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This paper analyzes factors facilitating the electoral success of the Slovak extreme-right party ĽSNS by examining contextual explanations of electoral support during in 2010–2016 national election...

Does the targeted spending of public resources provide electoral benefits for incumbents? Despite the attention of scholars to that question, the empirical results are mixed thus far. The present paper supplies insights into the electoral benefits of discretionary funding on local elections. I study the consequences of pork-barrel politics in 7355 competitive mayoral elections in Slovakia between 2006 and 2018, finding that more grants from the central government enhance the likelihood of mayors winning reelection. The same advantage applies to mayors whose municipalities receive grants in local election years. The effects of the number of grants obtained as well as the timing of their distribution are, however, moderated by municipal population. More specifically, a larger number of grants and resources obtained near the end of the mayoral term provides electoral benefits only to small town mayors but give no advantage to the mayors of larger urban areas.

In divided societies and new democracies, clientelism (in the form of pork barrel) and ethno-politics appear to go hand in hand. It is apparent that politicians are incentivized to compete for support within their own ethnic groups, but does an ethnic link between voters and decision-makers influence how voters perceive and evaluate pork barrel practices? To address this question, we conducted a survey experiment (n = 1200) in ethnically heterogeneous Slovakia. The aim was to examine whether pork barrel politics implemented by a Slovak decision-maker and a Hungarian decision-maker are evaluated differently by Slovaks and Hungarians. The findings suggest that when individuals and decision-makers share the same ethnicity, individuals tend to maintain an equally positive level of trust and willingness to vote for the responsible decision-maker, even when the decision-maker implements a policy decision that does not benefit them. Nonetheless, shared ethnicity does not prevent individuals from being critical of the implemented policy decision itself.

In recent years Slovakia witnessed a dynamic development with crucial consequences for its domestic politics. Vast civic mobilization, the emergence of new parties and decline of a long-term hegemon – all these features culminated in the 2020 general election. We first introduce the results and discuss them from a longitudinal perspective of Slovak politics. Most importantly, despite a considerably large portion of correctly casted ballots for parties which failed to pass the institutional thresholds, the outcomes do not suggest that the representativity or proportionality of the Slovak political system is about to suffer. Second, we focus on the rise and ideological appeals of populist political parties. Although similar in many ways, we show important differences in their ideological platforms.

The existing research suggests that socially rooted new political parties are more likely to be reelected to parliaments than parties emerging without links to preexisting social groups. It is argued that the two groups face different prospects of institutionalization: Rooted parties are more viable because their links to preexisting societal groups contribute to a higher sustainability of their electoral support and stronger institutionalization. We assess the link between the origin of parties, their level of institutionalization, and their electoral performance in the context of Slovakia, a new Eastern European democracy. We add to the existing state of knowledge in three ways. First, we empirically assess the link between the social origin of parties and their level of institutionalization. We also provide rich empirical material on the intraparty processes resulting in various levels of institutionalization. Subsequently, we assess whether rooted parties record better electoral performance than political entrepreneur parties. Second, we provide some illustration of the fact that agential factors, especially the decisions and activities related to leadership contestation, directly impact both party institutionalization and electoral performance. Third, we show that developing the links to a sociostructurally well-defined electorate may be a viable strategy to secure a parliamentary relevance for a prolonged period of time for some political entrepreneurs. Our findings suggest that parties with different levels of institutionalization are able to secure reelection, and that their electoral performance is not directly linked to their social origins.

Článok analyzuje distribúciu hasičskej techniky do obcí na Slovensku v období pred parlamentnými voľbami v roku 2016. Z výsledkov vyplýva, že obce vedené starostami z vládnej strany a tiež obce, kde vládna strana v predošlých voľbách zaznamenala lepší výsledok, boli v distribučnom procese zvýhodnené. Súčasne text ukazuje, že pridelená technika mala pozitívny dopad na podporu vládnej strany a ešte výraznejšie zvyšovala podporu vládneho predstaviteľa, ktorý distribučný mechanizmus osobne riadil. Daný efekt je najsilnejší v najmenších obciach a s rastúcou veľkosťou obcí sa oslabuje. Research shows that political parties use public resources as a vote-buying mechanism. This paper analyzes the distribution of fire engines to Slovak municipalities before 2016 election. We find that towns with mayors from the ruling party as well as municipalities where this party scored better in previous election were advantaged in the selection process. We also show that grants increase the electoral support of the ruling party and even more substantially they boost the share of votes of the government representative who personally directed the distribution. This positive effect is strongest in smaller municipalities and it weakens with rising town population.

