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This article seeks to examine changes in Czech party competition between 2006 and 2014. Drawing on Sani and Sartori’s concept of party competition, it incorporates later findings on the nature of party competition to facilitate the concept’s application to fluid party systems. It conceptualises party competition as multi-dimensional and according to the (a) salience the individual dimensions used in this analysis have for political parties and (b) the positions that the parties occupy on these dimensions. It distinguishes three types of relations in party competition – non-competitive, defensive and acquisitive competition – and using data from the Chapel Hill questionnaire survey focuses on three dimensions in Czech party competition: socio-economic, European, and social-liberal/conservative. Special attention is devoted to the competition strategies of individual parties while taking into account the duration of their existence (new vs traditional parties). The findings indicate that the nature of party competition has transformed, as changes have occurred in the intensity of the competition, the salience of the dimensions of the competition, the space of the competition, and how much competition occurs in one dimensions as opposed to another. Consistent with previous studies, the analyses reveal, that most of the competitive relationships (which were primarily defensive in nature) observed in this study occurred in the socioeconomic dimension, but they also show that there is very strong potential for intense party competition to develop in the other two dimensions if they become more salient.
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Election laws regulate the number of deputies who are elected in individual electoral districts, and set them in relation to the population, respectively to the number of voters participating in elections in individual regions. Elected deputies could thus be regarded as political representatives of citizens living in electoral districts. However, under systems of proportional representation, current deputies represent the ideology of the party to which they belong rather than the region. Nevertheless, it makes sense to study the spatial distribution of the places of origin and residence of members of parliament and their changes over time, because it suggests much about the political system and the system of representative democracy in the country. The spatial distribution of places of residence of candidates and elected members indicates not only the territorial proportionality and geographic representativeness, but also the shifting centers of political power. The analysis clearly confirms the gradual decentralization and regionalization of political power in the country, which stands in contrast to the centralization of power in the economy, this latter trend apparent from the concentration of economic management and decision-making in the largest cities, especially in Prague.
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Electoral behavior in Slovakia is characterized by high instability. The study identifies the level of aggregated and individual volatility from a historical perspective, focusing specifically on the 2016 general election. Based on exit - poll data, it argue s that the traditional mainstream parties (KDH, SDKU, which failed to surpass the 5% threshold, and also Smer - SD) have lost many of their loyal core voters. The beneficiaries of voter mobility were the new anti - system parties – above all, We Are A Family a nd the extreme - right People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS). The paper identifies a specific segment of the electorate – voters who abstained in 2012 but were mobilized for the more recent election. It argues that as the turnouts were about the same in 2012 an d 2016, other segments of voters were mobilized in the 2016 election. The fact that a large proportion of these voters decided for the parties We Are A Family and ĽSNS means that they were effectively addressed by a protest, anti - establishment alternative. Based on exit - poll data, the study argues that the level of abstention in the 2012 general election (excluding first - time voters) was the strongest predictor of voter preference for these two parties. Moreover, the extreme - right ĽSNS has been very success ful in attracting first - time voters.
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The article deals with the topic of electoral design, reforms, and engineering in the post-Yugoslav state entities between 1990 and 2015. First, it briefly conceptualizes a theoretical framework, drawing on the work by Katz, Shugart and Renwick. Second, it describes the evolution of electoral design and reforms to the main chambers in particular systems in detail. Third, it analyses and compares common trends in electoral reforms and design. Proportional representation (PR) list systems have been used for almost 90 % of all 60 elections (a PR list had been adopted by the fourth elections in all the systems). There have been 29 reforms in total (avg. 3.6 per entity), 1/5 of them major and 4/5 minor. Major reforms took place in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in Serbia (one each) and in Croatia and Macedonia (two each). There have, however, been no major electoral reforms in Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, or Kosovo. Minor reforms have been present in all entities (the most in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro, the least in Kosovo and Slovenia). While major reforms were primarily used to correct parts of political systems perceived as dysfunctional, one third of minor reforms were used for intentional electoral engineering. Generally, post-Yugoslav electoral design can be considered unstable, with frequent electoral reforms by the state entities (avg. every 4.7 year). Each system also introduced its specific approach to national minorities, which facilitated their representation in the main chambers.
