Economic Voting in Slovakia: Impact of Economic Factors on Electoral Results in a Country in Transition

Abstract:

Despite the vast literature on economic voting in western democracies, this phenomenon has been considered to be obscure in Slovakia. This article explores the patterns of the relationship between economic conditions and the party vote shares in the Slovak parliamentary elections in 1998 and 2002. It also compares unemployment rate and average wage with diverse cultural and demographic factors, applying an OLS regression on aggregated district-level data. The empirical results confirm the existence of the retrospective vote against the incumbent governmental parties in 2002. Moreover, economic factors are important determinants of the support for the communist party and other extremist left-wing parties both in 1998 and 2002. The success of the populist parties of the center in 2002 seems to be independent on economic predictors. Since the main political conflict between non-liberal and liberal approaches to democracy has been settled, a regional discrepancy in economic growth helps to shape an emerging left-right polarization.

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