The elections to the Chamber of Deputies in October 2017 were a turning point for the Czech Pirate Party (called "Piráti"). It was the first time since establishing the party in 2009 that the Pirates entered the lower house of the Czech Parliament. They took the third place with 10.79 % votes and won 22 seats out of 200. Their main programme points came out of typical "pirate policies" like control of power and the powerful ones, simplification of the running of the state through technology, protection of citizens from bullying and defence of freedom as well as basic Pirate principles including liberalism and direct democracy. Their programme was called "New Ideas for the New Age". From a different view, this party presented itself as a watchdog of democracy and as an alternative mostly for liberal voters. This qualitative case study will provide a complex overview of the Pirate phenomenon in the Czech Republic from their establishment to their current role of an opposition party. This article aims to show and describe how the position of the Czech Pirates has varied over time. For this purpose, open data from the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) and the findings from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) dataset will be used. It is possible to say that the Pirates are playing the role of newcomers in the Chamber of Deputies after the 2017 elections, but they are not newcomers in the Czech party system.
The emergence and success of new political parties are one of the typical reflections of the dynamics of party system development. This phenomenon can also be observed in the context of gradual changes in the Slovak party system. Within it, the tension between established and new entities is evident and continuously transforms the overall character of political competition. The crisis of political elites and trust in political parties went along hand in hand with this process. This situation was an excellent starting point for new players. This qualitatively oriented comparative case study focuses on selected political entities of the Slovak party system that managed to succeed in the first-order elections, namely: Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), Ordinary People (OĽaNO), the Slovak Conservative Party (SIEŤ) and We Are Family. These parties are analysed in the context of theoretical approaches to studying new political parties. For this study, Alan Sikk’s concept of novelty, based on Paul Lucardie’s findings, was successfully used in other cases. This concept sets forth four ideal types of new political parties: prolocutors, purifiers, prophets and the project of newness. The results of the analysis have shown that, despite the possible difficulties of the chosen approach, the selected new entities could be contextually mapped and compared in the respective categories. All of the analysed subjects of significant success achieved it progressively, and each of the parties was in principle oriented differently. The role of leaders was an essential connecting feature. Some identical profile characteristics can be found among these new and successful entities.
New political parties can be essential holders of party systems' change. A lot of scholars underline this reality. In fact, it is often not enough only to establish a new political subject. There is a significant relationship between a new party emergence and the subsequent electoral success, which is often an overlooked research dimension. This article intends to focus on the most important features narrowly connected with new political parties' study approaches. There is no concurrence on what a new political party exactly is. It is possible to find a whole range of high -quality based articles exploring newness in a current or recent state of knowledge. Despite it, this research still has several substantial doubts about this question. Examples of Czech political parties that have been successful in the first -order elections (FOE) and where the problematic aspects of their declared novelty can be traced will be compared here. The evidence of complexity pertaining to this phenomenon is obvious: every political party is new in the moment of its formation in reality, but on the other hand not every political party is new regarding an appropriate theoretical concept. This empirical base shows that declared novelty can be rather more a tool of broader communication and image strategy than a real indisputable party attribute. Dawn -Dawn of Direct Democracy (Úsvit přímé demokracie) FOE -first -order elections KDU -ČSL -Christian and Democratic Union -Czechoslovak People's Party (Křesťanská a demokratická unie -Československá strana lidová) KSČM -Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy) LIDEM -Liberal Democracy (Liberální demokracie) MS Piráti -Moravian and Silesian Pirate Party (Moravská a Slezská pirátská strana) ODA -Civic Democratic Alliance (Občanská demokratická aliance) ODS -Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana) PP -Czech Pirate Party (Česká pirátská strana) PRO2016 -Political movement PRO 2016 (Politické hnutí PRO 2016) SPD -Freedom and Direct Democracy -Tomio Okamura (Svoboda a přímá demokracie -Tomio Okamura) STAN -Mayors and Independents (Starostové a nezávislí) SZ -Green Party (Strana zelených)
This article aims to analyse changes of the Slovak party system from 1992 to the last parliamentary elections of 2020. These elections were the eighth elections in the history of independent Slovakia. There are discussions about stability or instability of individual development stages of the party system. In the article, Attention is paid to changes in the distribution of forces within the development of the party system. In political science, various methods are used to measure the party system’s dynamics to determine the intensity of changes and the trends arising from them. This analysis is based on election results in each electoral cycle (period), which are being compared. Next part of the analysis is focused on the selected comparative indicators: Index of the Effective Number of Parties and Aggregation Index. These indices are chosen based on the criteria of classification of party systems. The results presented in the final part of the paper prove that several significant milestones in development of party system could be identified, as confirmed by the 2020 general elections – a major breakthrough in development trends.
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