Nationalisation of regional elections in Central and Eastern Europe

Territory is a salient issue in post-communist countries in Europe, yet subnational elections have received surprisingly little attention. This article analyses congruence between national and regional elections in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic held between 1993 and 2010. The findings suggest that election incongruence can be partly explained by approaches which work well in the West European context - territorial cleavages, regional authority and the second-order election model - but in order to fully grasp regional election outcomes in post-communist countries one also needs to take into account electoral alliance strategies and party supply change.