This article explores the spatial influences that shape the contemporary Czech party system and their consequences for the institutionalisation of the party system. First, the régionalisation of the party system is measured to identify the specific regional clusters of votes for individual parties. Second, after controlling for the impact of social cleavages, the independent effect of two macro-regions on the differences in voting decisions is analysed. In the case of Moravia, no such independent effect is evident. Conversely, in the formerly German-inhabited Sudetenland there is an effect on the vote in the case of two parties (KSČM and ODS). The historical reasons for this spatial regime are briefly discussed. Finally, the relative insignificance of spatial regimes in the Czech party system is explained with reference to its high degree of nationalisation (the level of spatial heterogeneity in regional voting results). The author employs spatial analytical techniques in the article, such as measures of spatial autocorrelation, the spatial regression model, and the Gini Index. The findings suggest that there is a high degree of spatial institutionalisation of the Czech party system and relatively insignificant contextual effects at the macro-regional level.
Parliamentary elections in May 2010 ended with unexpected and somewhat revolutionary results: they brought heavy losses to all traditional established parties within the Czech party system, which appeared to be relatively stable since the second half of 1990s, two lesser parliamentary parties were eliminated from the Chamber of Deputies, and two new political parties emerged among successful subjects surpassing quite easily the existing electoral clause of five percent. The text analyzes these results, as well as some attitudes of Czech public identified by exit poll and other sociological surveys and post-election development, and it tries to answer the question, whether the elections in 2010 meant any deep and lasting shift in long-term development of the party system in the Czech Republic or whether it was rather an incidental anomaly without persistent impact on the party system, which will gradually restore itself more or less in the shape that characterized it for one and half of decade before the elections in 2010., Jan Červenka., and Obsahuje seznam literatury