Ethnic mobilization and the impact of proportional and majoritarian electoral rules on voting behaviour: the 1990 elections to two chambers of parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The aftermath of the first multi-party elections in 1990 in Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina was the violent dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation. Elections for different levels of government deployed different electoral rules and formulas. A newly collected data-set on the 1990 elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina is used to test if and how incentives integral to two electoral models – proportional and majoritarian – influenced voting behaviour and shaped electoral outcomes at the level of municipalities. The effects of electoral rules are estimated within the framework of ethnic mobilization, which is seen as an opposing force that downplays the effect of electoral incentives. Results indicate that under different levels of ethnic mobilization, incentives will exert some influence under majoritarian rule, but this will be conditioned by the ethnic structure of the population and will decline under the run-off system, leading instead to radicalizing effects.