As Manuel points out in the accompanying post, Romano Prodi’s resignation as Italy’s Prime Minister is a rather sudden and dramatic, but scarcely unexpected, development. The immediate political crisis may be resolved as rapidly as it appeared, but again as Manuel indicates it may only serve as a prelude for further things to come, and [...]

Well as almost everyone must surely know by now, Romano Prodi’s government resigned earlier in the week. The present situation is still far from clear, with President Giorgio Napolitano holding urgent consultations with the various interested parties even as I write. Since my interest in Italy is largely an economic one (see accompanying post [...]

So Serbia had parliamentary elections yesterday.
Short version: could have been better, could have been much worse. There will be a new government, but probably not much will change.
A bit more below the flip.

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The 2006 parliamentary elections in The Netherlands have produced some interesting results. Another centre-right coalition of CDA, VVD and D66 (before the latter blew up that very same coalition, see comments) seems to be off the table and the formation of a new coalition will prove to be very difficult what with the votes spread [...]

So Serbia has finally called for elections.
I admit that I was wrong about this government’s tenacity. I predicted back in July that the government would collapse in October. Not so. It has staggered on, month after month… gasping, retching, coughing blood, but somehow refusing to die. It bought a few weeks [...]

Sweden wasn’t the only Baltic area with an election yesterday. The voters of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in Germany’s northeastern corner, dealt a heavy blow to the ruling Social Democrat-postcommunist (SPD-Left) coalition. The SPD dropped 10 percent, but still received the largest share of votes, topping the Christian Democrats (CDU) 30.2 percent to 28.8 percent. The postcommunist (or [...]

It seems that this morning Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende is visiting the Queen to signal the resignation of the cabinet. The smallest of the three parties in the centre-right government, D66 with six seats, has signaled that it would not continue to support the coalition if Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk retains her portfolio. [...]

UPDATE below the fold.
With respect to the Italian elections, there’s still only one thing certain - it’s going to be a long night, and, possibly, not the last one. There have apparently been, if my rudimentary understanding of Italian news broadcaster Rai News 24 is correct, unjustified delays in data processing. Thus, given the closeness [...]

Well it’s not official yet, but the first exit poll has Berlusconi trailing:
An exit poll Monday showed conservative Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi trailing center-left challenger Romano Prodi in parliamentary elections. The Nexus poll indicated that Prodi’s coalition received between 50 and 54 percent of the vote in both the upper and lower chambers of parliament, [...]

The CDU in Baden-Wuerttemberg is conducting negotiations with the Greens in that state to decide if the two parties should form a coalition government. If they do, it will be the first “black-green” coalition at the state level, and another sign of fluidity in Germany’s post-reunification party politics.
Update: Maybe next time. The CDU and FDP [...]