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Electoral Geography of Bosnia and Herzegovina – is there anything beyond the ethnic rule?
Abstract
The majority of experts consider ethnicisation the defining factor in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political life. Our objective is to uncover what other factors affect party performance and what, if any, territorial pattern different from the ethnic one, can be drawn. We argue, based on quantitative analyses, that besides the “ethnic rule”, other social cleavages (like the urban-rural one) with territorial patterns are also present in the country, though they are less significant. In the the entity of Federation ethnic polarisation is a significant contextual factor, while in the party competition of the entity of Republic of Srpska mainly non-ethnic factors are decisive.
The national context of BiH highlights the critical importance of social cohesion in the post-conflict country. BiH was the most ethnically heterogeneous republic within the SFRY and went through periods of inter-ethnic coexistence and tensions caused by internal and external factors. Under the socialist regime, the slogan “unity and brotherhood” was issued, and ethnic differences were downplayed. The socialist self-management system was introduced to govern society, and the system granted autonomy to schools. The conflict between the three ethnic groups in 1992–1995 led to a split in the newly independent country. Post-conflict education policies have been ethnic-based, perpetuating and exacerbating group divisions and hindering efforts to restore the social fabric and develop social cohesion. Meanwhile, external actors have played an assertive role in shaping the education system to facilitate democratization and accession to the EU. In response, various domestic actors have interpreted and implemented externally induced educational reforms, resulting in a stalemate in the system. Nevertheless, some examples of initiatives in formal education and NFE appear to have contributed to the development of social cohesion.
Электоральная география — это наука о пространственном измерении избирательного процесса. Дисциплина обобщает факторы и закономерности, лежащие в основе устойчивых идейно-политических расколов в обществе и их территориальных различий, а также в политической активности избирателей и распределении их голосов за партии и кандидатов по административно-территориальным единицам разного уровня, избирательным округам и участкам. В работе концептуализируется и операционализируется явление географического фаворитизма и пространственной диспропорциональности избирательных и партийных систем. На основе методологии пространственного статистического анализа и геоинформационного моделирования разработаны алгоритмы оценки роли пространства в электоральном поведении граждан. Монография ориентирована на исследователей в области общественной географии, политологии, электоральной социологии и избирательного права, а также специалистов в области политического консультирования. Может использоваться студентами при изучении соответствующей дисциплины.
Electoral geography tends to focus on the impact of geographical context on electoral behavior recently and challenges the classical compositional approach. We analyze spatial contextual factors of the 2018 general elections of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the linear regression models based on the fault line theory result in wrong estimations in several municipalities, not fitting into the national pattern. Using spatial modelling, it is confirmed that the strong territorial base of Bosnian parties is shaped by spatial dependence and spatial spillover effects. In addition to the spillover effect of individual party performance, the indirect neighbourhood role of ethnicity, sectoral structure and education was also shown in some cases.
The focus of this article is on ethnic diversity and polarisation in Latvia after 1989. Our fundamental question is that if we interpret diversification as a dynamic process, and include polarisation as a potential direction of diversification, how much will the results differ, compared to the explanations usually proposed in the literature? The recognition that apparent homogenisation results, in particular cases, in polarisation (in this case in 35% of Latvia’s entire population) is the major contribution of our empirical analysis. Taking into account the broad scale of the potential impact of polarisation, our findings raise significant questions for the classification mechanisms that may be employed in further investigations.
The 2018 Hungarian Parliamentary Election was the second time to declare a political opinion after the adoption of the electoral voting system and procedure act of 2011 and 2013. Thus, it was possible to analyse with timeline the geographic characteristics of the new individual constituencies. Consequently, two research questions were formulated in our study. On the one hand, the aim of the study is to find out how the spatial support of the participants and the parties to the parliament on the constituency scale was reflected in the 2014 and 2018 figures. On the other hand, we want to find relations between the parties support and the different social indicators on the constituency scale. In the analysis, mathematical-statistical methods were applied and the party lists of the 2014 and 2018 Parliamentary Elections were compared with the database of the 2011 census. The results have shown the participation changes in constituency level and the electoral geographical patterns in Hungarian. Furthermore, the research has demonstrated the interrelations between the main social and economic indicators and the list support of the parties. The urban-rural cleavages that have become increasingly marked in the time period under consideration have developed, while for example, the religious structure less differentiates the votes.
This article argues that the perforation of national states by immigration, integration and trade may signify a critical juncture in the political development of Europe no less consequential for political parties and party systems than the previous junctures that Lipset and Rokkan detect in their classic article. We present evidence suggesting that (1) party systems are determined in episodic breaks from the past; (2) political parties are programmatically inflexible; and, (3) as a consequence, party system change comes in the form of rising parties.
The study of the Baltic States provides new pathways for advancing the
sociological approach of party system analysis in general and in the CEE context in
particular. It further allows us to consider several empirical issues related to
cleavages in the Baltic States, but also extends the scope of the sociological
approach into new spheres of research and even allows us to pursue even a limited theoretical innovation in the field.
