Europeanization of Political Parties and the Party System in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The experience of the major political parties of the Czech Republic, both in the EU accession period and after joining the Union, suggests that processes of Europeanization have had only a limited impact, not simply on party programmes and organizations, but also on the structure and content of party politics and policies. Nonetheless, the field of policy appears to be a potentially more relevant area for Europeanization to have an impact than in the arena of politics, understood as the inter-party quest for power.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This essay was prepared as part of the project Political actors in the process of Europeanization and internationalization of the political environment of the Czech Republic of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Czech Republic (code 1J 002/04-DP1). The authors wish to thank Ms Zuzana Votrubová for her extremely helpful assistance in collecting materials and undertaking their analysis.

Notes

See Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček, ‘Cleavages in the Contemporary Czech and Slovak Politics: Between Persistence and Change’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.22, No.3 (2008), pp.518–52. For general introductions to the issue of the Czech party system see Břetislav Dančák and Vít Hloušek, ‘Czech Republic’, in Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (ed.), Parties and Democracy (Bonn: Bouvier, 2007), pp.195–217; Kevin Deegan-Krause, Elected Affinities: Democracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); and Petr Kopecký, ‘The Rise of Power Monopoly: Political Parties in the Czech Republic’, in Susanne Jungerstam-Mulders (ed.), Post-Communist EU Member States: Parties and Party Systems (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp.125–45.

Geoffrey Pridham, Designing Democracy: EU Enlargement and Regime Change in Post-communist Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), pp.19–20; see also Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier (eds.), The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2005).

There is a vast body of literature using the term Europeanization: see Agnes Batory's contribution to this collection.

Simon Hix and Klaus H. Goetz, ‘Introduction: European Integration and National Political Systems’, West European Politics, Vol.23, No.4 (2000), pp.1–26 (pp.3–9).

Robert Ladrech, ‘Europeanization and Political Parties: Towards a Framework for Analysis’, Party Politics, Vol.8, No.4 (2002), pp.389–403 (pp.396–400).

See Elisabeth Carter, Kurt Richard Luther and Thomas Poguntke, ‘European Integration and Internal Party Dynamics’, in Thomas Poguntke, Nicholas Aylott, Elisabeth Carter, Robert Ladrech and Kurt Richard Luther, The Europeanization of National Political Parties: Power and Organizational Adaptation (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), pp.1–27 (pp.9–15).

See Nicolò Conti, ‘Domestic Parties and European Integration: The Problem of Party Attitudes to the EU, and the Europeanisation of Parties’, European Political Science, Vol.6, No.2 (2007), pp.192–207.

Peter Mair, ‘The Limited Impact of Europe on National Party Systems’, West European Politics, Vol.23, No.4 (2000), pp.27–51 (pp.27–37); Peter Mair, ‘Parties and Party Systems’ (2006), available at: <http://www.eui.eu/SPS/People/Faculty/CurrentProfessors/PDFFiles/MairPDFfiles/PM_PoliticalPartiesChapter12.pdf>, accessed 13 June 2009.

Ladrech, Europeanization and Political Parties, pp.393–5; Robert Ladrech, ‘The Europeanization of Interest Groups and Political Parties’, in Simon Bulmer and Christian Lequesne (eds.), The Member States of the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.317–37 (pp.331–3); Mair, ‘The Limited Impact of Europe’, pp.48–9; Mair, ‘Parties and Party Systems’, pp.5–12.

Roman Chytilek and Jakub Šedo, ‘Party System Stability and Territorial Patterns of Electoral Competition in the Czech Republic’, in Vít Hloušek and Roman Chytilek (eds.), Parliamentary Elections and Party Landscape in the Visegrád Group Countries (Brno: CDK and ISPO, 2007), pp.23–35 (pp.26–7); Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp.125–9.

Pavel Šaradín, ‘The Influence of the Strong Bi-polarization’, in Pavel Šaradín and Eva Bradová (eds.), Visegrad Votes: Parliamentary Elections 2005–2006 (Olomouc: Palacký University, 2007), pp.13–37 (pp.14–5).

For detailed analyses of Czech parties see Sean Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe: Czech Transformation and Right-wing Politics, 1989–2006 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); Pavel Pšeja and Lubomír Kopeček, ‘Czech Social Democracy and its Cohabitation with the Communist Party: The Story of a Neglected Affair’, Communist and Post-communist Studies, Vol.41, No.3 (2008), pp.317–38; Pavel Pšeja, ‘Holding the Ground: Communism and Political Parties in the Post-Communist Czech Republic’, in Uwe Backes, Tytus Jaskulowski and Abel Polese (eds.), Totalitarismus und Transformation. Defizite der Demokratiekonsolidierung in Mittel- und Osteuropa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), pp.135–54.

