New Political Parties and Second Order Elections: the Czech and Slovak Republics since 2010

Recent parliamentary elections in both the Czech and Slovak Republics saw an irruption of new parties. However, only some of the newcoming parties managed to settle in the politial arena while others may be seen as a so-called single-use parties. A common feature of most newcomers is that they were created predominantly from above. For this reason, it seems to be an improtant factor to succeed in the second order political arena for newcoming parties to settle in national politics. The paper analyses how the newcomers in the first-order political arena succeeded in the second order elections, and vice versa. It proves the presumption that for the newcoming parties it is important to succeed both in the first order and the second order political arena to settle in national politics. It also looks for cases where a success in the second order political arena preceded a success in national elections.