Comparative analysis of the political parties and the party systems: the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Résumé du document

Although sharing institutions for over seventy years, and the transition pathways from communism, the two successor states of the former Czechoslovakia have faced different challenges in the state-building process and adopted distinct economic policies over the past thirteen years since Slovakia became an independent state in 1993. At first sight, the two countries share seemingly similar political context and social and economic structures. Formerly parts of the communist bloc, both countries have undergone a difficult period of economic and political transformation in the early 90s and developed, literally from scratch, new institutions and political parties. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have also shared the same political goals in the past years ; the candidacy for the European Union and for the NATO, stabilization of the state-economy as well as shaking off the corruption have become the priorities of the countries on the long term. However, after a careful analysis we come to the conclusion that there exists a deep gap between the party systems as well as between the voters' alignment in the two states.

Extraits

[...] In the Czech Republic, the major party to emerge from the ‘Civic Forum' was the ‘Civic Democratic Party' a largely neo-liberal movement under the leadership of Vaclav Klaus. Another party to share the objectives of marketization and privatization was the ‘Civic Democratic Alliance'. Opposed to these right-wing parties emerged other political formations, the ‘Social Democratic Party' comprised of reformed communists and the ‘Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia' comprised of former communists. The bipolarisation of the political landscape reflects the major cleavages that appeared capital during the transformation period in the Czech Republic: pro- and anti- liberal division and attitude towards the Western involvement. [...]

[...] The political orientation of the local parties will be then studied in the second part of this analysis. Finally, in the third part, we will try to give an overview of the parties' attitudes towards the EU enlargement and the accession of Turkey to the European Union The Structuring of the Political Cleavages in the Czech Republic and Slovakia Identifying and explaining the structure of political cleavages and ideological conflicts is a crucial element to understand the orientation of the voters towards distinct political parties. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, even this party was recently discredeted by financial scandals at the uppermost level of its representation as well as by its close ties to the ‘Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia' and, though maintaining its tenure, the party is not expected to win the upcoming elections in June 2006. An interesting position is held by the ‘Christian Democratic Movement'. Unlike other parties situated at the centre-right side of the political sphere that did not succeed to preserve its electorate[2], this party, despite having integrated both the right-wing government and the left-wing government in the past years, continues to keep the mainstay of its voters. As to the extremist parties, both on the left- and the right-wing, their partisanship have progressively developed. [...]

[...] To conclude this part, we have seen that despite years of common historical experience and continuing similarities in their political institutions, patterns of political division in the Czech Republic and Slovakia differ systematically in regard to the political cleavages as well as to the positioning of the parties towards these divisions. In the Czech Republic, the economic issues emerge as a central component of the ideological structuring of party divisions, whereas in Slovakia ethnic question together with the definition of the state borders are most closely related to party divisions. [...]

[...] Again, we can say that the formation of the Slovak parties responded to the divisions in the society and to the major cleavages present in the country. However, the quickly changing circonstances in terms of economic and social development in both countries have largely reversed the choices of the electorate in the past years. Due to the new political and economic context, some parties have adopted different attitudes, some parties have dissapeared from the political landscape or their elites have transformed and reapperead under a new political dress. [...]