Informal Politics in Post-Communist Europe: Political Parties, Clientelism and State Capture 2019026195, 2019026196, 9781138572492, 9780203702031

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
List of box
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Post-communism - clientelism, party and state capture
1.1 Post-communism - a unique transition
1.2 Transition strategies: Central Europe and the Russian sphere
1.3 Informal networks, informal politics
1.4 The informal predatory nomenklatura
1.5 The informal 'client-client' pattern
1.6 Post-1989 clientelism — corruption and patronage
1.7 State capture — the clientelist version
1.8 Party capture: the firm-party-firm pattern
1.9 Post-communist alternatives in Central Europe
1.10 Concluding remarks
2 Party capture: privatisation 'from below'
2.1 Party privatisation 'from below'
2.1.1 Recruitment of 'fake' party members
2.1.2 Withdrawal of licences in the ODS in 2013
2.1.3 Withdrawal of licences in the ODS in 2014
2.1.4 Regional bosses - a new layer
2.1.4.1 The regional boss — the narrow and broad approach
2.1.4.2 The regional boss - godfather
2.1.4.3 The regional boss - trader
2.1.4.4 The regional boss - authentic party politician
2.1.5 National bosses
2.1.6 The 'Kens' - an appendage of the bosses
2.1.7 A list of selected bosses
2.1.8 The new black marketeering
2.1.9 Decline of the bosses - what next?
3 Party capture: colonisation 'from above'
3.1 Pro-business politics - oligopolies and monopolies
3.1.1 Actors of colonisation 'from above' - the example of ČEZ
3.1.2 ČEZ, Škoda Holding, I&C Energo and Appian
3.1.3 ČEZ, J&T and Czech Coal
3.2 A comparison: party privatisation and colonisation
3.3 Political and economic cartels
3.4 Concluding remarks
4 The clientelist party, clientelist parliamentarism and clientelist regime
4.1 The client-client relationship
4.2 The triangle: parties-business-civil service
4.3 Concentric circles of clientelist networks
4.4 The contagion of clientelism
4.5 Structural corruption
4.6 Security and surveillance potential
4.7 Reduction of the significance of elections
4.8 Business and parasitic functions
4.9 A modified concept of fundamental cleavages
4.10 The party organisational model - confederation
4.11 Clientelist parliamentarism
4.12 Clientelist democracy
4.13 The concept of the clientelist party
4.14 A modified political system
4.15 Concluding remarks
5 "Old parties in new party systems?"
5.1 The new parties - a theoretical framework
5.2 Central Europe: "old parties in new party systems?"
5.3 Central Europe: a new party subsystem
5.4 'Flash' and 'start-up' parties
5.5 From mass to modern elite parties
5.6 Dis/continuity with the clientelist past
5.6.1 The business-firm party: ANO
5.6.2 ANO's positive and negative potentials
5.6.3 Quo vadis ANO?
5.7 Concluding remarks
6 Conclusion
6.1 Three critical political junctures
6.1.1 The second political juncture - since 2000
6.1.2 The third political juncture — since 2015
6.2 The myth of referenda: the deconstruction of representative democracy
6.3 The danger of anti-corruption crusades
6.4 Dahrendorf: an authentic civil society
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

INFORMAL POLITICS IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE

Routledge Studies on Political Parties and Party Systems

INFORMAL POLITICS IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE POLITICAL PARTIES, CLIENTELISM AND STATE CAPTURE Michal Klíma

Michal Klíma

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9/13/2019 9:53:15 PM

Informal Politics in Post-Communist Europe

This book offers a fascinating, thought-provoking and ground-breaking study of post-communist political life. It is published just as the countries of Central and Eastern Europe mark thirty years since gaining freedom and have embarked on the path of democracy. This book is one of the first full-length academic works to explore the question of how informal structures, headed by bosses, godfathers and oligarchs, affect formal party politics and democracy. The unique post-communist transition is observed as a specific historical moment of disorder, offering a window of opportunity for the large-scale exploitation of public resources in the sense of a kind of ‘Klondike Gold Rush.’ Phenomena of corruption, clientelism, patronage, party capture and state capture are topical themes that are deeply explored. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, democratisation, transitional societies, clientelism, party systems and more broadly of comparative and European politics. Michal Klíma is a professor of political science and currently the Rector of the Metropolitan University Prague, Czech Republic. He is a frequent commentator on Czech television and has authored several works on issues related to political life in the country and in the post-communist region.

Routledge Studies on Political Parties and Party Systems

Series Editors: Ingrid van Biezen, Leiden University, the Netherlands, and Fernando Casal Bértoa, University of Nottingham, UK

This new series focuses on major issues affecting political parties in a broad sense. It welcomes a wide-range of theoretical and methodological approaches on political parties and party systems in Europe and beyond, including comparative works examining regions outside of Europe. In particular, it aims to improve our present understanding of these topics through the examination of the crisis of political parties and challenges party organizations face in the contemporary world, the increasing internal complexity of party organizations in terms of regulation, funding, membership, the more frequent presence of party system change, and the development of political parties and party systems in under-researched countries. Opposition Parties in European Legislatures Conflict or Consensus? Edited by Elisabetta De Giorgi and Gabriella Ilonszki Party Members and their Importance in Non-EU Countries A Comparative Analysis Edited by Sergiu Gherghina, Alexandra Iancu and Sorina Soare Party System Change, the European Crisis and the State of Democracy Edited by Marco Lisi Do Parties Still Represent? An Analysis of the Representativeness of Political Parties in Western Democracies Edited by Knut Heidar and Bram Wauters Leaders, Factions and the Game of Intra-Party Politics Andrea Ceron Informal Politics in Post-Communist Europe Political Parties, Clientelism and State Capture Michal Klíma For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-on-Political-Parties-and-Party-Systems/book-series/PPPS

Informal Politics in Post-Communist Europe Political Parties, Clientelism and State Capture Michal Klíma

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Michal Klíma The right of Michal Klíma to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Klíma, Michal, 1959- author. Title: Informal politics in post-Communist Europe : political parties,   clientelism, and state capture / Michal Klíma. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series:   Routledge studies on political parties and party systems | Includes   bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019026195 (print) | LCCN 2019026196 (ebook) |   ISBN 9781138572492 (hardback) | ISBN 9780203702031 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Political parties—Europe, Central. | Political   parties—Europe, Eastern. | Post-communism—Europe, Central. |   Post-communism—Europe, Eastern. | Democratization—Europe,   Central. | Democratization—Europe, Eastern. | Europe,   Central—Politics and government—1989- | Europe, Eastern—Politics   and government—1989Classification: LCC JN96.A979 K55 2020 (print) | LCC JN96.A979   (ebook) | DDC 320.943—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026195 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026196 ISBN: 978-1-138-57249-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-70203-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figuresviii List of tables ix List of box x Acknowledgements xi Introduction xiii 1 Post-communism – clientelism, party and state capture

1

  1.1  Post-communism – a unique transition  2   1.2 Transition strategies: Central Europe and the Russian sphere 6   1.3  Informal networks, informal politics  8   1.4  The informal predatory nomenklatura  10   1.5  The informal ‘client-client’ pattern  13   1.6  Post-1989 clientelism – corruption and patronage  15   1.7  State capture – the clientelist version  21   1.8  Party capture: the firm-party-firm pattern  25   1.9  Post-communist alternatives in Central Europe  27 1.10 Concluding remarks 29 2 Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’   2.1  Party privatisation ‘from below’  32 2.1.1  Recruitment of ‘fake’ party members  32 2.1.2  Withdrawal of licences in the ODS in 2013  39 2.1.3  Withdrawal of licences in the ODS in 2014  47 2.1.4  Regional bosses – a new layer  48 2.1.4.1 The regional boss – the narrow and broad approach 49 2.1.4.2  The regional boss – godfather  51 2.1.4.3  The regional boss – trader  52 2.1.4.4 The regional boss – authentic party politician 53

31

vi  Contents 2.1.5 National bosses 54 2.1.6  The ‘Kens’ – an appendage of the bosses  55 2.1.7  A list of selected bosses  56 2.1.8  The new black marketeering  58 2.1.9  Decline of the bosses – what next?  59 3 Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’

63

  3.1  Pro-business politics – oligopolies and monopolies  64 3.1.1 Actors of colonisation ‘from above’ – the example of ČEZ  66 3.1.2  ČEZ, Škoda Holding, I&C Energo and Appian  72 3.1.3  ČEZ, J&T and Czech Coal  74 3.2  A comparison: party privatisation and colonisation  76 3.3  Political and economic cartels  78 3.4 Concluding remarks 80 4 The clientelist party, clientelist parliamentarism and clientelist regime 

