Assured Newcomers on a Squally Sea? Czech Pirate Party Before and After Elections 2017

The elections to the Chamber of Deputies in October 2017 were turning for the Czech Pirate Party (called “Piráti”). It has been for the first time since establishing the party in 2009 when Pirates entered the low chamber of Czech Parliament. They took third place with 10,79 % votes and got 22 seats from 200. Their main programmatic points stood for typical “pirate policies” like control of power and the mighty ones, simplification a state by technology, protection of citizens from bullying and defence of freedom as well as basic Pirate principles including liberalism and direct democracy. Their programme was called “New Ideas for the New Age”. From a different view, this party presented itself as a watchdog of a democracy and as an alternative mostly for liberal voters. This qualitative case study will provide a complex overview of a Pirate phenomenon in the Czech Republic from their establishment to their current role of an opposition party. This paper aims to show and describe how varied the position of Czech Pirates in time. For this purpose will be used open data from Czech Statistical Office (CZSO), findings from new Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) dataset and data from Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS). It is possible to say that Pirates are playing a role of newcomers in the Chamber of Deputies after 2017 elections, but they are not newcomers in the Czech party system.