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Czech Republic - Political Parties

The Czech party system is unstable. There were three parties - CSSD [Czech Social Democratic Party], ODS [Civic Democratic Party] and KSCM [Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia] - that are always returned to the lower house. Popular support for both the Social Democrats and Civic Democrats has declined over time, while the KSCM was one of the few largely unreconstructed Communist parties on the political scene in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, until the 2017 election. Between 1998 and 2013, there had always been five parties winning seats, but two "other" parties keep changing. Each election brings several new parties to the Parliament, while other parties exit the stage. Many new political parties are formed, but most do not get off the ground. Czech politics are frequently petty, driven by personal feuds, opportunism and populism; the economy is challenged by corruption. Most Czech are satisfied with the quality of life but cynical about domestic politics.

Czech political parties have one thing going for them: that is the generous system of state funding for their activities. The Czech system of political party funding is very generous and political parties are very much dependent on it. On average they receive more than three-quarters of their annual income from the state, which in years when elections take place is more than 80 percent. But that system has come under attack for its cost, the flaws in the party financing rules and the policing of those rules.

The current Czech financing system largely rewards parties on the basis of their past election performance and the number of seats gained. Annual payments to parties are made on the basis of every vote they get in elections to the lower house, Senate, regional and European elections as long as their total support is over a certain, low, percentage threshold. In addition, they get other payments based on the number of seats they have in everything except the European Parliament. And finally, they are given payments to help finance election campaigns to the lower house and European Parliament.

Czech laws on party funding appear to be the worst drafted and weakest in Central Europe. The law does specifically call for parties to make public direct cash donations made to them by companies. But is eloquently silent on other forms of indirect aid. The law is not very strict in terms of goods and services that companies can give to parties, especially during election campaigns: cheap advertisements and things like that. There are other loopholes as well. Many candidates for election carry out individual campaigns in tandem with the political party ones. But the former are not governed by the law. Compounding that problem is the fact that there is no independent watchdog keeping a check on the whole problematic area of party funding.

On the evening of November 17, 1989, an officially sanctioned student commemoration on the fiftieth anniversary of Jan Opletal's burial (he was killed by the Nazis during a student demonstration in 1939), sparked a violent confrontation with the Czechoslovak state security service. From this confrontation, a non-violent revolution over the next six weeks led to Vaclav Havel being sworn in as President of Czechoslovakia on December 29. Since then, the Czech Republic has been transformed into a stable (if sometimes raucous) democracy and a vibrant market economy.

In the Senate (Senat) 81 members are elected by absolute majority vote in single-member constituencies to serve 6-year terms*. In the Chamber of Deputies (Poslanecka Snemovna) 200 members are elected through a flexible-list proportional representation system to serve 4-year terms. Electors may cast two preference votes for candidates on their chosen party list. There are 14 multi-member constituencies. Votes are tabulated using the D’Hondt method. A threshold of 5% is required in order for a party to enter the Chamber of Deputies. The threshold is 10% in case of a coalition of two parties, 15% for a coalition of three parties, 20% for a coalition of four or more parties.

In June 1990, free elections were held, with almost 97 percent of the eligible voters participating, pitting advocates of democracy against unrepentant believers in Communism. Four parties exceeded the minimum 5 percent threshold to make it into the Czech National Council (precursor to the Parliament): the Civic Forum (OF) received 49.5 percent of the vote (124 seats); the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC) won 13.2 percent (33 seats); the Movement for Self-Government Democracy/Union for Moravia/Silesia (HSD-SMS) won 10 percent of the vote (23 seats); and the Christian Democrats (KDU) won 8.4 percent (20 seats). The Civic Forum had a strong majority (having far exceeded the 100 votes necessary to rule the 200-seat National Council) and ruled as the governing coalition until 1992, even though the party itself dissolved in 1991. Of these initial four parties, only two remain: the Christian Democrats and the Communists, having proven themselves as stable political parties with a steady electorate.

The 1992 elections brought eight parties into the parliament, the largest in the country's history. Since then, the number of parties in parliament dropped to five. The Czech political system crystallized during the 1990s with two dominant parties emerging: the right-of-center Civic Democrats (ODS) and the left-of-center Social Democrats (CSSD). The extreme left, unreformed Communist Party (KSCM) has stubbornly defied predictions of its demise, consistently polling between eleven and fifteen percent, due to disciplined party voter behavior and its role as the last resort for center-left protest voters dissatisfied with CSSD. However, the KSCM represents a dead block of votes in parliament, since it was still seen as taboo to enter into a national coalition with the Communists, although the CSSD had done so regionally in certain locations.

The Czech political scene supported a broad spectrum of parties ranging from the semi-reformed Communist Party on the far left to the nationalistic Republican Party on the extreme right. But the law of the "collapse of the center" was borne out. Political parties which placed themselves on the center of the spectrum and represented politically undefined positions which were difficult for voters to understand. In the 1996 elections sixteen political parties and movements participated. Only six of them obtained 5% or more of the popular vote in the Czech Republic. The three strongest government coalition parties (ODS, KDU-CSL, ODA), obtained 99 mandates in the Chamber of Deputies and 52 mandates in the Senate. The government, with Prime Minister Václav Klaus (ODS), was center and right oriented and tried to finish the transformation process of the Czech republic.

The Christian Democrats traditionally played the role of kingmaker because, as a centrist party, they have had no problem partnering with either ODS or CSSD. TOP 09 was the Czech Republic's new party, formed in 2009 as a right-of-center alternative to ODS. It polls up to 15 percent support, despite having no platform nor any articulated goals. Its popularity was due entirely to the high public regard for its leader, Karel Schwarzenberg.

One of the winners of the 2010 elections and a newcomer to Parliament, the Public Affairs party, clearly owed its success to its leader Radek John, a former TV journalist who is a household name in the Czech Republic. His investigative programme on commercial TV NOVA focused on uncovering corruption, something the party has promised to do in top politics as well. However, aside from its self-proclaimed role of watchdog, the party’s background and ambitions remained unclear even to its potential coalition partners. There was no anti-establishment party on the Czech political scene, something that’s quite common in many countries. Anti-establishment parties are parties that are very populist; parties that have a strong leader who is able to appeal to the public - and Radek John was a very popular journalist. So there was space for such a party on the Czech political scene.

In the run-up to the October 2013 general elections. Twenty-four parties and groupings applied for registration, 17 of them fielding candidates in all 14 regions. Apart from the established parties voters were able to choose from a vast number of small parties and groupings, who were hoping to ride on the wave of public discontent. All were promising change: a different style of politics and an end to corruption. And the vast majority put their money on well-known faces to attract voters, a tactic that has proved successful in past elections.

Around 65 percent of Czechs would like to see new political parties and movements in the lower house of parliament following the October elections, according to a September 2013 poll by the Herzmann agency in cooperation with Ppm factum. People who want a change in parliamentary representation are to a large part younger than 29 years old, or are from households with monthly income higher than 30,000 crowns. Out of the six best known new and non-parliamentary parties the poll showed that Andrej Babiš’s party ANO had the best chances of getting into parliament.