I feel very fortunate to have been able to spend the 2013/2014 academic year at the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester. My stay at the center allowed me to continue my research on party competition in Europe, and particularly in Central Europe.
Over the past months, I have made significant progress on several of my projects. For this newsletter, I would like to say a few words about my project on the linkages between vote shares that parties receive in national and regional elections in Poland and the Czech Republic.
National level government parties often receive smaller vote shares in regional elections than in preceding national legislative elections, a phenomenon that has been studied in several Western European countries. The results of the national and subsequent regional elections in Poland and the Czech Republic, two countries in which the connection between regional and national elections have not been studied until now, show different patterns. Whereas in Poland, parties that control the national level government tend to experience varying performances in the subsequent regional elections, Czech parties in regional elections seem to struggle to repeat their success from the preceding national level elections.
The literature on second order elections (midterm or regional elections) suggests two possible explanations for differences in the performance of government parties in national and regional elections. According to the balancing hypothesis, voters might attempt to balance power across levels, in which case they will vote in regional elections for parties which are in opposition at the national level in order to make sure that no single political party or coalition of parties maintains control of all the levels of government. According to the second hypothesis, voters use ‘barometer’ elections (regional, European, or by-elections) as an opportunity to express their opinions on the performance of the national level government. This means that their vote choices depend on their assessments of government performance, and that poor government performance would be offered as an explanation of small vote shares of government parties in ‘barometer elections.
In my research, I answer the question of whether voters in the Czech Republic and Poland use regional elections to balance power across levels of government, or whether government parties in these countries fail to do well in regional elections because of their disappointing performance in the national level of government. Several years ago, I conducted interviews with both Czech and Polish regional politicians. While the interviews with the Czech regional politicians suggested that Czech voters engage in balancing, Polish regional politicians believe that the performance of their parties in national government affects their electoral prospects in elections at the regional level.
I also explored the question of whether the difference between party vote shares in regional and national elections can be explained by measures of economic performance. In addition to widely used economic measures of government performance, I compiled survey data on government approval ratings at the time of regional level elections in Poland and the Czech Republic in order to test whether subjective measures of government performance affect the vote shares of government parties in regional elections. This allowed me to analyze whether subjective measures of government performance, rather than measures of economic performance, can explain differences between party vote shares in regional and national elections. I extended the analysis of the government parties’ performance in regional elections by comparing the performance of the parties of the prime minister and their coalition partners.
My research finds that Polish voters see regional elections as referenda on the performance of national level government and that they punish government parties whenever they do not approve of government’s actions. The government approval ratings were much more closely linked to performance of government parties in regional elections than were the economic conditions. In comparison, Czech voters engage in electoral balancing, so that no single political party or coalition of parties maintains control of all the levels of government. I also found that the parties of the prime ministers are held accountable for the economy more so than their junior coalition partners. As these aspects of party competition in Central Europe have previously not been explored, I believe that my research is an interesting contribution to the current literature. I am grateful to the Skalny Center for enabling me to continue my research on this subject.
Dr. Paulina Marek was the Skalny post-doctoral fellow for the 2013-2014 academic year. She received her Ph.D. form the University of Rochester.