Elections in aspatial context : a case study of Albanian parliamentary elections,1991-2005
2007
Exploring elections features from a
geographical perspective is the focus of this study. Its primary
objective is to develop a scientific approach based on
geoinformation technology (GIT) that promotes deeper understanding
how geographical settings affect the spatial and temporal
variations of voting behaviour and election outcomes. For this
purpose, the five parliamentary elections (1991-2005) following the
political turnaround in 1990 in the South East European reform
country Albania have been selected as a case study. Elections, like
other social phenomena that do not develop uniformly over a
territory, inherit a spatial dimension. Despite of fact that
elections have been researched by various scientific disciplines
ranging from political science to geography, studies that
incorporate their spatial dimension are still limited in number and
approaches. Consequently, the methodologies needed to generate an
integrated knowledge on many facets that constitute election
features are lacking. This study addresses characteristics and
interactions of the essential elements involved in an election
process. Thus, the baseline of the approach presented here is the
exploration of relations between three entities: electorate
(political and sociodemographic features), election process
(electoral system and code) and place (environment where voters
reside). To express this interaction the concept of electoral
pattern is introduced. Electoral patterns are defined by the study
as the final view of election results, chiefly in tabular and/or
map form, generated by the complex interaction of social, economic,
juridical, and spatial features of the electorate, which has
occurred at a specific time and in a particular geographical
location. GIT methods of geoanalysis and geovisualization are used
to investigate the characteristics of electoral patterns in their
spatial and temporal distribution. Aggregate-level data modelled in
map form were used to analyse and visualize the spatial
distribution of election patterns components and relations. The
spatial dimension of the study is addressed in the following three
main relations: One, the relation between place and electorate and
its expression through the social, demographic and economic
features of the electorate resulting in the profile of the
electorate’s context; second, the electorate-election interaction
which forms the baseline to explore the perspective of local
contextual effects in voting behaviour and election results; third,
the relation between geographical location and election outcomes
reflecting the implication of determining constituency boundaries
on election results. To address the above relations, three types of
variables: geo, independent and dependent, have been elaborated and
two models have been created. The Data Model, developed in a GIS
environment, facilitates structuring of election data in order to
perform spatial analysis. The peculiarity of electoral patterns – a
multidimensional array that contains information on three
variables, stored in data layers of…
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