The Unbearable Lightness of Reform: The Stickiness, Paradoxes, and Dark Sides of the Czech Proportional System

Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the proportional representation (PR) system has served as the undisputed organizational principle of Czech democracy. Despite frequent political rhetoric advocating for majoritarian elements to ensure government stability, the Czech PR system has demonstrated remarkable "stickiness." It has survived virtually intact throughout the post-revolutionary period, with its core character remaining unchanged. This paper aims to explain this persistence and analyze the "dark side" of the minor parametric adjustments that have occurred on the margins, specifically focusing on the paradoxes of the 2021 electoral reform and the strategic adaptations of political actors. First, we analyze the "strange reform" of 2021, precipitated by an "activist" Constitutional Court ruling just months before the general election. While the Court argued that the previous system (D'Hondt method combined with small districts) violated the constitutional principle of proportionality, the subsequent forced redesign (moving to the Imperiali/Hagenbach-Bischoff quotas) resulted in negligible changes to actual proportionality levels. We argue that this represents a case of "reform without change," where high institutional turbulence yielded minimal impact on the overall character of democracy, confirming the system's entrenched resistance to fundamental shifts. However, the marginal changes over time and existing institutional features have birthed significant anomalies and pathologies, fitting the "dark side of PR" framework. We focus on several phenomena associated with these unintended consequences. The first is the "Pirate Fiasco" of 2021, which illustrates the volatility of preferential voting (open lists) within pre-election coalitions. In the 2021 election, the liberal Pirate Party formed a coalition with the Mayors and Independents (STAN). Due to the specific design of preferential voting thresholds, a massive "jumping" effect occurred: although the coalition succeeded, the Pirates secured only 4 out of the coalition’s 37 seats. This case offers a stark example of how allocation rules within coalitions can produce extreme intra-alliance disproportionality and "electoral inversions" at the candidate level. The second issue concerns "hidden coalitions" (e.g., Stačilo! or SPD blocs). These entities bypass even the reduced coalition thresholds (8% or 11%) by running under a single party’s registration while hosting partners as candidates. We argue that while the new institutional reality effectively drives necessary party integration in a fragmented landscape, this specific form of "electoral engineering" circumvents the legal framework designed for alliances, opting for a lower transparency model to ensure survival. In conclusion, the paper argues that while the Czech PR system remains robust and "sticky" on the macro level, its micro-institutional design is increasingly vulnerable to manipulation and generates paradoxical outcomes that distort political representation. The Czech experience thus serves as a cautionary tale of how parametric tinkering and strategic adaptation can produce new vulnerabilities—the "dark matter" of an otherwise stable proportional system.