New issues, but old cleavages: Changes in the nature of party competition in the Czech Republic

The political competition today seems to be completely different than before. The rise of populist or anti-system parties, the spread of disinformation, or modern election campaigns based on the rapid alternation of hot-button issues portray politics as devoid of values or any predictability. However, the long-term transformations of the basic frameworks of political competition remain unclear. Politics in the Czech Republic was last described at the turn of the century in relation to traditional cleavages. As in other Central Eastern European countries, the socio-economic cleavage began to grow in importance then as a product of the transition to democracy, or more specifically, to a free market economy. In our research, we focused on what issues all relevant political parties in the Czech Republic have gradually worked with from 1990 to the present and what this means for the nature of the political system. We analysed the data on the issue composition of electoral manifestos collected and coded by the Comparative Manifesto Project.