The Reconfiguration of Political Landscape - Explaining Independent Candidates Lists in Elections to Municipal Councils in the Czech Republic

The project focuses on an alternative form of representation on the local level which are independent (local) lists (ILLs). ILLs have been part of many established democracies as well as of new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe for some time, but their importance has grown in the last decade significantly. The success of ILLs is leading to a reconfiguration of the

political landscape. The project aims to answer the question of whether ILLs are a symptom of a crisis of representative democracy or a sign for a healthy bot-tom-up democratic renewal

beyond the existing system of party politics in the Czech Republic. To answer this question, the project will: 1) map the vote share of ILLs in the last three municipal elections in the CR; 2) develop a frame of analysis for explaining the vote share of ILLs (independent and control factors); 3) scrutinize the background and factors, in which ILLs flourish; 4) apply the framework and test, which fac-tors or combinations of factors explain the vote share of ILLs.