Todosijević, B. (2013). Serbia. In Sten Berglund, Joakim Ekman, KevinDeegan-Krause and Terje Knutsen (eds.), The Handbook of PoliticalChange in Eastern Europe, Third Edition. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.(ISBN: 9780857935373; DOI: 10.4337/9781782545880)
(PDF) Serbia. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322384098_Serbia [accessed Feb 10 2019].
This article argues that the perforation of national states by immigration, integration and trade may signify a critical juncture in the political development of Europe no less consequential for political parties and party systems than the previous junctures that Lipset and Rokkan detect in their classic article. We present evidence suggesting that (1) party systems are determined in episodic breaks from the past; (2) political parties are programmatically inflexible; and, (3) as a consequence, party system change comes in the form of rising parties.
This paper examines how fragile Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is and whether it is indeed in danger of collapsing, as significant amount of academic literature often claims. The research finds that BiH is not in an immediate danger of collapse. BiH remains peaceful, despite the numerous challenges it faces. However, it comprises an alarming amount of causes of conflict that have been mitigated because both international actors and local elites benefit from the current status quo. Thus, BiH finds itself in a peaceful stalemate, which is likely to continue until a structural change occurs that triggers the outbreak of violent conflict.
There have been growing fears that the political leadership in Republika Srpska (RS) is in the process of laying the foundations for an attempt to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Drawing on a range of legal and political arguments, this paper assesses whether a unilateral declaration of independence is in fact a realistic scenario. It concludes that it is not. Apart from the international community’s deep-rooted aversion to secession, there are very strong specific factors that mitigate against it. Moreover, for varying reasons, Bosnia cannot be compared to other cases, such as Kosovo, Scotland or Catalonia. Meanwhile, at a very practical level, any act of secession would need to be supported by Serbia. This will not happen. For all these reasons, the threat of secession, and even the significance of any referendum on separation, should be downplayed. Indeed, it is argued that the biggest threat to peace and stability in the country is not the prospect of secession, but the danger that such a scenario is being given undue and unwarranted credibility by some officials and observers.
This paper presents a new solution for choosing the K parameter in the k-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm, the solution depending on the idea of ensemble learning, in which a weak KNN classifier is used each time with a different K, starting from one to the square root of the size of the training set. The results of the weak classifiers are combined using the weighted sum rule. The proposed solution was tested and compared to other solutions using a group of experiments in real life problems. The experimental results show that the proposed classifier outperforms the traditional KNN classifier that uses a different number of neighbors, is competitive with other classifiers, and is a promising classifier with strong potential for a wide range of applications.
Political behaviour of citizens is traditionally formed by a wide range of factors that influence their voting decision in the election. Dichotomy of both the space and society into the town and the countryside generates different election results constantly. A key aim of this paper is to assess the extent of rurality concerning the electoral support of relevant political parties operating on the Slovak political scene after the groundbreaking elections held in 1998 until ballots of 2010 not only at national, but also at the regional level. Evaluation of level and dynamics in socio-political cleavage between rural and urban space is one of the most important research ambitions of this study. We shall note the position of particular regions in Slovakia in terms of size and acceleration of the conflict and try to categorize them according to the similarity in values of indicators characterizing this social discrepancy. On the basis of found facts, we shall appraise the electoral success of political parties in urban and rural environment and compose the regional typization of Slovakia concerning the party representatives of urban and rural environment. Finally, we shall evaluate the potential of the regions to be future outbreak sites of latent cleavage influencing their differential political inclination.
