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In times of economic crisis, municipalities have faced serious fiscal stress and have had to implement responsive measures such as lowering operational costs, a hiring freeze or layoffs. Yet some cities even boost their bureaucratic apparatus. Based on empirical results of Czech statutory cities, it is argued, that the main cause of bureaucratic growth is party fragmentation, government alternations and weak mayors because post-communist administrations are affected by widespread patronage and clientelism. Decline or cutbacks strategies are linked to fiscal stress though in times of elections are determined by political context rather than the economic environment.

Knižní recenze /Book review.

This article examines the spatial factors that shaped the 2021 parliamentary elections. Building on a great deal of research in electoral geography and spatial analysis, it focused on specific spatial elements of voting behaviour that have not been previously studied, and on the key time-specific factors that shaped the electoral map and party system in the 2021 elections. Employing a quantitative approach to aggregate electoral and socio-demographic data, the study maps the electoral dynamic by exploiting the unique political situations that were characterized by a competition between two blocs – the two centre-right coalitions, SPOLU and the Pirates and STAN, and the populist ANO and SPD parties. Despite profound changes in the party system, the spatial stratification of Czech politics remained unchanged. Quite the contrary, the societal cleavages shaped the spatial voting patterns even more intensively. Additionally, the study shows that regional context factors modified the overall nationwide trend. Varying from region to region, factors included religiosity, local patriotism, the role of local entrepreneurs, and the effect of a popular local leader.

The article analyses the results of the 2021 general election in the Czech Republic. The election was shaped by two major factors. First, it took place in the shadow of the Covid pandemic crisis. Second, the Czech Republic was governed by a cabinet dominated by a populist political party with unprecedented support from the communist party for most of the term. The major feature of the election campaign was the formation and eventual victory of two anti-populist coalitions. The results brought about a decrease in electoral volatility and fragmentation of the party system. However, the formation of ideologically diverse coalitions is a challenge to the increased stability of the party politics. Moreover, the electoral loss of two traditional leftist parties (the Communists and the Social Democrats) is a major change in the logic of party competition. The populist/anti-populist logic of the campaign undermined the discursive salience of left-right issues and suppressed the usual policy-based competition. Nevertheless, analysis of the electorate shows the dominant role of policy issues in the voters' decision making.

AbstractLaw-making in most parliamentary democracies is dominated by the executive. Yet so far, all research has focused on the parliamentary stage of law-making. Studies suggest that the changes to bills submitted by coalition governments are the result of coalition policies dealing with the agency loss caused by ministerial drift. This is puzzling because it is already easier and more effective for coalition parties to attempt to change the bills in the executive phase than in the parliamentary one. The article aims to close the knowledge gap, and it quantitatively explores the factors that facilitate changes during the understudied executive phase on case study of the Czech Republic. Analysis reveals that government bills are altered more during the executive phase than the parliamentary phase. While we find no significant impact caused by the distance to coalition compromise, the saliency of a bill for coalition partners has a negative influence on the ratio of changes.

Holding two second-order elections simultaneously is expected to increase electoral participation. We exploit a natural experiment in which one group of Czech precincts was "as if" randomly assigned to holding subnational elections concurrently with senatorial ones. Using a unique data set containing variables on more than thirteen thousand precincts in five elections between 2000 and 2016, we detect a modest effect of concurrency only in the first election but no or inconsistent effect in the four subsequent contests. Furthermore, we report a strong effect of concurrency on invalid voting. We check for robustness using difference-in-differences design and matching techniques. Incongruent with existing theories, concurrency does not deliver on its promises and may come at a substantial cost to political representation. The surprising null effect on turnout is attributable to analyzing the effect of concurrency of the less salient on more salient elections.

Research on invalid voting has expanded rapidly over the past few years. This review article for the first time examines its principal findings and provides a new theoretical perspective on the origins of invalid votes based on a two-dimensional framework. The main results of 54 studies using both individual-level and aggregate-level data as well as the results of experimental and qualitative studies are analysed. The meta-analysis of all existing aggregate-level studies finds that compulsory voting, quality of democracy, fragmentation and closeness of the electoral race play important roles in explaining invalid voting. On the other hand, the research is accompanied by many theoretical and empirical contradictions that hamper the accumulation of knowledge in this field. We therefore conclude by suggesting the challenges for future research.

There is an ongoing debate on how political parties that form coalition governments keep tabs on each other during the drafting and negotiation of new bills. Our article complements existing studies focused on the parliamentary stage of law-making by enriching current knowledge with an analysis of the executive phase, where bills may be significantly changed before they are submitted to the legislature. Contrary to theoretical expectations, results based on unique data from the Czech Republic reveal that bills which are heavily altered during the executive phase are subsequently significantly changed in the parliament. Additional interaction models indicate the effect is stronger for bills that are highly significant for the proposing minister and are a greater distance from any coalition compromise. Our findings open the question of why the coalition parties leave the resolution of some controversial issues to the parliamentary phase: the outstanding conflict may be genuine, or the coalition MPs may just be playing out a prearranged and staged battle that enables the coalition partners to show their distinctive qualities to the voters.