The paper tries to assess the roles that political parties play in the political system of Czech parliamentary democracy. Popular evaluation of the parties’ performance seen by the eyes of the Czech public is rather skeptical. Parties are seen as weak and corrupted vehicles of political power without transmitting important societal interests and embodying important political and moral values. We are going to present different point of view as far as the quality of Czech parties is concerned. Political parties are important political actors having some standard political functions vital for maintenance and improvement of democratic politics. The analysis of Czech political parties presented in this article will be based on such a catalogue of parties’ systemic functions and evaluation of the scope and quality of Czech political parties in respect to them. The authors will base their evaluation on rich existing literature on Czech (and generally “post-communist”) parties and party systems presenting a mix of normative and systemic oriented evaluation of parties’ performance in contemporary Czech politics.
