Search

Stvarnost ponekad preduhitri naučno istraživanje i akademsku raspravu. Iako tema ove monografije nadilazi tek jedan u moru iz bornih ciklusa, događaji sa izbora održanih u Srbiji 17. decembra 2023. godine značajno su uticali na povratak narativa o potrebi izborne reforme u domaću javnost. To svakako doprinosi aktuelnosti ove knjige. Izborni uslovi kao jedno od značajnih političkih pitanja u Srbiji prisutni su u javnom diskursu već nekoliko godina – najmanje od pre izbora 2020. godine i najavljenog, a zatim i realizovanog, bojkota većine opozicionih partija; dok se potreba promene ili makar ozbiljne reforme izbornog si stema u akademskim krugovima razmatra već dve decenije. Uprkos tome, izborni sistem koji je na snazi u Srbiji od oktobra 2000. godine pokazao se izuzetno otpornim. Njegove posledice često su ekstremne, kako sa stano višta izbornih aktera, tako i sa stanovišta šireg institucionalnog i društve nog okvira, što ćemo razmatrati u nizu poglavlja u nastavku. Proporcionalni izborni sistem sa zatvorenim listama i celom zemljom kao jednom izbornom jedinicom redak je u komparativnoj praksi i primenjuje ga, uz manje ili veće varijacije, tek nekoliko zemalja širom sveta, ali u Srbiji je prošle godine dočekao svoj jubilej, budući da je primenjen u ravno deset uzastopnih parlamentarnih izbornih ciklusa.

Economic crises create specific social conditions that affect voter preferences and behaviors. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 spilled over to Serbia a year later, causing a major shock to the fragile Serbian economy, already burdened by wars and international isolation of the 1990s, along with inequalities and uncertainties caused by the late transition. Subsequent elections brought the collapse of the post-2000 political consensus, with many liberal and social democratic parties never recovering and moreover the party system being dominated by the populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) from there on. Main hypothesis of this manuscript stipulates that the 2008 crisis cemented the pool of transitional losers composed of low skilled workers, unemployed, low educated, rural, and elderly populations, providing continuous support for the SNS ever since. Authors will examine whether their socioeconomic status still replicates to the SNS votes, even though the party has been in power for almost 12 years. This would mean that the old economic traumas are still relevant for directing the voter preferences. Authors will employ the findings from the nationwide public opinion surveys

In comparison with the expanding body of literature on representation, the number of studies examining geographical aspects of it remains relatively limited. This relates primarily to comparative analyses, but also to the array of methodological tools used to measure localness. Our study seeks to address this gap by introducing a novel measurement based on Gallagher’s index of disproportionality. Drawing on contemporary data from 27 European countries, we envisioned an operationalisation of geographical representation which prevents the expected lack of representation of small municipalities to affect the index values, instead focusing on relative population sizes in correlation with the relative number of elected MPs. We introduce the data, and then proceed to establish which country-level determinants influence the Index of territorial disproportionality. The findings indicate that district magnitude and number, parliament size, and the difference between established and new democracies have a high impact on the proportionality of local representation. On the other hand, the opening of lists for more voters’ influence within the PR list system, implemented mainly through preferential voting, appears to have no impact, indicating that parties tend to nominate (and voters tend to elect) local candidates even when institutional incentives of the electoral system are low.

The authors are testing the patterns of geographical representation in single nationwide district closed-list PR systems, in the framework of an earlier study made by Latner and McGann (2005), who suggested that MPs mostly reside in central metropolitan areas, as well as in distant regions, to the detriment of descriptive representation of areas adjacent to the capital. In this way, spatial distance serves as an incentive for parties to nominate lists comprised mostly of candidates from metropolitan urban centres who can easily reach the mid-distance municipalities for campaigning and constituency service, but also of those candidates residing in peripheral regions in which there is some sort of political or ethno-cultural saliency, prompting the voters to prefer their local candidates over capital city politicians. Authors are offering a novel approach of measuring and comparing spatial distance to the data on representation of local administrative units and regional subdivisions of four countries (Montenegro, Netherlands, Serbia and Slovakia). While the findings indeed indicate overrepresentation of capital cities and underrepresentation of neighbouring areas, the representation of peripheral areas is not significantly pronounced and seemingly depends more on a contextual case-to-case basis than on a general pattern related to spatial distance producing political or ethno-cultural saliency.

This article examines the presence and activities of Green parties in governments of Central and Eastern Europe. In recent years, many ecologist parties and movements gained considerable electoral and general political success, especially in developed democracies of Western Europe. However, their ideological counterparts in new democracies tend to remain out of power and often out of parliament, albeit with a few notable exceptions. In this study, success of the Greens in CEE is operationalised through their impact on public spending and direct investments allocated to environmental protection. The hypothesis regarding the Greens' impact on spending is tested within the regression models, along with other potential predictors of government expenditure. The research results demonstrate a low significance of Greens in government participation and also their impact on budgetary allocation, contributing to the debate about the Green politics' position in the context of social and political cleavages in post-socialist societies.