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The aim of the article is to analyse the discussion about the electoral system in Slovenia during the 1990s. In the first part of the analysis we focus on the transitional electoral systems in East-Central Europe and its main characteristics. Later we present the specific development and preconditions in former Yugoslavia and Slovenia during the period of transition. Our analysis focuses here not only on the technical issues (electoral system and electoral mechanism), but also on the more general framework of party competition based on the initial cleavage Communism against Anti-Communism. In the main part of the study we analyse in detail the development towards the plebiscite about the electoral system in December 1996 and the controversial decision of the Constitutional Court about the result of the plebiscite two years later. This decision is often evaluated as legal, but not legitimate and was not accepted neither by the majority of political actors, nor by the society. The discussion about the electoral system we include into the broader debate about the transitional justice in new democracies.
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The study uses the 2017 parliamentary elections results to analyses spatial patterns of votes in the city of Prague. A unique approach combining contextual and compositional data is introduced. Census data and data indicating the quality of life are reassigned to a shared entity – an address point, and analysed via automatic linear modelling. The model explained 69 % of spatial variance of votes share for the conservative TOP 09 party and the winning ANO 2011 movement, but only 19 % for the Pirate Party and the Mayors and Independence movement. Future research might focus on finding variables which would explain spatial variance of these parties’ vote shares. Abother possibility is the development of a methodology for studying votes spatiality within urban areas, in order to develop a robust theory.
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This article aims to identify and analyse the structure of co-voting ties among the members of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The structure of co-voting ties is approached as a network of members of parliament that represents the rate of co-voting between each pair of deputies that were elected to the lower house of the Czech parliament in 2017. Similarity of the voting of deputies is treated as a proxy indicator of a potential relationship, either co-operation or rivalry between the MPs. This study focuses exclusively on the level of political party groups, their internal cohesion and intra-party co-operation, based on the co-voting ties between all members of the parliament. The main findings of this research are that the dynamics of the internal party cohesion of each parliamentary party and their voting co-operation are heavily influenced by the time the government is formed. As the internal cohesion of political party groups present in the Czech parliament and even the co-operation between them changed drastically after the government of Andrej Babiš got the vote of confidence. This research connects the findings with the previous works on the internal cohesion of Czech political parties.
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Members of parliament (MPs) and parties enjoy mutually beneficial cooperation in a legislature. Nonetheless, representatives often face cross-pressure from more than one principal, which may result in a voting dissent. Since the voting dissent of MPs in the Czech Republic has been scrutinised only on the party level, I present the very first study dealing with individual aspects of voting rebellion. The pioneering results show that between 1993 and 2017 MPs voted against a parliamentary party group (PPG) chairman more often than against the majority of PPG colleagues. The frequency of voting dissent remained the same, on average, during legislative terms regardless of an approaching election. Next, the analyses show that being a male MP, enjoying more parliamentary experience, and holding a ministerial mandate are factors that increase the chances of individual voting dissent. Conversely, voting dissent decreases for MPs from a ruling party, and for PPG (vice-)chairmen. The results imply that voting rebels attend fewer roll calls and abstain more compared to other MPs. As MPs vote against the majority of their party counterparts, they elucidate such a contradiction at plenary sessions. Overall, MPs adjust their parliamentary behaviour more if they vote against the majority of party colleagues than against a PPG chairman.
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Recent findings related to the controversy over proximity and directional spatial models of voting suggest that the relevance of the models can change under different conditions. The political sophistication of voters and the issue factor are discussed in this article. In line with other authors, we believe that it is necessary to focus also on the question whether the examined issue is salient for the voter-party relationship. Contrary to what was expected, when voters’ preferences for parties emphasizing a particular issue are predicted by increasing sophistication of voters, it does not mean that these preferences are predicted by the proximity theory at the same time. Moreover, the directional theory is a better predictor of voters’ preferences for most of the issues, regardless of the sophistication influence. Yet voters’ proximity utilities from their preferences are increased by their increasing sophistication across all of the issues under examination.
