Does exist a political culture of the Czech borderland?

Abstract

The article analyses the differences in voting behaviour of the population in borderland and "inland" of the Czech Republic as spatial units sharply differing in their migration history in the 1940's: the borderland being a target region of a large-scale resettlement following the expulsion of Germans in 1945-46, while the inland was source region of the migrations. The results of the 1992, 1996 and 1998 parliamentary elections were analysed on two hierarchical levels by ANOVA models to test the hypothesis that the borderland and the inland are significantly different from the point of view of voting behaviour of the population. Four out of eight variables describing voting behaviour have distinct values for the borderland and the inland, even after setting apart the impact of differences in the population structure by incorporation of covariates into the model. It suggests that the pre-war ethnic boundary within the Czech Lands is a significant contextual factor standing behind the variability of electoral results still in the 1990's.