Elections In Croatia Research Articles

Constructive patriotism predicts voting intentions: Evidence from state parliamentary, EU parliamentary, and presidential elections across different EU countries

In the present research, we investigated the link between different forms of national identification (i.e., constructive patriotism, glorification, and conventional patriotism) and intentions to vote in state parliamentary elections in Poland and Spain (Study 1, N = 1,270), presidential elections in Croatia (Study 2, N = 640), and elections for the EU Parliament in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Croatia (Study 3, N = 1,238). In Study 3, we additionally measured European identity. Moreover, we asked about actual voting behavior in Poland (Studies 1 and 3) and Croatia (Studies 2 and 3). The results consistently show that constructive patriotism is linked with greater intentions to vote in all types of elections and across all countries, and with a greater likelihood of voting in state parliamentary elections. In contrast, conventional patriotism had no link with intentions to vote or with actual voting behaviour in any type of election in any of the countries studied. Glorification was linked to lower intentions to vote only in state parliamentary elections. European identity was linked with greater intentions to vote in EU elections. Overall, our results suggest that constructive patriotism is a form of national identification that has particular electoral relevance.

Pandemic Persona and Digital Culture: The Role of Celebrity Politicians on Social Networks

The paper discusses a specific intersection of the politics, celebrity, and digital culture. In the last few decades, more and more people from the entertainment realm entered the world of institutional politics trying to leverage their popularity. Thanks to the media, they manage to transfer their celebrity capital, namely accumulated media visibility and recognisability (Driesens 2013) into the political sphere. In the beginning, they improve their visibility with the help of mass media that place their personas and private lives in the focus of public attention. However, with the digitalization of the media, the popular-political landscape has changed (Marshall 2020), so today they have dispositional new bases for practising personalized politics, i.e. imposing their personality instead of political party programmes. In this paper, attention is directed to former American president Donald Trump, president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Miroslav Škoro, who was a candidate in the presidential, parliamentary, and local elections in Croatia. Although there were obvious differences between these three celebrities mentioned before entering the political arena, their later use of social networks vividly shows how they built their political/pandemic persona in the evolving mediatization of politics.

Jakša Kušan’s Forgotten Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Croatia

Croatian journalist and writer Jakša Kušan (1931–2019) was one of the most prominent Croatian émigré dissidents. By editing and publishing the non-partisan magazine Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia), he tried to inform the global public about the suppression of human rights and civil liberties in socialist Yugoslavia, even under constant threat of being attacked by the Yugoslav secret police. After the fall of communism, he returned to Croatia and continued his work in the media and the civil sector for a brief time. In this article, I offer an overview of the most relevant of Kušan’s oppositional activities during the period of communist rule in Croatia and Yugoslavia and consider the roles and impact of his activities. I also venture some explanation as to why his life and work have mostly been forgotten in today’s Croatia. One possible answer to this question could be his complex relationships with the Croatian dissidents who won the first multiparty elections in Croatia in 1990. My discussion is based on the findings of the COURAGE project (Cultural Opposition – Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries), oral history sources, and archival documents of the Yugoslav secret police.

The State Awaking Or Stealing?

The 2020 parliamentary elections in Croatia were held in an atmosphere marked by fear and anxiety because of negative consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, and riddled with other unresolved socio-economic and political issues. Therefore, choosing appropriate political slogans that would reflect positive messages of hope, encouragement, and safety to the Croatian people seemed of utmost importance. This paper identifies and discusses political discourse strategies behind the creation of selected billboard slogans used in the pre-election period by different political parties and platforms. Taking into account the results of the elections, the research focuses on the negative reactions to the content of the slogans in the Croatian public space. For this purpose, a corpus of readers’ online comments was built and subjected to a computer sentiment analysis. The results show that the majority of citizens in the research sample created negative mental images of political agents and the policies they promote. Further investigation of the reasons for the negative perception and evaluation revealed that the politico-historical and situational contexts play a significant role in shaping the public opinion, specifically in times of crises and threats to public health and wellbeing.