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Anti-minority rhetoric as an almost universal feature of extremeright parties is often analytically and empirically linked to their electoral success. This article tests the link between the presence of an outgroup and the vote for the extreme right in an attempt to explain the electoral success of the first openly anti-system extreme-right party to enter the Slovak parliament in 2016. A multilevel approach is used to analyse the connection between Roma presence in a municipality and extreme-right support while controlling for the individual characteristics of voters. Analysis using exit-poll data covering 161 municipalities and 20 128 voters reveals no relationship between the presence of Roma in a municipality and support for the extreme right. A partial exception seems to be observed for older voters and the university-educated, who are generally the least inclined to far-right support. Interaction effects suggest that, for these groups, Roma presence might be connected to a higher probability to cast a vote for the extreme right. However, a notably higher chance of voting for the extreme right was associated with young, male, manual labourers and people without university education.
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Today’s democracies (polyarchies) face a lowering trust of their own citizens towards democratic institutions, governments or fundamental processes like competition or participation. This common disappointment with democracy, which started around the 1960’s in western democracies and manifested itself primarily by the lowering level of participation in elections, is frequently described as a “crisis of democracy” (Crozier, Huntington, Watanuki 1975). This trend worries politicians and political scientists because this low level of participation could undermine the very basis of democracy. One possible solution comes along with the spread of new media and internet access as a common tool in the 1990’s and mainly after the start of the new millennium: e-voting gets to be known as remote internet voting (RIV). The idea of overcoming the crisis of democracy by new media tools is based on a simple consideration: today’s citizens are used to sort their matters on-line and the lowering demands for voting participation can bring new participants and boost the total turnout (see Blais, Gidengil, Nevitte 2004; Wattenberg 1998). Estonia1 today uses RIV for all level of elections. The number of usages generates a sufficient database for an analysis on how RIV can stand up to the expectations of increasing voter turnout
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This paper is focused on the evolution of the ideology of Smer - Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party and its positions on European integration before the political elections in Slovakia in February 2020. As the ‘social-democratization’ of Smer-SD was the result of party’s Europeanization, the article explores the dimensions of de-Europeanization in the politics of this party in 2017–2020. Since 2006, Smer-SD has occupied a dominant position among political parties in Slovakia. However, a substantive decline in the electoral support of the party took place after 2016. Smer-SD faced a significant political challenge during the political crisis after the assassination of the journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in February 2018. The result was the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico. The appointment of party vice chairman Peter Pellegrini as Prime Minister created a new situation within the party, as for the first time the positions of Prime Minister and head of the party were separated. The political crisis in 2018 revealed the presence of internal conflicts within the party and the weakening of the authority of its chairman, Robert Fico. The establishment of two centres of power within the party resulted in competition between Fico and Pellegrini and, finally, in June 2020, a split, as Pellegrini announced the founding of a new political party.
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The 2019 Polish parliamentary elections were the last in a series of three elections held within 12 months (chronologically: local elections, European Parliament election, elections to the Sejm and the Senate). The three consecutive elections opened up the possibility for cooperation within the parliamentary opposition with the aim of political victory. This article examines the relations between opposition groups in 2018–2019. Each election is analyzed in terms of the nature of relations within the opposition as well as cooperation and interparty competition. The hypothesis assumes that the types of relations among parliamentary opposition groups were shaped by the character of the given elections and the decisions taken by individual parties choosing between maintaining their independence and steps to potentially increase their electoral chances. The analysis shows that during the period in question the opposition did not develop a stable unified model of cooperation and that relations between individual groups were dominated by competition; however, depending on the election, cooperation was possible and was pragmatically pursued by the parties, as in the case of the European Coalition. The only stable cooperation was between Civic Platform and Modern.
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The article examines how use of the topic of corruption in the election manifestos of Czech political parties has transformed over the course of the entire post-communist period. The theoretical framework used to grasp the anti-corruption positions expressed in the manifestos is populism. The study builds on the discussions about mainstream political actors (not) adopting populist principles and on the methodological debate around the possibilities offered by populist communication research. Using a content analysis and the principle of triplets, the article analyses the election manifestos of all the parties that were successful in the parliamentary elections between 1990 and 2017 in order to determine whether there was a stronger presence of populist principles in communication on the topic of corruption. Among other things, the study shows that: (1) statements on corruption that are consistent with a populist communication strategy can be found in parties that are not commonly understood as populist throughout the entire researched period; (2) mainstream parties did not respond to the success of populists in the 2010, 2013, and 2017 elections by adopting populist principles; (3) the populists who won a share of power strengthened the elements of populist communication in the next election manifesto.
