Personalization vs. Party Organization Dilemma: The case of a populist party rebirth in Czechia

Since the end of the 1990s, the Czech party system has been characterized by the lack of an electorally significant right-wing populist political party. This situation changed with the unexpected electoral success of Tomio Okamura. As a proponent of direct democracy, he was able to attract a specific group of voters on the right of the center with rather nationalist or populist attitudes. Our analysis aims to understand Tomio Okamura's specific political leadership strategies, as he, responding to an internal crisis within his first political movement USVIT, founded a new party SPD and performed the second successful electoral breakthrough under a different label with a newly formed base of collaborators and supporters. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, we provide a comparative analysis of the organizational settings of two political parties and examine the changes within their electorates. We observe that both parties have highly centralized organizational structures with a strong emphasis on the leader's position. While little is known about Okamura's strategies for maintaining party discipline, the unique sequence of building two distinct parties allows us to better understand the role of various factors, including the leader's interventions to the autonomy of regional and local party structures or policies of party membership. Our findings shed light on the complex interplay between party organization and electoral success and offer insights into the factors that shape party politics in Europe.