A Failure of Party Crisis Management? Unity, Loyalty, Strategy, and the Collapse of Czech Social Democracy

From the mid-1990s until mid- 2010s, Czech Social Democracy of two key pillars of the Czech party system. Although considered one of the more successful and robust CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) social democratic parties (Vachudova 2015, Snegovaya 2024), it then suffered repeated electoral collapses, exiting parliament in 2021. Its decline may be understood as a form of party crisis common to many established mainstream parties in CEE, influenced by internal causes (weak institutionalisation, corruption) and the external environment (electoral volatility, populist challenger parties). However, it may also be interpreted as a failure of crisis management and political resilience, and a appears on first examination a surprising outcome. Some early post-1989 mainstream parties – predominantly on the political right – were able to (partially) recover from similar collapses (Hanley & Kopeček 2025). The Czech Social Democrats had a relatively large, well-resourced organisation, a strong party brand and a political offer of wide potential appeal in the Czech electorate. Applying and developing the framework of anti-crisis resilience developed by Hanley and Kopeček paper examines the Czech Social Democrats’ long crises across several phases, focusing on the problems of party disputes and securing the loyalty of cadres, elites, and voters; pressure of political competitors, and mistakes in party strategy, and crisis leadership. The paper concludes by discussing whether party crisis on the Czech and CEE centre-left poses different and/or additional challenges to that on the mainstream right and reflects on Social Democrats’ difficulties alliance-building, including their (non-)relationship with the Greens and participation in the Communist-led Enough! bloc.