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7 - Building Democratic Values in the Czech Republic since 1989

from Part Three - Central Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2019

By
Carol Skalnik Leff
Edited by
Sabrina P. Ramet  and
Christine M. Hassenstab
Sabrina P. Ramet
Affiliation:
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim
Christine M. Hassenstab
Affiliation:
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim
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Summary

Despite its emergence from one of the more repressive communist states, and the prompt dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992, the new Czech Republic successfully democratized, marketized, and integrated into the complex of European institutions. In 2017, the Czech year-end growth rate of 5.5 percent led the OECD countries in Eastern Europe, and the Bertelsman Transformation index of 2018 ranked the Czech Republic as the leading consolidated democracy and market economy of the 129 countries ranked. This performance, however, masks some significant unresolved problems. This chapter explores the evolution of the Czech post-communist regime in three stages. The first part unpacks some important historical legacies of the multiple regimes the Czech Republic experienced in the twentieth century – parliamentary democracy in the interwar First Republic, the Nazi protectorate in World War Two, and the communist state. Attention then turns to the institutional framework for democratic decision-making. The final step is to analyze the broad political process under this system, emphasizing some of the distinctive dynamics that have created accountability problems in Czech politics and left some key problems still to resolve, not least the Czech version of Europe’s populist nationalist problem.

Keywords

CzechoslovakiaCzech Republichistorical legaciesminoritiessecularismparty systemcoalition-buildingleadershippopulismEuroskepticism
Type
Chapter
Information
Central and Southeast European Politics since 1989 , pp. 165 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Further Reading

Deegan-Krause, Kevin. Elected Affinities: Democracy and party competition in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Demetz, Peter. Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the life of a European city (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997).Google Scholar
Golan, Galia. The Czechoslovak Reform Movement: Communism in crisis, 1962–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
Golan, Galia. Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia: The Dubček era, 1968–1969 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).Google Scholar
Holy, Ladislav. The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation: National identity and the post-communist transformation of society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leff, Carol Skalnik. National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: The making and remaking of a state (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Kieran. The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak politics 1968–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

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