Review article
REGIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES
Dejan Jović
; Faculty of Political Sciences, Zagreb
Abstract
Based on the Beyme classification of "party families", the author discusses the
concept of the "regional political party". On the one hand, the question arises
whether one can speak of parties if they in advance renounce the possibility of
gaining power on a national level, while on the other hand, this in advance accepted
partial quality is precisely the reason for calling this party group a "party". The author
accepts Beyme's interpretation about the genesis of regional parties: they appeared
as an act of opposition to the tendencies of centralization. Autonomy is one of the
basic concepts of regionalism, and it has brought many regional parties closer
towards liberal paradigms. In the second chapter of the text the author indicates the
essential difference between parties representing territorial autonomy and those
which add to it a strong ethnical dimension. Parties can become regional due to their
original intent, or via facti, as a result of elections. In the third part of the text, the
author analyzes the attitude towards regionalism in the 1990 elections for parliament.
The central issue of these elections was defining Croatia's status: between a region
in Yugoslavia and an independent state. Nevertheless, the first elections were not
domina ted by the issue of the interior administrative and territorial constitution of
Croatia. The fourth part of the text contains the reasons responsible for an increasing
influence of the Istrian Democratic Assembly after the first 1990 elections. The author
presents the basic features of this party's program, and also the concept of the future
Istrian District that it pleads for. The last chapter analyzes the reasons for a significant
success of the election ooelition of regional parties in the 1990 parliamentary
elections. The coelition IDS-DA-RDS won six parliamentary seats and regionalism
was among the most frequently discussed topics in the election campaign itself.
This may well indicate the future of the debate on regionalism in Croatia.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
32588
URI
Publication date:
1.9.1992.
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