Czech Journal of Political Science

Under Pressure: The 2025 General Election in the Czech Republic

2026-08-20T15:13:44+02:00

This article discusses the context and the results of the 2025 general election in the Czech Republic. It stresses the importance of the change of the contextual conditions including the new geopolitical situation after the Russian invasion to Ukraine and linked it to the domestic political outcomes. It concludes that the economic impact of the invasion (rise of inflation and pressures in the energy supply) fuelled growing discontent in the Czech society that helped the electoral success of populist political parties and subsequent formation of the populist government. Furthermore, the text analyses the electoral results, pointing to the uneven rise in electoral turnout and the change in the distribution of support among the political parties. ). Electoral turnout increase was primarily concentrated in socioeconomically vulnerable municipalities characterized by higher shares of primary-educated voters and elevated unemployment rates. The electoral results confirmed a progressive deepening of spatial polarization and reveal a clear pattern of territorial sorting among established political blocs (populist vs anti-populist). This divide was manifested along three dimensions: the classic urban-rural cleavage, the centrum-periphery axis, and a widening structural divergence between lagging, post-industrial regions and economically resilient and richer territories. The pattern aligns with broader European dynamics regarding the “geography of discontent” where regional economic stagnation and peripheralization foster distinct party alignments.

Czechia in First Place? Foreign and European Policy Narratives in the 2025 Elections

2026-02-19T15:18:20+01:00

The article examines the politicisation of foreign and European policy in the 2025 Czech parliamentary elections through an analysis of party narratives articulated in electoral manifestos and campaign discourse. The 2025 campaign was marked by a deliberate effort of incumbent parties to increase its salience and to frame geopolitical orientation and EU membership as existential choices. Building on the literature on the Europeanisation of Czech foreign policy and on party-based foreign policy narratives, the study analyses manifestos of all parliamentary parties (ANO, AUTO, Pirates, SPD, STAN, and Together) and one relevant extra-parliamentary actor (Enough!). Using a qualitative narrative approach, the article identifies dominant narrative patterns and maps their alignment with established ideational strands such as liberal internationalism, sovereigntism, Euro-optimism, and Euroscepticism. The findings demonstrate a clear incumbents–opposition divide. Government parties articulated coherent internationalist and Euro-optimist narratives, combining Europeanist and Atlanticist trajectories, whereas opposition parties offered more heterogeneous but generally reactive and Eurosceptic visions. The article contributes to comparative research on the domestic politicisation of foreign policy and the role of party narratives in structuring electoral competition.

Historical Narratives in the 2025 Czech Parliamentary Election Campaign: Strategic Mobilisation and Moral Polarisation

2026-06-09T08:50:45+02:00

This article examines how historical narratives were mobilised in televised pre-election debates preceding the 2025 Czech parliamentary election and what political functions they performed within electoral competition. Drawing on theories of memory politics, symbolic politics, populist communication, and framing, the study conceptualises references to the past as strategic discursive instruments shaping contemporary political conflict. The analysis is based on a qualitative discourse analysis of debates broadcast by major Czech media outlets during the 2025 campaign.The findings demonstrate that history functioned primarily as a mechanism of emotional and moral mobilisation. Political actors framed issues such as migration, relations with the European Union, democracy, and national identity through analogies to normatively charged historical experiences, particularly the communist regime, the democratic breakthrough of 1989, and the Soviet invasion of 1968. Four dominant mechanisms were identified: analogical comparison, warnings against repeating past mistakes, the heroisation of democratic milestones, and relativising reinterpretations of historical parallels. These strategies moralised electoral competition and intensified value-based polarisation by transforming programmatic disagreements into existential conflicts over the direction of the state.

Online Campaigning For All? Mapping The Digital Infrastructure Of The Czech Party System During The 2025 Electoral Campaign

2026-06-09T08:38:14+02:00

This innovative article maps the digital infrastructure of the nine main parties in the Czech party system – ODS, KDU-CSU, TOP09 (all part of SPOLU), ANO, STAN, Pirates, SPD, Motorists and Stačilo! – in the month preceding the 2025 general election. By digital infrastructure we mean their formalized online presence over a range of online platforms, websites, and social media portals. Methodologically, this article performs qualitative coding for eight analytical categories, looking at these parties not only through their main pages, but also through the digital platforms of their best-known politicians and a sample of local/regional branches. By performing this mapping, we reconstructed the main features in their political communication and messaging towards the electorate at large. What the data reveals is the degree of personalism, professionalism, negative messaging, and issues of focus of the different parties and their candidates. Coming now to the research question, we wanted to investigate the degree of variation between parties in the level of development of their digital infrastructure and in their style of “platform politics” and see if we could find patterns between parties according to their characteristics. To do so, we formulated a series of clear hypotheses expecting the effect of party type, electoral size, internal centralization, and incumbency on the digital infrastructure of Czech parties. The findings do not fully support our expectations but point to a crisis of traditional parties in building digital infrastructures, and a partial success for some of the new parties. Overall, this article promises to change our way of thinking about the online presence of Czech political parties.