83

 4.1 The client-client relationship 84   4.2  The triangle: parties-business-civil service  85   4.3  Concentric circles of clientelist networks  87   4.4  The contagion of clientelism  91  4.5 Structural corruption 93   4.6  Security and surveillance potential  96   4.7  Reduction of the significance of elections  98   4.8  Business and parasitic functions  100   4.9  A modified concept of fundamental cleavages  101 4.10  The party organisational model – confederation  104 4.11 Clientelist parliamentarism 106 4.12 Clientelist democracy 108 4.13  The concept of the clientelist party  109 4.14  A modified political system  112 4.15 Concluding remarks 113 5 “Old parties in new party systems?”   5.1  The new parties – a theoretical framework  121   5.2  Central Europe: “old parties in new party systems?”  125   5.3  Central Europe: a new party subsystem  128   5.4  ‘Flash’ and ‘start-up’ parties  132   5.5  From mass to modern elite parties  133

120

Contents vii   5.6  Dis/continuity with the clientelist past  136 5.6.1  The business-firm party: ANO  138 5.6.2  ANO’s positive and negative potentials  142 5.6.3 Quo vadis ANO? 145  5.7 Concluding remarks 147 6 Conclusion

150

  6.1  Three critical political junctures  151 6.1.1  The second political juncture – since 2000  153 6.1.2  The third political juncture – since 2015  158   6.2 The myth of referenda: the deconstruction of representative democracy  161   6.3  The danger of anti-corruption crusades  164   6.4  Dahrendorf: an authentic civil society  166 Bibliography Index

168 192

Figures

1.1 1.2 3.1 4.1

Party capture based on the firm-party-firm pattern Captured party realising clientelist state capture Corporate state capture index Multi-layered clientelist networks surrounding the established parties and their links to non-transparent business 4.2 Mass parties between civil society and the state 4.3 Cartel parties between civil society and the state 4.4 Clientelist parties between civil society, non-transparent business and the state

26 27 81 87 115 115 115

Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3 5.1

Membership of established parties (1998–2019) ODS membership (1991–2019) Situation of regional and national bosses in 2014 Elections to Chamber of Deputies in the Czech Republic (1996–2017) 5.2 Electoral support for a set of new parties in elections to Chamber of Deputies in the Czech Republic, 2010, 2013 and 2017 (above the 5% threshold) 5.3 Change in ANO Membership (2013–2019) 6.1 Mass anti-corruption demonstrations – Central and partially Eastern Europe after 2010

35 37 60 127 131 141 154

Box

2.1 Letter from 12 local organisations of the ODS in Prague-West district

41

Acknowledgements

The author worked continually on this book over a period of fifteen years. He primarily focused on an analysis of the unique post-communist processes in the pivotal period in the Czech Republic of 1998–2013. He has progressively presented individual parts of his work at dozens of conferences both in the Czech Republic and abroad, and subsequently published them in the political science literature. Within the Czech environment, the author first presented the initial version of the concept of the clientelist party at a conference in Brno held by Masaryk University in 2008. The conference paper was entitled “The Prototype of the Clientelistic Party in the Czech Republic?” The author further elaborated upon the concept of the clientelist party in his paper, “The Clientelistic Party: A Modified Version of a Catch-all Party in the Czech Republic,” presented at the 21st IPSA World Congress of Political Science held in Santiago de Chile in 2009. Other related papers by the author include “From Totalitarianism to Defective Democracy. The Czech Republic 25 Years after November,” presented at the conference of the Central European Political Science Association in Prague 2014. The chapter on the concept of the clientelist party in this book is also based on a revised, supplemented and updated text (Klíma 2013). The theme of the emergence of a new generation of new parties, in particular business-firm parties, was dealt with in his paper, “The Private Business-Firm Party – as a Sub-category of the Modern Elite Party. Movement ANO 2011 – The Case of the Czech Republic,” presented at the ECPR General Conference in Prague 2016. The author elaborated upon further aspects of his book in the joint work by Michal Klíma and Jonathan Mendilow entitled “Clientelism, Corruption, and the Concept of Anti-System Parties” in Corruption and Governmental Legitimacy (2016). Most recently, in 2018, he presented his paper “Re-conceptualisation of Clientelism. The Post-Communist Experience” at the 25th IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Brisbane. This book is a substantially revised version of the author’s Czech-language publication From Totalitarianism to Defective Democracy: The Privatisation and Colonisation of Political Parties by Non-transparent Business [Od totality k defektní demokracii. Privatizace a kolonizace politických stran netransparentním byznysem] (Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství, 2015). The core of the original Czech work is incorporated into this English version, namely Chapters 2, 3 and

xii  Acknowledgements 4. At the same time, two completely new comparative texts are added, i.e. Chapters 1 and 5, as well as a new Introduction and Conclusion. Nevertheless, the main analytical focus has remained identical: the processes of party capture in the sense of party privatisation ‘from below’ and party colonisation ‘from above.’ The author thanks all the book’s reviewers for their in-depth expert comments and advices. His colleagues Jan Outlý and Iva Chvátalová in particular deserve a mention here for their valuable consultations, comments and advice. Thanks are also due to the head of the library, Petra Hornochová, and assistant head of the IT department, Josef Kovář, for searching the relevant sources and technical support. His colleague David Erkomaishvili provided excellent support in processing the typescript and arranging the corresponding tables and figures. The author appreciates the supportive approach on the part of the management of the Metropolitan University Prague, namely of its founder, Anna Benešová, and its director, Marek Beneš, especially for the time they made available for the writing of this publication. The author would also like to thank Ashley Davies for his assistance with the English language version of the text, and values the professional and accommodating approach of the Routledge publisher. My final thanks are to family, and in first place to my wife Hanka for her support, patience and understanding over the last years, since a considerable amount of this text was written during weekends and holidays. Michal Klíma 26 April 2019

Introduction

MOTTO: “We live in a peculiar land . . . In a land where the results of public tenders that are to be announced tomorrow were already arranged by somebody yesterday. Under communism they taught us that to live in a land where tomorrow already means yesterday is the greatest fortune that could be bestowed upon us in life. If somebody had told me in 1988 that communism could fall, I’d have said they were mad – but it happened. If somebody had told me in 2010 that clientelism could disappear, I’d probably have said the same.” Libor Michálek, Senator, Czech Republic (2013) *** Thirty years after the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union, the region of Central and Eastern Europe represents a natural laboratory for a comparative study of party development, regime dynamics and democratic quality. This builds upon the fact of the extraordinary accumulation of transformation processes within a short period of time, i.e. democratisation, state-building, the introduction of a market economy and bureaucratisation of political leadership. Such a unique post-communist transition created a special historical moment of disorder, offering a ‘window of opportunity’ for the exceptional large-scale exploitation of state resources in the sense of a kind of ‘Klondike Gold Rush.’ In this context, the book looks from a new perspective at the informal political party-economic ties which are of essential importance for understanding the post-1989 political development. The aim is to integrate informal networks and informal politics (Rupnik and Zielonka 2013, Hale 2015, Ágh 2016), and thus nontransparent structural transactions such as clientelism, corruption and patronage, into the academic study of political parties. For this reason the work uses terms such as informal networks, informal exchanges, informal politics, informal postcommunist nomenklatura, informal party privatisation and colonisation, informal ‘client-client’ pattern, undercurrents of politics, party capture and state capture.

xiv  Introduction Regarding the basic territorial parameters, the main focus is on Central Europe, covering the four countries of the Visegrad group, namely Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and chiefly the Czech Republic. It also relates partially to Eastern Europe, covering the Baltic and Balkan States, including Bulgaria and Romania as well as Ukraine and Moldova. These are states which maintain a democratic regime and at the same time are located within the wider orbit of the European Union and NATO. This work also relates, though only peripherally, to the post-Soviet successor states, referred to as post-communist Eurasia (Hale 2015), including Russia, Belarus, the states of the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this territorial aspect, two distinct strategies for how to transform and modernise their states are explored in Subchapter 1.2. The book follows the alternative framework in comparative politics for analysing the uniqueness of the post-communist political system. According to Hale’s approach (2015), post-communism constitutes a “distinct political system” in the sense that the determining role in the formation of new democratic regimes in the 1990s was played by informal networks and the informal side of politics. Within this context, informal politics, and more specifically the informal pattern of partyfirm ties and transactions, are conceptualised here as a specific system of particular representation and promotion of interests. In other words, they embody a kind of interest politics satisfying individual or collective needs by other means than through the official institutional and impersonal channels. Therefore, such particular interests are pursued through additional and parallel channels, establishing a complementary framework of selective relationships and strategies (Piattoni 2001). It is argued that post-communist clientelism constitutes a particular form of social organisation which embraces structural corruption and structural patronage (Sajó 2002), and thus potentially generates processes of party capture as well as state capture. Moreover, it is apparent that this systemic version of clientelism can prevail in transitional societies for decades. As Hanley contended (2016), this is because clientelism as a specific kind of social glue can be ‘functional’ in its ability to organise intra-party life and co-ordinate government institutions through distributing ‘selective incentives.’ The systemic clientelism referred to in this work therefore indicates potentially rational behaviour within the circumstances of a unique pattern of opportunities. This follows from the ubiquitous transition opportunities based on (1) the unprecedented extent of state assets designated for privatisation and redistribution; (2) the large scale of government jobs available under traditional form of patronage; and (3) the excessively porous legal circumstances enabling exclusive gains (Sajó 2002). The work thus starts from the hypothesis that in addition to official politics, parallel structures of powerful informal politics were formed in the early postcommunist 1990s. Therefore, if both layers of politics were intertwined, it was crucial from a practical and theoretical perspective to make efforts to identify and differentiate between the two, and mainly to define the latter. Within this approach, it was of fundamental importance to uncover the process of formation and functioning of informal political-business networks. Subsequently, it would