Public resources are often allocated neither effectively nor equitably, and they serve as a tool for securing re-election. Despite compelling evidence for pork-barrel politics, little is known about voters’ perceptions of this practice. Moreover, limited findings from Western countries are also contradictory - voters perceive such a strategy both positively and negatively. To contribute with findings from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), we conducted two survey experiments - in Czechia and Slovakia - which randomized people’s exposure to fairness of the distribution and profit for the respondent’s country. Our results suggest that once voters realize their profit from pork-barrel politics, they are less critical of unfair distributions of resources and the responsible decision-maker.

This book assesses the quality of Czech democracy relative to both its postcommunist peers and older EU members. Motivated by the authoritarian tendencies and illiberal outcomes in the postcommunist region, it explores the extent to which the Czech Republic is genuinely an outlier within the region and why. The book elaborates on an original conception of democratic quality that emphasizes three aspects of governance: citizen rule, political equality, and good citizenship. The authors show that while the Czech Republic falls short of Western democracies on these standards, it does perform better than most of its peers. The book includes original data on campaign promises, dual mandates, legislative productivity, the wealth of MPs, the opinions of millionaires, women’s representation, and the stability of public preferences along with comparative analyses of a host of other indicators. The book will appeal to those interested in the politics of Eastern Europe and new democracies, those working in the rapidly growing fields of democratic quality and populism, and NGOs concerned with the development of new democracies around the world.

The paper studies how Freedom of Information (FOI) laws work and assist citizens in their demand for information at the local level. To examine this, we ran a field experiment and sent emails to all 2,928 municipalities in Slovakia and asked them to provide us data from local election, inaccessible in any other way. Results show that mentioning FOI law in the request increased the response rate, while a moral appeal had no effect at all. The found effect is, however, moderated by population size. While in less populated municipalities the FOI requests led to substantially higher responsiveness of public bodies, the form of the request becomes less relevant with increasing population. Higher compliance was also found for municipalities led by independents. On the other hand, areas with a predominance of an ethnic minority had lesser responsiveness, possibly due to a language barrier.

The politically motivated distribution of public funding, or porkbarrel politics, occurs for various reasons, one of which is the wish to reward political allies over political rivals. Despite the widespread nature of this practice, research in Central Europe has not yet examined this issue at every level of publication administration. The literature that does exist on this subject has mainly focused on national grant programmes, while less attention has been paid to distribution channels at lower-level administrative units. This article focuses on the distribution of subsidies in the municipalities in the Central Bohemia Region between 2014 and 2016. It uses a binary logistic regression to analyse the factors that lead to an application for a subsidy being supported. A negative binomial regression revealed what factors influence the level of subsidy granted. The results of the analysis show that party ties have a strong effect on the odds of a municipality obtaining a subsidy. This factor, however, has less of an effect on how large a subsidy the municipality obtains, and moreover only does so when the distribution of funding is taking place before an election.

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 2016 parliamentary elections in Slovakia brought important changes to the composition of parliament and resulted in an innovative four-party government. The leftist Smer-SD came on top but suffered substantial losses compared to 2012. It managed to form a government with three other parties, one of them representing the traditional Slovak nationalists while another being the leading representative of Slovakia's largest ethnic minority. The new coalition government downplays its internal divisions and claims it can provide stability in difficult international political situations, innovative policies in fighting corruption, and rejection of political extremism and radicalism. The opposition is fragmented and divided: it is composed of the two new radical right parties and two more moderate conservative-liberal groupings.

Given the fact that only two relevant parties in Slovakia since 1993 have managed to replace their leaders and maintain their relevance, the role of personality traits in the rise and success of party leaders in Slovakia is an especially important topic. Therefore this chapter focuses on two party leaders – Robert Fico and Mikuláš Dzurinda – who are closely tied to more than two decades of political development in Slovakia during 1998-2019. They both managed to utilize their high level of personal popularity to reach the party leadership and via electoral success achieve intra-party cohesion and increase the membership in their parties. However, while Fico relied on his public popularity for another decade after becoming Prime Minister for the first time, Dzurinda gave up on building the popular public image and focused on managing his heterogeneous coalitions. Fico’s SMER thus remained an internally homogeneous party (to an outside observer) for as long as Fico was the most popular politician in Slovakia, while Dzurinda’s SDKÚ was completely marginalized because Dzurinda was not willing to step down as chairman, despite his decreasing public support and increasing criticism from inside the party.