Elections During the Pandemic: Lessons Learned from the 2020 Early General Elections in Croatia

Elections During the Pandemic: Lessons Learned from the 2020 Early General Elections in Croatia

Republika Chorwacji: wyrok Trybunału Konstytucyjnego z 3 lipca 2020 r. dotyczący prawa do głosowania osób znajdujących się w izolacji w związku z zakażeniem lub podejrzeniem zakażenia koronawirusem SARS-CoV-2, sygn. U-VII-2980/2020

The parliamentary elections in Croatia were ordered for 5 July 2020. However, as the election date approached, the number of coronavirus infections increased, prompting the authority responsible for overseeing the conduct of the elections, i.e., the State Election Commission of the Republic of Croatia, to issue appropriate voting guidelines. People in self-isolation had the opportunity to vote only if the registration activities were completed by 2 July 2020, as this guaranteed a visit from a member of the election commission to whom they could pass the vote, but completely excluded infected persons from the vote. On 1 July 2020, one of the Croatian non-governmental organizations, the GONG, submitted a request to the Constitutional Court (supported by the signatures of several dozen citizens) to examine the legality of the elections, arguing that the state authorities are obliged to give each voter the possibility to vote in the elections. The Constitutional Court stated that the state authorities are obliged to create the legal possibility of exercising the right to vote guaranteed by the constitution for all citizens who express such wish, including those who have been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID 19) or any other infectious disease, and who, for this reason, remain in isolation.

Presidential Elections in Croatia and Parliamentary Elections in Kosovo

Presidential Elections in Croatia and Parliamentary Elections in Kosovo

An analysis of Croatian political parties’ pre-election manifestos and healthcare policies

Abstract Background Before the regular 2015 Parliamentary elections in Croatia, we identified and analysed topics and comprehensiveness of health policies (HPs) included in political parties’ pre-election manifestos. After the loss of government confidence, we did a follow up before the 2016 preliminary elections. Here, we present a comparison of the 2015 and 2016 results. Methods We used the Walt-Gilson policy model for the content analysis of pre-election HPs. Five evaluators independently reviewed manifestos for HPs through four dimensions: content, actors, processes and context. HPs proposed by at least two parties were included in the final analysis and by referring to any of four dimensions for specific HP, parties scored one point (maximum of four points per HP). Results Seven out of the eight parties addressed healthcare topics in their manifestos, six discussed healthcare workforce and financing, while five discussed hospital systems, primary care, medical equipment and (re)organization of the healthcare. Parties earned 41% of all points for describing content, 28% for processes, 17% for actors and 14% for context of proposed HPs. Compared to the 2015 results, most comprehensively approached HPs changed to more focus on workforce and medical equipment. Topics of access to healthcare and people with disability earned significantly less points than in 2015. Conclusions Parties’ manifestos in both 2015 and 2016 focused on topics mostly represented in the public discourse on healthcare and daily media coverage. Financing the 2015 elections, as a consequence of a large financial restructuring effort of the hospital system at the time. Health workforce topped the 2016 elections, due to large emigration of health care professionals after legislative changes and Croatia’s accession to the EU. Parties mostly focus on the content while they less frequently address the role of processes, actors, and the context needed for successful implementation of the recommended HPs.

Izborne kampanje 2015. i 2016. godine: analiza obilježja naslova i toniranje vijesti na dnevnoinformativnim portalima

Political elections are an important part of political journalism. The ways of reporting news, especially the messages conveyed through news headlines can affect the electoral decisions of citizens. This paper shows the main features of news headlines published in six news portals during the campaign for the parliamentary elections in Croatia in 2015 and 2016. Content analysis of the 777 headlines shows an even distribution of news during the campaigns, with a slightly higher frequency of news released in 2016 as well as on daily news portals that are exclusively electronic. The main actors in the headlines are parties HDZ, SDP and MOST, and politicians Andrej Plenkovic, Zoran Milanovic, Božo Petrov and Milan Bandic. There is also domination of the terms elections, liquidation and cooperation. The analysis of 245 articles shows a moderate positive correlation between the (negative) reporting tone in the headlines and news texts.

Politički vođe u dnevnim novinama: analiza hrvatskih parlamentarnih izbora 2016.

This paper analyses the daily newspaper reporting on key political leaders of the 2016 parliamentary elections, the first early parliamentary elections in Croatia directly caused by a breakup of the ruling coalition. The introduction to these surprise and short-notice elections, at which preferential voting was practiced for only the second time, was a short election campaign and a change in leadership of the biggest party (HDZ), which triggered the extensive use of personalisation in campaigns run by the biggest parties and their coalitions. This study examines how five leaders of the most prominent political parties were presented in the six most relevant Croatian daily newspapers during the official election campaign. The findings reveal that the leaders of the two biggest parties dominated media coverage, but also that the only new leader, HDZ's Andrej Plenkovic, had a very favourable treatment in all of the analysed daily newspapers. Results also showed political programmes and private lives of the leaders to be marginal topics within the analysed leaders' media coverage.