Introduction  xv then be possible to map the ways and extent of their penetration into the institutions of the official politics, first of all into political parties as gatekeepers of the entire political system. In this respect, systemic distortions of the whole political setting are explored. In line with this view, this book presents the process of how non-transparent political-business networks created the specific main building blocks of the political arrangement rooted in three broad sets of collective actors: local political machines, powerful politicized corporate conglomerates and various branches of the state. “Whoever controls these bosses, ‘oligarchs,’ and officials controls the country” (Hale 2015: 10). This approach reflects the shift from the ‘ideal’ to the ‘real’ world, and permits a creative application of classical Western concepts to the post-communist conditions. More specifically, this work attempts to identify how post-communist informal networks or informal politics have affected, subverted and seized relevant parties, referred to here as party capture, and through them also the main pillars of the political system, identified as a form of state capture. Therefore, in practice, not only political parties were subjugated but consequently also the executive and legislative power, the judiciary, public prosecution service, police and public media. In such an extreme way, large-scale clientelism led to the systemic privatisation of public decision-making by informal and non-transparent networks. This approach also helps to explain the electoral turbulence over the last two decades, but mainly the overall tendency of democratic backsliding in this part of the world. Chapter 1 presents as its key topic a modified version of clientelism, formed in the unique transition from totalitarianism to democracy. The author posits arguments concerning why, in the circumstances of the early post-communism of the 1990s, it is no longer appropriate to assume such basic attributes of the classical concept of clientelism, in which: (a) patrons are a priori politicians and a priori dominate; or (b) the main goal of politicians is a priori to gain profit in various forms of electoral support. It is argued here that the regional and nationwide bosses and godfathers from the business environment can also acquire more power within the political-company networks. Moreover, it shows that politicians behave and decide contextually, i.e. the unprecedented privatisation opportunities contributed to a preference for a strategy of long-term private enrichment over short-term electoral profit. Therefore, both sides of the clientelist relationship can pursue primarily the same entrepreneurial goal: mutual enrichment at the expense of public resources. Thus, the differences between the roles of patron and client are blurred, and consequently the fixed hierarchical ‘patron-client’ relationship is substituted by the flexible client-client pattern. Taken as a whole, clientelism is conceptualised as an all-embracing and penetrating phenomenon including an extensive privatisation of public decisionmaking (Piattoni 2001). At the same time, the author follows the view of Kitschelt and Wilkinson (2007: 4) that within the contemporary context, “clientelism evolves into a more symmetrical (rather than asymmetrical), intermittent (rather than stable and continuous), instrumental-rational (rather than normative) and broker-mediated (rather than face-to-face based) exchange relationship.” After

xvi  Introduction all, it is from this kind of post-communist clientelism that notions and concepts such as clientelist parties, clientelist parliamentarism, clientelist democracy, clientelist regime and clientelist state capture are derived and developed. In general, social and political phenomena are examined here on the basis of an interplay of the contextual circumstances and the strategies or choices adopted by individuals or group actors in the political sphere. Therefore, the theoretical framework interconnects both dimensions, namely the ‘demand’ and ‘supply-side’ (Piattoni 2001, Bolleyer 2013). It implies that the ‘demand-side’ comprises the external structural conditions within which the ‘supply-side,’ in the sense of the political class, bureaucracy and their business and other allies, assert their particular interests and strategies. Obviously, every historical phase produces different structural conditions, such as specific economic development, social structure, political culture, the composition of the electorate and political and economic actors. It is apparent that interest in studying such systemic distortions and democratic decline in Central and Eastern Europe is increasing due to contemporary developments not only in Hungary and Poland but also in the Czech Republic. This can appeal also to other regions and states, for example in Southern Europe, Latin America, South Africa and India, where political parties are similarly prone to capture by clientelist and corrupt business groups. It will be useful to reflect upon the impact of the post-communist world also on North America and Western Europe, which are currently experiencing turbulence and democratic difficulties. Specifically, this topic has already provided inspiration for the Mongolian academic and political elite, which is encountering the same kind of post-communist challenges, namely pervasive clientelism with structural corruption within the context of a similar two-pillar party system as in the Czech Republic. For this reason, the original Czech version of this book was translated into Mongolian. *** This book is a substantially revised version of the author’s Czech-language publication From Totalitarianism to Defective Democracy: The Privatisation and Colonisation of Political Parties by Non-transparent Business [Od totality k defektní demokracii. Privatizace a kolonizace politických stran netransparentním byznysem] (Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství, 2015). The core of the original Czech work is incorporated into this English version, namely Chapters 2, 3 and 4. At the same time, two completely new comparative texts are added, i.e. Chapters  1 and 5, as well as a new Introduction and Conclusion. Nevertheless, the main analytical focus has remained identical: it concentrates on the processes of incremental party privatisation and colonisation by informal networks of corrupt business groups, which as a whole constitute the phenomenon of party capture. In this context, the book explores how such distorted intra-party evolution produces a kind of ‘clientelist party.’ The presented notion of the clientelist party does not aim to define a completely new type or a new model of party which could be typical for the whole region of Central Europe. The author is aware of the plethora of already existing party typologies. Therefore, this version of the

Introduction  xvii clientelist party constitutes a party variation in terms of a negative mutation, forming in the unique conditions of the post-communist transformation. It is contended that the clientielist party crystallised in its purest form in the case of the Czech Republic, as documented in Chapters 2–4. ‘State capture’ is partly derived from the development of ‘party capture’ (Hellman 1998, Hellman and Kaufmann 2001, Hellman et al. 2003, Kaufmann et al. 2010). In other words, the contagious effect of clientelist and corrupt activities is studied in the sense of their spread from the level of party politics into the individual elements as well as the entire political system and economy. Consequently, Chapter  4 examines how the inherently parasitical parties and the processes of party and state capture lead to a clientelist form of government and democracy, and moreover trigger an authoritarian tendency. As mentioned earlier, this work includes two new chapters, Chapters 1 and 5, which present a broader comparative view on political development in the area of Central and partially Eastern Europe and beyond. Chapter 1 provides the theoretical framework, identifying the main theoretical concepts, such as post-communism, informal politics, informal nomenklatura, post-1989 clientelism, structural corruption and patronage, party capture and state capture. Within this context, it is highlighted that all these concepts are structurally entrenched in the environment of a dual legacy – that of forty years of communist totalitarianism and subsequent decades of post-communist transformation. It shows that few other circumstances have created such ideal conditions for the flourishing of non-transparent informal transactions and the given actors. Chapter  5 explores how the vacuum created by the collapse of a hollowedout and captured party mainstream is fulfilled in many countries by a new generation of political parties, covering a diverse array of specific entities such as business-firm parties and ‘Pirates.’ The phenomenon of the birth of a new set of parties – predominantly elite-dominated protest parties – is then explored from a comparative perspective within the circumstances of Central Europe. In the case of the Czech Republic, the chapter examines whether the business-firm party of the second biggest entrepreneur, Andrej Babiš, with his fusion of political, economic, media and security power, constitutes at least an equal if not greater threat to the quality of democracy in comparison with the clientelist parties. Political processes are analysed within the context of a comparative approach involving post-communist Central and partly Eastern Europe, and in the first place the case of the Czech Republic. The book incorporates empirical data into broader theoretical frameworks, and on this basis conceptualises the individual phenomena. In general, it was not easy to collect empirical data because the intertwined informal political and economic networks operate in a grey zone or in a covert regime. It follows that the gathered empirical data is obtained from trials on corruption, police files, reports of the Security Information Service and publications by investigative journalists, as well as from surveys of international organisations such as World Bank, Freedom House and Eurobarometer. The central topic of the book is an examination of the evolution of political parties as the core of the political system within the circumstances of the unique

