Crossing the left-right party divide? Understanding the electoral success of the Czech Pirate Party in the 2017 parliamentary elections
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395720920768 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2020
Article
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(4) 510 –526
Crossing the left-right party
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
divide? Understanding the
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395720920768
DOI: 10.1177/0263395720920768
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
electoral success of the Czech
Pirate Party in the 2017
parliamentary elections
Pavel Maškarinec
Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
Abstract
In the 2017 Czech parliamentary election, the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) gained 10.79% of
the votes – an unprecedented success, compared to most of the pirate parties across Europe.
However, as their electoral gain varies widely across the Czech Republic’s territory, this article
analyses all (more than 6000) Czech municipalities in the elections of 2010, 2013, and 2017 to
explain this variation. Overall, the success of the Pirates was driven especially by obtaining much
more support in larger municipalities with younger populations (although not only those aged
18–24 but also older ones), lower unemployment, higher turnout, and lower support for leftist
parties. Thus, from a spatial perspective, the patterns of Pirate voting largely resembled long-term
spatial support for Czech rightist parties and we can conclude that the Pirates made considerable
inroads to regions which had historically been strongholds of the Civic Democratic Party, as the
former main party of the right, but also strongholds of minor right-wing (‘liberal centre’) parties
of the 1990s and early 2000s. Success of the Pirates thus was based especially on votes from
municipalities located in more developed areas, where the Pirates received many more votes than
in structurally disadvantaged regions.
Keywords
Czech Pirate Party, Czech Republic, elections, electoral geography, spatial analysis, spatial
regression
Received: 6th October 2019; Revised version received: 27th January 2020; Accepted: 26th March 2020
Introduction
In the 2017 Czech parliamentary election, the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) gained 10.79%
of the vote – an unprecedented success, compared to most of the European pirate parties.
Corresponding author:
Pavel Maškarinec, Department of Political Science and Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Jan Evangelista Purkyně
University in Ústí nad Labem, Pasteurova 3571/13, 400 96 Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic.
Email: maskarinec@centrum.cz
Maškarinec
511
Indeed, although Otjes (2020) speaks about a ‘remarkable’ growth of the pirate parties in
contrast to a slower growth of other new party families, in reality, the rise of Czech
Pirates, together with a continuing success of the Pirates in Iceland (9.20% in 2017), or a
sudden rise of the Pirates in Luxembourg (6.45% in 2018), were rather exceptions that
prove the rule in the context of ‘waning existence’ (Fredriksson Almqvist, 2016) of this
party family.
It was perhaps precisely due to the limited success of pirate parties that studies of this
party family still remain a relatively undeveloped discipline, although there already exist
several studies that have attempted to map the electoral base of pirate parties (Baldini and
Bolgerini, 2015; Demker, 2014; Erlingsson and Persson, 2011; Haas and Hilmer, 2013;
Neumann, 2013; Niedermayer, 2013; Onken and Schneider, 2012; Otjes, 2020; Zulianello,
2018).
The central questions of this article are as follows: First, what were the spatial patterns
of support for the Czech Pirates, especially with regard to voting patterns of other Czech
parties? Second, how did the Pirates replace individual established or other new parties
territorially? And finally, what were the most important explanatory factors for the spatial
variation of the Pirates’ political preferences? We use spatial analysis to expand our
understanding of the importance and possible transformation of the geographical patterns
of Czech voting behaviour, with primary focus on whether the Pirates were able to suc-
ceed more in traditionally leftist or, in contrast, rightist regions – or whether their spatial
support transcends the left-right model of political competition which had dominated
Czech electoral competition since the 1990s.
In this context, this paper contributes to research about spatial explanation of electoral
change. Furthermore, aside from expanding knowledge about the specific empirical case
of the Czech Republic, this study is an important contribution to the literature on voting
for pirate parties generally. It draws upon a considerably higher number of observations
than cross-national studies, which means that we can put research questions to more reli-
able tests.