Regionální dimenze socio-politického konfliktu mezi městem a venkovem na Slovensku
Politické chování občanů je tradičně formováno širokou plejádou faktorů, které ovlivňují jejich hlasování v samotných volbách. Dichotomie prostoru i společnosti na město a venkov dlouhodobě generuje rozdílné volební výsledky. Klíčovým úkolem tohoto příspěvku bylo zachycení míry rurality volební podpory relevantních politických subjektů působících na slovenské politické scéně v období po přelomových volbách v roce 1998 až po rok 2010 nejen na národní, ale především na regionální úrovni. Evaluace úrovně a dynamiky sociopolitického štěpení společnosti venkova a města představovala jednu z nejvýznamnějších vědeckovýzkumných ambicí představované studie. Zhodnotili jsme postavení jednotlivých regionů Slovenska z hlediska rozsahu a akcelerace této konfliktní linie a pokusili jsme se o jejich kategorizaci na základě podobnosti hodnot ukazatelů charakterizujících tento společenský nesoulad. Komentovali jsme volební úspěšnost jednotlivých politických stran v městském a venkovském prostředí a na základě zjištěných reálií jsme zkoncipovali typizaci regionů Slovenska podle politických reprezentantů urbánního a rurálního prostoru. V závěru jsme vyhodnotili potenciál jednotlivých regionů ve smyslu budoucích ohnisek latentního štěpení společnosti projevujícího se v politických inklinacích jednotlivých částí země. Při hodnocení globálního stavu zkoumané problematiky lze konstatovat, že mezi lety 1998 až 2010 došlo na celonárodní úrovni k volebně-preferenční konvergenci urbánního a rurálního prostředí. K nejcitelnějšímu sociopolitickému štěpení společnosti na bázi diference volebních preferencí obyvatel měst na jedné straně a venkovských obcí na straně druhé došlo v přelomových parlamentních volbách v roce 1998. Naopak nejvyšší míru podobnosti volebních výsledků mezi urbánním a rurální prostředím bylo možné evidovat u příležitosti voleb do NR SR uskutečněných v roce 2010. Výsledky provedeného výzkumu tak dokazují, že parlamentní volby v roce 1998 se právem označují jako souboj města a venkova, resp. jako vítězství urbánní části voličů nad rurální, což jen potvrzuje výraznou vyhraněnost politických inklinací těchto specifických prostředí právě v případě voleb před 15 lety. Druhá nejvyšší sociopolitická divergence mezi populací města a venkova byl registrován při volbách do NR SR v roce 2006, kdy se po osmi letech pravicové vlády dostal k moci někdejší vládní trojlístek Smer-SD, ĽS-HZDS a SNS. V tomto období je zajímavý masivní přesun elektorátu ĽS-HZDS k voličské základně Smeru-SD, což v konečném důsledků transformovalo původně nevýrazný urbánní profil strany Roberta Fica na mírně rurální s předpokladem dalšího posilování rurality její volební podpory. Pokud bychom však neuvažovali o společensko- -politickém štěpení urbánního a rurální prostoru v jižních oblastech Slovenska typických vysokou územní koncentrací obyvatelstva maďarské národnosti, které je dáno v první řadě geografickou kompozicí etnických skupin zdejší populace, pak bychom mohli za nejvýznamnější souboj skutečných městských a venkovských hodnot považovat ten odehrávající se ve volbách v roce 2002. Obecně platí, že hodnotový rozpor mezi městem a venkovem projevený prostřednictvím specifického politického chování jejich obyvatel byl nejvýraznější v těch regionech země, v nichž žije vysoký podíl občanů maďarské národnosti, a to především v jejich venkovském prostoru, přičemž urbánní prostředí těchto oblastí je charakteristické významným zastoupením populace slovenské národnosti. Avšak v této souvislosti je třeba zdůraznit, že vysoká ruralita volebních zisků SMK-MKP je vzhledem k prostorové kompozici jejího elektorátu zapříčiněna především etnickou strukturou obyvatel Slovenska charakterizovanou územní koncentrací občanů maďarské národnosti v jižních částech země. Venkovský profil voličské podpory této strany se tedy programově neváže na prosazování hodnot a potřeb venkovské komunity jako takové. Naopak nejmenší volebně-preferenční nesoulad mezi elektorátem měst a venkovských obcí byl zjištěn v těch částech Slovenska, které vykazují podobné sociální a ekonomické charakteristiky obou prostředí a nacházejí svůj politický rozměr ve volebních inklinacích samotného regionu bez zásadnějšího vlivu zkoumané konfliktní linie. Regionální obraz úrovně sociopolitického štěpení společnosti urbánního a rurální prostředí lze z prostorového hlediska považovat v rámci území Slovenské republiky za dlouhodobě platný. Rovněž můžeme předpokládat, že ke zmírňování společensko- politického rozporu mezi městem a venkovem přispívá relevantním dílem i probíhající proces suburbanizace největších měst Slovenska.
This article questions whether a relatively strong conviction that legitimacy conveys nothing more than acceptance derived from legal recognition. Therefore several indices are constructed which are applicable to comparing and contrasting four major dimensions of political legitimacy both in parent states and in secessionist entities. In measuring political legitimacy in Cyprus, Moldova and Bosnia & Hercegovina in terms of identity and security on the one hand, and democracy and performance on the other, we may be able to observe cases where internal legitimacy has been neglected by the international community. This article concludes that legitimacy is a variable continuously used in the support and rejection of secessionist bids and integrationist endeavours.I would like to thank Rein Taagepera, Rein Murakas, Piret Ehin, Martin Mölder and Scott Pegg for useful comments and criticism to various drafts of this article. I owe special thanks to Mihkel Solvak for graphic design and Raul Toomla for drafting the questionnaire. I am grateful also to Yücel Vural, Muharrem Faiz, Dino Djipa, Elena Bobkova, Ion Jigau and Arcadie Barbarosie for help in conducting public opinion surveys in Cyprus, Moldova and Bosnia & Hercegovina. This article represents a contribution to the Estonian Science Foundation project ‘De Facto States in the International System: Legality vs. Legitimacy’ (grant no. 7951).
