Explaining Secessionism: What Do We Really Know About It?

In this thematic issue we discuss what we really know about the explanations for secessionism. Over the last few decades, an increasing number of new analyses on secessionism have appeared, regarding both its normative and its empirical dimensions. We can distinguish at least three types of research questions that categorise the current analyses of secessionism: normative, explanatory, and pragmatic. Political theorists work mainly on the moral and political right to unilaterally secede, answering questions such as “under what conditions” this right is legitimate and “who” has this moral right (Requejo & Sanjaume-Calvet, 2015; Sanjaume‐Calvet, 2020). Despite the importance of normative theories, these approaches do not provide explanations for secessionism, although most of them are built on implicit explanations of these phenomena. The field of explanatory theories of secession focuses mainly on the individual and/or aggregate preconditions and variables that correlate (or not) with the presence (or absence) of secessionist movements in specific territories. Through our general guiding question—”what do we really know about the explanations for secessionism?”—we try to disentangle the current explanations of secessionism by using empirical analyses, combining comparative politics and case studies. We bring together several different analytical perspectives, from political economy, nationalism, electoral behaviour, and institutional studies. Beyond these empirical perspectives, the issue puts forward some normative implications based on what we know and what we do not know about the existence of secessionist claims.

Regionalism

This chapter examines regional division, or regionalism, in South Korea, a dominant factor determining the country’s politics. The conceptual definition of regionalism in the context of South Korean politics refers to regional patterns of voting behaviour, with voters deciding their vote based on their birthplace. But regionalism has been also understood from different perspectives focusing on its history, public emotional antagonism, regional party system, etc. This chapter elaborates the origins of regionalism and conceptualizes regionalism according to the level of analysis and the domain of its manifestation. The chapter then promotes the theoretical understanding of regionalism by drawing on prejudice, social identity, and cleavage theory. It argues that the regional cleavage based on birthplace-based regional prejudice and identity that have determined electoral behaviour and party system will not change significantly in the near future. The chapter concludes with a discussion of recent developments in regionalism.

Importance of Voting at the Municipal Level: The Seniors’ Voices

While municipal elections in Quebec are characterized by low voter turnout, it appears that people over 65 years old are the ones who vote in higher numbers. In fact, this is the case for both federal and provincial elections. However, the lack of individual data on municipal elections does not yet allow us to say that seniors vote more than younger people. This finding invites political scientists to look at the electoral behaviour of individual voters and the importance attached to the act of voting at this level of government. In addition, the majority of studies on elections focus on the behaviours of voters living in large cities such as Montreal or Quebec City. In Quebec, the few studies that have looked at medium size municipality voting behaviour have mainly studied the cities of Quebec City, but not Montreal. Based on 19 interviews conducted with people aged between 65 and 84 and living in one medium size cities, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, our research illustrates the importance of the exercise of a duty, the access to political information, the proximity of electoral behaviour and the influential role of seniors. According to participants, it is easier to talk to municipal candidates and get to know the person who will become their official representative, compared to the provincial and federal levels where it is more difficult to talk to candidates. Also, their knowledge of the municipal political system is better than when they were younger. While voting is similarly important at each level of government, participants felt that voting at the municipal level is directly relevant to them because of the municipal services but also by the influence they can have on their councillor.

Changing Electoral Behaviour of Tea Tribes People in Assam: A Study of Mariani Legislative Constituency

The electoral behaviour of people is generally influenced by different socio-political and economic factors. It is more common in a diverse society like India where caste and community plays a significant role in many ways shaping the mindset of the electorates during the time elections. In Assam, these factors found to be more determined in many areas among various communities. The Tea Tribes are one of such communities in the state which has been used as vote banks by political parties since the post-independent period. But gradually this traditional conception of vote bank and trend of community voting has declined as many other factors started determining the electoral behaviour of this community.

THE 2020 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC FROM A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE

The subject of this article is the analysis of the 2020 parliamentary elections in the Slovak Republic from the point of view of the regional success of individual political entities. The authors refer the strong and weak areas of support for individual political parties, which gained more than five percent of the votes on a nationwide scale. As the Slovak Republic is considered as single constituency in the parliamentary elections, the results themselves do not literally indicate the areas with the strongest or weakest voter support. It is interesting to observe the extent of influence of the residence of the electoral leader, the ethnic composition of the population or the religiosity on the electoral behaviour. Equally interesting is the observation of the stability of electoral preferences, as we have witnessed largely different results in the 2020 parliamentary elections compared to the 2019 elections (presidential elections, as well as the European Parliament elections). Key words: parliamentary elections, Slovak Republic, electoral gain, National Council of the Slovak Republic, regions.

Electoral Behavior of Voters in Ukraine in Crisis Times

The article contains an analysis of the impact of the crisis situation on the electoral behavior during the national elections in Ukraine. For this purpose, the study highlights the pre-crisis, crisis and postcrisis periods. The criteria for a comparative analysis of the electoral behaviour during these periods are the peculiarities of territorial differentiation of voting and the degree of support for election participants, as well as the specifics of the turnout in the regions of Ukraine. It has been revealed that with the transition from one period to another there has been a transformation of the electoral behaviour of voters. The pre-crisis period was characterized by a significant electoral split in Ukraine between pro-Russian and pro-Western forces. The sharp decline in voter turnout in the South-East of the country during the crisis period led to a significant fall in the influence of the pro-Russian forces. In the western regions of Ukraine, on the contrary, during this period there was an increase in voter activity, which determined the emergence of new relevant political forces of a pro-Western nature. In the post-crisis period, turnout rates generally returned to pre-crisis levels. However, this did not lead to a full restoration of the electoral division of the country due to the geographically homogeneous support of V.A. Zelensky and his party «Servant of the People». A forecast is made, including three scenarios of transformation of the political system of Ukraine taking into account possible changes in the electoral behavior of voters.