Voting after war: Legacy of conflict and the economy as determinants of electoral support in Croatia

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.02.012In spite of a rapidly expanding literature on democratization, elections, and conflict, we lack systematic understanding of what determines electoral results in post-conflict societies. This article offers a novel initiative in revealing electoral patterns in states recuperating from painful experiences of war by analyzing data from more than 500 Croatian municipalities during five post-war electoral cycles. While the findings suggest voters do respond to parties' economic policies, the underlying pattern of electoral support demonstrates that competition is heavily constrained by the legacy of conflict, with the communities more exposed to the violence being more likely to vote for the principal party of the center-right which led the country into independence and throughout the war. This tendency exhibits a remarkable level of stability over time, which suggests conflict dynamics can become firmly embedded in post-conflict democratic electoral competition – even in societies that are not ethnically diverse.The authors express their gratitude to Irena Kravos of the Croatian Electoral Commission, Ivanka Purić of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, Mirna Valinger of the Croatian Tax Administration, and in particular to Maruška Vizek of the Institute of Economics, Zagreb for invaluable help with data collection. The article has also benefited from comments and suggestions by Marin Božić, Monika Maminskaite, Kathleen Montgomery, Petra Posedel, Branko Salaj, Pieter van Houten, Maruška Vizek, as well as participants of the Research Colloquium at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. Damir Galić provided useful research assistance, and Tomislav Kaniški of The Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography created the maps. Josip Glaurdić is also grateful to the Leverhulme Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust (ECF-2012-399∖7) which supported his work on this study