A U.S. political geographer, examining regional political divisions in post-independence Ukraine, argues that the debate between the school positing that regional cleavages are ebbing and that which holds that Ukraine has not yet become a political community is also fundamentally a geographic question regarding scale and place. Using two measures of political preferences, votes in the 1999 presidential runoff election and the political attitudes expressed in 1992 and 1996 Eurobarometer surveys, the regional effect in Ukraine is shown to be complicated by the nature of the political question and by local disparities from regional trends. New methods of analysis clarify these complications and challenge both schools of researchers to heed issues of measurement, technique, and geographic issues of scale. 11 figures, 4 tables, 61 references.
The coloured revolutions in the post-communist countries are widely regarded as bourgeois democratic breakthroughs in a classical liberal tradition. Statistical analysis of the structural side of the Orange electoral success in Ukraine - examining in a range of regions the effect on electoral support for an anti-regime candidate of a district's class composition, the activity of non-governmental organizations, ethiclinguistic characteristics, the prevailing mode of human settlement, the church influence, and economic links with Europe - shows the class composition of an electoral district to be the single most important factor behind Viktor Yushchenko's electoral success. However, the Orange victory in 2004 was achieved with support from the least bourgeois areas rather than those where the urban capitalist class had been the most developed.
Sociology lags considerably behind political science in its comparative research on European societies, but enough material now exists to enable us to talk broadly about the major changes that have taken place since the 1970s across western Europe, and also to some extent central and eastern Europe too. Attention is here concentrated on those social trends that seem particularly salient for the study of politics, with occupational structure as the starting point. Although this dominant theme of classical sociology has tended to be neglected by much recent research in favour of such areas as deviance, gender and the formation of identities, working life remains fundamental to social organisation and in particular to politics. In fact, the theme of gender is easily accessed through consideration of changes in occupations, and considerable attention will be devoted to it here. This leads in turn to consideration of the family, then on to other aspects of demography including immigration and cultural diversity. This relates clearly to the final theme that will be discussed: the state of religion in Europe. In the conclusions some of the political implications of these changes are brought together.
Through the analysis of Hungarian politics, this article demonstrates how parties become embedded in the social, cognitive and emotive structures of societies. The role of agency in cleavage formation is addressed, with a special emphasis on the mechanism through which political parties structure their environments. Next to the popularization of conflict perceptions and the consolidation of camp identities, the development of a more elaborate and segmented organizational structure is identified as an integral part of the process of cleavage formation. Such a structure enables parties to forge coalitions among previously separate social groupings and combine group interests into packages large enough to overcome institutional thresholds of power. The findings indicate that parties are potentially able to cross cleavage lines, re-structure relations within the party system and create new associations between party preferences, socio-structural categories and attitudes. Furthermore, parties seem to be able to alter the relationships between psychologically rooted attitudes and social categories. The study also shows, however, that deep-seated socio-cultural divides limit the power of agency even in new democracies.
This article examines the territorialization of party replacement in the Czech Republic between 2010 and 2017. Using spatial analytical techniques, we found that despite the significant success of new populist parties, which considerably transformed the parliamentary strength of individual parties, the “new” geographical patterning of party support was far from real transformation. Historically, most of the rightist and center-right parties relied on higher support in areas with a high development potential and the developmental axes related to them, whereas established left-wing parties found support in areas with a low development potential. The elections of 2010 and 2013 were exceptions to this pattern, but the elections of 2017 interrupted this deviation when geographical support for some of the new populist parties (those which had succeed in 2013 already) moved mostly to underdeveloped areas. However, as the programmatics of most of the new populist parties are relatively unclear (especially on the left-right ideological division), one can hardly speak of class realignment, but rather of spatial re-stratification of Czech politics: traditionally leftist and rightist voters largely abandoned “their” (established) parties, but on the other hand, their voting mostly did not contravene the Czech spatial division between leftist and rightist regions.
This research note presents EPAC 2017, a dataset resulting from the second round of an expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition. EPAC provides cross-sectional data on the positions of (ethno-) national and mainstream parties on an ethnonational (also often referred to as ‘territorial’ or ‘centre-periphery’) dimension, as well as other important dimensions of political competition. The 2017 edition covers 222 political parties in 22 multinational European countries. The research note presents the main survey items and performs a series of validity and reliability tests on the data. Results show that EPAC 2017 provides valid and reliable measures of party positions on an ethnonational dimension. A short analysis of party system changes in Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the opportunities of combining the 2011 and 2017 editions. The combined dataset allows studying the mobilization of the centre-periphery cleavage in party competition across Eastern and Western Europe and over time.
This article examines the territorialization of party support in the Republic of Georgia as political parties in Georgia try to territorialize by aligning themselves to existing societal cleavages. The article specifically focuses on the case of the United National Movement (UNM), which from its inception in 2001 was led by Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and was the country’s governing party from 2004 to 2012. While in power, the UNM enjoyed nationwide support. After being unseated, instead of nationalizing countrywide, the UNM has based its support in national elections on specific areas populated by ethno-linguistic and religious minorities. By analyzing the results of the most recent five national elections and the 2014 national census, the article shows that continuing support for the UNM and the subsequent territorialization of the party is dictated by these existing societal cleavages.
