The Dawn of Direct Democracy - Application of the Memberless Party Model

The paper will focus on Czech entrepreneur party Dawn of Direct Democracy, founded and lead by Czech-Japan entrepreneur Tomio Okamura, which entered the Parliament in 2013 election. The party established extremely minimalist party organization with very simple and centralized party structure (closed membership with only 9 members and strong formal position of the leader). After two years in parliament, the party disintegrated and both camps (Okamura’s camp, and majority of MPs elected by the party) developed two new party organizations, following different ways how to learn from own mistakes. The paper is rooted in the party institutionalization theory and follows the Harmel and Svåsand model of party institutionalization, as is further elaborated by other scholars (de Lange, Art 2011; Bolleyer, Bytzek 2013; Pedahzur, Brichta 2002). Based on interviews with former party members and MPs, and using party documents and information from party representatives presented by media, the paper will describe main aspects of party organization and internal functioning (recruitment process, strategy in approaching new members, party organization, management of party-MPs relations). Identification of goals and critical points in the working of party will be connected to three phases of party institutionalization process (identification, organization, stabilization). Comparison with two Czech parliamentary entrepreneur parties (Public Affairs and ANO) will be done. The organizational structure of new parties (Okamura’s new entrepreneurial project SPD and Dawn-National Coalition, the party created by parliamentary representatives) will be studied to find out how the representative of different camps understood the main problems of original Dawn, and how they avoided them in the new party structures. Especially for The new Okamura’s party is this look interesting because it established new closed (“entrepreneurial”) party structure. The results of the paper will add the empirical information about variety in internal modes of entrepreneur parties and their functioning in the East-Central Europe.