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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Czech Social Democratic Party (Česká strana sociálně demokraticka, ČSSD)
The Czech Social Democratic Party was established during the 1990s and quickly became the strongest left wing party. In the first years after the Velvet revolution, ČSSD was faced with strong competition on the left wing by KSČM. Unlike political parties in other CEE countries, ČSSD had a social and political advantage thanks to the long history of the party, being the oldest political party in the Czech Republic. This was very helpful for the party when standing up against the Communist party in the early post-revolutionary period. Although the elections in 1990 and 1992 could refer to the revolution, the anti-communist backlash brought about weak and unsatisfactory election results. ČSSD got just a few votes over the 5% limit. Subsequent changes in the leadership brought gains, however. The new party leader Miloš Zeman made the party act more confrontationally towards the centre-right government
Polish People’s Party (Polske Stronictwo Ludowe, PSL)
Polish People’s Party was renewed immediately after the fall of the communist regime in Poland in 1989. PSL played an important role in the Second Polish Republic after the First World War.
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
Direction - Social democracy (Smer - Sociálna demokracia, Smer - SD)
Direction – Third Way was formed in 1999 by popular figure of then coalition Party of the Democratic Left Robert Fico. Fico left the party and also parliamentary majority declaratorily because of the continuing corruption and unfulfilled government program and promises. Fico an his party which defined itself as beyond right – left dichotomy quickly became very popular among the voters partly due to its protest appeal and its refusal of both Mečiar and heterogeneous anti – Mečiar coalition. In elections of 2002 Direction –Third Way took over the whole electorate of the SDĽ and despite it gained less votes than polls had predicted it established itself as a relevant political force. Between the years 2002 and 2006 Direction – Third Way moved from the centre to the left of the political map. Reason for this move was simple – recently formed government was composed of centre right parties which had no intention to cooperate with Direction and in the same time besides Communist party of Slovakia there was no relevant party representing the left in the National Council. In 2004 Direction merged with most of the remaining left wing parties in Slovakia and changed its name to Direction – Social Democracy.
Action of Dissatisfied Citizens 2011, (Akce nespokojených občanů, ANO 2011)
ANO was founded by Czech billionaire Andrej Babiš as a reaction to unsatisfactorily political and economic developments in Czech politics. The main reason was the growing level of corruption and a series of scandals involving the centre-right government. Although the movement had at the beginning a leftist profile, during the 2013 election campaign the movement targeted centre-right middle class votes. It is very hard to categorize the manifesto on the left-right scale or even on the liberal–conservative one. From the content perspective, the manifesto is mainly focused on economical and corruption issues.