BETWEEN THE NATIONAL AND
7.1 The national context 1 The representative model
Czechia is a parliamentary democracy with a bicameral parliament. The parliament holds the legislative power according to the Constitution, even though other political actors (such as the
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government or the regional assemblies) may also submit bills. The lower chamber, the Chamber of Deputies (hereafter the Chamber), consists of 200 members, and the upper chamber (the Senate) consists of 81 Senators. Multiple asymmetries between the two chambers exist. Some of them have been already enshrined in the Constitution, such as the stronger powers of the lower chamber when bills are being adopted since an absolute majority of deputies in the Chamber can overrule a negative Senate vote on a bill. Other asymmetries are, however, a consequence of the historical evolution of the two chambers as the first election of the Senate took place only seven years after the Velvet Revolution, and the Senate is repeatedly attacked as a useless but expensive institution.
Since the birth of Czechia in 1993, the country has had a total of 15 governments. Out of these, three were caretaker governments (January-July 1998, May 2009-July 2010, and July 2013-January 2014). Three minority governments were approved in confidence votes (1996-98, 1998-2002, and the current government) and a further government relied on exactly one half of the deputies (2007- 09). Interestingly, all three of the minority governments were marked by concerns about backsliding from democracy as the normal functioning of the opposition was weakened. In particular, the period of the so-called Opposition Agreement between the Civic Democrats and the Social Democrats (1998-2002) is widely considered a period of non-transparent decision-making and deterioration in democratic standards.1
If one puts aside the caretaker governments and those that failed to pass the motion of confidence, altogether ten regular governments have ruled the country. Out of those, six remained in power for more than two years and only four remained in place until the date of the regular parliamentary election. Having said this, some of the governments formally fell, but the same party (the Social Democrats) continued as the strongest coalition member
1 The time of this Opposition Agreement was marked by a number of
irregularities of both a political and an economic nature. Allegations were widespread about burgeoning corruption, with prominent large-scale investments being allocated without transparent tenders and with dubious results. The Opposition Agreement led to a substantial decrease of overall trust in politics on the part of the public (cf. https://interaktivni. rozhlas.cz/data/volby-historie/1998_opozicni_smlouva/).
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several times. For instance, although there were four consecutive prime ministers (PMs) from July 1998 to September 2006, all four were members of the Social Democrats. In this sense, the stability of government was somewhat lower than that in Germany and comparable to that in Poland, but still better than that in Italy or France.
Basically, from the very birth of the independent Czech Republic in 1993, the model of coalition-building always revolved around the two strongest parties – the right-wing Civic Democratic Party and the left-wing Social Democratic Party. Thesetwo parties commonly needed additional coalition partners, usually from the political centre. Typically, the centrist Christian Democrats supplied the necessary votes. The dominance of the two biggest parties remained unchallenged for a long period of time: until the end of 2017 all PMs (except for the caretaker ones) were members of either one or the other party. However, the situation has changedover the last decade with a series of new, supposedly ‘non-elite’ or even ‘non-political’ parties/movements emerging and gaining substantial electoral support. Their key argument was that they do not conduct politics, do not belong to the old political elite and instead focus on practical things that have to be done. Finally, the most recent product of this development was the billionaire and former finance minister Andrej Babiš forming his government in late 2017, thus definitively ending the alternation of power between the Civic and Social Democrats.
7.1.2
Political cleavages
Political cleavages playan important role, especiallyas the notion of a consensual policymaking has never been strong in Czech politics. However, the right-left cleavage
or the triangle of liberalism-socialism- conservatism seems to be less useful in the Czech context. Instead, the current wave of populism is so strong as to replace traditional cleavages with new distinctions such as the elites vs. the ordinary people or politicians vs. those who ‘really work’.
