Europe's Radical Left: From Marginality to the Mainstream? by Luke March & Daniel Keith

Author:Luke March & Daniel Keith [March, Luke & Keith, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783485369
Google: sGEQswEACAAJ
Amazon: B086RBH174
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Goodreads: 54843138
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International, Limited
Published: 2016-01-15T08:45:08+00:00

Source: Výsledky voleb a referend. Poslanecká sněmovna Parlamentu ČR (respective years), http://www.volby.cz.

The absence of a crisis effect was even more obvious in the 2014 European elections: here, the election results of the party have been continuously decreasing, mainly due to its ambivalent attitude towards the European Union and competition from other Eurosceptic parties (Table 11.2). The actual winner of the election was ANO.

On the regional level, the KSČM was more successful. In 2012, it achieved 20.43 per cent of votes in regional assemblies and became the second most successful party in the Czech Republic. The KSČM was subsequently invited by the ČSSD to build joint governments in nine regions and in one of them its candidate secured the post of the regional governor. The economic crisis played little role in helping the party to expand. More significant explanations are found in the KSČM’s ability to exploit local political issues, the view that it is largely isolated and therefore ‘has its hands clean’ and the way that it placed non-party candidates on electoral lists.

Attempts to analyse the 2010 electoral losses by Vojtěch Filip concluded that the election programme was both well written and offered the right answers to the situation. Filip argued that the problem was that the party was unable to communicate the programme to society, mainly to the young generation. According to him, the way forward was more actively to seek broader societal coalitions. The Central Committee should be more actively using its new competence and directly influencing the lists of candidates on the regional level.65

For the modernisers, the problems facing the party are more complex: the above-mentioned demographic change is seen to be compounded by the party’s outdated and unattractive party programme.66 For example, they highlighted that policies that promote employee stock ownership have little resonance with Czech citizens who appear to seek either full independence and engage in start-ups, or to prefer a position as employees. The modernisers agree that the party lacks effective communication strategies – it poured considerable funds into its own radio and TV programmes for several years but neither offered sufficient quality or managed to significantly expand their audience. The KSČM initiated and sponsored the platform ‘Společenství práce a solidarity’ (SPAS, ‘Alliance for labour and solidarity’) to co-ordinate social organisations in the search for alternatives to the system. However, although this recieved much praise, it failed to attract new left activists.67

Table 11.2 KSČM Performance during the Elections to the European Parliament

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