Books & Book Chapters

My first monograph examines the new anti-establishment parties electorally succeeding at the expense of their established counterparts and argues that party organization matters for their electoral success.

It explores a relationship between these parties’ electoral success and their party organization. Using a framework to explain the role of organizational features such as local party branches, party membership, and party elites in this process, it reveals how they help parties to be more stable, cohesive, and legitimate; a state that facilitates better conditions for electoral success. It also shows that control over party organization is achieved partially by the existence of a corporate network associated with party leaders’ businesses.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of party politics and political parties, anti-establishment politics, and Eastern European politics.

If one would look for trends characterizing the Czech party system in the 2020s, it would be fragmentation and a wave of new anti-establishment parties. Although relatively stable and electorally predictable in the past, the Czech party system has registered fundamental changes in recent years. The influx of many newcomers changed the number of parties in the parliamentary arena and influenced the issues structuring political competition. No longer driven by the ideological struggle, the conflict began to be drawn along the lines of the political establishment versus anti-establishment parties. Many of the latter were often short-lived, haunted by intra-party divisions and conflicts. We focus on these recent party system transformations, mainly on the surge of anti-establishment parties exemplifying the most significant of these changes. Our findings highlight how several of their organizational features influence their survival, pre-disposing their political fates. Our analysis shows what the fragmented party system means for government formation and democratic development. 

This chapter analyzes two party leaders in the Czech Republic: Václav Klaus and Andrej Babiš. We see them as symbols of two different eras in Czech politics: the former representing an era of ideology-driven amateur politics, and the latter an era of interest-driven professional politics. Where Klaus’ era was defined by an ideological struggle between two opposing views on country’s politics and economy, Babiš’ era can be characterized by an ideologically amorphous contest whose protagonists compete against each other on various issues within the context in which political activity is largely shaped by marketing experts. Our analysis provides insight into the changing nature of party politics and party competition, and specifically to a shift from a bipolar pattern of party competition between two blocs of ideologically defined parties in a relatively non-fragmented political landscape, toward a more multi-polar competition of ideologically amorphous parties in a more fragmented political landscape.

This chapter contributes to the scholarship on politics and history in Central Europe. The Centers for Austrian and Central European Studies, founded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research play an important role for the Austrian and international scientific community since the 1970s. Their tasks are to promote studies on Austrian and Central Europe in their host nations as well as to offer Austrian and Central European students the opportunity to conduct research abroad and to get in touch with the local scientific community. This anthology contains reports on the activities of the Centers in the Academic Year 2015/2016 and papers of their most promising PhD-students.

More and more anti-establishment parties succeed in elections at the expense of their established competitors in contemporary European democracies. However, a large proportion of these parties fall apart and disappear as quickly as they appear. What is the relationship between the way these parties organize and their electoral performance? This dissertation proposes a framework to explain the role of organizational features such as local party branches, party membership and party elites in this process. It argues that these features facilitate party stability, cohesion and legitimacy and, as a consequence, parties do better at elections. 

A single case study explores these relationships in the case of the Czech party ANO, and is then complemented by a comparative analysis of three other anti-establishment parties. The dissertation argues that party organization matters for the electoral success of anti-establishment parties. The control of local branches´ autonomy, restrictions on party membership and professional links between party elites help new anti-establishment parties to present themselves as cohesive and legitimate entities. In the case of ANO, this effect is further strengthened by the infiltration of its party organization by the structures of the business-firm owned by the party leader.