The history of Estonia forms a part of the history of Europe. Humans settled in the region of Estonia near the end of the last glacial era, beginning from around 9000 BC.
Arnold Rüütel is an Estonian politician. He was the third President of Estonia from 8 October 2001 to 9 October 2006. Rüütel was the second president of the country after the end of the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation, and the restoration of the independent Republic of Estonia on 20 August 1991.
The People's Union of Estonia was a political party in Estonia. Its last leader was Margo Miljand.
Parliamentary elections were held in Estonia on 2 March 2003. The newly elected 101 members of the 10th Riigikogu assembled at Toompea Castle in Tallinn within ten days of the election. Two opposing parties won the most seats, with both the Centre Party and Res Publica Party winning 28 seats in the Riigikogu. Res Publica was able to gain enough support in negotiations after the elections to form a coalition government.
Andrus Ansip is an Estonian politician, a member of the European Parliament, the former European Commissioner for Digital Single Market and Vice President of the European Commission, in office from 2014 until 2019. Previously, he was Prime Minister of Estonia from 2005 to 2014 and chairman of the liberal Estonian Reform Party from 2004 to 2014.
The cube rule or cube law is an empirical observation regarding elections under the first-past-the-post system. The rule suggests that the party getting the most votes is over-represented. It was first formulated in a report on British elections in 1909, then extended to elections in other countries. Both in theory and in practice, the cube rule is only applicable in a two-party system. In a multi-party democracy operating under the first-past-the-post system, the cube law invariably fails, often leading to capricious results.
Paul Ariste was an Estonian linguist renowned for his studies of the Finno-Ugric languages, Yiddish and Baltic Romani language.
Matthew Søberg Shugart is an American political scientist. He is a Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. He is also an Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. Shugart specializes in electoral systems, party systems, and the design of political institutions, primarily through empirical studies of political systems across large numbers of countries. Shugart is also an orchardist, and runs the Fruits and Votes blog on electoral systems and fruit growing.
The effective number of parties is a concept introduced by Laakso and Taagepera (1979) which provides for an adjusted number of political parties in a country's party system. The idea behind this measure is to count parties and, at the same time, to weight the count by their relative strength. The relative strength refers to their vote share effective number of electoral parties (ENEP) or seat share in the parliament effective number of parliamentary parties (ENPP). This measure is especially useful when comparing party systems across countries, as is done in the field of political science. The number of parties equals the effective number of parties only when all parties have equal strength. In any other case, the effective number of parties is lower than the actual number of parties. The effective number of parties is a frequent operationalization for the political fragmentation.
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the Republic of Estonia.
Elections to the Supreme Soviet were held in the Estonian SSR on 18 March 1990. Altogether 392 candidates ran for the Soviet-style legislature's 105 seats, of which four were pre-allocated to the military districts of the Soviet Army. The pro-independence Popular Front won the plurality. The coalition of the reformed Estonian communists, who favored independence but close relations with the USSR and were supported by Indrek Toome who was running under the Free Estonia banner, won 27 seats. The anti-independence, pro-Moscow "Joint Soviet of Work Collectives", representing mostly the ethnic Russian immigrant minority in Estonia, won 25 seats. During its first session, the new legislature elected the former Communist Party member Arnold Rüütel as its chairman, allowing him to stay as the nominal leader of Estonia.
Jüri Kukk was an Estonian professor of chemistry, anti-Soviet dissident and political prisoner, who died in the former Soviet labor camp at Vologda.
In voting theory, the micromega rule holds that, when political parties choose electoral systems, "the large prefer the small and the small prefer the large". The term "micromega" references Micromégas, a tale by Voltaire in which dwarfs and giants dialogue.
The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Estonia, or simply Estonia, was a union republic of the Soviet Union (USSR), covering the occupied and annexed territory of Estonia in 1940–1941 and 1944–1991. The Estonian SSR was nominally established to replace the until then independent Republic of Estonia on 21 July 1940, a month after the 16–17 June 1940 Soviet military invasion and occupation of the country during World War II. After the installation of a Stalinist government which, backed by the occupying Soviet Red Army, declared Estonia a Soviet constituency, the Estonian SSR was subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union as a "union republic" on 6 August 1940. Estonia was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941, and administered as a part of Reichskommissariat Ostland until it was reconquered by the USSR in 1944.
Presidential elections were held in Estonia alongside parliamentary elections on 20 September 1992. However, as no candidate gained over 50% of the votes, a second round was held in Parliament on 5 October 1992 in which Lennart Meri was elected. Voter turnout was 68.0%.
Estonian presidential elections, 2006 took place over four rounds, which were held on 28 and 29 August, and 23 September 2006. The first three rounds of the presidential election were held within the Riigikogu, which is Estonia's Parliament, as specified under electoral law. The two top candidates, Ene Ergma and Toomas Hendrik Ilves, were not elected because they did not obtain the required two-thirds of the votes in the Riigikogu.
The cube root law is an observation in political science that the number of members of a unicameral legislature, or of the lower house of a bicameral legislature, is about the cube root of the population being represented. The rule was devised by Estonian political scientist Rein Taagepera in his 1972 paper "The size of national assemblies".
Political fragmentation is the fragmentation of the political landscape into different parties and groups, which makes it difficult to deliver effective governance. Political fragmentation can apply to political parties, political groups or other political organisations.
