Seeking a Type: the Czech Party System after 1989

Abstract

This article studies the issue of a typological categorization for the Czech party system. The author works from Sartori’s concepts of moderate and polarized pluralism; the reasons for using this concept are laid out in the theoretical part of the text. An analysis of individual phases of development of the Czech party system shows that until the middle part of the last decade the Czech party system could not be fit into a single type. However, analysis of the current form of the Czech party system at the electoral and parliamentary levels shows that the today’s Czech multi-party system displays the characteristics of a moderate pluralism.