Localisation of Local Politics and Voter Turnout in Croatia (2001–2017)

In the aftermath of the ethnic conflict in the early 1990s and simultaneous intensive territorial expansion of nationwide parties, local politics and elections in Croatia became notably nationalized. By decreasing the salience of specific local issues and evaluation of election candidates based on their national party affiliation, nationalization of local politics may contribute to the 'second-order' status of local elections, with lower voter turnout being the most worrisome characteristic of such elections. However, the link between nationalization/localization of local politics and voter turnout in local elections is rarely scrutinized empirically, particularly in post-conflict societies such as Croatian. In the context of ethnic cleavage and 'catchallover' strategies of nationwide parties, this paper studies the effect that localization of local politics, both in terms of mixed municipal ethnic structure and presence of non-partisan local lists, has on voter turnout at Croatian local elections. Whereas national politics is dominated by ethnic Croats, local politics provides ethnic Serbs an arena for more immediate interest articulation, which should increase the attractiveness of local electoral participation. Similarly, non-partisan local lists are known for competing on genuinely local issues, thus increasing the perceived relevance of local elections and mobilizing voters under fatigue from national issues. The theoretical expectations are tested on the aggregate data from five rounds of Croatian local elections (2001-2017). The results suggest that municipalities where non-partisan lists competed recorded higher voter turnout in comparison to municipalities with fully nationalized electoral party systems. The higher proportion of ethnic Serbs in a municipality rather decreases voter turnout, revealing that localization of politics in Croatia does not uniformly affect voter turnout at local elections. The reason behind this finding might lie in the institutional arrangement, where ethnic minorities above a certain threshold of population size are guaranteed representation in a local council.