In our continuing series of “election reports”:https://themonkeycage.org/election_reports/, we are pleased to welcome Kevin Deegan Kraus, author of the definitve “Slovakia blog pozorblog.com”:http://www.pozorblog.com/, with a pre-election report on today’s Slovak parliamentary elections.
Slovakia holds parliamentary elections “today”:http://portal.statistics.sk/nrsr_2010/menu/index.jsp?lang=en. Incurious readers with busy lives will be pleased to know that it is entirely acceptable not to care: Slovakia is a small country without any natural resources craved by the United States and other Monkey Cage posts this week deal with far more consequential topics, including commentary about “Jersey Shore and the tanning tax”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/06/politics_everywhere_snooki.html. Dedicated readers who remain can take solace in the fact that although Slovakia is poor in oil and tanning beds, it is rich in politics. It may not be precisely true that “Slovakia is Everywhere”:http://books.google.com/books?id=lAeteXoNx-QC&lpg=PP1&ots=B7nKfSxMJ7&dq=elected%20affinities&pg=PA230#v=onepage&q=slovakia%20is%20everywhere&f=false as I have claimed elsewhere (with apologies to “Mojo Nixon”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_hkIN38qnY) but political developments in Slovakia repeatedly shed light on complicated processes that are more difficult to study in larger or less accessible countries. In the 1990’s Slovakia illuminated the “authoritarian undertow”:http://books.google.com/books?id=YhqKGeM0OrgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=tim+haughton+meciar+constraints+opportunities&source=bl&ots=G-GukqHzsX&sig=85xJJ_X7ivcQPT9pwaLALQHvmRM&hl=en&ei=KmYSTP38F4KBlAe8ooneBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=tim%20haughton%20meciar%20constraints%20opportunities&f=false in the third wave of democratization. Recovering its balance in the 2000’s, Slovakia offered a remarkable demonstration of the shift of political competition from national questions to socioeconomic ones and put a spotlight on the “political conditions necessary for economic reform”:http://works.bepress.com/john_a_gould/3/. And Slovakia continues to be generous to the political scientists of the 2010s. Although the areas of potential interest are many, three come quickest to mind:
*Nationality politics*
In late 2009 even Slovakia’s foreign minister acknowledged that his country’s relationship with Hungary could be called “the worst bilateral relationship”:http://euobserver.com/?aid=28640 in the EU. As bad as the relations have become, however, they do not threaten to have much macro-political impact. (Prominent analysts have privately compared Slovakia-Hungary relations to hemorrhoids—embarrassing and painful when inflamed but hardly ever fatal.) While it is a bit ghoulish to neglect the immediate negative impact of recent language laws and citizenship laws and historical revisions on the lives of individual Hungarians and Slovaks, the low likelihood of actual conflict provides political scientists with an opportunity to study the underlying dynamics and in the process perhaps find some signs of hope. It seems at times that identity-related agitation is the gift that national parties of rival countries give one another in secret recognition of their common identity-oriented worldview (in spite of diametrically opposed national goals). Each outburst by a national party prompts an equal and opposite reaction from the neighboring nation or national minority and thereby precisely demonstrates the need to support the national party that made the outburst in the first place. Extremes at both sides gain. Even though this has a deleterious effect on inter-ethnic relations, its rewards for party politics within a particular ethnic group are so apparent that we expect parties to “play the national card” whenever they can, and we further expect that this card will trump all others. Yet we must be careful in our expectations: if the strength of the national card were absolute, then all parties would play this card all the time, but they don’t, and Slovakia provides some insight into the limits of national appeals. It would be incautious to say much more before we see the electoral results, but public opinion polls show that increasing national tensions have not lent significant support to parties with a national orientation. Indeed even the Slovak National Party (SNS), vehemently anti-Hungarian, has gained only a point or so in the final pre-election polls, a shift that counts for little against the party’s loss of six points–more than half of its overall support–in the last two years. National fear is a potent force but must have at least some roots in reality and while “the Hungarian threat” lends itself to rhetorical flourish, it does not seem to connect with voters this year as well as more concrete concerns about floods and jobs and corruption.
*Multidimensional party systems*
The Monkey Page has recently hosted a fascinating set of discussions about “Andrew Gelman’s assertion”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/06/elaborating_on_the_statement_t.html that “elections are inherently more unstable when more than two candidates are involved. As an observer of countries where the number is more like six, my first reaction was “how quaint,” but I quickly realized that I could ignore the discussion at my own peril because it closely paralleled my interest in dimensions of competition in multiparty systems and my own question about whether simultaneous competition on multiple axes gives leaders a greater degree of freedom in shaping outcomes. One dimensional competition—analogous to competition between two candidates—tends to reinforce fundamental constraints that link parties more firmly to past campaigns and long-standing support from particular demographic groups. Introduce a second dimension and leaders find themselves able to do more than just compete for undecided voters in the middle of the single dimension. Slovakia provides an excellent example of a case in which parties fight both about economic issues and about national ones (and sometimes about cultural ones as well) and in which the most successful ones face a choice about which issue debate would be most advantageous. Indeed it is no surprise that ambitious leaders spend great effort tying to introduce new dimensions (in the US we often refer to them in terms of “wedge issues”) for precisely the purpose of gaining new political options. Without a better understanding of the dimensionality of political competition of the kind we find in Slovakia, we stand little chance of understanding the role of third candidates or even who has an upper hand in two-candidate elections.
