The Rise of Anti-Establishment Reform Parties in the Czech Republic: Qualitative Analysis of Political Discourse of Emergent Populist Parties.

Since 2010, disintegration of political party system took place in the Czech Republic. Until 2010, the Czech party system was described as institutionalized, structured and being on the way to converge to party systems of the traditional Western democracies. The stability lied in a fixed number of core parties in the system as well as in their clearly defined ideological and programmatic identities. However, since elections in 2010 anti-establishment reform parties (AERPs) made breakthroughs in the rather stable Czech party system. The AERPs, characterized by strong anti-establishment rhetoric, centrist political values and possessing ability to galvanize popular support in short time have not been unique to the Czech Republic but emerged in most post-communist countries in the past decade. Based on qualitative analysis of media articles, the paper tracks how AERPs managed to make breakthrough in the party systems. It is analysed the political discourse used by these emerging populist parties and well as the reaction of the established political parties and elites. The analysis focuses on strategies of argumentation and legitimations that support arguments and claims made by these emergent parties. Inspired by theory of populist mobilization of Ernesto Laclau it is argued that populist discourse is accepted not only based on emotions (or fear) but has underlying argumentation structure. The analysis contributes to the research on populist discourse and populist mobilization.