Hanley, SL; (2010) The consolidation of centre-right parties in the Czech Republic as an issue for comparative analysis. Politologicky casopis - Czech Journal of Political Science , XVII (2) 115 - 132.

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Abstract

The emergence of strong parties of the centre-right in the Czech Republic in the early 1990s of a predominantly neo-liberal or “liberal conservative” orientation was one of the more unexpected outcomes of early post-transition politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Many commentators had assumed that Czech(oslovak) party system would be shaped by what they took to be) the country’s “social democratic tradition” or cultural proximity to the social market economies such as Austria or Germany. A centre-right bloc, if it emerged at all, was expected, to be Christian Democratic in character. Such expectations were rapidly confounded by the formation and rise of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in 1990–1 which, as academic observers more correctly anticipated, became one of the most electorally successful and enduring party formations in the region. This article reflects upon the question of the Czech centre-right’s stabilization, reviewing how existing literature has addressed this issue and considering what future directions might be open to researchers. It focuses on three sets of issues: 1) Czech centre-right parties’ patterns and processes of consolidation as distinct from general processes of party (system) consolidation; 2) Czech centre-right parties’ patterns and processes of consolidation as distinct from comparable parties in Central and East European; 3) how research on the Czech centre-right might make a broader theoretical and comparative contribution to the literature on parties.

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