This article contributes to the debate on spatial variance of voting behaviour in Poland. Using empirical data from the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, two alternative explanations of observed patterns are tested. The first focuses on the role of economy while the second emphasises the importance of the urban–rural divide. The empirical analysis demonstrates higher relevance of the differences between urban and rural areas. Even after controlling for historical legacies, urbanization offers the best explanation of the differences in electoral results between spatial units. Furthermore, the effects related to the urban–rural divide are similar within the two broadly defined clusters of parties. Economic variables, on the contrary, matter only in certain socio-cultural contexts.
In some ways, electoral geography has never been more popular. From the detailed, online maps of the Brexit vote to discussions of the electoral college versus the popular vote in the 2016 Trump–Clinton U.S. presidential contest, the relationships among geography, voting, and political power have seldom been more visible. The popularity of electoral geography in social and news media, however, does not necessarily reflect its presence in scholarly discussions, and indeed, in some ways, the former has replaced the latter. Digital technology and the burgeoning availability of electronic data mean that it is easier than ever to create maps of votes, often in near real time. Yet the academic field of electoral geography encompasses more than just mapping votes, including the study of election campaigns, political parties, electoral systems, and gerrymandering. The 3 major approaches are the geography of voting (mapping and visualizing votes), geographic influences on voting (the effect of place on political preferences and behavior), and the geography of representation (the analysis of electoral systems). Indeed, the structure of the electoral system, including gerrymandering, is often the key to understanding how political and racial/ethnic minorities can (or cannot) wield power and influence. This article examines each approach after a brief review of the historical origins of the subfield.
When does a country's social structure foster the development of territorialized party systems? This article argues that electoral geography – defined as the interaction between the geography of social diversity and electoral rules– is key to answering this question. I make two claims: first, the impact of geographically concentrated diversity on party system ter- ritorialization depends on the proportionality of electoral rules. Second, the types of geographic cleavages (ethnic versus economic) and whether they are overlapping or cross-cutting also affects the likelihood of party system territorialization (conditional on the electoral system). I test these claims with an original dataset measuring party system territorialization in 382 elections across 60 countries that also includes comparable cross-national measures of different types of geograph- ically concentrated diversity (language, race, religion and income). The main conclusion is that proportional electoral systems and cross-cutting cleavages can act as a powerful constraint on the translation of territorial ethnic cleavages into territorialized party systems.
The asymmetrical, federal construction of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been contested by all groups, but it has particularly influenced a significant element of Croat politics in BiH - their need to create 'their own' entity. Not being able to form a separate territorial unit, Croats created parallel institutions following the Herzeg-Bosna pattern: firstly in 2000, and again in 2011. This paper aims at analyzing the Croats' autonomist and secessionist politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina with special emphasis on the formation of parallel structures as a replacement strategy derived from the Croat inability to bring about a constitutional unit of their own. Using the model suggested in the introduction to this special issue, the problem is analyzed from the perspective of center-periphery dynamics in Bosnia and answers the question as to why territorial autonomy has been an impossible goal for Croats.
From the maps of election returns that appear after the polls close to debates surrounding the drawing of voting district boundaries, geography figures prominently across elections and electoral studies. This chapter examines the role that geography plays in understanding elections and shaping democracy, and situates recent work into the three analytical traditions of electoral geography. First, insights into elections and voting behavior that can be obtained through the geography of support or mapping of election returns are discussed and reviewed. Next, geographical influences on voting, such as neighborhood effects, are addressed, as is the debate between compositional and contextual approaches to voting studies. Third, electoral systems and their implications, ranging from electoral bias to malapportionment, are presented for their impact in elections and on democracy. The chapter concludes with a discussion of recent trends and opportunities to extend electoral geography.
Why do people living in different areas vote in different ways? Why does this change over time? How do people talk about politics with friends and neighbours, and with what effect? Does the geography of well-being influence the geography of party support? Do parties try to talk to all voters at election time, or are they interested only in the views of a small number of voters living in a small number of seats? Is electoral participation in decline, and how does the geography of the vote affect this? How can a party win a majority of seats in Parliament without a majority of votes in the country? This book explores these questions by placing the analysis of electoral behaviour into its geographical context. Using information from the latest elections, including the 2005 General Election, the book shows how both voters and parties are affected by, and seek to influence, both national and local forces. Trends are set in the context of the latest research and scholarship on electoral behaviour. The book also reports on new research findings.
