A TimeSpace for electoral geography: economic restructuring, political agency and the rise of the Nazi party

Using the electoral rise of the Nazi party in Weimar Germany as an example, this paper proposes the use of cyclico-ideological TimeSpace from Immanuel Wallerstein for the analysis of electoral geography. Elections are viewed as acts of political agency within structural constraints. From a world-sys tems perspective, the temporal dynamics and spatial structure of the capita list world-economy are used to identify Weimar Germany as a semi-peripheral country during a period of global economic stagnation and restructuring, a Kondratieff B-phase. The structure and dynamics of the world-economy are e xpected to mobilize three classes in the semi-periphery; the "national" bou rgeoisie, professionals, and skilled workers. Conflicts between factions of capital in Weimar Germany, defined by the economic restructuring, created a period of political instability exploited by the Nazi party. Furthermore, the Nazi party pursued policies to capture the votes of the three classes mobilized in the semi-periphery. However, electoral politics was mediated b y regional contextual settings so that different classes supported the Nazi party in different regions of Germany. The regional specificity of the Naz i party's ability to capture the votes of people disaffected by the dynamic s of the world-economy is modeled using spatial regression models. Consider ation of a cyclico-ideological TimeSpace allows electoral geography to anal yze how voters in contextual settings react to global processes. (C) 2001 E lsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.