Parties on the Brink? The Crisis of Representative Democracy in the Czech Republic

Until the early 2010s, the Czech Republic had the most stable party system among all of the countries in East Central and Eastern Europe. It resembled West European systems and provided the foundation for a representative democracy. This model has fallen into a deep crisis. Voter turnout has declined, parties are losing members, and voter turnover is high. The programmatic parties became cartel parties without social mooring, but with a tremendous interest in campaign reimbursement from the state and posts in the government. This development is also known from Western Europe. In the meantime, however, there is a man at the head of the Czech government who has come to power by using proceeds from his corporate conglomerate to found his own business party and to counter the idea of a pluralistic competition of ideas by offering the technocratic model of better management.