Datasets in the field of ethnic politics still tend to treat ethnonational groups as unitary actors and do not differentiate between the positions of the organizations representing these groups. Datasets in the field of party politics differentiate between the positions of political parties, yet fail convincingly to conceptualize an ethnonational dimension of competition. This Research Note presents EPAC, a new dataset on Ethnonationalism in Party Competition that seeks to fill this gap. Based on an expert survey, EPAC provides cross-sectional data on the ethnonational positions of 210 political parties in 22 multinational European democracies. The conceptualization of an ethnonational dimension of competition underlying the dataset is introduced and a series of validity and reliability tests performed. Test results show that EPAC provides valid and reliable measures of party positions on an ethnonational dimension that can serve as an empirical base for study of the causes and effects of the mobilization of ethnicity in party competition.
This paper looks at the electoral geography of the Partij Voor de Vrijheid, a Dutch right-wing radical populist party, which is anti-immigration, anti-establishment and critical of urban conditions. Combining survey analyses and geocoded polling station data analyses of the 2010 parliamentary elections, it is found that overrepresentation of support in suburban environments cannot be explained by voter composition alone. There is a positive contextual effect in lower-density neighbourhoods in cities and in suburban municipalities, as well as in post-war New Towns. To account for spatial variations, an explanatory framework is proposed based on urban theories of class, revanchism and nostalgia. Traditional middle classes, concentrated in suburbs, seem to support RRPPs to reclaim urban space for daily use and as a defensive strategy in view of metropolitan change.
A noted specialist on the electoral geography of Russia reviews the existing body of work on the subject based on national elections, beginning with the RSFSR returns from the March 1989 voting for seats in the the USSR Congress of People's Deputies and extending to the presidential race of 2004. The author identifies major themes and methodologies relevant to a discussion of the political topography of Russia, before assessing the extent to which the country's emergent electoral landscape has been described. He emphasizes the importance of scale in interpreting the spatial patterns of electoral outcomes, as well as the social and economic correlates of voting across the regions.
Two experts on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia examine the disruption of the relatively stable pattern of political choice evident in the returns from the December 2003 elections to the Russian Duma. The paper documents major shifts, relative to three previous Duma elections, in turnout and the percentage share of vote among major parties and broad party groupings (liberal/reform, nationalist, KPRF/Agrarian, and centrist). Prominent among the latter are the resurgence of nationalist parties, the losses suffered by the communists, the virtual elimination of the reform parties from the national legislative scene, and the consolidation of power by the favorite party of the Kremlin.
Research on post-communist party systems must deal with (1) the extent to which party systems crystallize around programmatic cleavages or are based on clientelistic or charismatic parties and (2) if programmatic competition is high, the content of the major divisions that are represented by the parties. The extent to which programmatic structuring takes place in post-communism depends on countries' democratic experience and the nature of their democratic institutions fostering more personalized or more depersonalized power relations. These institutions, in turn, are influenced by the pathways of transition from communism to democracy, the type of communist rule and earlier traditions of democratization and industrialization in the inter-war era. With regard to the content of cleavage divisions, the paper identifies several configurations of party systems. Determinants are derived from voters' economic interests, the varying salience of socio-cultural conflicts in postcommunist countries and the relations among ethnic groups.
Recent research conducted in both the United States and Canada has found that residents of inner cities and suburbs are diverging in their voting behavior and political attitudes. The mechanisms producing such a divergence, however, have remained unclear. After identifying a set of distinct hypotheses for why one might expect residents of inner cities and suburbs to differ in their political views, this article draws on a survey undertaken by the author in one electoral district in the Toronto region to empirically test the relative contribution of each of the hypothesized mechanisms in explaining the geography of party preferences. This study suggests there is no single explanation for the city-suburban cleavage, and that the mechanisms producing it are complex. Spatial segregation (based on individual attributes such as race, ethnicity, and class) is clearly important; however neighborhood self-selection, local experience, and, to a lesser extent, mode of consumption all have significant independent effects. Particularly important is the self-selection of supporters of political parties on the left into the inner city, stemming either from a search for a “sense of community” or the desire to link their lifestyle choices to their political convictions, whereas supporters of parties farther to the right are more likely to choose postwar suburban neighborhoods out of a preference for private space. In contrast, there is little evidence that housing tenure or the sharing of political information between neighbors are factors independently producing city-suburban political differences within the study district.
This paper discusses some of the methodological issues in the measurement of ethnicity in the social survey. Measurement encounters two sets of interrelated problems: those of the definition and nature of ethnicity as a social phenomenon and its individual subjective experience and those of the derivation of valid and reliable categories. Commonly used single-item measures fail to capture many ethnic groups and may be of limited value. Extending categories in these will capture more groups, but can be unwieldy and produce small cell counts, whereas multiple measures can be more successful, but are practically less viable in general surveys. We conclude that whilst these difficulties are probably insurmountable, a strategy that is sensitive to the presence of ethnic groups in particular localities is a way forward, but this should also be part of a more sociologically nuanced approach to the collection of ethnic data.
