Parliamentary Elites in Time of Crisis: The Case of Czech Republic

From the very beginning of democratic changes, two types of opposition coexist in the Czech parliament - parties who are temporarily out of power and one party which is permanently excluded from of power (Communist Party). Given the small governing majorities, the result of this setup is a polarized system with divided opposition and weak government scrutiny. The recent experience shows that the parliamentary opposition remains divided, even in the case that both parties are in the same part of political. Prior to EU accession, the governments were able to rely on support of the population for the EU integration and the EU leverage. In time of economic crisis and austerity legislation this has changed. The permanent exclusion of the Communist party – whose electoral support is stable over time – forced the opposition to choose between cooperating with the weak governing majority for the nation´s sake in order to influence the direction of economic politics, or undermining the already fragile government. The result is the inability of the Czech governments to perform key reforms and, more importantly, the lack of political consensus on the general direction of the country’s economy and welfare basis. Based on a large volume of original data on voting behaviour in the Czech parliament in the period between 2003 and 2013, we will analyse the dynamics of Czech opposition both prior and during the economic crisis. This offers us a unique opportunity to analyse the degree to which the behaviour of parliamentary opposition changed.