Measuring variation in subnational electoral democracy: evidence from the Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Slovak regions

Although there is a comprehensive body of research of quality of democracy or variation in electoral democracy at the national level – cross-national analyses as well as case studies of individual countries, and although studies have explored the phenomenon at subnational levels in the Americas, India, or Russia, research of subnational democracy remains sparse in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The main objective of this paper is to analyse a variation in the subnational electoral democracy in Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia since establishment of the regional self-governments to the present, 1994–2022 (i.e. in 16 Polish, 14 Czech, 8 Slovak, and 20 Hungarian regions). Using own dataset covering more than twenty years of regional elections, and conceptualization based on Dahl’s procedural democracy (i.e. two theoretical dimensions of democratization, namely participation, and liberalization), the paper will present trajectories of subnational electoral democracy across CEE regions. The resulting values in each dimension will be individually charted in a two-dimensional space in their mutual relations. Furthermore, the index of subnational electoral democracy will be presented to show whether both variation in electoral democracy exits between subnational units of the countries studied, but also between them, and also in a multi-level comparison. In this regard, the paper will try to determine whether it is possible to observe signs of democratic backsliding (which is taking place at the level of national regimes across the post-communist CEE) and regime hybridity at the regional level, as well as at the national level, and whether there is a relationship between subnational electoral democracy variation and regional development or other institutional characteristics of regional politics in CEE.