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Descriptive Representation and Political Participation: Exploring Croatia’s Non-Dominant Groups Electoral Turnout Agarin, T., & Cermak, P. (2020). Descriptive Representation and Political Participation: Exploring Croatia’s Non- Dominant Groups Electoral Turnout. ANALI HRVATSKOG POLITOLOŠKOG DRUŠTVA, 16(1), 49. https://doi.org/10.20901/an.16.03 Published in: ANALI HRVATSKOG POLITOLOŠKOG DRUŠTVA Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright 2020 the authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction for non-commercial purposes, provided the author and source are cited and new creations are licensed under the identical terms. 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Oct. 2021 DESCRIptIVE REprESENtatION AND POLITICAL PartICIpatION: EXPLORING CrOatIA'S NON-DOMINANT GROUPS ELECTOraL TURNOUT Timofey Agarin Queen's University Belfast United Kingdom E-mail: [email protected] Petr Čermák Masaryk University, Brno DOI: 10.20901/an.16.03 Czech Republic Preliminary scientific report E-mail: [email protected] Accepted: November 2019 Abstract The series of ethnic conflicts in the Western Balkans over the 1990s in- volved primarily the constituent nations of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugo- slavia: Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and later, Albanians and Macedonians. Ethnic vio- (2019) 49-70 (1) 16 lence has equally affected other numerically smaller groups residing in the geo- graphic areas affected by conflict between the dominant, de facto state-founding Anali ethnic groups. The paper investigates the continuous importance of ethnic identity for political participation of non-dominant groups affected by the ethno-political dynamics of dominant groups in post-conflict Croatia. Analyses of the political mobilisation of non-dominant groups in regions previously affected by conflict offer evidence that their ethno-political mobilisation reflects the continuous importance of identity-politics in the context of highly ethnicised institutions ensuring political representation at national and municipal levels. Keywords Political participation, Non-Dominant Minorities, Local Elections, Post- conflict Society, Croatia Introduction ilding, minority accommodation and the establishment of the rule of law after The region of former Yugoslavia has the conflict. Far less attention, however, experienced a series of violent ethnici- has been granted to minor groups, those ty-based conflicts throughout the 1990s who were affected by the conflict but did when dominant republican majority not play a central role in its resolution. groups (Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, These minority groups often participa- Kosovo Albanians) wrested control ted in politics from the margins but con- over 'their' republic from Serbs. Scho- tributed to peace and state building. lars have long studied the ethno-politi- Čermák, Agarin, Descriptive P. T. Representation and Political Participation, cal mobilisation and violence by Serbs, Reasons for political participation Croats, Bosniaks, and Kosovo Albanians vary greatly, but social and economic 49 and analysed their impact on state bu- motives set the context in which contemporary relationships between the account for less than 1% of the entire political interactions of members of population (Krasniqi 2015).1 The focus formerly conflicting groups have been of our study is all ethnic groups, except formed. Crises and violent conflict in for Serbs, present in the former conflict particular support the emergence of zones, contested territories and/or dire- new ethno-political identities. Thus, in ctly affected by the violence between the societies emerging from violent confli- dominant Croats and Serbs. cts, ethnic identities hold a particular degree of significance and continue to We proceed in three steps; first we galvanise electorates to ensure represen- present a brief outline of the 'nationali- tation of the 'likes by the likes' (Wimmer sation' process in Croatia by setting the 1997). Comparative research on confli- context in which contemporary politics ct has focussed to some extent on the takes place. We then discuss the electo- effects of conflict on multidimensional ral dynamics at the municipal level whe- identity transformation during and after re it is clear that ethnic politicking takes violence (Kalyvas 2008; Wood 2015). the upper hand over politicking on civic However, the primary focus of research issues, despite the (presumed, shared) has been on the radicalisation of iden- interest of all citizens in the best possible tities in the conflicting parties (Fearon policy outcomes. Finally, we draw upon and Laitin 2003) and the underlying the sets of our qualitative interviews relationship between identities and cau- conducted over the past five years with sal effects on their change in conflict representatives of non-dominant groups (Gurr 1994), or the process of identity that illustrate data offered by our descriptive statistics.2 transformation within the conflicting parties (Wilhelmsen 2005). Others point out that the effect of political insti- Ethnopolitical Mobilisation tutions privileging certain group identi- in Croatia ties in access to state resources, as well as offering individual opportunities for Since the mid-1960s, for the ethno-po- social advancement, is far more impor- litically mobilised Croats, national so- tant for increasing the salience of ethnic vereignty, and ultimately nation-state identities (McLaughlin 2007). Instituti- independence, crystallised as the focal onal incentives, thus, trump individual point of political mobilisation that es- identity preferences. calated with the break-up of Yugosla- via in early 1990s. However, the Serbs, We focus specifically on Croatia, whe- who until 1991 constituted about 12% of re conflict took place in several regi- the republic's population, opposed the ons with high levels of ethnic diversity, independence of the Croat nation-sta- including Hungarians, Roma, Czechs, te setting the two groups on course for Ruthenians, Slovaks and many others. interethnic violence. The war in Cro- Following Juon (2020), we focus on mi- atia (1991-1995) directly affected ma- nority groups with the size of 'less than 1 Popis stanovništva, kućanstava i stanova half the one of the next larger minority 2011. godine. group of the groups whose size is below 2 We have conducted considerable desk-ba- 10% of a country's population'. This sed and field research, collating the muni- Anali Hrvatskog politološkog društva 2019. allows us to reflect the context of the co- cipal-level electoral data from eleven elections for the period of 2003-2017 and untry and to make it clear that although triangulating it with the qualitative data 50 the Serbs are the largest minority (popu- collected in more than 20 interviews, all of lation share of 4.36%), all other groups which underlie the present study. inly the areas claimed and temporarily Similar to the case of the Turks settled controlled by the rebel Serb structures, in Southern Kosovo, non-dominant mi- comprising about 30% of the Croatian norities have been 'squeezed not only territory. Hundreds of thousands had between the conflicting majority natio- to leave their homes as a result of ethnic nalism… and the larger minority nati- expulsions committed by both warring onalism…, but also between their own parties. The vast majority of Serbs fled ethnic, religious and civic identities' the Serbs-controlled areas of Krajina (Kut 2000, 1). and Western Slavonia as a result of Cro- atian military offensive in 1995, and The final political settlements of the just half of the pre-war Serb population conflict ultimately granted the minority remained in Eastern Slavonia, the area groups some, albeit weak, special status. temporarily taken out of control of the Beyond elementary citizen rights, all central institutions by the international minorities were granted the right to re- transitional administration after the vio- turn to their pre-war places of residence and minority political representation at lent conflict (Živić and Pokos 2004). different institutional levels was institu- During the conflict, areas settled by tionally guaranteed (Caspersen 2008). Serbs in Eastern Croatia were allowed non-dominant groups were subject to to form a special quasi-territorial entity territorial claims both by the Serbs and in the form of an association of munici- the Croats. All non-dominant commu- palities intended to consolidate their et- nities had to take sides in the conflict hno-territorial autonomy (Barić 2011). or remain

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