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This article is about Nayib Bukele’s presidency in El Salvador, and to what extent it is a case of populism, and if it has contributed to a negative democratic development between 2019–2021. By using the concepts of democratic backsliding, autocratization, and populism, three main conclusions are made. First, actions taken by Bukele during his presidency has directly contributed to a negative democratic development. Second, both during the electoral campaign and in office, there are also signs of populism, such as anti-pluralism, hijacking the state, mass clientelism, and a feeling of a less democratic civil society and free media. Consequently, Bukele has pushed the country into a process of autocratization, where the future destiny toward less democracy is still uncertain.
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Party politics across Central and Eastern Europe has become less structured. Many of the divides that anchored political competition have waned in recent years, weakening the attachment of voters to the existing palette of parties and making them more likely to be attracted to new and non-traditional electoral vehicles. But for such parties to succeed at the ballot box, they need to be able to frame elections and campaign effectively. Drawing on data from a specially commissioned survey, we find that the success of Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) led by Igor Matovič in the 2020 parliamentary elections in Slovakia owed much to the crafting of an anti-corruption appeal combined with an effective campaign. Both mobilization and conversion of voters, particularly through television and the leaders’ debates, in the months leading up to election day ensured OĽaNO won a quarter of the vote. OĽaNO stands in stark contrast to other parties whose leaders failed to craft as effective a message, miscalculated the impact of electoral rules and in some cases were unable to distance themselves enough from their past actions. The success of OĽaNO underlines that themes related to anti-corruption and good governance have become central to party politics and political contestation. More broadly, the election and its aftermath continued a general trend of forward movement of voters from old parties to new to newer still, indicating the churn of party politics in Slovakia is likely to continue.
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From the quantitative point of view, offences against elections and referenda are on the margins of the total number of offences recorded annually in Poland. However, they are characterized by a unique particularity revealing temporal, seasonal dynamics, and a distinctive motivation of perpetrators, including those accepting (demanding) an advantage in exchange for a certain way of voting (vote buying) and those providing such an advantage (bribery). A limited number of offences committed does not necessarily indicate a lack of judicial dysfunction in the operation of the justice system, especially if the reduction in the number of offences is not the result of the state criminal policy. The truth of this thesis seems to be particularly relevant in the case of the offence of electoral corruption (Article 250a of the Criminal Code) since its commission always constitutes a manifestation of criminal pathology that distorts the actual outcome of elections, and consequently, the value of the entire electoral process and even of democracy in general. For these reasons and despite the limited extent of electoral corruption, legal interests underlying it remain of the highest value. The paper addresses these very issues. It includes dogmatic, theoretical and legal research and analysis of the title active repentance referred to in Article 250a § 4 of the Criminal Code, established, under the legislator’s intention, to break the solidarity between perpetrators of corruption in the area of electoral corruption. The purpose is to present the normative basis of the institution, which, after all, is of major importance for shaping the criminal liability of an individual perpetrator, but also, despite the small number of electoral offences, for conducting the entire criminal policy of the state. However, the aim of the article is not limited to descriptive analyses, because the research and analysis of the selected type of prohibited activities are not limited to considerations conducted through a purely dogmatic prism, but includes a research aspect that relies on the presentation of research results of an empirical nature. The deliberations, which are based on lex ferenda and partially on de lege lata considerations, focus heavily on the analysis of the institution of active repentance as described in Article 250a § 4 of the Criminal Code. This institution provides that the perpetrator may count on the modification of the scope of liability, including waiving the punishment if they abandon their criminal intent and no longer wish for the act to happen. Ultimately, this paper does not deal only with dogmatics focused around Article 250a of the Criminal Code and involving a purely descriptive approach. It also addresses the title breaking of the solidarity of the perpetrators committing the offence of electoral corruption and the empirical research that the authors have presented in this study.
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