Pre-electoral Alliances in the Czech Parliamentary Elections of 2025: Patterns, Motivations and Electoral Effects

2026-02-18T14:59:21+01:00

Electoral alliances¹ have become a significant feature of recent parliamentary elections and of the broader development of Czech politics. Political parties increasingly use pre-electoral cooperation as a response to growing fragmentation of voter preferences and as a strategy to overcome institutional constraints of the electoral system, particularly the electoral threshold. This study analyses open and hidden pre-electoral alliances competing in the 2025 elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic and examines their effects on parliamentary representation. Methodologically, it combines qualitative analysis of alliance agreements and candidate lists with quantitative evaluation of electoral results. The analysis focuses on three dimensions: (a) a typology of alliances based on their electoral effects (sub-additive, additive, and super-additive); (b) the structural characteristics of alliances and the motivations of political actors to cooperate prior to elections; and (c) the success of candidates from individual political parties within joint candidate lists. The study contributes to understanding pre-electoral alliance behaviour in a fragmented party system.

Neither Realigning nor Maintaining Election: Czech Party System and the 2025 General Election

2026-04-08T12:05:22+02:00

Since the 2010 critical election, the Czech party system has undergone a significant transformation. Given that the party system stability is a core variable for contemporary comparative politics research, the proposed case study aims to explore the results of the 2025 general election within the framework of the recent dynamics of Czech party politics. To this end, the single-country case study focuses on both the electoral and parliamentary arena, and employs a multi-component conceptualisation of party system dynamics, encompassing well-established indicators such as party system continuity, effective number of parties, party system volatility, and electoral polarisation, but also in terms of the party system format and its change. The study concludes that, notwithstanding the results of the 2025 general election, which suggests signs of continuity rather than discontinuity in the trajectories of Czech party politics, the election cannot be considered either a realigning, or a maintaining contest.

Back to Class? Changing Effects of Class on Party Choice in the Czech Republic between 1992 and 2025

2026-02-18T14:45:30+01:00

This paper focuses on the role of social class in shaping party choice in the 2025 Czech parliamentary elections and situates these findings within a broader longitudinal comparison covering the period from 1990 to 2025. Using post-election survey data from ten national elections, we analyze the relationship between social class and party choice through multinomial regression models and summary indices of class voting. The study addresses two main research questions. First, it investigates whether class voting declined during the 2010s in connection with the rise of new political parties and whether it re-emerged in recent elections. Second, it examines the extent to which new parties have absorbed the electorates of traditional parties and reshaped class-based patterns of electoral support. The findings contribute to debates on dealignment and realignment by assessing whether the transformation of the Czech party system led to a weakening of class–party linkages or to their reconfiguration. Overall, the paper provides the most comprehensive longitudinal account of class voting in the Czech Republic to date and offers new insights into the changing social foundations of party competition in a volatile political context.

From City Hall to Parliament: Electoral Performance of Mayors in the 2025 Czech General Election

2026-02-19T10:53:43+01:00

This article examines the electoral performance of mayors in the 2025 Czech general election, focusing on candidates from parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies. Amid the growing personalisation of politics, mayors are often seen as valuable assets to party lists due to their local visibility and perceived competence. Using a dataset of 2,052 candidates, we compare the electoral performance of mayors and deputy mayors against other high-status professions (medical doctors, lawyers, teachers) and incumbent MPs. Methodologically, the study employs a probit model to estimate the probability of election and quantile regression to analyse preferential vote gains relative to ballot position.

The results confirm that, while mayors possess a statistically significant electoral advantage over the average candidate, they do not outperform medical doctors or incumbent MPs. The analysis further reveals significant variations across political parties and regions. While the STAN movement fielded the most mayors, their individual electoral impact was often surpassed by that of other professionals within the party. Conversely, the populist ANO movement successfully leveraged deputy mayors. The findings suggest that while municipal experience remains a key recruitment channel, the "mayoral bonus" is not limitless.

No Quotas, Just Circles: Institutional and Electoral Dynamics Behind the Rise of Women in the 2025 Czech Elections

2026-02-18T14:52:37+01:00

The 2025 Czech parliamentary elections produced the highest share of women in the history of the Chamber of Deputies, despite the absence of legislated gender quotas. This article investigates the institutional and electoral mechanisms behind this increase, focusing on the interaction between candidate supply and preference voting. Using a counterfactual decomposition and candidate-level data, the study demonstrates that the rise in women’s representation was driven by both changes in party nomination strategies and voter-induced reordering of candidate lists. While improvements in candidate supply account for part of the increase, preference voting played a substantial and causally identifiable role. Importantly, the effects of preference voting were not uniform across parties or regions, but highly concentrated within specific political contexts. A comparison with the 2021 elections reveals that the 2025 outcome represents not merely a continuation of earlier trends but a structural shift in how preference voting translates into gendered representation. The findings contribute to the broader literature on open-list systems and gender representation by showing that preference voting can function as a selective and context-dependent mechanism of gender redistribution.