Do less developed regions vote populistic parties? The case of Slovakia

• Název práce v češtině: Volia menej rozvinuté regióny populistické strany? Prípad Slovenska
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Do less developed regions vote populistic parties? The case of Slovakia
• Klíčová slova anglicky: populism, political parties, OLS
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2019/2020
• Typ práce: bakalářská práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Institut ekonomických studií (23-IES)
• Vedoucí / školitel: Mgr. Barbara Pertold-Gebicka, M.A., Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 06.05.2020
• Datum zadání: 06.05.2020
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 09.06.2021 09:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: Opletalova - Opletalova 26
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 03.05.2021
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 09.06.2021
• Oponenti: Mgr. Michal Kotrč

Seznam odborné literatury

Ingelhart, R., Norris, P., 2016. Trump, Brexit and the Rise of Populism: Economic Havenots and Cultural Backlash. Faculty Research Working Paper 16-026. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard UniversityKrastev, I., 2006. Democracy´s Doubles. Journal od Democracy, Volume 17, No.2
Kotrč, M., 2017. The Rise of Extreme Right: Evidence from the Slovak Parliamentary Election. Bachelor thesis. Charles University
McCann, P., 2016. The UK Regional-National Economic Problem: Geography, Globalisation and Governance. London: Routledge.Smilov, D., Krastev, I., 2008. The Rise of Populism in Eastern Europe. Policy Paper. Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.
Mesežnikov, G., Gyarfášová, O., Bútora, M., Kollár, M., 2008. Slovakia. Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.
Rodriguez-Poes, A., 2018. The revenge of the places that don´t matter (and what to do about it)

Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce

Research question and motivation

Politicians and political parties are trying to obtain as many votes as possible, by various approaches. Their intention is to convince people to vote for their political party, for their ideas, for their motivation. One of the means how to maximize votes is relying on populism, a phenomenon that is deepening in many countries around the world. The society have been dealing with populism for many decades. Ivan Krastev (2006) in his paper describes Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as a populistic leader, similairly as Vladimir Putin in Russia, even though these are different types of regimes. As Daniel Smilov and Ivan Krastev (2008) suggest, rising of populism is not an exception in Eastern European countries.
As Andres Rodriguez-Pose (2018) argues in his article, in Central and Eastern Europe the economic dynamism has been heavily concentrated in capital cities, which combine size with economic and political power. What about regions with lower standards of living? In my thesis, I am going to study the relationship between the Slovak populist political parties’ success and their voters’ motivation in less developed regions of Slovakia. Grigorij Mesežnikov et al. (2008) explain that SMER- SD is a party of “soft”, non – authoritarian populism. Another populist party in Slovakia, Kotlebovci -Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko, is a party of “hard” populism, which threatens principles of liberal democracy.
I will analyze the data form the Parliamentary elections from 2016 and 2020 and compare results and changes in the outcomes. I am concerned about places “that do not matter”. According to McCann (2016) populists are usually more successful in territories that have been dealing with long-term declines and reflect an increasing urban/rural divide. I assume that regions with lower income, higher unemployment and lower GDP in comparison with other regions in Slovakia decided to vote for populist parties, especially for SMER – SD in elections in 2020, although the party was diminishing its popularity at the country-level. I would like to investigate whether voters in regions with high percentage of success of SMER in the Parliamentary election in 2016 decided to vote for SMER again in the Parliamentary election in 2020. Working on this specific topic is critical, considering that rise of populism can be dangerous as Ingelhart and Norris (2016) proved in their paper, voters of populistic parties prefer authoritarianism and distrust of governance. My motivation is to seek to what extent is populism widespread in Slovakia.

Contribution

There are many papers analyzing voting behaviour and relationships between the demography and results of the elections. However, my work will be focused on analyzing the most recent elections, which has not been analysed yet. What is more, I will be interested in the trend and changes in support for the political parties, since I will compare the data from two elections. In my opinion, it is important to analyze the data from several elections to observe dynamics in populism and enrich the existing literature on the topic.
There are significantly less papers related to political situation in the Eastern and Central Europe and Slovakia especially, therefore I have decided to do my bachelor thesis about political problems in Slovakia. I was inspired by Michal Kotrc and his bachelor thesis from 2017 about rising extremism in Slovakia. The explanation of behaviour of voters in poorer regions in Slovakia may reflect problems in „forgotten“ regions and help policy makers target their plans and ideas better.


Methodology

I am going to work with county-level data from the Parliamentary elections from years 2016 and 2020 coupled with basic economic and demographic indicators. I will rely on OLS regression analysis and potentially take advantage of spatial models. The dependent variable will be the percentage of votes for populist political parties (SMER alone or extremistic parties alone, or all populist parties together – in different specifications). As explanatory variables I will use variables identifying less developed regions such as demographic structure of county populations, GDP, local wages, unemployment rate or employment rate and its inactivity rate etc. I am also interested in the trend and changes in behaviour of voters between years 2016 and 2020. In this latter analysis I will work with a first-differenced model that will identify the relationship between changes in demographic and economic situation of counties and the trend in voting behaviour.


Outline

1. Introduction
2. Political situation in Slovakia
2.2. Electoral system
2.3. Political parties
3. Demography and urbanization
4. Populism
4.1. Populism in the world
4.2 Populism research
4.3. Populism in Slovakia
5. Data and methodology
6. Results
7. Conclusion