Stable or not? Patterns of party system dynamics and the rise of the new political parties in the Czech Republic.

• Author: Havlik, Vlastimil
• Position: Report

Introduction

The Czech party system has been considered among the most stable in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, mainly due to the fact that the number; identity; and electoral support for relevant parties have remained comparatively constant. As such, it represented a remarkable exception in the post-communist context; that is, until the 2010 election of the Chamber of Deputies, which broke with the aforementioned trend (cf. Haughton et al. 2011, Sedo 2011). Not only did the support for the two largest parties decline to a historical low, but for the first time since its inception in 1919, the Christian and Democratic Union-Czechoslovak People's Party (KDU-CSL) lost representation in the Chamber of Deputies (previously the National and Federal Assemblies, and the Czech National Council). Furthermore, two new political parties, TOP 09 and Public Affairs (VV), entered the parliament. The electoral disappointment for the Green Party, which failed to cross the electoral threshold, was another discontinuity with the results of the 2006 election. The 2013 general election followed the path made by the previous electoral contest: the support of the once biggest parties dropped again and two new parties--the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens 2011 (ANO) and the Dawn of Direct Democracy crossed the electoral threshold, gaining together more than one quarter of votes. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the development trends in the Czech party system, using selected methods of assessing party system dynamics, and to point out some specifics of Czech party politics and answer the following research question: how and why has the Czech party system changed in recent years? It will do so in the wider context of the theoretical discussion about party system change and the endeavours to conceptualise it in order to describe the dynamics of the Czech party politics. Additionaly, reasons for the rise of new political parties will be discussed and apply in order to explain the recent changes of the party system in the Czech Republic.

The results show that the party system in the Czech Republic can be no longer considered as a stable party system since both the number and electoral support of political parties and level of openness of the party system have changed dramatically in recent years. Moreover, these changes can be accounted for the combination of political and economic crises that struck the Czech Republic in recent years.

Volatility and party system institutionalization: different dimensions of party system stability

Issues of party system stability and dynamics have firmly established themselves in the study of party politics over recent decades. Party system stability is often thought to indicate the quality or consolidation of democracy (e.g. Jones 2012). Scholarly interest in party systems stability has also increased in connection with the emergence of new democracies (e.g. Jiglau & Gherghina 2011), particularly the transitions and transformations of Central and Eastern European political regimes during the 1990s. A few rare exceptions aside, the post-communist party systems have become bywords for instability, especially so when compared with their Western European counterparts.

When studying party system dynamics, the crucial question of the subject of study arises. Does the party system stability stem from a change of electoral support of individual political parties (i.e. from the level of volatility, see below) or should it be seen as an expression of dynamics of political parties' interactions? To make it more confusing, several scholars use political parties stability and party system stability interchangably or claim that party system stability is dependent on stability of individual political parties (Meleshevich, 2007). Consequently, a complex analysis of dynamics of party politics in a particular country demands a researcher to be focused on the two more or less separate dimensions: (1) political parties as individual actors and (2) character of interactions among them.

The first dimension has been well covered by a bunch quantitave studies using various ways of measurement of number of political parties and changes of their electoral support by studying volatility as the most widely applied approach. The overall level of volatility expresses the aggregated level of change of electoral support of political parties in a completion in the two subsequent elections and results from the three following sources: 1) change in electoral support due to the preferences of voters participating in both subsequent elections, 2) change in electorate composition (loss of electorate, new voters, changes in voter turnout), and 3) change in the supply of political parties standing for the election (some parties might not stand; new parties might enter the competition; electoral coalitions could appear or transform themselves--Birch 2003: 121). The chief problem connected with studying volatility is that it is often incorrectly interpreted as indicating individual shifts in the electorate, even though the data has been aggregated to the overall level of support for individual political parties (e.g. Birch 2003, Tavits 2005). Therefore, volatility is 'merely' the sum of changes in electoral support for political parties between two subsequent elections, and cannot be interpreted as indicating change in the electoral behaviour of individual voters, even though statistical tests exist that point out the closeness of aggregated and individual change of electoral behaviour (e.g. Bartolini, Mair 1990). The basic calculation of volatility was set by Mogens Pedersen (1979) and modified by others who tried to reflect different sources of volatility (for more details see below).

Undoubtedly, the change of electoral support of individual political parties is an important feature of dynamics of party politics. On the other hand, stable electoral support of political parties does not tell us much about stability of interactions among them. Therefore, assessing dynamics of a party system solely on volatility would mean to miss the more important aspect of functioning of a party system. As Peter Mair put it, the core feature of a party system stability lies in predictability of interactions among political parties in the system (Mair 2001, see also Casal Bertoa 2014). In recent years, party system stability has been increasingly equaled with the concept of party system institutionalization (PSI) which dates back to the seminal work by Mainwaring and Scully (1995). We stick to the definition of PSI as ,,the process by which the patterns of interaction among political parties become routine, predictable, and stable over time" (Mair 2001, Bakke, Sitter 2005, see also Casal Bertoa 2014). PSI thus leaves the perspective of electoral performance of individual political parties and moves to the systemic and interactive aspect of party system dynamics.

In addition to research on volatility, several tools for measuring fragmentation of party systems have been developed. A prominent position within this type of research was captured by so-called number of effective parties. The idea behind this measure is to count parties and, at the same time, to weight the count by their relative strength. The relative strength refers to their vote share ("effective number of electoral parties") or seat share in the parliament ("effective number of parliamentary parties"). The number of parties equals the effective number of parties only when all parties have equal strength. In any other case, the effective number of parties is lower than the actual number of parties (Laakso, Taagepera 1979).

Volatility, PSI and measures of fragmentation of party systems will be used to analyse the development of party dynamics of party politics in the Czech Republic as they are able to capture different dimensions of its stability and change.

Data and methods

In order to answer the research question defined in the introduction of the article, we will analyze the two key aspects which are decisive for assessing the party system dynamics: (1) the change of electoral support of political parties; (2) the interactions among the parties referring to the level of institutionalization of the Czech party system.

To quantitatively measure the changes of the electoral support of political parties, we count the level of volatility by using the index constructed by Mogens Pedersen in his seminal work (Pedersen 1979). The formula of the Pedersen Index is as follows:

Volatility = [[summation].sup.n.sub.i = 1][absolute value of [p.sub.it] - [p.sub.i(t + 1)]]/2

where n is the number of parties, and p represents the percentage of votes received by that party in time periods t and t + 1.

In addition to measurement of the overall level of volatility, it will be useful to identify the changes cause by the entrance of new political parties and by exit of the old ones. The different dynamics of the results achieved by established and new political parties have been emphasised by Mainwaring, Gervasoni and Espana-Najera (2010), who have defined within-system and extra-system volatility. The analysis of the different types of volatility should express the different dynamics which attach to the frequent successes of new or young parties, as opposed to that occurring when electoral support merely shifts between the established actors (Mainwaring et al. 2010: 3). Powell and Tucker (2013) have likewise distinguished two types of volatility. Whereas Type B volatility refers, in their interpretation, to shifts of electorates between existing political parties, (3) Type A volatility corresponds to the electoral gains of new political parties, or to the decline of electoral success of those parties which had previously gained parliamentary representation but are not standing for the present election. According to Powell and Tucker, the Type A volatility better reflects party...