Tadeusz SIWEK, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Non-democratic states use different methods to avoid democratic elections. Nevertheless, many of them try to create at least the illusion of a democratic process to strengthen their legitimacy to rule on eyes of the world public opinion.
The European communist states during the period of the bipolar world 1945-1989 were undoubtedly among such countries. The elections held there always ended the same way: about 99% of the votes for candidates from the only allowed list. Electoral geography does not seem to apply here. Really?
The aim of this presentation is to answer the question if it is possible to make at least any political-geographical knowledge from officially published election results on the example of elections in communist Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1986. This presentation shows how various historical moments (especially the Prague Spring of 1968) affected the results of Czechoslovak elections under communism at least in this small range between 99 - 100%. This is not an electoral geography in full sense, but it is its minimal version at least.
Mots clés : election|communist countries|Czechoslovakia
A103342TS