To what extent can electoral engineering mitigate deadly intra-state conflict? This paper investigates the impact of electoral engineering on nationalist party behavior in highly-fragmented states. As nationalist parties have been instrumental in escalating inter-group tensions to large-scale hostilities, frameworks for conflict resolution frequently incorporate institutional mechanisms as a means of altering the incentives for conflict exploitation or for inter-group cooperation. Specifically, the paper investigates proportional representation (PR) and preferential systems. To test the impact of these systems, the study observes party engagement in cooperative or conflictual behavior during legislative campaigns in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and Croatia over several election cycles. Data from the Bosnian cases largely support expectations that PR presents incentives for nationalist parties to “play the ethnic card” and exacerbate communal conflict. In contrast, the Croatian case provides a degree of support for the prediction that preferential voting structures encourage cooperation and thus conflict dampening.

This thesis deals with the possibilities of changing the electoral system to Czech municipal councils. It is an analytical case study with elements of a policy paper, i.e., a set of recommendations intended especially for legislators. The thesis has two main goals: (1) to identify and summarize aspects of the electoral system that experts call controversial and (2) to suggest possible solutions that would mitigate or eliminate these controversial variables. The work comes with three alternative solutions for changing the electoral system: (A) minor modifications to the existing system, which will facilitate the possibility of election because of preferential votes, and at the same time prevent local governments from performing electoral engineering by purposeful modifications of constituencies; (B) a variably mixed fusion system identical for all municipalities and (C) combination of two systems: unlimited vote for municipalities with less than 2,000 inhabitants and an open PR system for larger municipalities.

The master's thesis deals with local elections in the Czech Republic from the point of view of electoral engineering. Theoretical part of the thesis is focused on the elections, electoral systems and variables of electoral systems. The main variables are electoral district magnitude, electoral formula, legal threshold and the number and character of tier districting. The thesis then describes issue of gerrymandering and malapportionment from the theoretical perspective. The next part of the thesis deals with legislative framework of the local government elections from 1989 including rules and problematic characteristics of current electoral law for electing members of municipality. Empirical part of the thesis analyses local elections in the Czech Republic and results of the elections between 1994 and 2014. In the last chapter, division of the territory into electoral districts is assessed with an emphasis on principle of equal weight of votes and degree of proportionality. Comparison was carried out by using two indices of proportionality, Loosemore and Hanby index and D'Hondt index.