xviii  Introduction post-communist transformation. The conceptual foundation is based on an indepth insight into the intersection between non-transparent economic forces and relevant parties. More specifically, it analyses how such business shapes party politics and creates systemic problems for democratic governance. In the case study of the Czech Republic, Chapter 2 offers a detailed analysis of the processes of party privatisation ‘from below’ managed by local bosses and godfathers by means of fake members recruited in cheap bars and restaurants. Chapter 3 then introduces the associated parallel phenomenon of party colonisation ‘from above,’ headed by business oligarchs and conducted in a more luxury environment of five star hotels and yachts. The following Chapter 4 applies the main findings of twoway party capture to the individual elements of the party system and ultimately to the entire party government and democratic regime. In addition to the aforementioned chapters, the case study of the Czech Republic is dealt with partially also in Chapter 5. All these chapters concentrate on the post-1989 development, however, they focus primarily on the period of 1998– 2013. This period begins with the cementing of the growing clientelist tendency by means of the cartel contract between the two biggest parties under the label of the so-called “Opposition Agreement.” It ends with the culmination of the crisis of the Czech political system in the form of the collapse of the Nečas cabinet, and the dramatic rise of the new anti-establishment parties and the election of a president with authoritarian tendencies. Subsequently, in Chapter  5 the focus of the book takes us beyond the watershed of 2013 and up to the present, i.e. to April 2019, since it explores the new set of parties, among them most importantly the oligarchic business-firm party of the ANO movement. The concluding chapter summarises the basic findings and lays out the framework of three critical political junctures which produced the principal waves of political mobilisation, subsequently causing a reconfiguration of the individual parties and party system, and more or less changing the entire political arrangement. Indeed, this refers to post-communist Central and partly Eastern Europe since 1989. These three political crossroads covered the following landmark events or processes: (1) the revolutionary year of 1989 as the beginning of the transition from totalitarianism to democracy laid the foundations in the form of establishing a pluralistic party system; (2) approximately from 2000  – as a consequence of the degenerative processes of party capture connected with systemic clientelism and structural corruption due primarily to the party-directed unprecedented mass privatisation of the first post-1989 decade – profound electoral revolts gave birth to a new generation of non-rooted entrepreneurial protest parties; and (3) after 2015, the migration crisis – representing another sharp line of conflict based on mass immigration from Islamic societies linked with a terrorist threat – generated a groundswell of patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia, and ultimately initiated a limited breakthrough of a further group of ‘newer’ parties; i.e. anti-immigrant and anti-European subjects. Attention is drawn here to the controversial demand for the introduction of direct democracy, together with proposals to deconstruct representative democracy as a response to the crisis of the established parties and politics. Furthermore,

Introduction  xix within the broad context of mass dissatisfaction, a note of warning is raised with regard to a moralising approach or moral crusade, potentially leading to the unjustifiable criminalisation of politicians. At the end of the conclusion, a reference is made to Dahrendorf’s idea about the principal role of authentic civil society in providing a firm foundation of democracy. *** It is appropriate to note that the author does not have a patent on reason, and views his book as a contribution to a never-ending debate. He is aware that he may be skating on thin ice when he proceeds intuitively and tentatively, for example when he identifies individual categories of bosses. Some propositions and hypotheses need to be tested, and thus await confirmation or refutation; certain outlined themes require further analysis.

1 Post-communism – clientelism, party and state capture Post-communism

Post-communism

This first chapter provides a theoretical and conceptual background for analysing negative structural phenomena relating to the party development and regime dynamics in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. As the starting point, it highlights the crucial factor of the unique post-communist transformation, signifying a special historical moment of disorder that opened a window for the unprecedented large-scale exploitation of state resources. The sudden freedom that arrived post-1989, with minimal barriers, naturally brought about the circumstances of a kind of ‘Klondike Gold Rush.’ In such an environment, negative structural behaviour flourished such as clientelism, corruption, organised crime and patronage. It is precisely these phenomena that will primarily be examined at the beginning of this book. Within this context, we identify the main actors that were prepared to take advantage of this historical opportunity for their exclusive enrichment at the expense of the state. The best organised agencies were informal political-business networks, which were generated by local political machines and giant conglomerate business groups. Thus, both broad collective actors ‘sandwiched’ every element of the political system: first of all, they subverted and captured the relevant political parties, and consequently through them also various branches of the state. These informal structures were represented at the top by bosses and oligarchs (Hale 2015) who played a substantial role in the functioning of the distorted democratic system. In other words, this informal networking helped a limited circle of actors to pursue its ‘doping strategy’ in the form of gaining an exclusive position on the economic and political market (Hellman and Kaufmann 2001, Grzymala-Busse 2008). Ultimately, this approach allows for an integration of the informal side of power into the academic study of political parties and politics per se. This chapter deals above all with the phenomenon of complex state-centred clientelism. The conceptual stretching of multifaceted clientelism is presented within the context of the unique post-communist period. This approach facilitates the inclusion of structural corruption as well as structural patronage within the broader orbit of clientelism. In this sense, it is argued, clientelism incorporates the more or less hierarchically arranged structures of informal networks and informal politics (Rupnik and Zielonka 2013, Hale 2015, Ágh 2016). The definition of

2  Post-communism complex clientelism consequently contributes to a fundamental understanding of the phenomena of party capture and state capture.

1.1  Post-communism – a unique transition The demise of the Soviet communist totalitarian system at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s liberated more states from dictatorship than any other event of the twentieth century. Francis Fukuyama (1989) wrote of the triumph of democracy and the end of history. Samuel Huntington (1991) referred to this transformation in the Euro-Asian region as history’s third wave of democratisation, commencing in Southern Europe in the 1970s, and progressively spreading to Latin America, Africa and Asia. At present, thirty years after the disintegration of the communist regime and of the Soviet Union, the region of Central and Eastern Europe remains a natural laboratory for a comparative study of party development and regime dynamics. The rapid and extensive collapse of the communist system represented a great historical challenge with an unknown outcome. As regards the scope of the post1989 social transformation, no historical parallel exists. As Claus Offe (1991) states, within a brief moment in history “triple transitions” took place: of identity (nationhood), politics (constitution-making and democratisation) and economics (allocation). At that moment countries, political power and immense state assets were divided up. Such a unique and complex transition was described similarly by Holmes (2013: 1165, 1173): But the transitions were more complex; almost overnight there was a need for new classes (social transition), educational reorientation, new legal frameworks, new international alignments and allegiances, and new ethical codes. There was also a need for an ideological reorientation. Furthermore, the post-1989 development was structurally embedded in the environment of both the communist legacy and the post-communist transition. Few other environments have created such ideal conditions for the flourishing of nontransparent informal transactions. Let us briefly summarise the structural factors following from the late communist period, which constitute a direct linkage to the favourable pro-clientelist conditions: (a) the legacy of the lack of division of power and the absence of a system of checks and balances in the political sphere; (b) the legacy of the excessive intervention of politics, specifically the former communist state-party, in the functioning of the state administration; (c) the legacy of the extraordinary interconnection of the political and economic spheres; (d) the legacy of the excessive interconnection of the public and private spheres; (e) the absence of a strong civil society and middle class as potential checks on political power in the sense of the persistence of a subservient political culture and the significance of personal connections and networks.

Post-communism  3 This list of factors from the communist period presents the main causal connections which predetermined the clientelist course of the subsequent political and economic transition. The initial period of the post-communist transformation also added further ‘ammunition’ to the aforementioned circumstances, contributing to the future explosion of clientelism. This includes the following factors: (f) the unique scope of the political, economic and social transformation, and especially the unprecedented extent of privatisation, causing the political parties to adopt the strategy of a rent-seeking approach; (g) the delay in the de-politicisation of the state administration; (h) the lack of immunity regarding predatory and parasitical groups which were privileged at the beginning of the transformation process in terms of “former network capital,” i.e. the possession of social and financial capital, including links to former communist secret police structures. This view, observing the peculiarities of both – the communist legacy and the post-communist transition  – corresponds to the approach of Mungiu-Pippidi (2006), who distinguishes two socio-political systems: universalism and particularism. Universalism was typical of modern states, in which power was divided and there existed a clear distinction between the public and the private. Within such a social setting, it was then possible to apply Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy, which presupposes the following fundamental characteristics quoted from Ledeneva: • • • • • •

a hierarchical division of labour, directed by explicit rules that are impersonally applied; staffed by full time, life professionals who do not in any sense own the ‘means of administration,’ [. . .] and live off a salary rather than from income derived directly from the performance of their job (Ledeneva 2009: 77)

On the other hand, particularism, or more precisely the particularistic state, was based on a concentration of power and interconnection of the public and private spheres. Therefore, while universalism acts in a manner antagonistic to corruption, particularism manifests a tendency to use public power for economic and private gain (Mungiu-Pippidi 2006). Each of these types of society, universalist and particularist, produces different cultural patterns of interactions in terms of how people relate to each other (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 1998). Within the framework of universalist culture, rules are applied universally and identically to all agents. By contrast, particularist culture prefers dealings based on informal relationships. It follows that the contrast of universalism versus particularism is based on principally different value orientations: rules versus relationships. The rule-based culture is typical of the USA, Canada and most of Northern Europe, while relationship-based