The provincial elections in the Serbian region of Vojvodina are preconditioned to demonstrate the typical effects of second-order competition. Its main features include the weak competences of regional institutions in a specific shared-rule arrangement, which are limited to only one province, and a non-politicized regional identity. The trend of simultaneous voting, along with a recently aligned electoral system and a centralized political arena, has created a nationalized regional competition, emulating national political dynamics. This claim is substantiated through an analysis of candidates, campaigns, and results, as well as voters’ behaviour, the last being operationalized through the dissimilarity index, both on the provincial level and on the level of polling-stations.

Izložba o jevrejskom nasleđu Apatina i kompozitoru Palu Abrahamu otvorena je 23. novembra 2022. u Jevrejskom kulturnom centru u Beogradu povodom 130-te godišnjice od rođenja Abrahama Pala, jednog od najpoznatijih jevrejskih umetnika sa naših prostora., The exhibition about the Jewish heritage of Apatin and the composer Pal Abraham was opened on November 23, 2022, at the Jewish Cultural Center in Belgrade on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Pal, one of the most famous Jewish artists from our territory.

This research paper is produced in the course of the project funded by the European Fund for the Balkans, analyzing outcomes of different electoral rules across the Western Balkans. Multinational research team examined the electoral mechanisms with regard to the specific value-oriented methodology , based on principles of democracy and accountability. Although all analyzed societies use proportional representation model, they substantially differ in the number of constituencies, openness of the electoral lists, and also other specific rules related to the seat allocation and affirmative action for minority groups, which altogether produces different effects for political actors and citizens alike. The paper will also include a list of possible recommendations for improvements, intended for policy makers, researchers and the general public.

This article is examining the effects of party dynamics on changeability of party leaders, arguing that significant differences can be expected with regard to ideology, parliamentary strength, and involvement in government. Authors claim that leaders are more prone to change, when their parties lose elections or depart from the government. Moreover, they explore variations in leadership longevity in relation to degree of democratic consolidation, based on the analysis of experience from the Western Balkans and Visegrad Group countries. Findings confirm the hypotheses regarding electoral failure and departure from government, as well as regional differences between transitional and more consolidated democracies.

The article is revisiting a never-concluded debate about the partisan effect on public spending. It explores the impact of the ruling parties' ideological orientation , operationalised in a single-dimensional left-right scale, on budget expenditures in Central and Eastern Europe. The research is conducted within an expanded time series covering the complete period since the fall of one-party regimes in sixteen former socialist countries, where the issue has remained under-studied, especially in comparison with a number of similar studies focusing mostly on developed Western democracies. The findings moderately support the main hypothesis demonstrating that, although an ideology matters, there are also other more significant predictors of the spending among political, economic or other contextual variables related to a specific transitional framework of the countries in question. The same conclusion applies to the total consumption, as well as to the examined budget segments of social transfers and education, while the environmental spending seems to be completely unrelated to the partisan variable.

Data set on ideology of ruling political parties and coalitions in former socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Data is retrieved from an expert survey which included a multinational panel of 273 experts on party systems of 16 countries. The survey was conducted online in June and July 2017 by Dejan Bursać, researcher at the Belgrade-based Institute for Political Studies, as a part of his doctoral research at the University of Belgrade. The respondents were asked to locate each party on a general left-right scale, considering all aspects of party policy and all relevant information about a party position. Ideology of each party is presented numerically in the one-dimensional policy space, ranging from 0 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right), for every parliamentary term/government since the first multi-party elections after the fall of socialism (and in some cases, after achieving national independence) in all 16 countries of the sample. Average ideology of every government is presented as a weighted mean of member parties, in relation to their parliamentary strength. This document is accompanied by a separate excel database. Please cite accordingly: Bursac, Dejan (2018). Expert survey on party ideology in former socialist countries, 1990-2017. Retrieved from: http://www.ips.ac.rs/researchers/dejan-bursac

Data set on ideology of ruling political parties and coalitions in former socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Data is retrieved from an expert survey which included a multinational panel of 273 experts on party systems of 16 countries. The survey was conducted online in June and July 2017 by Dejan Bursać, researcher at the Belgrade-based Institute for Political Studies, as a part of his doctoral research at the University of Belgrade. The respondents were asked to locate each party on a general left-right scale, considering all aspects of party policy and all relevant information about a party position. Ideology of each party is presented numerically in the one-dimensional policy space, ranging from 0 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right), for every parliamentary term/government since the first multi-party elections after the fall of socialism (and in some cases, after achieving national independence) in all 16 countries of the sample. Average ideology of every government is presented as a weighted mean of member parties, in relation to their parliamentary strength. Please cite accordingly: Bursac, Dejan (2018). Expert survey on party ideology in former socialist countries, 1990-2017. Retrieved from: http://www.ips.ac.rs/researchers/dejan-bursac

