If President Vjosa Osmani’s decree to dissolve the Assembly “holds up,” then Kosovo could go to new extraordinary elections in April.

These would be the third parliamentary elections in 14 months, triggered by the “impotence” of political parties to establish the Assembly, form a government, and elect a president.

So many elections so often within such a short period is not something many democracies in the world have “experienced.”

However, according to research conducted by KosovaPress, there are countries that vote even more frequently than Kosovo. In fact, there is a country that held parliamentary elections three times within a single year — actually within seven months — like Bulgaria, for example. This happened in 2021, when citizens voted on April 4, July 11, and November 14.

More than that, this country — which is not far from Kosovo and is separated from it only by Serbia and North Macedonia — also held two more elections in October 2022 and April 2023. Two new electoral cycles were imposed on June 9 and October 27, 2024, making this state one of the rare ones in the world to vote seven times within three years because parties failed to form stable governments.

Bulgaria faces strong competition in terms of frequent elections from Israel. Citizens in that country voted three times within 11 months during the period from April 2019 to March 2020.

The first elections in this period were held on April 9, 2019. The second took place on September 17 of the same year. The third became necessary, due to the inability to form a majority and a government, on March 2, 2020.

However, these elections did not stabilize Israel. One year and 21 days later, the country went to the polls again on March 23, 2021. The record was further extended when another round of elections had to be held on November 1, 2022.

So, unlike Kosovo, which may hold three elections in 14 months, Israel held the same number of electoral cycles within 11 months, and together with two more later, five within three and a half years (April 9, 2019 – November 1, 2022). This happened because no political bloc managed to secure a stable majority in the national parliament — the Knesset.

Spain can also “boast,” like Kosovo, of being a “strong” democracy, as it held elections four times in as many years, from 2015 to 2019.

The first elections of this cycle were held in December 2015, the second in June 2016, while the third and fourth were delayed “a bit” until April and November 2019. The reason was party fragmentation and the lack of stable coalitions.

Italy is also historically known as a country that has experienced frequent government crises and repeated elections, although not always as close together as in the cases of Kosovo and Spain — and especially Israel and Bulgaria, which are the real electoral champions.