CROATIA has been an economic and political basket-case for years, but the events of the past few weeks demonstrated that things could still get worse. On June 16th the government collapsed, a day after the leader of the ruling party resigned over a conflict of interest (his wife had been paid by a Hungarian energy company). The president stood passively by. Then on June 17th hooligans threw flares onto the pitch during a game Croatia had been winning at the Euro 2016 football championships in France. This apparently constituted a greater crisis than the fall of the government, and the president called an emergency cabinet session.

Ever since Croatia proclaimed independence from a disintegrating Yugoslavia in 1991, its politics have been dominated by the Social Democrats on the left and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) on the right. Social scientists observe that for many Croats, voting has less to do with left- or right-leaning ideological beliefs than with whose side one’s family was on during the second world war. In Croatia this was also a civil war between Yugoslav communists and supporters of the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime.

The schism has haunted Croatia ever since, but recently it has grown even more bitter. From independence to joining the European Union in 2013, for all their divisions Croatia’s left and right agreed on the country’s basic agenda. First the war of independence had to be won; then the country needed to be anchored in Western institutions. Once those goals were achieved, the national consensus evaporated.

Economically, things began to go wrong with the global financial crisis in 2008. For six years afterwards, Croatia’s economy contracted. Last November the electorate turfed out the Social Democrats, who had failed to turn things around. But this time power did not simply pass back to the HDZ. A new party called Most emerged, which claimed to be non-ideological and reformist. In fact, its leaders had no shared agenda.

Tihomir Oreskovic, a Canadian Croat with experience in business but none in politics, was chosen as a non-partisan prime minister, backed by a patchwork coalition of the HDZ, Most and numerous smaller parties. Mr Oreskovic proved to lack clout; his poor Croatian drew public ridicule. The HDZ, Most and the prime minister bickered over jobs and power. According to Tvrtko Jakovina, a historian at Zagreb University, one wing of the HDZ has launched a “social and cultural revolution” to gain advantage by polarising the political landscape. The minister of culture, who had a history of praising the Ustasha regime, spent his time in office purging the public broadcaster of leftists and emphasising the crimes of the Yugoslav communists (who, to be fair, slaughtered thousands of fascists after the war).

But the HDZ is internally divided, too. Whereas some of its leaders are obsessed with history and symbolism, a clerical wing close to the Catholic church is more interested in social issues such as banning abortion and promoting conservative values in schools. Mr Oreskovic and some in Most are also close to conservative Catholic forces.

In some countries football serves as a unifying force. But in Croatia it only worsens the divisions. Croats have long suspected that their football business is deeply corrupt: Zdravko Mamic, one of its most powerful figures, helped finance the election campaign of President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, who belonged to the HDZ. Last November Mr Mamic was arrested on suspicion of tax evasion and involvement in organised crime. When the president discovered that the intelligence service had been monitoring her communications with Mr Mamic, she demanded that its head, who was close to the Social Democrats, be sacked. The prime minister and Most objected. The spat helped lead to the fall of the government last week.

Some suspect the hooligans in France who threw flares during the football match were trying to sink Croatia’s Euro 2016 chances as a desperate means of purging its football establishment. Others, says Ines Sabalic, a prominent journalist, think they were “working for a rival mafia”. But the confused state of football is a mirror of society as a whole. Elections will probably be held in September, the HDZ has plunged into a leadership battle and the polls show that the lacklustre Social Democrats might lead the next governing coalition. There is nothing to indicate that Croatia is about to experience a winning streak.