There are clear parallels here with the Estonian case: see Sikk's contribution to this collection.

Maxmilián Strmiska, ‘The Czech Multipartism in the Late 1990s: Some Remarks’, Středoevropské politické studie, Vol.2, No.2 (2000), pp.1–6, available at: <http://www.cepsr.com/clanek.php?ID=121>, accessed 13 June 2009; and Maxmilián Strmiska, ‘The Czech Party System: A Few Observations on the Properties and Working Logic of the Czech Party Arrangement’, in Hloušek and Chytilek (eds.), Parliamentary Elections and Party Landscape, pp.107–15 (p.113); Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, pp.131–84.

See also Hloušek and Kopeček, ‘Cleavages in the Contemporary Czech and Slovak Politics’.

However, the anti-EU stance was not central to Communist Party campaigning: see Lubomír Kopeček and Jakub Šedo, ‘Czech and Slovak Political Parties and their Vision of European Integration’, Středoevropské politické studie, Vol.5, No.1 (2003), pp.1–10 (pp.2–4).

Jaroslav Petřík, ‘Postoj politických stran k EU ve volební kampani 2002 – Česká republika’ [‘Stance of Political Parties to the EU in Electoral Campaign 2002 – The Czech Republic’], in Jakub Šedo (ed.), Evropská otázka ve volebních kampaních [The European Question in Electoral Campaigns] (Brno: IIPS, 2003), pp.11–37 (pp.13–4).

US merged with a small party called Democratic Union (Demokratická unie: DEU), becoming US–DEU.

Jakub Šedo, ‘Role Evropské unie a jejího rozšíření ve volební kampani’ [‘The Role of the European Union and its Enlargement in Electoral Campaigns’], in Šedo (ed.), Evropská otázka ve volebních kampaních, pp.126–39 (pp.126–33).

Klára Plecitá-Vlachová and Mary Stegmaier, ‘The Chamber of Deputies Election, Czech Republic 2002’, Electoral Studies, Vol.22, No.4 (2003), pp.772–8 (p.775).

Eva Bradová, Marek Migalski, Andrász Rácz and Pavel Šaradín, ‘EU and Visegrad: The Foreign Policy Consequences of the Elections’, in Šaradín and Bradová (eds.), Visegrad Votes, pp.188–209 (p.200).

Most Czech parties, however, included EU issues in their manifestos in general chapters devoted to foreign (and in some cases even security) policy: see Vlastimil Havlík, ‘Evropská dimenze české politiky. Srovnání voleb do Poslanecké sněmovny v letech 2002 a 2006’ [‘European Dimension of Czech Politics: Comparison of 2002 and 2006 Chambers of Deputies Elections’], in Dalibor Čaloud, Tomáš Foltýn, Vlastimil Havlík and Anna Matušková (eds.), Volby do Poslanecké sněmovny v roce 2006 [Elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2006] (Brno: CDK and ISPO, 2006), pp.26–41 (pp.29–34).

Havlík, ‘Evropská dimenze české politiky’, pp.34–6.

The Accession agreement was signed in 1993 and the Czech Republic's membership application was submitted three years later.

A notable exception can be seen in the case of KSČM, which presented a very different vision of European integration and assumed a very cautious attitude towards the process: see Iveta Frízlová, Michaela Kozlová, Ondřej Málek and Jaroslav Švestka, ‘Vliv evropeizace na české politické strany’ [‘Influence of Europeanization on Czech Political Parties’], Working Papers of International Institute of Political Science of Masaryk University, No.20 (2006), pp.13–5, 18; and KSČM, Program KSČM do Poslanecké sněmovny PČR 2006 [KSČM's Election Manifesto for the 2006 Election to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic] (2006), p.16, available at: <http://www.kscm.cz/article.asp?thema=3783&item=35527>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008.

For an account of the developments related to party programmes that occurred in this period, see Havlík, ‘Evropská dimenze české politiky’, pp.26–41 (pp.36–9).

Tim Haughton and Marek Rybář, ‘A Change of Direction: The 2006 Parliamentary Elections and Party Politics in Slovakia’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.24, No.2 (2008), pp.232–55.