Two American geographers and noted specialists on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine describe and analyze the three rounds of Ukraine's pivotal and highly contested presidential elections in late 2004. In an effort to shed light on the underlying demographic and socio-economic correlates of the vote (e.g., age, income, urban/rural residence, language/ethnicity), the authors pay special attention to changes among the rounds, providing background to widespread allegations of electoral fraud in round two (first runoff). Finally, they summarize results of bivariate and multivariate regression analyses that reveal which among the various correlates contribute most to explaining differences in the vote. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O18, R10. 6 figures, 5 tables, 26 references.
A widely-accepted assumption of modern political science is that as the national ‘societies’ defined by state boundaries modernize, citizens are mobilized as individualized voters into a national political community. The locality and the region lose their significance as settings for the constitution of political conduct as allegiance is transferred to the national community and political parties draw support on. functional (class or religious) rather than geographical grounds. This idea has become a central element in Italian political science over the past 20 years. Yet the empirical evidence in support of it is tenuous at best. Acceptance of the nationalization thesis is based largely upon intellectual foundations independent of empirical demonstration. The most important of these are the importation of ideas from American political science to define an autonomous Italian political science and the biases implicit in the Hegelian—Crocean tradition of political thought long-dominant in Italian universities. For reasons more intellectual than empirical, therefore, Italian political science has come to deny the possibility of a non-residual geography of Italian politics.
Party assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina has focused on encouraging multi-ethnic and moderate mono-ethnic parties by placing funding and political restrictions on ethnonationalist parties while providing technical assistance and public support to those parties with less nationalist agendas. However, multi-ethnic parties have met with very limited electoral success and moderate mono-ethnic parties have found electoral success primarily by radicalizing their political discourse to match that of nationalist parties. This study provides evidence for the effect of international intervention drawn from patterns of electoral support for multi-ethnic and moderate mono-ethnic parties in canton, entity and national elections from the 2006 general elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis shows that even voters who are predisposed to vote for multi-ethnic parties are much less likely to choose non-nationalist parties in elections where parties representing other ethnicities also compete. As a result, there is a clear trade-off between promoting Bosnia's integration and promoting parties and candidates who refrain from using often incendiary nationalist rhetoric.
In this article regional differences in party support are analysed by means of comparative survey data from 15 West European countries. The main research question is: How can we explain that people in different regions vote for different political parties? On the basis of the literature on new regionalism and old and new politics, this article formulates two sets of hypotheses which are considered related to new regionalism and new politics, and old regionalism and old politics, respectively. A causal model is formulated which includes three groups of explanatory variables, namely, (other) socio-structural variables, value orientations and territorial identities. The main findings support the old regionalism and old politics notions of how we can explain the regional cleavage. Social structure is the most important explanatory variable, and, among the various value orientations, old politics values are most important. There is, however, some evidence that values and territorial identities are important explanatory variables in three of the countries where the regional cleavage has increased since the 1970s: Belgium, Italy and Spain.
This contribution proposes an analytical framework for explaining regionalist parties' ideological positioning in the multi-dimensional political space. It focuses on three ideological dimensions: centre–periphery, left–right and European integration. Positioning along the first two dimensions is explained in terms of socio-structural characteristics of the regions and the incentives posed by institutional/political environments. Then mutual influences between positioning on the three different ideological dimensions are discussed. The structural characteristics of the regions are particularly useful in locating the main regionalist party in each region to the left or right of centre and, to some extent, in explaining centre–periphery radicalism. Voting systems and the dynamics of (multi-level) party systems help us to explain political fragmentation of the regionalist movement, changes of positions through time and the adoption of moderate or radical positions in both centre–periphery and left–right dimensions. Finally, the analysis of cross-dimension positioning suggests that moderate centre–periphery stances (i.e. non-secessionist) tend to match with liberal or (especially Christian-democratic) moderate and conservative positions. It also suggests that anti-European integration positions match with left–right radicalism and, increasingly so, with centre–periphery radicalism.
The return of refugees and displaced persons has been a strong priority in the international commitment to reverse “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the war. Return and reintegration of refugees as a durable solution in profoundly changed and uncertain conditions are rarely unproblematic, and in Bosnia the sustainability of such returns, especially minority returns, remains of great concern. This article examines the strategies of return which Bosnian refugees adopt given such uncertainties, and points to the transnational space in which they occur. The return strategies described are of different duration, often take place outside of established policies and programmes, and are based on the need to keep options open in different places. While policies have tended to define refugee return as a single and definitive move to the country or place of origin, the transnational perspective suggests that return be better conceptualized as a dynamic and open-ended process, one which may extend over long periods of time, involving mobility between places and active links to people and resources in the country of asylum. Transnational strategies also include the many refugees abroad who hold on to their repossessed houses in Bosnia and visit regularly, some of them for longer periods and in preparation for returning permanently at a later date. In such a transnational dynamic, refugees and returnees are not always clear-cut categories, as both may move between and combine resources at both ends. The transnational perspective also throws into question notions of “home” as something bound to one particular locality or national community. If home is not just a place or a physical structure, but also a site of social relations and cultural meanings, it may well extend to several places, each one of which may hold its own particular sets of relations and meanings to those concerned. This transnational dimension of home is thus a challenge to notions of “repatriation” or “return” in the simplistic mode. Instead, as this paper shows, the reconstructed home may be translocal, where each locality becomes part of a new home. Rethinking return of refugees in terms of transnational mobility and belonging also suggests new ways of conceptualizing the potential for reconstruction of a large refugee population abroad. How policies and assistance programmes may capitalize on the skills and continued transnational engagements, not least of the many young Bosnians now acquiring higher education abroad, has yet to be developed.