4  Post-communism strategies apply in Russia and China. Central European states belong rather somewhere in between (Ledeneva 2009). From the aforementioned, it is evident that a society following on from a communist past and the entire process of societal transformation cannot meet the fundamental parameters of an impersonal rational-legal system. In many respects, the post-communist system is reminiscent of the patrimonial power structures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which decisions were made not on the basis of institutionalised rules, but rather according to personal relationships and traditional and informal forms of authority. For this reason, it is not possible to simply apply contemporary Western concepts to post-communism. Because the historical and cultural context is fundamentally different, certain socio-political phenomena do not represent mere deviations from the norms of advanced market democracies, but rather ‘normality’ (Ledeneva 2009). The uniqueness of the post-communist environment is determined not only by the communist legacy but also at the same time by a revolutionary destruction of the totalitarian order. Within the circumstances of the transition phase, a breakdown of the original social ties took place, thereby also creating unique opportunities for the predatory behaviour of new or ‘re-established’ actors. As a result, societies in post-communist transition experienced not a reduction of the level of clientelism, patronage, corruption, organised crime and mafia activity, but rather a substantial increase thereof. This bred disillusionment and distrust of ‘officialdom’ among the general population, who even felt a sense of separation from the ‘system’ (Kornai 2006). Moreover, such a post-communist situation mixed with other unstable factors may lead to a dramatic shift in the frame of reference from democracy to authoritarianism, and from West to East. Specifically, in many states the post-1989 majority consensus regarding the supremacy of democratic values and pro-Western orientation was weakened or even disappeared entirely. It is no wonder that thirty years after the disintegration of the totalitarian Soviet bloc, a sense of partial or complete disenchantment predominates in these countries. Not only has the end of history as posited by Fukuyama not arrived, but also a wave of de-democratisation has afflicted almost all the states of the former Soviet Union except for the Baltic States, and in part also Moldova and Ukraine. In reaction to these large-scale complicated and controversial transformations in Europe-Asia, Hale (2015: 2–3) summarised political scientists’ approaches into the following three ideological currents: (1) “One school deemphasized democratization and stressed instead democratic ‘consolidation,’ a task that increasingly appeared Sisyphean. (2) A second group argued for a shift in focus: What should be explained was not transition from authoritarian rule, but transition back toward it, a process they saw as the new norm. (3) A third cohort proposed a more radical response: Eschewing the ‘transition paradigm’ altogether, it posited that these countries could long remain in a ‘twilight zone’ (on the boundary) between democracy and dictatorship,

Post-communism 5 governed by ‘hybrid regimes’ that might not be adequately characterized as ‘unconsolidated democracies’ yet are not transitioning to anything else.” Within this context, the immaturity of civil society and the weakness of the new democratic institutions of the early 1990s, more concretely the impaired capacity of parliament, government, the state administration, judiciary, public prosecution and police, essentially resulted in a failure to prevent, investigate and punish abuses of power and misappropriation of public property on a massive scale. Hence, in the majority of post-communist countries, systemic corruption, clientelism and organised crime infiltrated the governing party to a large extent, which to a greater or lesser extent contributed to the formation of clientelist, oligarchic or illiberal democracies. It is precisely this development that connects the majority of these countries and is the reason why the term post-communism is still valid (Magyar 2016). At the same time, it is this development and its theoretical reflection that allows us to understand the fragility of post-communist systems. The validity of the post-communist discourse, even thirty years after the break-up of totalitarianism, is also confirmed by Bálint Magyar in his work Post-communist Mafia State (2016), in which he placed the current Hungarian political system within a new theoretical framework of understanding. This refers to the arrangement under which a single governing one-man party, i.e. Orbán’s Fidesz party, within the course of a few years after 2010, implemented a constitutional putsch by means of its two-thirds parliamentary majority. This subsequently enforced substantial changes in the functioning of the entire state system, mainly by means of stripping the Supreme Court, National Bank, Prosecutor’s Office, local governments, cultural and educational institutions, public media, etc. of their independence. The rotation of power was thus blocked (more in Subchapter 1.9). Magyar explains such a contemporary development in Hungary as a natural continuation in terms of a germination of the post-1989 transition, the communist legacy of single-party dictatorship and a monopoly on state owned property. At the same, he argues that such political evolution can in many aspects be “best compared with what has happened in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union” (Magyar 2016: 2). *** Moreover, changes in the external environment in the last decade have magnified domestic failings and flaws. Negative factors include political and economic instability in both of the fundamental blocs of the democratic world – the European Union and the United States – representing the values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. The former has been shaken above all by the unprecedented mass migration which began in 2015, as well as by Brexit due to the referendum of 2016, i.e. the process of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. In the United States, political turbulence erupted after president Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017. In addition, two authoritarian powers, Russia and China, strengthened their influence in international relations. In particular, the Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014 became a watershed event.

6  Post-communism As a result, it is no wonder that the simultaneous presence of both domestic and external instability is awakening authoritarian forces also in Central Europe.

1.2  Transition strategies: Central Europe and the Russian sphere To place it in a comparative context, after the collapse of the communist regime, the new political elites in Central Europe, on the one hand, and in Russia and the post-Soviet Eurasian region, on the other, chose different strategies for how to transform and modernise their states (Sajó 2002, Yakovlev 2006, GrzymalaBusse 2008, Kostadinova 2012, Hale 2015). The main aim of the Central European countries was to Westernise themselves, both politically and economically. In the political arena this meant to constitutionalise freedom and build the rule of law as well as electoral and party systems, and in the economic domain to introduce a standard market by opening up their economies. In Russia, by contrast, the predominant strategy was of self-closure, which presupposed keeping the national economy under domestic control. Such a continuation of the Soviet legacy of a closed economy was enabled, among other factors, by the phenomenon of the inert masses and the country’s large resources of oil and gas. However, the distinct transition strategies within the contexts of both Central Europe and Russia together with the post-Soviet Eurasian states ensued particularly from: (a) their different levels of general political, economic and cultural development, (b) their different geographical distances from the European Union, and (c) the historical absence of democratic traditions on the part of Russia. Regarding Central Europe with its context of full literacy, the preconditions were better for integration into the world economy and modernisation. Similarly, in Central Europe a relatively consolidated party system and party government setting became entrenched. Contrasting social conditions led to different behaviour of the political elites, and ultimately to a different course of development in terms of democracy. After thirty years of modernisation, the Central European states rank among the democracies which belong within the broader international alignments of the European Union and NATO. This is despite the fact that in Poland or Hungary, for example, a weakening of the system of checks and balances is currently taking place, in particular a threat to the independence of the media, the constitutional courts and judiciary (Kornai 2015, Ágh 2016, Magyar 2016). Meanwhile, in Russia, there has been a restoration of authoritarian relations and imperial foreign policy. Ultimately, via the path of democratisation at the beginning of the 1990s, the communist system was transformed into a clientelist polity, as shall be observed in more detail in the following text. Thus, in the early phase of introducing democratic elections and institution building, totalitarianism was replaced by a society based on complex clientelism or a clientelist regime. Such a semi-informal political and economic arrangement was based on a sophisticated system of exploitation of public resources. It is clear that this type of clientelism was a profoundly distinct phenomenon in comparison with previous historical periods or eras.

Post-communism  7 As to the hierarchical structure of informal networks, there is a basic difference between the Soviet Union’s successor states and the countries of Central Europe. In the former, a single pyramid of authority predominated (Hale 2015: 11), whereas in the more democratic conditions of Central Europe multiple competing networks formed without a clear hierarchy. In this case, the significant strings of power of such informal networks rather converged within the hands of key bosses, oligarchs and godfathers, who carried out a part of their operations in tax havens, whereas politicians acting incognito periodically activated their covert power channels. To conclude, within the post-communist environment, two principal developmental alternatives were promoted: (1) Within the region of Russia and the other post-Soviet Union successor states, the crudest forms of clientelism were pursued, incorporating elements of decay in the form of an expansion of harsh oligarchisation and mafia structures. This development constituted a blind alley for the development of democracy, since it had destructive effects on the functioning of the state. The result was a curtailment of the democratic experience and the launch of an incremental process towards the restoration of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. Such evolution had its roots in the previous development. According to Yakovlev (2006: 1035), these distortions were deeper in Russia than in the other transitional states because “the communist regime had existed longer, and because the USSR held a central position in the socialist world.” (2) In the region of Central Europe and the Baltic States, clientelism did not take on such stark features. Nevertheless, even in these countries, which have been more successful in terms of adhering to democratic standards, systemic clientelism became entrenched. In several countries, its highest form, denoted as ‘state capture,’ was pursued (Subchapter 1.7). Such a development was a response to an unprecedented accumulation of transformation processes at one time, i.e. democratisation, state-building, economic transformation and the bureaucratisation of political leadership. Whilst Hale (2015) focused primarily on the USSR’s successor states, considerable authoritarian tendencies have appeared also in Central Europe. In other words, at one end of the post-communist continuum is the greater part of the post-Soviet states, which have returned to the embrace of new dictators. Model examples of such states are Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. At the other end of the continuum are the relatively successful countries of Central Europe, although today these states also are having problems remaining within the realm of standard democracies. In contemporary Poland and Hungary (Kornai 2015, Ágh 2016, Magyar 2016), a dismantling of the fundamental pillars of liberal democracy is taking place under the reign of single-party governments. Thus, an attack has been launched on the independence of the public media, the public prosecution service and the judiciary, including the Constitutional Court. At the same time the Czech Republic,

8  Post-communism Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania have recorded an excessive incidence of clientelism, corruption or organised crime.

