Suchergebnisse

The selection of candidates is one of the most important processes related to elections which are the key aspect of the functioning of modern democracies. The shape and the outcomes of nomination processes reveal how political parties operate within their organizations. The process of candidate selection also affects the real politics as the political elite is formed from the group of elected candidates. For these reasons, this topic is slowly gaining significance in political science. The book follows these trends and focuses on the nomination processes in the Czech political parties for elec.

Distribution of resources is an essential part of politics and vast research has been done in this field. While the allocation of public money is primarily of an economic nature, the literature shows that political representatives tend to use it for rewarding their allies while punishing their rivals. In addition, allocated grants have the potential to increase the prospects of incumbents when seeking reelection. This paper elaborates on these expectations and it studies a governmental program of local grants in Slovakia in the period between 2004 and 2014. The results show that better access to resources is given to towns led by mayors with closer ties to the central cabinet. In coalition governments, however, this advantage is provided primarily to municipalities with mayors supported by the ruling party that directly controls the distribution. What is more, the subsidies are beneficial for mayors when seeking reelection. A greater number of grants awarded during one term or grants distributed at the end of the electoral cycle help local incumbents to an even greater extent. Hence the paper demonstrates that a program paid for by all taxpayers may operate as a mechanism fueled by political and partisan interests with an impact in the electoral arena.

Abstract
Distribution of resources is at the core of politics. Although this activity is primarily economic in nature, the existing research shows that political representatives often use the allocation of public money to reward their allies at the expense of their rivals. This paper analyses a 2015 governmental programme of local sport grants in Slovakia that aimed to build sport facilities for children and young people. In order to avoid any political bias, the programme was established as a neutral mechanism with an anonymous evaluation of grant requests. The results of analysis, however, provide substantial evidence that the subsidies were given primarily to towns with closer political ties to the government while municipalities led by mayors from the opposition were nearly fully ignored. In addition, the presented social and economic aims of the funding programme were not effectively pursued. The paper thus represents a valuable contribution to the discussion of distributive politics, in general, as it shows that, despite the respective legal framework, the allocation of resources may still end up as a process fuelled by partisan interests.

This article deals with ballot order effect in preferential voting in general elections in Slovakia. Previous research in this field has primarily focused on countries whose elections are based either on single-member districts or on lists with fewer candidates. This article aims to analyze a case of a different nature. Slovakia uses a proportional representation list system with a single nationwide constituency where all 150 members of parliament are elected. Hence, most of the political parties create lists with a high number of candidates, which according to theory should enhance the influence of ballot ranking. Using data from Slovak general elections between 2006 and 2012 with a sample of 7,587 candidates, this study provides strong evidence of the impact of ballot order on the results of preferential voting. The analysis in this article shows the existence of both the primacy and recency effects, that is, a positive bias of voters towards candidates listed at both top and bottom positions on a list. What is more, the multilevel models used in this article demonstrate that support for top-ranked candidates significantly increases as the size of the list increases. For the bottom-listed candidates, this trend is rather the opposite. These findings represent a valuable contribution to the debate in this area as they provide insight into the role of ballot order in electoral systems that use lists composed of numerous candidates.

This study is focused on the democratic competencies and political participation of young people taking part in debate programs in seven "new" democracies – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, and Slovakia. The research employs conventional methods adopted from various established surveys for capturing the political attitudes and values of youths. Using a longitudinal research design, we compare results from debaters and their non-debating peers on three dimensions: political competence, democratic values, and political participation. The results of the pre-tests indicate that debaters' attitudes are more in accordance with what a democratic theory would expect from active and engaged citizens. Participating in debate activities did not reveal significant attitudinal improvements during the short timeframe of our research (one school year), but the initial differences between debaters and non-debaters remained stable over time.

The paper analyses the impact of local demography on the electoral strategies of ethnic political parties. We focus on Hungarian parties in Slovakia and their tactics of fielding candidates in the 2014 and 2018 mayoral elections in 4,461 municipalities with competitive elections. We find that local demography is an essential explanatory factor concerning the strategies of ethnic parties. Our results show that in towns where an ethnic minority predominates, ethnic parties are more likely to challenge each other in elections. On the other hand, we find only little support for the split demography hypothesis that ethnic parties will cooperate in such an environment. Although Hungarian parties form alliances in these municipalities, their occurrence is not different than in towns where the same ethnic group dominates the local population. Finally, we observe that in areas where Hungarians are a numerical minority, inter-ethnic alliances are formed, but only by the more moderate ethnic party. In general, the paper shows that the ethnic composition of municipalities can provide incentives to avoid ethnic outbidding as well as to enhance intra-ethnic rivalry.

Abstract
Media and politicians widely debate the relationship between holidays and political participation, but research in the field is underdeveloped. To test the impact of holidays on election turnout, we use a natural experimental setting in general elections in Slovakia with respect to the presence of holidays near election day. More specifically, while a part of the country had no holidays, other regions either experienced holidays for the first time or had the holiday in a repeated manner. The results from difference--in-differences and OLS regressions employed in the analysis show that experiencing a holiday near election day decreases electoral turnout. However, this negative effect of holidays on turnout is found to be significant only in territories that experienced holidays for the first time, while it is absent in territories that had holidays near elections repeatedly. This finding points to a potential habituation of the electorate and the holidays' influence in the long run. The paper thus contributes to our understanding of how different time aspects of holidays affect electoral turnout.