Tim Haughton (CREES) gave a presentation, The Gorilla in the Room: the 2012 Parliamentary Elections in Slovakia, to an audience of scholars and policy-makers at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington DC.

Tim Haughton (CREES) analyzed the recent parliamentary elections in Slovakia in a recent lecture, The Gorilla in the Room: the 2012 Parliamentary Elections in Slovakia at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He examined not just the explanations for the victory of Robert Fico’s Smer-Social Democracy and the reasons behind the drop in support for the parties of the centre-right governing coalition, but also the impact of the Gorilla scandal. Moreover, he showed how the elections demonstrated not just the underlying dynamics of stability and instability in party politics in Slovakia, but also wider lessons about the motors of change in politics across Central and Eastern Europe.

The lecture was recorded and has been posted on the Wilson Center’s website: www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-gorilla-the-room-the-2012-parliamentary-elections-slovakia.

Dr Haughton’s lecture followed hard on the heels of his co-authored analysis of the elections posted on the influential pozorblog website: www.pozorblog.com/2012/03/2012-parliamentary-elections-in-slovakia-the-building-blocs-of-success/.