The consolidation of centre-right parties in the Czech Republic as an issue for comparative analysis

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 un- expected outcomes of early post-transition politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Many com- mentators 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 Demo- cratic 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, contribut- ing both to stable broader pattern of centre-right politics and the wider consolidation of the Czech party system. Rather than providing a narrative overview of the development of Czech centre-right parties or considering its “unexpected” character (for my own attempts to address this see Hanley 2007), this paper reflects upon the question of the Czech centre-right’s stabili- zation, reviewing how existing literature has addressed this issue and considering what future directions might be open to researchers. The paper considers three principal sets of issues: • The extent to which centre-right parties in the Czech Republic have undergone patterns and processes of consolidation distinct from general processes of party (system) con- solidation in the country. • The extent to which centre-right parties in the Czech Republic have undergone patterns and processes of consolidation distinct from comparable cases in the Central and East European region and beyond. • The extent to which research on the Czech centre-right might make a broader theoreti- cal and comparative contribution to the literature on parties. In doing so, I am guided by the view that single country studies, however theoretically informed and empirically rich they might be, must be explicitly integrated into a comparative perspective that goes beyond a mere juxtaposition of national cases. As Kitschelt (2006) ar- gues, when this not undertaken – or is undertaken inadequately – such approaches risk degen- erating into mere “story-telling” and have limited (and decreasing) intellectual impact (Lees 2007; see also van Biezen and Carmani 2006).