Party politics and political geography in the Czech Republic
In contrast to many other Central and Eastern European countries, the Czech party system
was relatively stable during the first two post-communist decades, with low levels of
volatility and failure of most new political parties (Deegan-Krause and Haughton, 2010;
Hanley, 2012; Just and Charvát, 2016). After the fall of the communist regime, Czech
politics exhibited a relatively smooth emergence of the left-right axis, which gradually
took on the traditional socioeconomic form and became the main structural cleavage of
Czech party politics at least until the parliamentary election of 2010 (Chytilek and Eibl,
2011; Hloušek and Kopeček, 2008).
Linek and Lyons’s (2013) individual-level analysis, covering two decades of Czech
party politics (from 1990 to 2010) showed that party choice in the Czech Republic was
largely based on three cleavages (social class, religion, and generational membership)
and on the left-right ideological orientation. The considerable stability of allegiances
between different social groups and Czech political parties throughout the 1990–2010
time period then contributed to the stabilization of the classic left-right model of political
competition (Deegan-Krause and Haughton, 2010).
The right was dominated by the liberal-conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS)
and the left by the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). The pair of large parties (a
512
Politics 40(4)
maximum of votes for these two parties was 67.07% in 2006) was accompanied by two
medium-sized ones: the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) and the
Christian Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU–ČSL), and support
for these four (‘traditional’) parties reached 87.73% in 2006.1 However, the stability of
Czech party system was undermined by the triad of electoral earthquakes in 2010, 2013,
and 2017 after which the number of parliamentary parties rose to nine, the same number
as after the first election to the lower house of the Czech parliament in 1992. More impor-
tantly, the patterns of political support shifted away from previously fairly stable alle-
giances as the former main parties of the left and the right together achieved less than
one-fifth of the vote, compared to over two-thirds in 2006.
To return to determinants of electoral behaviour, an analysis of individual data showed
that the ODS was predominantly supported by higher-class right-wing voters, compared
to the ČSSD, which was more successful among left-wing voters of lower social classes.
Furthermore, the KSČM mobilized voters especially among blue-collar workers, pen-
sioners, and older generations and, in the case of the KDU–ČSL, religious identity was
the primary factor of party support (Linek and Lyons, 2013).
Similarly, research of electoral geographers (conducted at the aggregate level) found
that socioeconomic factors explained the largest part of inter-regional differences in elec-
toral support, and resulted in the stabilization of the geographical distribution of parties’
constituencies over time (Kostelecký et al., 2015). In short, right-wing parties were more
successful in regions that were better off economically, while left-wing parties won more
support in regions with structural problems in the economy. In other words, while rightist
parties (the ODS, or the parties of the liberal centre) were more successful in areas of high
development potential (especially the axis connecting capital city of Prague with the
regional capitals of western Bohemia, Pilsen, and north-eastern Bohemia, Liberec), left-
wing parties (especially the KSČM) were preferred in regions with low development
potential (Bernard et al., 2014; Maškarinec, 2017a). Finally, this division also has its
spatial dimension, as electoral support for left-wing parties, as well as areas with low
turnout, are traditionally concentrated especially in peripheral borderland areas of west-
ern and north-western Bohemia (the formerly German-inhabited Sudetenland) and north-
ern Moravia (Kostelecký et al., 2015; Pink and Voda, 2012; Šimon, 2015).
In contrast to the four traditional parties, analysis of voting patterns of new parties
which entered the Czech parliament after the 2010 election showed that, with the excep-
tion of the Tradition, Responsibility, Prosperity 09 party (TOP09), which succeeded in the
2010 election and whose electorate considerably overlaps with those of traditional rightist
parties, spatial support for other new parties was relatively weakly rooted in geography as
its constituency was relatively indistinct (in the case of the Public Affairs party (VV), the
Dawn of Direct Democracy (Dawn) or the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD)), or
significantly changed between...
To continue reading
Request your trial