The Localization of Electoral Volatility: Evidence from Serbia and Croatia
The Localization of Electoral Volatility: Evidence from Serbia and Croatia

Summary/Abstract: This study introduces a novel methodology for measuring,exploring and describing the pro cesses of party nationalization and localization.The key component of this approach is using electoral volatility as a baselinemeasure for computing party localization indices. For the purposes of this study,conventional definition of localization as non-uniform territorial politicalresponse (Caramani, 2004) is redefined as non-uniform, but spatially contingentresponses of territorial units to national political forces. Using network analysis,the authors introduce quantitative approach for studying spatial and dynamicalaspects of party systems and demonstrate its usefulness and applicability in casesof two post-communist systems: Serbia and Croatia. The results demonstrate thatdifferent components of party systems (new versus stable parties) exhibit differentlevels of nationalization and localization, which has been overlooked in previousstudies. In line with previous research (Bochsler, 2010c; Golosov, 2016; Schakel,2017), this study confirms that the Croatian party system is less nationalized thanSerbian, but there are some similarities between the two countries in terms of thedistribution of electoral volatility. In the discussion part of the study, limitationsof new methodology are explained and directions for its further development areoutlined.

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