Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Story of the Populist Public Affairs Party in the Czech Republic

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Authors	HAVLÍK Vlastimil HLOUŠEK Vít
Year of publication	2014
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	Perspectives on European Politics and Society
MU Faculty or unit	Faculty of Social Studies
Citation
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2014.945254
Field	Political sciences
Keywords	Public Affairs; Czech Republic; election; party system; business-firm party; populism
Description	The 2010 parliamentary election resulted in the unprecedented electoral success of the Public Affairs, the first electorally successful exclusively populist political party in the history of the Czech Republic. The article examines the history, ideological profile and the internal organization of the party and concludes that the success of the party was facilitated by the growing dissatisfaction with the political situation. The VV result also indicates (together with the success of TOP 09 and the drop in electoral support for ODS) that the dynamics of the party system are changing, and that the right-wing/centre part of the political spectrum in the Czech Republic is undergoing restructuring. When assessing the organizational structure of the party, VV can be labelled as an excellent example of business-firm party.
Related projects:	Stranické systémy zemí středovýchodní Evropy Contemporary challenges of democracy in East Central Europe