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.
Polish National Party
Polish National Party was established in March 2004 before the first elections to the European Parliament in Poland.
Communist party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy, KSČM)
Since the regime changed to democracy there has been an unwritten agreement between other political parties in the Czech Republic about excluding KSČM from high level policy-decision processes; however in the real political life there are many contacts and KSČM has already become a legitimate part of the political system in the Czech Republic. Moreover, in the last decade Social democratic party in particular has relied on silent support from KSČM on some decisions against right wing political solutions or to support some leftist decisions which could not get support from other mostly centrist or right parliamentary parties.
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.
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.