*New models of party organization*
Like business firms and Galapagos finches, political parties continue to evolve in the face of competition, and the race to identify new species is a popular pastime in political science. Beyond the elite parties of the 19th century, the extensively-organized mass parties early 20th century, and the “catch-all” parties of the late 20th century, recent decades appear to have produced several new variants which rely heavily on new approaches to media and organization. Some have followed the lead of business in a variety of ways, emphasizing flexible organization and branding and extending their reach through electronic social media to regain some direct connections with potential voters (though quite different from the in-person contacts of mass parties). While long-established parties have also begun to employ these techniques, the best innovators are the many new parties that have emerged, in countries such as Italy and the Netherlands and particularly in postcommunist Europe. These parties repackage their political inexperience as a central part of their political message in political environments permeated by corruption: “We are new, they claim, and therefore clean”:http://www.pozorblog.com/2009/02/ostentatiously-new-parties-in-lithuania. Most of these parties do little to build strong internal organization and often rely heavily on one or two prominent leaders from “outside” or “above” the political system, especially journalists, entertainers, entrepreneurs, and nobility. For these same reason, these same parties often have difficulty surviving beyond a single term. Indeed some seem designed from the outset as short term projects. When they fail to stay clean their voters often turn to yet another new alternative. It is not yet clear how long these cycles can continue or how the increasing power of disposable parties will affect the quality of policy or the accountability of political leaders, but Slovakia is a good place to start the study. Slovakia not only has an ample supply of these parties (including several new entrants in 2010) but it also has perhaps the most successful and enduring example of such a party in postcommunist Europe: Robert Fico’s party Smer. Smer will win the greatest number of votes today, but the margin by which it does so, and the consequences for the party if it loses the premiership will help to demonstrate the .
*What to look for in Slovakia’s election results*
Slovakia’s contribution to these political questions above will remain significant regardless of who wins or loses tomorrow, but for the few readers who are actually interested in the nuts and bolts of Slovakia’s politics (or have now become so), I should offer a few words about what to look for in the election returns. Polls, odds markets and experts all suggest that this election will be one of extremely narrow margins, both because two key parties stand within half a percent of the 5% threshold (and two more within a percent-and-a-half), and because many projections show a difference of only one or two seats in parliament between the current coalition and the opposition. Whatever government is formed, it is likely to be a weak and internally-divided one that will not undertake too many major policy initiatives, but it will still make a difference whether the political initiative remains in the hands of Smer or falls the current opposition. What should a casual bserver watch for?
Overall distribution of votes between blocs:
* Current polls and other analyses suggest 40-45% for the current coalition, around 35% for the current Slovak opposition, and about 11% for the current Hungarian opposition. Anything dramatically different will suggest a
Distribution of votes within blocs.
* Chances for the continuation the current coalition led by Fico’s Smer are about even, but the coalition will have little chance if Vladimir Meciar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) falls below the 5% threshold or if Smer falls below 30%.
* The current Slovak opposition should maintain its 35% but it will make a difference in coalition negotiations whether the top vote getter is the former government leader, the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU) or the rising Freedom and Solidarity (SaS—one vogue for new parties names appears to be a combination of “This and that” with no mention of “party.” See Poland’s “Law and Justice” and “Left and Democracy” and Bulgaria’s “Order, Lawfulness, Justice.”)
* The chances for an opposition coalition will be harmed significantly if either of the two Hungarian parties—the Party of the Hungarian Coalition (MKP-SMK) or Bridge (Most-Hid)—fail to cross the 5% threshold.
Slovakia’s polls close today at 10pm Central Europe Time / 4pm Eastern Time. Those looking for a quick fix can find my immediate post-election reactons this evening at “pozorblog.com”:http://www.pozorblog.com (along with longer and even more obsessive past discussions of electoral politics in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the Eurovision song contest). Everyone else can probably wait for more succinct and reasoned post-election comments that should appear soon in the Monkey Cage just above special section on “John McCain’s tweets to Snooki”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/06/snooki_john_mccain_feels_your.html.
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Note: There was an earlier version of this post that contained some typos – including my misspelling Kevin’s name for the second time in two weeks! – and formatting errors. These have now been corrected in this version, although please note that none of the substantive points or references were changed.