in Croatia were formed in 1989 and 1990, mainly as clubs of intellectuals, public persons and former political dissidents, who gathered in order to offer ‘an alternative option’ to the existing political reality. Among all of them, only HDZ managed to develop a broader organisational structure with solid material support within the country and especially abroad, ensuring the significant increase of its membership and other preconditions for being able to take the decisive role in the country’s political life during the 1990s. First of all, using the pressures from the Serbian political elites and the historical momentum of the collapse of communism, the HDZ managed to go beyond the form of a simple political party and became a much wider movement, advocating the end of the communist regime, and Croatian independence and sovereignty. As it was mentioned before, owing to its political character, which inclined more to populism than to liberal-democracy, it did not dissolve after the formation of the multi-party system, like it was the case in Poland, and Slovenia. On the contrary, it remained in power using different semi-authoritarian means to govern the country undisputed, marking the difference between the transitional processes in Croatia and other post-communist countries.

In general, when speaking about power sharing, the model of the absolute domination of one party known from the political praxis of the former federationde facto did not change dramatically. Broadly speaking, the model of one predominant party marked the whole ten- year period between 1990 and 2000. First of all, there was the great advantage of the party in power compared to the second strongest one, in terms of the outcome of the elections. This difference increased significantly in the parliament, owing to the disproportional effect of the majority electoral system, so the HDZ had six times more MPs than the second strongest party.

Other mechanisms of the institutionalisation of the HDZ as a movement were visible in the political vocabulary that was predominant at that time. The terminology of the nationalistic movement, together with its interpretation of the political reality and the promotion of its political goals under the influence of a media dominated by the political elites, appeared in almost every aspect of the public debate. As it was emphasized before, the position of the president, along with his constitutional position and his personality, which had been carefully built by the party support mechanisms, significantly contributed to the institutionalisation of the HDZ, and the general atmosphere of populism and clientelism, which replaced nationalist enthusiasm, only added to it.

On the other hand, while it is a fact that a single party dominated the political life in Croatia during the 1990s, the rift between a more organised opposition and the party in power

became very visible in the period between 1995 and 2000. The main reason for that was the end of the aggression and the occupation of a significant part of the country (1995), which practically ended the period of extreme circumstances and opened the floor for a debate on the democratic future of the country. While the war, apart from its well-known horrifying consequences, provoked broad national solidarity for the defence, and sometimes it served as a good excuse for the irregularities in the political and economic system, its termination opened opportunities for the reformulation of the political discourse in Croatia.

As a reaction to the above described environment marked with populism and clientelism, the opposition parties started to gather and oppose the regime instead of opposing each other, which had been the praxis for some time. This contributed to a perception of a ‘united opposition’ and a clear rift between the opposition and the government. This provided the 2000 election process with a new dimension of real competition and contributed to some new trends of power sharing.