Working with data
The webpage focuses on political parties and their perception of nationalism and national identity. Firstly, the webpage contains a profile of each party in a national context based on basic facts, well known officials, and their electoral gains in national and European elections. Secondly, it gives an analytical insight into parties’ perceptions of national identity and nationalism. The parties are categorised according to mentions of related to national identity issues in election manifestos. These issues cover minorities, national myths, European integration, national sovereignty, integration of immigrants and related categories.
Selected case studies show parties’ "real politics" and strategies using national identity to politicise certain policies, such as using national mythologies in election campaigns. Case studies focus on up to three specific national identity issues for each country. They cover opposite positions of different parties to show different strategies and policies used to attract voters. For this purpose, visual (e.g. billboards) and text (e.g. given speeches) material was analyzed.
Acknowlegment
The Visegrad parties' profiles from 2006 - 2010 are based on a scholarly study published at Masaryk University: Černoch Filip, Husák Jan, Schütz Ondrej, Vít Michal (2011): Political parties and nationalism in Visegrad countries. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Mezinárodní politologický ústav, Monography servies 46, 2011; and on the scholarly paper Husák Jan, Schütz Ondrej, Vít Michal (2012): National identity of the Political parties in Visegrad region and their European dimension, Journal on European Integration and Federalism, Science Po, Nice.
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Civic Democratic Party, (Občanská demokratická strana, ODS)
Civic Democratic Party was the dominant conservative formation in the Czech Republic. The beginning of its political activity is dated in the early 1990s due to fragmentation of OF. Václav Klaus led the conservative stream inside the OF. During the time early after election in 1990 Václav Klaus was elected as the chairman of OF and he started creating new party based on conservative neoliberal ideas. ODS was the most successful political party in elections in 1991, 1992 and in 1996, and Václav Klaus became the prime minister for three times.
Slovak Democratic and Christian Union – Democratic Party (Slovenská demokratická a kresťanská únia – Demokratická strana, SDKÚ-DS)
Democratic Party of Slovakia and Green Party in Slovakia formed coalition before the general elections of 1998 however due to new amendment to the electoral law they would need get 25 % of the votes to enter the National Council. That was the reason why they take part in the establishment of the new party SDK. SDK competed in elections instead of the five parties and all membership of the new party comprised of the leaders and politicians of the five coalition parties. SDK succeeded and after the elections led as a senior partner wide so – called anti – Mečiar coalition. During the 1999 and 2000 leadership of the SDK namely Mikuláš Dzurinda and Ivan Šimko originally from KDH pushed for further integration of the right – wing parties in SDK. Internal struggle in the main government party SDK did not led to serious weakening of the coalition and it survived full term till the elections of 2002. In these elections SDKÚ proved to be successful project when it gained more than fifteen percent and overall second place. SDKÚ joined coalition with other center – right parties and Dzurinda formed his second government. During the 2003 conflict in SDKÚ arose in connection with the so – called “small group” affair.
Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People´s Party ( Křesťanská a demokratická unie – Československá strana lidová, KDU-ČSL)
KDU-ČSL originally represented Christianity and Christian and traditional conservative values as stated above, but since 1990s it has profiled itself as a non-confessional party for all people even
Freedom and Solidarity (Sloboda a Spravodlist, SaS)
Political party Freedom and Solidarity is relatively new in the Slovak party system. Party was founded by economist Richard Sulík and some other entrepreneurs and economists generally from Bratislava. Sulík served as an advisor under two ministers of finances from both right wing government of Mikuláš Dzurinda and center left government of Róbert Fico. Sulík was main designer of the pension system reform and therefore in some way active in politics before founding SaS. New party was established in 2009 soon enough to take part in the European Elections of the same year. SaS gained almost five percent of the votes. Despite it was not enough to enter the European Parliament many including Sulík considered these results to be fairly good. Before the general elections of 2010 SaS persistently criticized Fico’s government and refused to enter any potential coalition with the Direction – SD. In the elections SaS managed to enter parliament and even to become the third largest party with more that twelve percent of the popular vote. SaS also entered newly formed government led by Iveta Radičová from SDKÚ – DS.