Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2016, 52(5): 647-678 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2016.52.5.275

Defence, Acquisition or Non-Competition? How Did the Form and Intensity of Czech Party Competition Change between 2006 and 2014?

Lukáš Linek, Roman Chytilek, Otto Eibl

1 Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i, Praha

2 Fakulta sociálních studií, Masarykova univerzita, Brno

This article seeks to examine changes in Czech party competition between 2006 and 2014. Drawing on Sani and Sartori's concept of party competition, it incorporates later findings on the nature of party competition to facilitate the concept's application to fluid party systems. It conceptualises party competition as multi-dimensional and according to the (a) salience the individual dimensions used in this analysis have for political parties and (b) the positions that the parties occupy on these dimensions. It distinguishes three types of relations in party competition - non-competitive, defensive and acquisitive competition - and using data from the Chapel Hill questionnaire survey focuses on three dimensions in Czech party competition: socio-economic, European, and social-liberal/conservative. Special attention is devoted to the competition strategies of individual parties while taking into account the duration of their existence (new vs traditional parties). The findings indicate that the nature of party competition has transformed, as changes have occurred in the intensity of the competition, the salience of the dimensions of the competition, the space of the competition, and how much competition occurs in one dimensions as opposed to another. Consistent with previous studies, the analyses reveal, that most of the competitive relationships (which were primarily defensive in nature) observed in this study occurred in the socioeconomic dimension, but they also show that there is very strong potential for intense party competition to develop in the other two dimensions if they become more salient.

Keywords: party competition, policy space, elections

Published: October 1, 2016Show citation