1.3  Informal networks, informal politics From where did the internal sources of this unexpected, predominantly negative development in the post-communist world emerge? What were the deep causes of such an evolution? A crucial work in providing responses is Henry Hale’s Patronal Politics. Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective (2015). In this work Hale, within the context of post-communism, differentiated between the ideal and the real world, calling for a transition from the theory of the ideal to a theory of the real. Hale thus divided politics into formal and informal, or into its more and less visible forms. In doing so, with regard to influence on the running of politics, he placed greater emphasis on informal politics. This is a dramatically different approach, which stands the understanding of the post-communist reality back on its feet. However, above all it enables a reevaluation of several approaches, and a creative application of the original ideal concepts to a different environment. Such a theoretical standpoint contributes to a newly sharp focus on certain less comprehensible phenomena and events, and above all facilitates an understanding of the causes of political crises and at the same time a more reliable prediction of future developments. Last but not least, an understanding of the informal side of politics may lead to an invention of more optimal tools, serving for the prevention of negative phenomena (Rupnik and Zielonka 2013, Ágh 2016). Hale stated that comparative politics can no longer suffice with a simple application of the Western concept of democracy to the post-communist conditions. Mechanical memorising and the use of classical concepts – such as ‘political participation,’ ‘political beliefs and culture,’ ‘parties and electoral politics,’ ‘public policy making,’ ‘state building’ (2015: 6–7), ‘traditional cleavage structures’ and so on – will not lead to an understanding of what has taken place beneath the lid of everyday politics. Hale (2015: 7) emphasised that the real stuff of politics in post-communism cannot be captured by means of ideal concepts, “at least, not in the straightforward way, often assumed.” He proposes that it is necessary to start out from a good sense of the distinct political system, thus from the logic that makes this system a system. On the basis of such an approach, he recommended the articulation of an “alternative framework for organizing all of these elements.” In the case of post-Soviet Eurasia, formal institutions of the type of parliament, the government or the presidency are not of such key importance. By contrast, the most significant building blocks of the political system are represented rather by informal hierarchical networks rooted in three broad sets of collective actors. Specifically, Hale (2015: 10) presented: (1) Local political machines that emerged from reforms of the early 1990s, (2) giant politicized corporate conglomerates,

Post-communism  9 (3) various branches of the state that are rich either in cash or in coercive capacity. Whoever controls these bosses, ‘oligarchs,’ and officials controls the country. *** This book – focusing primarily on Central Europe, with primary emphasis on the case study of the Czech Republic – starts from the hypothesis of the following fundamental idea: in addition to official politics, parallel structures of powerful informal politics have been created. If both structures have become intertwined, and thus complementary, it is crucial from a practical and theoretical perspective to distinguish between the formal and informal side of politics. Within this context, it is important to identify the circumstances under which informal politics, i.e. the informal networks indicated here as clientelist, can overwhelm and subsequently deform political parties, and through them also distort the functioning of the legislature and executive. However, what is particularly exciting in this approach, which places informal politics if not in primary position, then at least on a level equal to official politics, is that this theoretical scheme gives social and political meaning to otherwise haphazard events. It therefore suddenly enables an explanation of political events that have hitherto been difficult to comprehend. A mental space opens up for an understanding of the causes of several government crises and political reversals, in particular a pattern of moving back and forth “between more democratic and more autocratic conditions” (Hale 2015: 8). After all, the incorporation of the informal side of politics into the general consideration permits an understanding of the fragility of post-communist systems. There are certain differences between Hale’s work and this book. Hale uses different terminology, which has its foundation in an investigation of a primarily distinct territory within the post-communist space. In the context of post-Soviet Eurasia, Hale applies such terms as patronalism, the patronalististic dimension of politics and patronal politics. His concept of patronal politics is an innovative approach. He defines patronal politics in the following words: It refers to politics in societies where individuals organize their political and economic pursuits primarily around the personalized exchange of concrete rewards and punishments through chains of actual acquaintance, and not primarily around abstract, impersonal principles such as ideological belief or categorizations like economic class. (Hale 2015: 9–10) The nature of a patronal network involves an instinct to continually expand and adapt to altered conditions and thus form broader coalitions. Such extended networks include informal members on the basis of different kinds of acquaintance. Depending on the circumstances within the given country, these networks of

10  Post-communism actual personal acquaintance are forged to various degrees “through ethnicity, region, kinship, friendship, patronage, or service in formal institutions like the Komsomol or the KGB, and its successor organizations” (Hale 2015: 433). An important role is played also by close interpersonal ties of classmates, co-workers or neighbours. Within informal networks, it is not ideological or party cohesion that is valued, but rather the ability to provide exclusive profit, political and security benefits for insiders. This approach is reminiscent of Kremlinology, and is thus an essential tool for grasping the political happenings in the former Soviet Union. Similarly, as in the past, today also experts on Russian politics are unable to suffice with a study of official institutions of the type of political parties, parliament or government. It is more important to be an expert on the ‘tsar’ Putin and his closest circle, such as the armed forces, including the military-industrial complex, the Minister of the Interior and the intelligence services. The main point of this book is that informal politics matters to a significant degree not only in the circumstances of post-Soviet Eurasia but at the same time in Central Europe. Due to the specific nature of the informal side of politics in Central Europe examined in the previous subchapter, the author of this book incorporates into his analysis not the term patronalism but clientelism (Subchapter 1.6). This entails that informal networks embrace clientelist political-economic circles, and as a result the expressions informal networks or clientelist networks are mutually interchangeable. The specific terminology thus springs from the different nature of phenomena which are embedded in a different time, territory and social context. This work therefore uses terms such as informal networks, informal exchanges, informal politics, undercurrents of politics, post-communist nomenklatura, informal party privatisation and colonisation, party capture and state capture. At the same time, this approach evolves further expressions with a clientelist attribute such as informal ‘client-client’ pattern, clientelist parties, clientelist parliamentarism and clientelist democracy or clientelist regime. Informal structures, elected by nobody, often possess greater power than parliament and government, but at the same time operate through them. Such informal networks are more or less hierarchically organised. At their apex are the unofficial national bosses or oligarchs, who work in symbiosis with key representatives of the political parties. The positions of the central bosses may be filled by the highestranking politicians and by national lobbyists or godfathers or by representatives of the largest corporate conglomerates. Within these circles, decisions are made behind closed doors on a wide range of informal exchanges of favours. In addition to the classic allocation of the largest domestic tenders and projects from European funds, these networks also decide upon the post-election composition of the cabinet or alternatively the fall of the government. This theme is explored in detail in the case study of the Czech Republic in Chapters 2, 3 and 4.

1.4  The informal predatory nomenklatura In a comparative perspective, within the communist and consequently postcommunist environment, a notable continuity can be identified in the operation

Post-communism  11 of the nomenklatura. Although this term originated from the Latin nōmenclātūra, signifying a list of names, the expression used here is a specifically communist one, namely nomenklatura. This is because under the communist regime it had a strict meaning, referring to totalitarian power in association with a privileged lifestyle. The nomenklatura system was thus based on the process of appointment to important positions of authority at all levels. More concretely, there was “a list of individuals drawn up by the Communist Party from which were selected candidates for vacant senior positions in the state, party, and other important organizations” (Collins English Dictionary), such as in the communist party apparatus, government and industry. Moreover, nomenklatura status included membership of the ruling and bureaucratic elite, but at the same time acquired a privileged lifestyle, ensuring a higher standard of accommodation, healthcare and so on. In any case, most important was the macropolitical context. This so-called cadre politics, i.e. the deployment of cadres, preferred the most ideologically loyal and disciplined members of the communist party. Through the single-party patronage system, communists perpetuated their so-called ‘leading role’ in politics and thus cemented the totalitarian system. This introduction of the communist past links together with the new reality of the post-1989 democratic transformation, during which the old, official nomenklatura was replaced by a new, informal one. This means that the communist nomenklatura, founded on an ideology of the ‘historical role of the working class’ with the ‘leading role of the communist party,’ was replaced by a new predatory nomenklatura, woven from a hidden clientelist fabric of parasitic business and politics. The new, informal nomenklatura was established upon a commercial basis of non-transparent state exploitation and the accumulation of political power. Two key sources of such a development can be detected: (1) the communist legacy but also subsequently (2) the wild post-communist privatisation. Such an evolution opened up a historical ‘window of opportunity’ for the development of clientelism, corruption, organised crime and mafia structures on a systemic scale. As a result, in the early stage of post-communism, in the broader sense the main political actor became the new nomenklatura which emerged from the previous communist nomenklatura. No alternative social network remained from the ruins of communism. It is therefore the product of a situation in which “the totalitarian system itself disintegrated quite rapidly and extensively, leaving mainly a variety of shards for political entrepreneurs to collect and piece together in new ways, often investing them with new meaning in the process” (Hale 2015: 456). Such a new nomenklatura in the first place incorporated the newly formed or transformed governing political parties. As a result, the core of clientelism comprised partycentred structures operating in a government setting (Sajó 2002). Therefore, in addition to the old-new nomenklatura, it was the state, the only surviving, all-encompassing organised force, which remained active. The state was the most significant economic decision-maker and the key service provider. It was no surprise that in the early stages of the post-communist development, an interconnection was established between the new nomenklatura networks and government bureaucracy. This was a new political elite in the form of relevant

