THE POLITICAL COMPETITION OF MINORITY PARTIES IN SLOVAKIA: THE DECLINE OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF PARTIES REPRESENTING THE HUNGARIAN MINORITY

Abstract

The political parties representing Hungarian minority in Slovakia have always played significant role in the Slovak party system which had been closely associated with the substantive number of ethnic Hungarians living in the country. Hungarian speaking minority had constituted approximately 8-10% of the total population since 1993. The parliamentary elections in Slovakia in 2010 and 2012 revealed the differentiation of the electoral success of traditional and newly emerged political parties that essentially consider the Hungarian voters in Slovakia. This evolution and the context of the theoretical grounding of ethnic minority parties (outbidding model by Donald Horowitz and categorization of ethnic parties by Kanchan Chandra) made it a new source for research of the party competition in terms of Slovakia. The authors argue in multiple dimensions: What are the current perspectives and position of ethnic minority parties in Slovakia? To what extent are these parties able to attract minority voters, and do they correspond to the profile of traditional minority party? Hereby, we present and explain the electoral manifestos of two minority parties and analyze their contents. The authors´ assumption is tested through the content analysis of the party programs and evaluation of the electoral results of the respective political parties.

Keywords

• minority parties
• political competition
• elections
• Slovakia
• Most-Híd