Montenegro is a country in which one of the main features of representative democracy has never developed: government replaceability. after regaining independence and initiating an eU accession process, externally driven changes have stimulated lively institutional transformations which, however, have failed to produce meaningful democratic competition.This article tries to shed some light on the following phenomenon: how is it possible that in a formally democratic legal framework the ruling (ex-communist) party keeps winning each national election? apart from providing a contextual analysis, it seeks to describe a rather interesting concept-the image of invincibility which is, together with deep national/ethnic divisions and non-participant political attitudes, believed to be one of the key ingredients of the enigma of the last uninterrupted ex-communist incumbency in the post-communist world.

Economic voting is multidimensional (covering valence, patrimony and positional dimensions), and a growing number of research contributions have explored the existence and strength of the effect of these dimensions on voting. However, we know comparatively little about the interplay between these dimensions. This article fills that void by focusing on how the interplay between the rise of income inequality (the valence dimension) and redistribution preferences (the positional dimension) influences support for incumbents. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Modules 4 and 5, I find that preferences for income redistribution reduce the likelihood of voters supporting incumbent parties. Modest evidence demonstrates that this relationship is stronger in countries where inequality increased to a greater degree between elections. Voters who want more redistribution tend to re-elect left-wing governments and want to throw out right-wing incumbents. However, rise of inequality hurts both left-wing and right-wing incumbents.

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