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The Rise of Direct Democracy in the Czech Republic: Sources, Use and Consequences
Dvořák, Tomáš ; Kabele, Jiří (advisor) ; Šaradín, Pavel (referee) ; Vráblíková, Kateřina (referee)
In the last few decades there has been an expansion of institutions of direct democracy in most developed countries. The Czech Republic has been no exception and over the past 25 years, there has been a rise of direct democracy in the Czech Republic. The aim of the dissertation is an analysis of the use of direct democracy in the Czech Republic. Although the analyses are based mainly on data from the Czech Republic, the aim is also to contribute to scholarly debates in the field of direct democracy research. I focus on the following questions: Who supports the use of direct democracy and who participates in it in the Czech Republic? How do voters form opinions and what are the characteristics of direct democracy campaigns? What is the effect of direct democracy on other forms of political participation? I view direct democracy as an institutional innovation and evaluate it based on three criterions: inclusiveness, competence and efficiency. First, I focus on who supports the expansion of direct democracy. I also study the patterns of turnout of various social groups in direct democracy (inclusiveness). Second, I analyse the processes of opinion formation in direct democracy campaigns to find out, whether it can be regarded as competent or not. Last, I analyse whether direct democracy leads to increased or...
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Non-voters in elections to Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic 2013 and their motivation to electoral absence
Nováková, Eliška ; Vinopal, Jiří (advisor) ; Sedláčková, Markéta (referee)
The issue of this thesis is to chart the motivations of non-voters for not attending the election to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic. This election had the second lowest turnout in the history of the Czech Republic in this type of election which is considered by the citizens to be the most important type of election. A decreasing turnout can be a threat to a proper functioning of democracy. In the theoretical part of the paper, the theory of functioning democracy and the theory explaining the decreasing turnout are introduced. According to several studies, there is a difference between younger and older generation, so I decided to explore this difference. Therefore, fifteen semi-structured interviews with non-voters have been conducted to detect the cause of this situation. Collected sample contains nine younger non-voters and six older ones. The data were analyzed according to the rules of grounded theory. The product of this analysis is a typology of non-voters and their main motivations for non-voting and a scheme of participating factors. The result of the analysis suggests that there is a difference between younger and older generation. Keywords: Non-voters, election behavior, politics, motivations
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Electoral volatility in European Parliament Elections in V4 Countries: 2004-2019
Mertlík, Arnošt ; Linek, Lukáš (advisor) ; Dvořák, Tomáš (referee)
This diploma thesis focuses on changes in voting behaviour among voters in the Visegrad Group states (V4), specifically electoral volatility between the European Parliament elections and the national elections in the particular state. The approach to examining electoral volatility in this work is based on the second-order national elections theory, which divides elections into less and more important ones. The aim of the work is first to describe the overall electoral volatility in the V4 states in a cross-section of all European elections based on individual data from post-election questionnaire surveys. Subsequently, I find out what are the specific causes and motivations for changes in electoral behaviour. The analysis shows that there are several different patterns of volatile behaviour in the V4 countries, but the consistent and general pattern is a high degree of electoral demobilisation in the European elections. This may be due to political attitudes or the level of trust in the European institutions. I then analyze voters' demobilization among government and opposition voters, who differ mainly in their views of the national political situation. Keywords Electoral volatility, vote switching, electoral behaviour, second-order national election theory, European Parliament elections,...
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Electoral volatility in European Parliament Elections in V4 Countries: 2004-2019
Mertlík, Arnošt ; Linek, Lukáš (advisor) ; Dvořák, Tomáš (referee)
This diploma thesis focuses on changes in voting behaviour among voters in the Visegrad Group states (V4), specifically electoral volatility between the European Parliament elections and the national elections in the particular state. The approach to examining electoral volatility in this work is based on the second-order national elections theory, which divides elections into less and more important ones. The aim of the work is first to describe the overall electoral volatility in the V4 states in a cross-section of all European elections based on individual data from post-election questionnaire surveys. Subsequently, I find out what are the specific causes and motivations for changes in electoral behaviour. The analysis shows that there are several different patterns of volatile behaviour in the V4 countries, but the consistent and general pattern is a high degree of electoral demobilisation in the European elections. This may be due to political attitudes or the level of trust in the European institutions. I then analyze voters' demobilization among government and opposition voters, who differ mainly in their views of the national political situation. Keywords Electoral volatility, vote switching, electoral behaviour, second-order national election theory, European Parliament elections,...
