Five days have passed since the first round of local elections in Croatia. The campaign is gradually heating up, if not already completely boiling, in those areas which await the second round. Although many consider them to be third-class elections that regularly attract the least number of voters, there is some agreement that these particular local elections were extremely important and their consequences will significantly determine the future course of Croatian politics. As a brief retrospective of the journey so far, we bring an overview of public appearances and comments by political scientists who have offered their expertise to understand these unusually important elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The season of political science commentary opens with the HRT (Croatian Radiotelevision) show \"Otvoreno\" on April 29<\/a>. The guests were Smiljana Leinert Novosel<\/strong>, a professor at the Faculty of Political Science (FPZG), Bo\u017eo Skoko<\/strong>, a professor at the FPZG and a public relations expert, and Pero Maldini<\/strong>, a professor at the University of Dubrovnik. In about forty minutes, they commented on various topics such as digital campaigns, intra-party relations, candidate motivation and the situation in various election arenas, concluding by considering the consequences of potential election results on the political scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the very beginning of the official campaign in his column on Tportal<\/a>, FPZG professor Vi\u0161eslav Raos<\/strong> offered a brief overview of the strategic situation, referring to large cities but also to small municipalities, where many await 'silent elections', i.e. elections where only as many candidates as there are seats to be elected will participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FPZG professor Bo\u0161ko Picula<\/strong>, who like Vi\u0161eslav Raos regularly writes columns for Tportal, offered two analyzes of the election campaign field, one for\u00a0Zagreb<\/a> and the other for\u00a0Split<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Saturday, May 8, we had the opportunity to watch Pero Maldini<\/strong> on the Libertas TV show "Presstisimo"<\/a> where through thirty minutes he answered questions about democracy and elections.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the week before the elections, Smiljana Leinert Novosel<\/strong> appeared in HRT’s Studio 4<\/a>, stating that she would rate the campaign thus far with a three out of five, adding that everything offered so far is nothing new. Additionally, she comments on candidate performances, candidate lists, current polls and campaign methods. A few days later, Leinert Novosel appeared on HRT's Dnevnik<\/a>, commenting on the poll results. She especially commented on the situation in Rijeka, where she believes that the people of Rijeka are still more inclined towards left political options, up to 50% of them, while 30% of the people of Rijeka are inclined to the center and only 20% to the right.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n FPZG professors Goran \u010cular<\/strong> and Višeslav Raos<\/strong> commented for Dnevno.hr<\/a> on the participation of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovi\u0107 and President Zoran Milanovi\u0107 in the election campaign. According to \u010cular, it is not appropriate for the Prime Minister and the President to use their position to participate in local campaigns and it is no excuse that their predecessors did the same. Raos agrees with \u010cular's position and concludes that such a practice is not illegal, but it is also not correct, and that national and local politics should be more strongly separated.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n FPZG professor Dra\u017een Lali\u0107<\/strong> was a guest on the RTL Direkt<\/a> show, commenting on the "dirty campaign", conspiracy theories used as weapons of the election campaign and the state of the campaign for the mayor of Split. He believes that such tactics are used by weak candidates, especially those who are the product of poor personnel decisions of large parties, since they have no other way to draw attention to themselves.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Political scientists were also represented as commentators on the results of the election night. In a special show election night show<\/a> on HRT, Smiljana Leinert Novosel<\/strong>, Bo\u017eo Skoko<\/strong> and Pero Maldini<\/strong> commented on the election results and were joined by FPZG professor Berto Šalaj<\/strong>. Višeslav Raos<\/strong> and Nikola Baketa<\/strong> from the Institute for Social Research (IDIZ) were guests on a Hanza Media special show<\/a>. We could also see Raos answering questions in the Al Jazeera Balkans report<\/a> on local elections. Boško Picula<\/strong> was also a guest on Al Jazeera Balkans<\/a> as an election commentator.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n The day after the election we had the opportunity to watch and read a series of political science comments. Goran \u010cular<\/strong> and Josip Glaurdi\u0107<\/strong>, director of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Luxembourg, gave statements for Jutarnji list<\/a>. Glaurdi\u0107 presents an interesting thesis that Mo\u017eemo!, empowered by their victory in the local elections, have a chance to win the national elections in three years, just as the Greens in Germany now have a chance to win the Bundestag elections. \u010cular believes that Tomislav Tomaševi\u0107 will probably win the second round of elections for the mayor of Zagreb, since his opponent, Miroslav Škoro, exclusively gets the votes of the right and finds it difficult to attract more moderate voters. \u010cular agrees with Glaurdi\u0107 that Mo\u017eemo! has the potential to make a leap in national politics.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Višeslav Raos<\/strong> commented on the continuation of the campaign in the N1 television show "Novi Dan"<\/a>, predicting that Miroslav Škoro will opt for primarily ideological topics. Raos also commented on the election results in his column on Tportal<\/a>, predicting that the campaign for the second round will be "noisy and harsh" with "mobilization of fear and conspiracy theories".<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Smiljana Leinert Novosel<\/strong> commented on the election results in HRT Studio 4<\/a>, referring to the results in Zagreb, Osijek, Vukovar and Split. The topic of mobilization of the right in Zagreb, turnout in the second round and the appetite of voters for new candidates and policies were also touched upon.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Berto Šalaj<\/strong> was a guest on the show "U mre\u017ei prvog"<\/a> of the Croatian Radio. According to him, the elections confirmed the HDZ as the strongest center-right party, although they suffered many losses compared to previous local elections, especially in Zagreb, where he believes the HDZ will not be able to become part of the ruling structure for a long while.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bo\u017eo Skoko<\/strong> was a guest on HRT's Dnevnik<\/a>, concluding that there are currently no absolute winners of local elections - "because Croatia has so many municipalities, cities and counties that everyone can still assemble a "dream team" winning coalition.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Drazen Lali\u0107<\/strong> answered questions for the Serbian edition of BBC News<\/a>, where he concluded that the election results are a reflection of the crisis of the big parties, which began in 2013.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Boško Picula<\/strong> appeared on Radio Sljeme's "Gradska posla"<\/a> show, commenting on the campaign of Miroslav Škoro, who he believes had a better chance of becoming president of Croatia as a candidate in the previous presidential election than the current mayor of Zagreb. The reason for this, according to Picula, is that he fails to present himself as a candidate of all citizens instead of as a candidate of a small part of his own electorate. Picula also gave a statement for Tportal<\/a>, stating that the big parties, HDZ and SDP, had lost the most, and that in many cases change had been chosen.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The review also includes professors at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb who are not political scientists and have commented on the local elections as political analysts. The review does not include those political scientists who have made statements in the capacity of political actors running in elections. The review is not comprehensive: it does not include all political scientists who have commented on local elections in various media.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a short retrospective of the local elections, we an overview of public appearances and comments by political scientists who have offered their expertise to understand these unusually important elections.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-politologija-i-lokalni-izbori"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}