The manifestos considered in this article are: ČSSD, Člověk na prvním místě. Volební program 2002 [People First: Election Programme 2002] (2002), available at: <http://webarchive.org/web/20020624203840/www.cssd.cz/volby2002/index_mamaJ.htm>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; ČSSD, Otevřenost novým výzvám – věrnost tradici [Open to New Challenges, Loyal to Tradition] (2004), available at: <http://www.cssd.cz/nas-program/dlouhodoby-program>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; ČSSD, Jistoty a prosperita. Volební program ČSSD [Certainty and Prosperity: ČSSD's Election Manifesto] (2006), available at: <http://www.socdem.cz/nas-program/volebni-program>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; KDU–ČSL, Křesťanskodemokratická politika pro 21. století [Christian-Democratic Politics for the 21st Century] (1997), in authors' archive; KDU–ČSL, Dáme věci do pořádku. Programové prohlášení Koalice [Setting it Right: Coalition's Programmatic Statement] (2002), available at: <http://www.kducsl.cz/default.asp?page=51&id_rok=7&IDR=10149>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; KDU–ČSL, Volební program [Election Programme] (2006), available at: <http://www.kducsl.cz/default.asp?page=510&idr=10149&IDCl=18242>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; KSČM, Program KSČM pro volby do PS PČR v roce 2002 [KSČM's Election Manifesto for the 2002 Election to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic] (2002), available at: <http://www.kscm.cz/index.asp?managepreview=ok&thema=3283&category=&language=1&item=28319>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; KSČM, Naděje pro Českou republiku [Hope for the Czech Republic] (2004), available at: <http://www.kscm.cz/index.asp?thema=2679&category=>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; KSČM, Program KSČM do Poslanecké sněmovny PČR 2006; ODS, Politický program ODS [Political Programme of the ODS] (1995), available at: <http://www.ods.cz/ods_se_predstavuje/program_1995.php>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; ODS, Volební desatero [Electoral Decalogue] (2002), available at: <http://www.ods.cz/docs/programy/program_2002.pdf>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; ODS, Společně pro lepší život. Volební program 2006 [Together for a Better Life: 2006 Election Manifesto] (2006), available at: <http://www.ods.cz/docs/programy/program_2006.pdf>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008; Strana zelených, Volební program 2002 [Green Party Election Programme 2002] (2002), in authors' archive; Strana zelených, Vize ekologické demokracie [Visions of Environmental Democracy] (2003), in authors' archive; Strana zelených, Kvalita života [Green Party: Quality of Life] (2006), available at: <http://www.zeleni.cz/59/rubrika/volebni-program-kvalita-zivota>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008.

Keywords employed for this purpose are as follow: Europe, European, all-European, EU, Union, pro-European, integration, euro, Euroregions, Eurofederalist. Moreover, institutions and actions such as Galileo, eEurope, Europol or European Court of Human Rights are also taken into account.

Jan Zahradil, Národní zájmy v reálném světě [National Interest in the Real World] (2000), available at: <http://www.ods.cz/knihovna/dokument.php?ID=31>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008.

Jan Zahradil, Petr Plecitý, Petr Adrián and Miloslav Bednář, Manifest českého eurorealismu [Manifesto of the Czech Euro-realism] (2001), available at: <http://www.ods.cz/knihovna/dokument.php?ID=11>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008.

ODS, Volební desatero [Electoral Decalogue] (2002).

Frízlová et al., ‘Vliv evropeizace na české politické strany’, p.10.

It is interesting to note that this programme is the oldest of all programmes under consideration; the second oldest is KDU–ČSL's programme from 1997; all others date from well after 2000.

KSČM, Program KSČM do Poslanecké sněmovny PČR 2006.

The 2002 programme assumed a very unusual structure, rejecting the traditional division into topical chapters and presenting instead members of an imaginary family declaring their wishes.

Established in 1998, the other members of the Coalition were ODA, US and DU; it was dissolved in 2002.

However, the most pro-European voices within the Coalition were heard from US.

KDU–ČSL, Volební program [Election Programme] (2006), p.82.

If we measure these values in long-term programmes, we discover that the leader – surprisingly enough – is KSČM (764), closely followed by ČSSD (784), ODS (988), KDU–ČSL (1,118) and the Greens (1,780). While these data are difficult to compare because of dramatically different dates of publication, ranging from 1995 to 2004, the order of parties closely corresponds to that for the 2006 election. Most strikingly, we can see the Green Party, allegedly a strong supporter of the EU, is in all cases saying the least about the EU.

For the purpose of this essay we consider the governments headed by Vladimír Špidla, Stanislav Gross and Jiří Paroubek respectively (all of them are members of ČSSD, period 2002–6). Moreover, we also analyse the government headed by Mirek Topolánek (ODS, established after the 2006 election).

However, all other governments were headed by ČSSD, while that formed after the 2006 election is dominated by ODS.

Frízlová et al., ‘Vliv evropeizace na české politické strany’, p.36.

