Notable Presidential Elections of 1999 and 2019 in the Slovak Republic: Communicative Markers and Electoral Cleavages

Abstract

The present-day Slovak Republic has overcome two systemic political polarizations, ‘Mečiarism – anti-Mečiarism’ and ‘Fico – anti-Fico’, that further determined the format of political confrontation in the elections. The degree of crisis in Slovak politics, as well as a level of trust in politicians, shaped the voters’ electoral preferences. In the Slovak electoral field, the national dimension of politics is predominant (in both parliamentary and presidential elections), while regional and ‘European’ elections are, in essence, second-order elections. The 1999 and 2019 presidential elections had specific communicative markers that determined the communicative strategy behind each candidate’s electoral campaign, along with the choice of a leadership pattern. In 1999, the Slovak electorate fragmented on the principle of popular populism vs Euro-Atlantic integration, whereas in 2019, a confrontation between social populism and progressive liberalism was the main driving force behind the fragmentation. A political confrontation between a conservative Vladimír Mečiar and a potential reformer Rudolf Schuster in 1999 was highly antagonistic, resulting in the country’s conventional electoral division into north and south by the region. The 2019 presidential elections took place under the confrontation between a systemic, albeit nominally independent, candidate Maroš Šefčovič and non-systemic Zuzana Čaputová (electoral cleavage ‘west versus east’)