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-systems perspective, the temporal dynamics and spatial structure of the capitalist 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 expected to mobilize three classes in the semi-periphery; the “national” bourgeoisie, 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 by regional contextual settings so that different classes supported the Nazi party in different regions of Germany. The regional specificity of the Nazi partyʹs ability to capture the votes of people disaffected by the dynamics of the world-economy is modeled using spatial regression models. Consideration of a cyclico-ideological TimeSpace allows electoral geography to analyze how voters in contextual settings react to global processes.