"Absurd" Electoral Actors: Origins, Strategies, Role in the Political Field

This paper studies the factors which may have influence on the activity of "absurd" electoral actors - parties and independent candidates in whose programms there are only absurd, irrational, and/or physically impossible theses and suggestions. There are numerous researches in political science that pay attention to the more unconventional political phenomena. However, these researches mostly focus on the protest actioins and non-institutionalized oppostional forces. "Absurd" electoral actors, thus, are not seen as a separate group. They are, however, quite different from the subject of the aforementioned researches, since they, by their essence contradicting with the existing social conventions considering electoral process and political system as a whole, participate actively inside the exact systems and conventions they contradict with; they have their own election campaigns and position themselves as equals to their more "conventional" opponents. In the course of this research the database of the "absurd" electoral actors from around the world and from 1950s until modern days was composed. Later these actors were analysed from historical and territorial perspectives with the focus on their chronological transformation and differences due to their respective countries. Case-study approach also helped in analysing the most successful cases of "absurd" electoral actors. Finally, all the results were combined with the existing theory on absurd and unconventional political phenomena, which helped in describing the factors that might help "absurd" electoral actors gain electoral support.