Článok analyzuje efekt poradia kandidátov v regionálnych voľbách na Slovensku. V rámci výskumu bol uskutočnený experiment s randomizovaným a rotovaným poradím kandidátov na listine. Z výsledkov vyplýva, že pozície bližšie k začiatku listiny sú príjemcami väčšieho podielu hlasov voličov. Tento efekt je významnejší v prípade kandidátov, ktorí nezastávajú žiadnu verejnú funkciu. S ohľadom na to, že v krajských voľbách na Slovensku, sú kandidáti na listine zoradení abecedne, naša štúdia preukazuje, že kandidáti s menami zo začiatku abecedy získavajú vo voľbách neodôvodnenú výhodu oproti svojim konkurentom. Vo všeobecnosti tak naše zistenia problematizujú férovosť analyzovaných volieb. This paper examines list order of candidates in regional elections in Slovakia. We conducted an experiment with a randomized and rotated ballot ordering. Our results show that earlier positions on the list receive significantly higher portions of votes. This effect is even more substantial for candidates without public office although it works also for public office holders. Given the alphabet ranking used in regional elections in Slovakia, our study shows that candidates with surnames starting with letters from beginning of alphabet are given unfounded advantage over their rivals. In general, our findings problematize the fairness of the analyzed elections.

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.

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.

Even though partisan cues are widely recognized as a primary force shaping voter behaviour in a referendum, their effect on a decision whether to attend or abstain from voting has not yet been carefully studied. Our analysis of the pre-referendum survey data gathered before the 2015 citizen-initiated referendum in Slovakia leads to two important conclusions: First, parties’ recommendations whether to attend or abstain from voting influence voters’ behaviour in a similar fashion as their suggestions for which side to vote for. Moreover, in certain institutional settings, the partisan cues related to mobilization have an even stronger impact on voters than endorsements for who or what to vote for. Second, the provided party recommendations must be unambiguous and clear. Lower clarity cues are reflected in voters’ behaviour to a lesser extent.

An analysis of national and regional elections reveals that elections are highly nationalized in Slovakia. However, the nationalization of regional elections does not translate into second-order election effects. Due to radically different electoral systems used for regional and national elections, political parties are induced to form alliances in regional but not in national elections and electoral alliances crossing the government-opposition divide are abundant in regional elections. Another notable and important regional election dynamic is the growing success of independent candidates. This trend can be interpreted as ‘departyisation’ of regional politics rather than regionalization. Regional elections may be conceived as ‘barometer elections’ whereby voters do not use their vote to punish parties in national government. Rather, the regional vote indicates the electoral prospects of parties in the upcoming national election.

The article deals with the topic of parliamentary elections in Slovakia in 2012. The elections were held early after the breakup of the previous Slovak government. For the first time since 1993 a single party, Smer – Social Democracy, was able to gain a majority in parliament and to create a government without the need to find any coalition partners. On the other hand the centre-right parties got only disappointing results and went to opposition. As in the past, the party system of Slovakia still seems slightly unstable as a new party with a strong protest appeal entered the competition and gained mandates.

The 2014 presidential elections in Slovakia, held on March 15 and 29, produced an unexpected result: millionaire-turned-philanthropist Andrej Kiska convincingly defeated the incumbent Prime Minister Robert Fico in a runoff election and became the fourth president since Slovakia's independence in 1993. Kiska, who had not held any elected office before, ran as an independent candidate with no ties to political parties.

With the restore of party plurality in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, the far right was able to emerge and operate in this region. Due to a lack of immigrants in these countries, the far right parties found domestic ethnic minorities a proper scapegoat to win votes. This article analyzes the support of the main extreme right party in Slovakia, the LSNS in general election in 2012. Our study of the party’s electoral results focuses on the local level and brings substantial findings of the case. Our findings indicate that the areas with a moderate share of Roma among the population are the breeding grounds for the support of the party. We also discovered that LSNS scored better in areas with the Roma population concentrated in settlements outside of municipalities. In accordance with previous theory, the party’s results also were better in localities with higher unemployment and lower overall levels of education.

The paper examines the change Smer underwent after it gets to power. It focuses on the three aspects of the change: ideology, organizational structure and voters and put it into a context of theory of populism.