Social scientists know that relative levels of voter participation versus voter apathy are reliable indicators of the sense of “ownership” which citizens, including minority groups, feel towards the state in which they live. This is equally true for unrecognized states or partially unrecognized states such as Transdniestria and Kosovo.

So who is on board and supportive of these places and their respective nation building efforts?

According to the Southeast European Times, a web-only Public Diplomacy effort which is financed entirely by the U.S. Department of Defense,

Election data showed that only around 1% of the approximately 120,000 eligible Kosovo Serb voters went to the polls.

In Transdniestria, an approximate equal number of ethnic Moldovans are eligible to vote. Turnout for this ethnic minority is consistently above 60% versus the 1% among the Serb minority in Kosovo. Moreover, other sociological indicators back up the conclusions to be inferred from voter turnout data: here and here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 10:06 am and is filed under Transdniestria musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.