12  Post-communism political parties and their informal allies, who gained executive power in order to subsequently offer public-service positions and public goods to their clients. Thus, the new nomenklatura primarily took on the ability to act as a parasite upon the state and its assets. Generally speaking, the new nomenklatura made use of its “former network capital” to become the “new patrons of post-communism.” “This network developed into systems of clientelist structures in the games of privatization, governmental subsidy, and the formation of public bodies” (Sajó 2002: 7). From the concept of the nomenklatura there ensues a high degree of mutual loyalty, which contributes to the closed nature of the informal clientelist networks and thereby also to their protection and safeguarding. Such loyalty is partially given by the nomenklatura legacy and by the institutional arrangement under which that legacy functions (Sajó 2002). Rational adherence to personal deals is therefore valued within these informal circles. All are in the same boat of mutual enrichment, shared power but also shared risk, since all are operating on the edge of the law. One mistake can spark a chain reaction in the media and launch a police investigation. The ultimate goal was not only to obtain electoral votes or other exclusive commodities behind the scenes but also to acquire special nomenklatura status. Such a contemporary caste system suggests operation within a closed circuit, which facilitates an accumulation of wealth and political power. In the Czech Republic, at least up to 2013, members of the nomenklatura enjoyed opulent living conditions in the form of constructing villa communities in leisure resorts, luxury holidays abroad, preferential healthcare and membership of VIP golf clubs. The precondition for this was sharing in privileged access to the venal use of state resources and further public benefits. The members of the nomenklatura thus had access to privatisation projects, public contracts, public employment, as well as tailor-made pork barrel legislation and so on. The biggest deals were negotiated in the shadows of the period of social transformation. The logic of exchange was that virtually everything could be bought and sold, even if behind the curtain of giant politicised corporate conglomerates or political lobbies. On the clientelist market everything was available, as if in a Turkish bazaar everything could be traded, therefore including every political function or administrative position. Even top posts in the police, public prosecution service as well as intelligence services could be traded. The nature of the new nomenklatura was of unscrupulous and pragmatic structures. From its functional basis there also ensues an endeavour to perpetuate its governing position. As a typical nomenklatura, it permeated into all the pores of the political sphere, the economy and social life in general. Its main interest was in penetrating into the established parties, which had the highest governing potential. In general, it sought to subjugate the relevant parties, executive and legislative power, the judiciary, public prosecution service, police and public media. The post-communist nomenklatura thus implemented a higher form of mass patronage (Müller 2006: 193). Instrumental cadre policy, in the sense of pervasive patronage, was the key to political success (Kopecký et al. 2012). Hence, the so-called deployment of cadres, specifically structural patronage (Subchapter 1.6), was based on the principle of mutual service, wherein those

Post-communism  13 who had provided the most services and shown themselves most loyal received a reward in the form of jobs in state agencies. For example, posts became available in the top management of state or semi-state enterprises or regional and municipal firms and organisations. In the case of the Czech Republic, this kind of reward is referred to in the clientelist jargon as a ‘trafika’ (Kopecký 2012), which in practice means a traditional newsagent, but in the transposed sense of the word refers to the securing of a stable and lucrative job. It was no surprise that the opening up of inequalities as a result of the unfair distribution of wealth associated with a unique spread of untouchable immoral behaviour gave rise to growing social frustration and distrust in the political elite. The vast majority of ordinary citizens were left without social protection vis-à-vis the predators of the new nomenklatura. Kostadinova (2012: 240) characterised this development in Bulgaria in the following words: The insider nomenclature privatisation of the 1990s generated bitterness, frustration, and disappointment with the unfair and dishonest methods of redistribution of state assets. As concerns the composition of such networks and their hierarchy, this covers the pawns, the middle cadres and the bosses. A typical representative of the middle cadres – for example a ‘flexible’ public official – performs a circuit of functions within the framework of the state administration and state enterprises, and in each post decides on the allocation of large public contracts. At the apex are the bosses, who are labelled here as regional or national bosses or godfathers. It does not necessarily apply that a top boss must hold a post in politics, but he nevertheless has access to high politics, and thus sufficient leverage in controlling the running of local, regional or national political machines. The highest ranks of the new nomenklatura may also be occupied by lobbyists or heads of giant corporate conglomerates. After two decades of democratisation and marketisation, it had become ever increasingly clear that one of the main winners was the new informal nomenklatura, consisting primarily of former communist party functionaries, former captains of industry and foreign trade, former state security officers, and former black market hard currency dealers (Subchapter 2.1.8), brothel owners and also a new parasitical layer of lobbyists or bosses and godfathers (Subchapter 2.1.4–2.1.7). It is interesting that such colourful kinds of actors, especially in Central Europe, were not concerned primarily with overthrowing democracy. On the contrary, they preferred stability for the sake of steadily abusing democratic processes to act as parasites upon the state.

1.5  The informal ‘client-client’ pattern For the purposes of mapping the uncharted territory of informal power or the informal side of politics in post-communist Central Europe, the main analytical tool used is primarily the flexible ‘client-client’ pattern, and not the classical fixed and hierarchical ‘patron-client’ relationship. Such a structural composition of

14  Post-communism these informal networks more precisely articulates the substance of the party-firm interdependence. The ‘client-client’ approach has very important consequences for the entire analysis, because it concentrates on (1) how parties were infiltrated and captured internally by non-transparent business groups, as well as (2) the processes of how ‘friendly’ circles formed around parties. For this reason, this book particularly analyses the phenomenon of informal party privatisation ‘from below’ (Chapter 2) and subsequently explores informal party colonisation ‘from above’ (Chapter 3), which as a whole constitutes the phenomenon of party capture and subsequently produces state capture. In this context, the unique ‘client-client’ pattern appears in various forms as: (a) the captured party-firm networks; and (b) the interconnected party-firm ties. The former is closer to the phenomenon of party privatisation ‘from below,’ which goes along with the party occupation by local and regional business. In the latter, there exists a more or less separate ‘division of labour’ between parties and firms, which is typical of the processes of party colonisation ‘from above,’ i.e. by giant corporate conglomerates. It is clear that each of these forms of the post-communist ‘client-client’ relationships contain as their main component an interdependence between nontransparent parties and non-transparent business. Two sides of the same coin can merge to such an extent that politicians cross over into the ranks of opaque business, whilst conversely businessmen become party members and politicians or in some cases individual actors adopt both roles simultaneously. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the ‘client-client’ approach has upset the division of labour between politicians and businessmen. The scheme of informal party-company interactions and specialisations to a greater or lesser extent advanced across the entire post-communist space. On the one hand, the relevant parties sold their political influence to a close circuit of firms, i.e. they provided them with political protection and patronage, in particular privileged access to privatisation, public contracts and European funds. On the other hand, favoured companies returned the favour to parties for their services in the form of contributions to their election campaigns and for covering their organisational and operational expenses. The experience from Bulgaria is characterised as follows: political elites in power award particular businesses with public contracts or favourable legislation; the companies, on their part, finance parties beyond what is envisioned by the law. (Kostadinova 2012: 96) At the same time, it applied for both sides of such a relationship that their universal aim was to pursue a clientelist exchange in the form of mutual enrichment at the expense of the state. It is not of defining importance as to who has the more dominant role, since this depends on the specific situation. In the context of Bulgaria, Kostadinova (2012: 117) posed the following questions: Who was in charge in the mighty politicoeconomic networks that in effect governed the country and stripped it of its assets? Did the powerful

Post-communism  15 multimillionaires prevail over the politicians who carry a mandate from voters to reform and democratize Bulgaria? The nature of the ‘client-client’ relationship produces very important characteristics for the mechanics of politics, namely that a significant proportion of the party elite was displaying divided loyalties, i.e. not only to their own party but also to a particular non-transparent business. It is precisely these divided loyalties that often clashed mutually, which impaired party discipline, meaning the cohesion of the party factions in parliament and multi-party coalitions. This often resulted in serious intra-party conflicts and government crises. Thus, the political system was less predictable and more unstable. At the same time, the covert nature of loyalty to non-transparent businesses generated increasing public frustration and distrust in the political elite.