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Patterns of Institutionalization of Political Parties in the Czech Republic
Stauber, Jakub ; Perottino, Michel (advisor) ; Dvořáková, Vladimíra (referee) ; Kouba, Karel (referee)
Research on political parties and their organizational stability presents one of the most important research agendas in modern comparative politics. Especially among newly democratized countries of the Central and Eastern Europe, the consolidation of democratic political institutions used to be considered as a key factor for the successful finishing of the whole transitional process. Despite the fact that most of the transitologists optimistically perceived the consolidation of the new democracies as a one-way process, the most of party systems in the eastern countries experienced serious changes and periods of instability within the last ten years. The most notable change was definitely the unexpected electoral success of genuinely new political parties and movements usually led by a political entrepreneur and formed without solid organizational background or solid ties to society. This tendency further turned into a new wave of unpredictability even within the party systems commonly perceived as fully stabilized and consolidated. Based on such new conditions, the contemporary party researchers turn their attention towards possible interpretations of this unprecedented phenomenon. This dissertation contributes to this discussion by the attempt to operationalize and explain the level of...
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The spatial analysis of the 2018 Czech presidential election results in the capital city of Prague
Vratný, Radek ; Lepič, Martin (advisor) ; Šimon, Martin (referee)
The 2018 Czech presidential election were profoundly controversial and polarising event. One of the polarising factors was a perception that the voting behaviour in the capital city of Prague is significantly different compared to the voting behaviour in the rest of Czechia. Therefore, the primary objective of this thesis is to examine the electoral support of both runoff voting candidates across the territory of the capital city of Prague. The main part of the analysis focuses on the spatial differentiation of the election results of both candidates at the level of Prague's polling districts and on searching for the spatial clusters of electoral support. For the purpose of the study the methods of the exploratory spatial data analysis were used, specifically the global and local statistics of spatial autocorrelation. Subsequently, the thesis attempts to clarify which factors determined the voting behaviour through testing the socio-economic and demographic indicators using the method of multinomial linear regression. The analysis proved that the spatial differentiation of the election results of both candidates is significant across the territory of Prague and detected the spatial clusters of electoral support. The analysis also clarified that this voting behaviour can be explained particularly by...
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The Green party in Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt. Analysis of differences in voting behaviour
Myslíková, Adéla ; Handl, Vladimír (advisor) ; Šafařík, Petr (referee)
This bachelor thesis deals with the topic of voting behaviour towards the Green Party in Germany. The paper focuses specifically on the elections to the Landtag in 2016, in the two Länder Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt. The Green Party achieved completely different results in these two elections, winning the elections in Baden-Württemberg and barely getting to the Landtag in Saxony-Anhalt. These two Länder serve as examples of the differences between the old and new Länder, which persist for almost 30 years after German reunification. The thesis tries to find answers to the questions of what specific differences in electoral behaviour towards the Green Party and its topics exist in the new and old Länder, what are the reasons and what are the consequences for German politics. The first theoretical part of the thesis presents the factors of voting behaviour, which are divided into long-term and short-term. In the second analytical part of the work, is this theory applied to a comparative case study of the two mentioned elections, which are compared on the basis of factors of voting behaviour. That means differences in the history and economic situation of Länder, the history of the Green Party and its typical voters. The party's election program, the competencies assigned to party by voters and...
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The Friends and Neighbours Effect and Its Relevance to Voting Behaviour in Czech Parliamentary Elections
Pileček, Radek ; Kostelecký, Tomáš (advisor) ; Daněk, Petr (referee)
Voter decision-making about which political party to support in the elections is a very complex process. One of the key factors influencing our voting behaviour is the effect of particular candidates in terms of their local activities. Many Czech and also foreign studies show that candidates gain significantly higher preferences in the municipality of their residence and its surroundings. Within the analyzed parliamentary elections, this is reflected not only by the territorial concentration of preferential votes, but also by higher local electoral support of the political parties or movements represented by these candidates. This diploma thesis examines, among other things, differences in the strength of the described effect (technically called the friends and neighbours effect) between candidates from different political parties and in different regions of Czechia. Quantitative research has shown greater local strength and spatial extent of friends and neighbours effect for leading candidates from non-metropolitan areas who have experiences from local or regional politics, such as mayors or regional councilors. In the 2017 parliamentary elections, the friends and neighbours effect mostly influenced the spatial patterns of electoral support of the KDU-ČSL and the STAN movement and on the other...
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