El retorno de refugiados y personas desplazadas, ha sido prioritario en el compromiso internacional a efectos de revertir la “limpieza étnica” acaecida en Bosnia y Herzegovina tras la guerra. El retorno y reintegración de refugiados como solución duradera en condiciones que han sufrido profundos cambios y son inciertas suelen acarrear problemas, y en Bosnia el sostenimiento de estos retornos, especialmente el de las minorías, sigue siendo motivo de gran preocupación. Este artículo examina las estrategias de retorno que adoptan los refugiados bosnios en razón de la incertidumbre, y pone de relieve el espacio transnacional en el que se producen. Las estrategias de retorno descritas tienen diferente duración, a menudo fuera de las políticas y programas establecidos y se basan en la necesidad de mantener opciones abiertas en distintos lugares. Si bien las políticas tienden a definir el retorno de refugiados como un movimiento único y definitivo al país o lugar de origen, la perspectiva transnacional sugiere que el retorno debería conceptualizarse como un proceso dinámico y abierto, que puede extenderse durante largos periodos, y que implica la movilidad entre distintos lugares y los lazos vigentes con personas y recursos en el país de asilo. Estas estrategias trasnacionales también comprenden a los diversos refugiados en el extranjero que se aferran a sus casas recuperadas en Bosnia y visitan regularmente el país, algunos por periodos más largos, en una óptica de preparar el retorno permanente en una fecha ulterior. En esta dinámica transnacional, los refugiados y personas que retornan no pertenecen a categorías bien definidas, puesto que se mueven y combinan los recursos en ambos lugares. La perspectiva transnacional también plantea preguntas sobre la noción de “hogar” como algo relacionado con una localidad en particular o una comunidad nacional. El hogar no es simplemente un lugar o una estructura física sino también un sitio de relaciones sociales y significados culturales, y bien puede abarcar diversos lugares, cada uno de los cuales tendrá su propia serie de relaciones y significados para los concernidos. La dimensión transnacional del hogar es, por consiguiente, un verdadero reto para las nociones simplistas de “repatriación” o “retorno”. Este documento demuestra también que el hogar reconstruido puede ser translocal, donde cada localidad forma parte del nuevo hogar. La reconcepción del retorno de refugiados en términos de movilidad transnacional y pertenencia también sugiere nuevos modos de conceptualizar el potencial de reconstrucción de una considerable población de refugiados en el extranjero. Ahora bien, cabe desar-rollar políticas y programas de asistencia que capitalicen las competencias y los compromisos transnacionales continuos, y qué decir de muchos jóvenes bosnios que actualmente están realizando estudios superiores en el extranjero.
The capabilities for visualization, rapid data retrieval, and manipulation in geographic information systems (GIS) have created the need for new techniques of exploratory data analysis that focus on the “spatial” aspects of the data. The identification of local patterns of spatial association is an important concern in this respect. In this paper, I outline a new general class of local indicators of spatial association (LISA) and show how they allow for the decomposition of global indicators, such as Moran's I, into the contribution of each observation. The LISA statistics serve two purposes. On one hand, they may be interpreted as indicators of local pockets of nonstationarity, or hot spots, similar to the Gi and G*i statistics of Getis and Ord (1992). On the other hand, they may be used to assess the influence of individual locations on the magnitude of the global statistic and to identify “outliers,” as in Anselin's Moran scatterplot (1993a). An initial evaluation of the properties of a LISA statistic is carried out for the local Moran, which is applied in a study of the spatial pattern of conflict for African countries and in a number of Monte Carlo simulations.
Spatial regression models allow us to account for dependence among observations, which often arises when observations are
collected from points or regions located in space. The spatial sample of observations being analyzed could come from a number
of sources. Examples of point-level observations would be individual homes, firms, or schools. Regional observations could
reflect average regional household income, total employment or population levels, tax rates, and soon. Regions often have
widely varying spatial scales (for example, European Unionregions, countries, or administrative regions such as postal zones
or census tracts).
This paper analyzes the effect of religious diversity on economic development. We argue that the religious polarization index is more appropriate to measure the effect of potential conflict on economic development than the traditional fragmentation index. The empirical exercises support this view.