Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999

Abstract

Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999, Joshua A. Tucker, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. xxii, 417.Recognizing and predicting the patterns of voting behaviour is a formidable task even in the case of mature and stable democracies. Needless to say, the identification of such trends in the wake of a fundamental political and economic restructuring, when the basic rules of the game are still in flux, can be frustratingly elusive. In this ambitious and methodologically sophisticated study, Joshua Tucker takes on the challenge and suggests a fresh approach for cutting through the fog of post-communist institutional ambiguity. The book reports on several prominent regularities in the voting outcomes that span five countries, several distinct institutional designs, twenty national elections and ten years of transition. In contrast to the studies that rely on micro-level survey data or small-n cross-country comparisons, Tucker aggregates and analyzes the election results at the intermediate, regional level. Cross-regional comparison provides enough resolution for detecting systematic voting patterns shaped by local economic conditions. Explaining the observed connection between regional economy and regional vote is the central theme of Tucker's study.