Nationalisation of regional elections in Central and Eastern Europe

Territory is a salient issue in post-communist countries in Europe, yet subnational elections have received surprisingly little attention. This article analyses congruence between national and regional elections in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic held between 1993 and 2010. The findings suggest that election incongruence can be partly explained by approaches which work well in the West European context – territorial cleavages, regional authority and the second-order election model – but in order to fully grasp regional election outcomes in post-communist countries one also needs to take into account electoral alliance strategies and party supply change.

European Elections in Croatia

This text discusses the results of European elections in Croatia. It reaches the conclusion that voters, unhappy with the economic situation, punished the ruling social democratic coalition which suffered a heavy defeat. On the other hand, election results prove the recovery of HDZ, the opposition, centre-right party. It is also obvious that most Croatian citizens do not believe that European elections are important enough to warrant voting. Euroscepticism in Croatia is on the rise because citizens see no obvious benefits from joining the European Union. On the contrary, it is becoming increasingly clear that, in its first year as a member, Croatia will pay more funds into EU budget than it will receive from it. It is evident that direct elections of European Parliament members did not succeed in strengthening EU's legitimacy in the eyes of Croatian voters, and that European elections are actually of secondary importance. Key words: European elections, Croatia, European Union, Euroscepticism

The parliamentary elections in Croatia, December 2011

The article investigates the parliamentary elections in Croatia in 2011 and causes of electoral success of „Kukuriku“ coalition. The author concludes that Zoran Milanovic’s style was much more attractive to the independent and swing voters than was the rigid style of Jadranka Kosor. In addition, HDZ refused to take responsibility for the negative features of their time in office, including corruption and economic decline, and this lack of accountability also failed to attract the voters.

The parliamentary election in Croatia, November 2007

The article investigates the parliamentary elections in Croatia in 2007 and causes of electoral success of HDZ. The article concludes that HDZ won because voters perceived HDZ as relatively successful during its previous term in office, which is confirmed by some economic indicators. To illustrate, the average annual rate of growth during the 2004–2006 period was 4.5%, and in 2007 it was forecasted to be above 5%. Moreover, unemployment fell from 14.3% in 2003 to 11.0% in 2007. In addition, HDZ was the most successful party during the post-election negotiations.

From Civil Society to Civil Servants: Women's Organizations and Critical Elections in Croatia

This work examines the role of women's organizations in the 2000 elections in Croatia in an effort to understand when and how they play a significant role in promoting democracy and, in particular, the election of female candidates. Croatia offers a crucial case for the study of gender and democratization because it challenges two significant generalizations from the comparative literature on postcommunist transitions: first, that women's organizations have been more likely to succeed in postcommunist countries where democracy has proceeded the furthest and, in particular, where ethno-nationalist conflict and ideologies are least salient; and, second, that widespread opposition to gender quotas in postcommunist countries prevented their use as a tool for promoting women's equality. What conditions were present that facilitated the effectiveness of women's organizations in Croatia in promoting their goal of electing more women? Four factors are key to explaining their success: the organizational strength and unity of women's organizations; the extent of involvement by international organizations and donors; the perceived central role of women's organizations in democratization; and, finally, the character of their alliances with political parties.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Thirteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Scripps College, June 2–5, 2005. I would like to thank Lisa Baldez, Karen Beckwith, Charlie Kenney, Carol Lilly, Andrew Halterman, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.

The Radicalisation and Ethnicization of Elections: The 1990 Local Elections and the Ethnic Conflict in Croatia

The results of the 1990 local elections in Croatia have been largely neglected in the present literature on ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This article argues that this lack of attention is regrettable since their results reveal some important facts which one cannot see clearly from election results at the national level. In order to do so, it first presents a theoretical overview of the relationship between elections and ethnic conflict, identifying and defining two distinct dynamics: radicalization and ethnicization. It then analyses the election results both at the national and local level in Croatia in 1990. The results of the local elections show that both radicalization and ethnicization occurred in Croatia in 1990, although to different scale, and that they had considerable effects on inter-ethnic relations in Croatia after the elections.

1995 parliamentary elections in Croatia

1995 parliamentary elections in Croatia