Beyond ethnic voting: Economic and patronage driven electoral mobilization

Abstract

Academic research on voting behavior in ethnically divided societies focused predominantly on ethnic voting. Economic voting, as a performance based voting, is rather scarce to find in these electoral contexts. It is investigated in more advanced democracies, where voting behavior is rather evaluative in nature than expressive, meaning that ethnicity is rather irrelevant or ethnic differences are non-existent. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of factors which have an impact on voting behavior in societies with ethnic divisions by asking how influential is unemployment on voting outcomes and if voters evaluate economic performance of the government when casting a vote. It also links ethnic voting to the phenomenon of political patronage, reflecting its negative impact on political accountability, per se. To provide empirical evidence, this cumulative dissertation centers mainly on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whereas one study looks at 44 countries.