Abstract
The chapter aims to map how Czech political parties worked with ideologies and roles in their electoral programmes and whether they changed after the migration crisis. In general, the events linked to the flow of refugees heading to European countries did not significantly impact the positions included in the electoral programmes of the political parties under study; the exceptions in this respect, however, were Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD, Svoboda a přímá demokracie) and partly also Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO, Akce nespokojených občanů). In the 2019 European elections, ANO was then more critical of the EU than before, and the migration crisis was one point of this criticism. For the SPD, the Sovereignist Reformer was a key position. Their anti-immigration stance was the primary source of their negative perception of the EU and defined their positions towards the Union and Czech foreign policy in general.
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Notes
- 1.
The migration crisis, even in the context of the terrorist attacks in Western European countries, meant that immigration, which was increasingly perceived as a threat (e.g., Wondreys, 2021), became an important issue in the Czech Republic as well, even though the influx of migrants into the country was very limited.
- 2.
STAN originally formed an electoral coalition with the KDU-ČSL for these elections, but due to fears of the poor electoral outcome predicted by opinion polls, the cooperation was eventually withdrawn.
- 3.
The exceptions to this are the political parties TOP 09, STAN, ÚPD and SPD. TOP 09 and STAN have long been coalition partners, but in the 2017 elections they ran separately. These political parties are analysed together. In the case of ÚPD and SPD, these are political parties that were not active throughout the research period. ÚPD participated in the 2013 and 2014 elections, while SPD subsequently participated in the 2017 and 2019 elections.
- 4.
Furthermore, the title of the ODS’s programme ‘Turning the EU in the Right Direction’ (Otáčíme EU správným směrem) referred to the reforms the ODS would like to achieve.
- 5.
An exception was the KDU-ČSL electoral programme for the 2014 European elections, which focused primarily on the Czech relationship with the European Union.
- 6.
In 2014, the Democracy Supporter role was mentioned by them in the context of Europeanism.
- 7.
In the electoral programme of TOP 09 for the 2017 legislative elections, the Europeanist Faithful Ally was represented in more than every third statement.
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Zákravský, J. (2024). Political Parties. In: Drulák, P. (eds) Roles and Ideologies in the Czech Foreign Policy: the Case of European Migration Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49975-3_3
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