Between Conflict and Cooperation : Electoral Strategies of Ethnic Parties

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Authors

SPÁČ Peter ZAGRAPAN Jozef

Year of publication 2024
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Web article - open access
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/08883254241235628
Keywords ethnic parties; outbidding; mayors; local elections; ethnic minorities
Description 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.
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