Problems of Governability in the Czech Republic

by Hubert Smekal & Martin Hrabálek

The elections held in the Czech Republic at the beginning of June 2006 have brought a difficult situation on the Czech political scene. Two blocks of 100 votes in a 200-seat Chamber of Deputies have emerged, without a clear solution. The stalemate has lasted for more than seven months and the current government still does not posses majority and is based only on the support of two switched representatives of ČSSD.

The paper looks back to the history of the Czech Republic in order to compare the outcome of 2006 elections with former elections. Our study is based mainly on the comparison of strength of previous government coalitions and on a survey of coalition potentials of political parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament after elections in 1996, 1998, 2002 and 2006, with a short examination of current preferences and possible coalitions after hypothetical early elections, based on a public opinion survey from January 2007.

In this short paper we seek to prove the following statement: "The current situation after an extraordinary outcome of the 2006 election does not present a completely new scenario in the Czech politics as there have always been governments without a majority or with an only very narrow majority".

address: Faculty of Social Studies, Department Department of International Relations and European Studies
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e-mail: hsmekal@fss.muni.cz

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