U meduratnom jugoslavenskom izbornom zakonodavstvu razlikujemo dva razdoblja koja se podudaraju s opcom podjelom politicke povijesti Kraljevine. Dvadesetih godina vrijedilo je zakonodavstvo usvojeno ...1920. i djelomicno promijenjeno 1922. godine. Drzava je bila podijeljena na izborne jedinice. Glasali su samo muskarci, na tajnim izborima. Mandati su se dodjeljivali prema proporcionalnom sustavu. Tridesetih godina na snazi je bilo zakonodavstvo iz 1931., koje je ispravljeno 1933. godine. Jos su uvijek glasali samo muskarci. Biralo se javno, i to za zemaljske liste kandidata. Izborni je zakon, unatoc proporcionalnoj podjeli mandata, favorizirao pobjednicku listu.//Parliamentary life in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia (19181941) can be divided in two periods. The first period spans from the 1920s to the second half of the 1930s. The milestone was in 1929 when King Alexander I forcibly dissolved the Parliament and introduced personal dictatorship. The first law was introduced in 1920 and amended merely two years later. The system was based on secret balloting and proportional representation. Eligible voters were adult male citizensand the same system remained in the 1930s. A voter would cast his vote by dropping the ball in the ballot box of his party. At the poll station there was one ballot box for each candidate party. This system had been used in the prewar Kingdom of Serbia due to the high rate of illiteracy. The law from 1920 adopted this method of voting for the same reason. In the 1920s the state was divided in more than 50 electoral units with a fixed number of seats. Parties hada candidate in each of them according to their interest. In each unit, the mandates were distributed separately. The 1931 Law retained the institution of proportional representation. But it was significantly modified by favoring the strongest party. The strongest party was given a larger share of seats comparing its share of votes. Following the idea of Unitarianism, the law introduced a state as a single electoral unit divided into subunits. A candidate list needed a candidate in the whole state and in every subunit. This had forced parties whose programs were mostly locally, nationally or religiously orientated to form a coalition before the election in order to run a candidate in the whole state. In the 1930s a voter expressed his decision by loudly and clearly declaring the name of their candidate to the electoral committee. Establishing a state as a single electoral unit in a multinational state, forcing parties to form coalition in advance and open voting were clearly a step backwards. web URL: http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_ jezik=237116
Parliamentary life in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia (1918–1941) can be divided in two periods. The first period spans from the 1920s to the second half of the 1930s. The ...milestone was in 1929 when King Alexander I forcibly dissolved the Parliament and introduced personal dictatorship. The first law was introduced in 1920 and amended merely two years later. The system was based on secret balloting and proportional representation. Eligible voters were adult male citizensand the same system remained in the 1930s. A voter would cast his vote by dropping the ball in the ballot box of his party. At the poll station there was one ballot box for each candidate party. This system had been used in the prewar Kingdom of Serbia due to the high rate of illiteracy. The law from 1920 adopted this method of voting for the same reason. In the 1920s the state was divided in more than 50 electoral units with a fixed number of seats. Parties hada candidate in each of them according to their interest. In each unit, the mandates were distributed separately. The 1931 Law retained the institution of proportional representation. But it was significantly modified by favoring the strongest party. The strongest party was given a larger share of seats comparing its share of votes. Following the idea of Unitarianism, the law introduced a state as a single electoral unit divided into subunits. A candidate list needed a candidate in the whole state and in every subunit. This had forced parties whose programs were mostly locally, nationally or religiously orientated to form a coalition before the election in order to run a candidate in the whole state. In the 1930s a voter expressed his decision by loudly and clearly declaring the name of their candidate to the electoral committee. Establishing a state as a single electoral unit in a multinational state, forcing parties to form coalition in advance and open voting were clearly a step backwards.
The article presents the basic characteristics of electoral legislation in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from 1920 and 1922. The electoral legislation stipulated the boundaries of the ...constituencies based on regional courts in Slovenia and counties in Civil Croatia. Zagreb and Ljubljana, as the capital cities, were separate constituencies. Besides Ljubljana, Slovenia had two other constituencies, while in addition to Zagreb, Croatia had eight constituencies. The constituencies in Slovenia and Civil Croatia were much larger than those in Serbia. The political situation in both Croatia and Slovenia was similar with regard to elections, as it was apparent that a single party was dominant. In Croatia this was the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) led by Stjepan Radić, while in Slovenia this was the Slovenian People’s Party under the leadership of Anton Korošec. Both parties advocated a less harsh/more moderate centralization, meaning a system that would at least acknowledge the features of individual provinces to some degree. A vital element that exerted an impact on the final election results in Croatia and Slovenia was ethnicity. In Croatia, this entailed the Serbs, while in Slovenia it entailed the Germans. Yugoslav parliamentarism managed to survive in the 1920s despite the system’s considerable instability, in which King Aleksandar often intervened, whose constitutionally and legally defined influence was not negligible. Political conflicts led to an assassination on the floor of parliament in Belgrade, which led King Aleksandar to take matters into his own hands on 6 January 1929, when he dissolved parliament and instituted a dictatorship. Parliamentary life was restored in the autumn of 1931. The similarities between the initial activity of the two most powerful parties in Croatia and Slovenia had disappeared entirely later in the 1930s.
