Electoral Systems in Slovenia and (North) Macedonia. A Comparison

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Politics - Other International Politics Topics, grade: 1,0, , course: Course: Electoral Systems, Summer Semester 2021, language: English, abstract: This paper describes and compares the parliamentary electoral systems of two successor states of Yugoslavia: Slovenia in the very North of the former federation and (North) Macedonia in the very South. Surprisingly, this comparison is rarely done, although both states have in common a relatively similar size and number of populations of around two million inhabitants.

This semester paper portrays that the design of an electoral system and historic legacies are important for a (transitional) democracy, but only till a certain, limited extent. Apart from relatively similar electoral systems in the here portrayed cases, the international and domestic as well as qualitative and quantitative studies showed, that political culture and how citizens and politicians are acting in a (democratic) states are also and probably more important than the design of an electoral system. Also, the EU integration process, lively EU membership and economic development could have an influence on functionality of transitional democracies. Especially, the differing partisanship culture is an interesting field of active citizenship behavior.