Dančák and Hloušek, ‘Czech Republic’, pp.213–6.

Thomas Poguntke, Nicholas Aylott, Robert Ladrech and Kurt Richard Luther, ‘The Europeanization of National Party Organizations: A Conceptual Analysis’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.46, No.6 (2007), pp.747–71.

The following text is based on parties' materials (statutes etc.) and on qualitative research undertaken during autumn 2007; this research included structured interviews conducted with Jan Zahradil (ODS), Libor Rouček (ČSSD), David Macek (KDU–ČSL), Ondřej Liška (SZ), and Kateřina Konečná (KSČM).

In the case of ODS, there is no explicit definition of the MEPs' role in the statute: ODS, Stanovy Občanské demokratické strany [Statues of the Social Democratic Party] (2003), available at: <http://www.ods.cz/docs/dokumenty/stanovy_ODS.pdf>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008, p.8. However, at the time of writing, four MEPs were members of the ODS National Executive Board, and Jan Zahradil (chair of the ODS group in the EP) belongs to the ODS National Governing Board. The chair of ODS MEPs belongs ex officio to the governing board (supreme executive body of the party), in a manner similar to the chairs of ODS clubs in the Czech Senate and the House of Deputies.

The Greens, however, subsequently amended the party rules twice (in December 2004 and September 2005): see SZ, Stanovy Strany zelených [Statutes of the Green Party] (2005), available at: <http://www.zeleni.cz/42/clanek/stanovy-strany-zelenych>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008. MEPs who are party members are automatically delegates to the national congress. The question of the influence of ‘European’ delegates is nevertheless only hypothetical because no Green MEP was elected in the 2004 EP elections.

ČSSD, Stanovy České strany sociálně demokratické [Statutes of the Czech Social Democratic Party] (2007), available at: <http://www.cssd.cz/o-nas/Stanovy-CSSD/Stanovy_CSSD_pro_MV_26_4_.pdf>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008, p.15.

KDU–ČSL, Stanovy Křesťanské a demokratické strany – Československé strany lidové [Statute of the Christian and Democratic Union–Czechoslovak People's Party] (2005), available at: <http://www.kdu.cz/videa/Media_11590_2004_1_13_11_31_36.pdf>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008, p.3.

European Commissioner Vladimír Špidla belongs to the ČSSD as well, but he plays no role within the party leadership.

KSČM, Stanovy komunistické strany Čech a Moravy [Statute of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia] (2004), available at: <http://www.kscm.cz/index.asp?thema=2680&category=>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008.

This section is derived from comparative research on new member states' parties within the structures of euro-parties: Vít Hloušek and Petr Kaniok (eds.), Evropské politické strany po východním rozšíření Evropské unie [European Political Parties after the Eastern Expansion of the European Union] (Brno: International Institute of Political Science, 2007).

See Dančák and Hloušek, ‘Czech Republic’, pp.201, 208–10.

ODS is member of the IDU/EDU. Especially in the period before Topolánek took the position of the party leader (2002), there was a strong eurosceptical wing within the ODS represented by, for example, Jan Zahradil. The opinions on the EU presented by these politicians were similar to the stances of British conservatives of the Thatcher era.

Vít Hloušek, Petra Jarošová and Petr Kaniok, ‘Evropská lidová strana (Evropští demokraté)’ [‘European People's Party (European Democrats)’], in Hloušek and Kaniok (eds.), Evropské politické strany, pp.27–52 (p.52).

Tim Haughton, ‘Driver, Conductor or Fellow Passenger? EU Membership and Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe’, in this collection.

Ladislav Cabada, ‘Česká politika a perspektiva evropeizace – několik úvah’ [‘Czech Politics and the Perspective of Europeanization: Some Reflections’], in Břetislav Dančák and Vít Hloušek (eds.), Parlamentní volby 2006 a česká politika [Parliamentary Election in 2006 and Czech Politics] (Brno: MPU MU, 2006), pp.136–44 (pp.141–2).

Ibid.

Paul Lewis's comments on the ‘Beyond Europeanization?’ panel at the European Consortium for Political Research General Conference, Pisa, 6–8 Sept. 2007.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vít Hloušek

Vít Hloušek is Associate Professor in the Department of European Studies and International Relations, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, in Brno, the Czech Republic. He specializes in comparative political science, especially political and party systems in Europe, contemporary history, and the shaping and development of modern mass politics in Central Europe.

Pavel Pšeja

Pavel Pšeja is Assistant Professor at the same institution. His research focuses on party systems and party politics, specifically in Central Europe, and in various issues related to the transition processes in post-communist countries.