Regional and National Elections in Eastern Europe

"With incongruent electoral alliances in national and regional elections, continuous changes to electoral rules, the breathtaking success of newcomer parties, and the restless metamorphosis of the party systems, the analysis of regional elections in Central and Eastern Europe resembles an adventure trip into the wilderness of a jungle. This book is a detailed map, a compass, and a guidebook, all in one." (Daniel Bochsler, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) "This book is an ambitious effort to remedy the national bias in electoral research in Eastern Europe by putting the region at the center of analysis. Arjan Schakel has brought together leading country experts to analyze regional and national elections using a common framework. The result is a superbly conceived and executed study that is an invaluable resource for those interested in the territoriality of politics." (Gary Marks, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA) "The complex interplay of administrative and institutional engineering with historical legacies and ethno-cultural diversity renders subnational elections a fascinating research topic even in the context of the rather centralized Central and Eastern European states. This nice follow-up on the editors' previous volume on Western European democracies is an eloquent illustration of how well-established theoretical models of electoral politics can be refined by having them travel eastwards to less charted territories. A mandatory reading for students of multi-level electoral competition and center-periphery cleavages." (Istvan Gergo Szekely, Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Romania)

They investigate when and where voters treat regional elections differently from national contests and aim to increase our understanding of the dynamics of electoral competition, which have become increasingly multifarious and complex in many countries due to the establishment and strengthening of regional government.

This book is the second of two studies which systematically explore territoriality of the vote in Europe. They investigate when and where voters treat regional elections differently from national contests and aim to increase our understanding of the dynamics of electoral competition, which have become increasingly multifarious and complex in many countries due to the establishment and strengthening of regional government. This volume brings together leading experts on elections who analyze differences between regional and national electoral outcomes in ten East European countries since 1990. Based on a common analytical framework, each chapter investigates congruence between regional and national elections and traces and explains second-order and regional election effects. The editors applied a similar analytical framework in Regional and National Elections in Western Europe (Palgrave, 2013) which focused on 13 West European countries, enabling the authors to compare regional electoral dynamics between Eastern and Western Europe and observe to what extent explanations for territorial heterogeneity in the vote in the West also apply to the East. This book will be of particular interest to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, regional studies, Eastern-European politics, and democratization.