Political scientists often consider transitional party systems are less institutionalized than those in more developed democracies. In this context, the paper will examine the impact of different factors on the level of party system institutionalization in Serbia, over the course of three recent electoral cycles. For this purpose, authors will create Index of institutionalization, a tool for measuring the changes of relevant factors in three individual time points (2012, 2014, and 2016). Index will include: electoral volatility (vote transfer between the cycles); strength of party identification; strength of ideological and organizational linkages between voters and parties (as oppose to more personal links between voters and leaders); and level of trust in political parties. Moreover, not just due to the relatively large number of political parties in electoral competition, but also because of widespread tendency of excessive coalition making in Serbia, the index will also include factors determining the fragmentation of party system. The latter will be determined on the basis of measuring Laakso-Taagepera Index of effective political parties in legislature, calculated for 2012, 2014, and 2016. Depending on trends of the index, authors will draw conclusions on the process of party system institutionalization-in connection not just to the frequent elections, but also to the overall stability of Serbian political system.

The paper is focusing on the patterns of coalition making in Serbian parliamentary elections, through the examination of motives for formation of pre-electoral alliances since the democratic changes in the year 2000. In the period of democratic consolidation, Serbian party system is still burdened with the long lasting practice of excessive coalition making: for example, in 2014 election, 12 out of 19 lists were coalitions; and in 2016 election, 9 out of 20. The question about the nature of this practice is twofold: are these coalitions formed because of ideological similarities; or is the motivation for association more pragmatically founded in political calculation to overcome the electoral threshold or gain additional parliamentary seats, and thereby released of ideological constraints? In order to determine the logic behind excessive coalition making, the impact of ideological factor will be investigated. This objective requires the use of classification of political parties, based on the experts’ opinions survey carried out by the author in 2014, and further complemented in 2017. In the survey, 18 relevant experts from the field of political science evaluated Serbian political parties’ ideologies on a single dimensional axis (extreme left to extreme right). The classification will serve as a basis for examination of ideological congruence of coalitions and further conclusions on the nature of coalition making. Furthermore, based on the same evidence, the author will make a time-section analysis of ideological stability of Serbian party system since 2000, in order to identify the patterns of ideological landscape through the years, mapping the significant changes in relation to the external factors of impact: such as EU accession, quality of democracy, cycles of economic crises and the issue of Kosovo - all the question that presumably could have the prevailing impact on the political and party dynamics in Serbia.

Frequent changes of electoral rules have been the hallmark of Serbian democracy since the reintroduction of multiparty system in 1990. Serbia experimented with different electoral systems: from majority system, to different variations of proportional representation, and finally – a single constituency proportional system with 5% threshold. During these changes, the level of representation of ethnic minorities in the National Assembly varied, reaching its historical low in the 2003 elections. Having in mind the share of minorities in total population of Serbia (close to 15%), the situation called for a legislative action in creating the positive discrimination mechanism for enhancing minority representation. The 2004 amendments to the electoral law repealed the 5% barrier for minority parties, introducing the so-called „natural threshold“. Although this solution subsequently improved the minority representation, several problems persisted. The paper will aim to examine the effects of 2004 changes on minority representation. Authors will review the alternative mechanisms found in similar countries, and will also compare the outcomes of different electoral systems applied in Serbia in the post-1990 period, in order to assess the impact of electoral rules not just on minority representation in Serbian parliament, but also on the quality of Serbian democracy as a whole.

Trichomonas vaginalis is a parasitic protist of the Excavata group. It contains an anaerobic form of mitochondria called hydrogenosomes, which produce hydrogen and ATP; the majority of mitochondrial pathways and the organellar genome were lost during the mitochondrion-to-hydrogenosome transition. Consequently, all hydrogenosomal proteins are encoded in the nucleus and imported into the organelles. However, little is known about the membrane machineries required for biogenesis of the organelle and metabolite exchange. Using a combination of mass spectrometry, immunofluorescence microscopy, in vitro import assays and reverse genetics, we characterized the membrane proteins of the hydrogenosome. We identified components of the outer membrane (TOM) and inner membrane (TIM) protein translocases include multiple paralogs of the core Tom40-type porins and Tim17/22/23 channel proteins, respectively, and uniquely modified small Tim chaperones. The inner membrane proteins TvTim17/22/23-1 and Pam18 were shown to possess conserved information for targeting to mitochondrial inner membranes, but too divergent in sequence to support the growth of yeast strains lacking Tim17, Tim22, Tim23 or Pam18. Full complementation was seen only when the J-domain of hydrogenosomal Pam18 was fused with N-terminal region and transmembrane segment of the yeast homolog. Candidates for metabolite exchange across the outer membrane were identified including multiple isoforms of the β-barrel proteins, Hmp35 and Hmp36; inner membrane MCF-type metabolite carriers were limited to five homologs of the ATP/ADP carrier, Hmp31. Lastly, hydrogenosomes possess a pathway for the assembly of C-tail-anchored proteins into their outer membrane with several new tail-anchored proteins being identified. These results show that hydrogenosomes and mitochondria share common core membrane components required for protein import and metabolite exchange; however, they also reveal remarkable differences that reflect the