Populism is now so strong as to replace traditional cleavages with new distinctions, such as the elites vs. the
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A recently instrumentalised cleavage is thatbetween Prague and the rest of the country. As artificial as this division is, it has become a powerful motto of the populist movements whose members often launch diatribes against the “Prague café intellectuals” who are supposedly detached from the concerns of real people in the countryside. Behind this split lies the deeper problem of the stark socio-economic disparities that plague some regions. In spite of all its economic success, Czechia has a disproportionately high share of people who are caught in debt traps and almost ten percent of the adult population are burdened by seizure orders.
This also explains the paradox of the dissatisfaction of large swaths of the population at the time of an economic boom. The country has been growing with impressive speed, with average wages rising faster than expected, and unemployment remaining the lowest in the EU. However, those faced with seizure orders remained largely untouched by the positive changes as their income could be legally re-channelled to debt settlement. To make things worse, these forgotten citizens were also those most likely to be affected by the robotisation of industrial production, which constitutes a disproportionately large share of the economy.
In a development similar to that in other parts of Europe, the language of dissatisfaction has taken on a pronouncedly identitarian aspect. As a result, even economic concerns are often expressed in the language of cultural difference(“Muslim refugees taking our jobs”, “gender ideology of the rich liberals in Prague”, etc.). Although the religious dividehad been fairly marginal for a long time, it has recently re-emerged as the Czech Catholic Church seems to have become a haven for the most conservative, homophobic, anti-EU, and counter-emancipatory elements in the society. Hence, religious language is often used by religious leaders to justify the refusal to accept refugees, or to attack “perverse gender ideology”. In this respect, it does not make sense to differentiate between socio-economic and cultural/religious factors, as the latter are used to exploit the problems directly related to the former.
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7.1.3
Instruments to scrutinise the executive
The Constitution gives the parliament strong powers to control the government. Among the many instruments for this, three stand out: votes of confidence and no confidence,
investigating commissions, and parliamentary interpellations of government members.
The most important of these are the vote of confidence and the vote of no confidence. Every new government has to go before the lower chamber of the parliament, asking for their confidence (article 68). Several governments in recent history have
not received the confidence of the Chamber (such as the government of Jiří Rusnok and the first government of Andrej Babiš). However, asthe Constitution does not set precise time limits for steps after the failure of a vote of confidence, policymakers, in particular President Miloš Zeman, have experimented with maintaining governments without parliamentary confidence in office. The complementary instrument is the vote of no-confidence (article 72). However, this instrument is used rarely. In fact, only one government fell following a vote of noconfidence (the government of Mirek Topolánek in 2009). While the no confidence vote is regularly invoked by the parliamentarians, it is typically called for by opposition deputies who lack the sufficient numbers.
Another tool of parliamentary control available to parliamentarians is the investigating commission, which may be established if at least forty deputies agree on itscreation(article 30). Investigating commissions have been established frequently, over 20of them in the last 25 years. Most focus on economic matters and the involvement of political actors. In the last ten years, however, the commissions have also increasingly started to investigate issues related to the police and the prosecutor’s office, which indicates that there is a worrying development towards more attacks on the independence of these vital institutions.
The third important instrument is the possibility of interpellations. Article 38 of the Constitutionstates that
The Constitution gives the parliament strong powers to
control the government, of which three stand out: votes
of confidence and no confidence, investigating commissions, and parliamentary interpellations of government members.
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members of the government are obliged to appear in person at a meeting of the Chamber, if it so resolves. The same applies to meetings of committees, commissions, or investigating commissions, in which case, however, a member of the government may have a deputy or another member of the government to appear in his stead if his personal participation has not been explicitly demanded. Article 53adds that
each Deputy has the right to interpellate the government or members of it concerning matters within their competence (...) Interpellated members of the government shall respond to an interpellation within thirty days of its submission.
As a result, members of the government have long tried to avoid oral interpellations, instead opting for the less confrontational written replies to interpellations. Their practical impact in the form of direct interactions between the deputies and the ministers is thus limited.