1.6  Post-1989 clientelism – corruption and patronage Clientelism can be generally conceptualised as a specific system of particular representation and promotion of interests, or as a kind of interest politics satisfying individual or collective needs by other means than through the official impersonal channels of formal institutions. This means that “clientelism may act as an additional and parallel channel for the promotion of particular interests” (Piattoni 2001: 199). In other words, clientelism is a complementary framework of selective relationships and strategies which cannot be fully suppressed, but its scope depends on the complex contextual historical and social circumstances of each country or region. The evolution of clientelism, similarly to other social phenomena, is determined by an interplay of the contextual circumstances and the strategies or choices adopted by individuals or group actors in the political sphere. Therefore, the theoretical framework investigating political clientelism interlinks both dimensions, the demand-side and supply-side (Piattoni 2001, Bolleyer 2013). The ‘demand-side’ covers external structural conditions in which the political class, bureaucracy and their business and other allies pursue their interests, namely clientelist practices. Clearly, each historical phase produces different structural conditions, such as specific economic development, social structure, political culture, the composition of the electorate and political and economic actors. The ‘supply-side’ then represents a concrete pattern of clientelist strategies of political actors and their allies within a different historical, geographical, social and institutional environment. The elite strategies targeted for the obtaining, maintenance and aggrandisement of political power and economic wealth are variable across time and space. For example, it is possible to assume that in the transition from feudal to industrial society, distinct clientelist actors emerge who pursue different clientelist strategies than was the case in the post-1989 transformation from communist totalitarianism to democracy. The main theme of this book is thus an examination of the new kind of political clientelism within the conditions of the unique historical development of the

16  Post-communism post-communist transition in the region of Central Europe, and particularly in the Czech Republic. As a result, the central nucleus of such a kind of clientelism will not be traditional interpersonal relations and exchanges between the powerful representatives and powerless represented, or in other words, between patrons and clients. Up to now, the core of the classical definition has constituted a fixed hierarchical ‘patron-client’ relationship in the sense of both personal and group relations. Piattoni (2001) denoted three main theoretical approaches analysing clientelism: culturalist, developmentalist and economistic. All three approaches summarily express key definitional features. The culturalist approach focuses on interpersonal relations connected with such phenomena as “familism, tribalism, clannism, orientalism.” These represent the particular culture of certain societies. In this context, clientelism is conceived as a cultural pathology. The developmentalist view explains clientelism as a consequence of “the distorted or incomplete development of given political systems.” Finally, the understanding of clientelism is economistic because interpersonal relations are ruled “by the pure economic goal of benefitmaximization” (Piattoni 2001: 11). These three approaches will also be useful instruments for an examination of clientelism in the post-communist environment. At present, a number of distinct traditional definitions of clientelism and patronage exist, which originate from the British, American or continental European scholarly traditions (Piattoni 2001, Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007, Hilgers 2011). Nevertheless, for the introductory needs of understanding these traditional phenomena and for a further elaboration of the corresponding post-communist concept of clientelism, the author uses the following distilled, rather narrow definitions from Simona Piattoni’s work Clientelism, Interests and Democratic Representation (2001: 4–8): Patronage indicates the clandestine distribution of posts in the public or semipublic sector – namely in the public administration – to partisan supporters; i.e. elected politicians informally control the hiring, firing and advancement of career officials. Clientelism as an all-embracing and penetrating phenomenon signifies the instrumental use of positions of power to distribute jobs, goods and all other public decisions to partisan supporters in order to maintain and strengthen positions of political power. From these definitions it is evident that clientelism is more of a general concept, since it incorporates patronage with its informal assignment of administrative posts. At the same time, both notions embrace the relationship between political representatives and public officials, on the one hand, and partisan supporters or the constituency, on the other, i.e. between politicians as patrons and electoral supporters as clients. It is undoubtedly possible to study the progressive transformation of the ‘patronclient’ relationship in different contextual circumstances and construct various alternatives of this relationship. Such a relationship will be systemically different in agrarian and in industrial societies. However, for the needs of understanding

Post-communism  17 post-communist clientelism, such a fixed hierarchical ‘patron-client’ pattern is a burden which does not enable us to gain an insight into the essence of the phenomenon. At the same time, it is outdated: (a) to install politicians a priori in the place of the dominant patrons, and (b) to attribute to them a priori the principal goal of offering their clients profits in exchange for various forms of electoral support. Concerning the outdated relevance of the role of the patron, it is important to underline the fact that the primary relationship here is played out between the spheres of non-transparent parties and non-transparent business. This type of interaction is assumed to be symmetrical rather than asymmetrical. Furthermore, there is no clear division, or more precisely the roles between patron and client are often blurred. And because these roles are intertwined and at the same time operate semi-legally or illegally, it is difficult to determine who is the patron and who is the client, as well as who is dominant and who is subservient. Moreover, sometimes individuals or groups may even perform both roles, namely that of patron and client, simultaneously. Both roles are more or less interchangeable. All are entrepreneurs: politicians with political power; businessmen with economic power in terms of their economic resources. In any case, not only politicians but also businessmen with economic power can become increasingly dominant. For example, the regional and national bosses and oligarchs  – primarily businessmen  – can acquire more powerful positions within the political-company networks (Chapters 2, 3 and 4). This implies first of all that the role of patron cannot be exclusively connected with politicians, and secondly, it loses all meaning to identify the fixed hierarchical patron-client relationship as the core of clientelism. Conversely, the flexible client-client pattern of interactions reflects more precisely the characteristics of post-communism. Regarding the principal goals of politicians, it generally applies that they endeavour to maximise their chances to stay in power. Nonetheless, in a given concrete situation, they act and decide according to context. For example, in the circumstances of unprecedented social transformation and privatisation, it may be more advantageous for them to prioritise their long-term private material gain over short-term electoral profit. Several ministers and other politicians in this ‘blessed’ historical period of a metaphorical ‘Klondike Gold Rush’ appeared like a comet on the political landscape, and after a number of years or even mere months of excavating public resources definitively left politics. This entirely corresponds with the aforementioned economistic approach, which assumes that interpersonal relations are primarily influenced by the purely economic goal of benefit-maximisation. Concurrently, the elements of the developmentalist and culturalist approaches are also present here. The approach which places the ‘client-client’ relationship at the centre thus better corresponds to the altered conditions which contribute to the different character of contemporary clientelism. These changes were partly described by Kitschelt and Wilkinson (2007: 4) in the following words: In the context of democratic institutional settings, clientelism thus evolves into a more symmetrical (rather than asymmetrical), intermittent (rather than

18  Post-communism stable and continuous), instrumental-rational (rather than normative) and broker-mediated (rather than face-to-face based) exchange relationship. *** It is now possible to attempt a definition of clientelism within the framework of the post-communist circumstances. The contemporary concept is applied mostly to Latin America, and thus explains clientelism in accordance with the developmentalist view as a patron-client relationship within the circumstances of a distorted process of modernisation. In this context, clientelism constitutes: a network of social relations where personal loyalty to the patron prevails against the modern alternatives of • • •

market relations, democratic decision-making, and professionalism in public bureaucracies.

(Sajó 2002: 3)

Sajó (2002) noted the simplification that had occurred in the assessment of clientelism in the post-communist countries ensuing from traditional Western perceptions. In particular, he pointed to the failure to understand the phenomenon of clientelism within the new conditions and the role of corruption therein. In particular, Sajó emphasised that clientelism is a form of social organization and correspondingly posited the following axioms: (a) “To say that post-communist clientelism presupposes or generates corruption is to imply that corruption has become a foundation stone of the region’s emerging clientelist social structure. I will call this phenomenon ‘clientelist corruption.’ ” (b) “Clientelist corruption is a form of structural corruption, which should be distinguished from discrete individual acts of corruption.” (c) “Clientelist structures in Eastern Europe are related to the previous communist nomenclature, but the way actual socioeconomic developments are unfolding creates levels and forms of state-centered clientelism distinct from those of earlier regimes.” (Sajó 2002: 1, 3) Similarly, if clientelism is a form of post-communist social organisation and evolves in a state-centred manner, then it embraces not only structural corruption but simultaneously also structural patronage. Accordingly, in parallel with corruption, the notion of clientelist patronage can be applied. Such broad systemic patronage is assumed to penetrate intentionally and offensively into the whole political system and its individual elements. Therefore, clientelist patronage in its structural composition covers all forms of patronage, i.e. patronage as an electoral resource (Piatoni 2001) as well as patronage as an organisational resource

Post-communism  19 (Kopecký et  al. 2012). It is thus plausible within the framework of the definition of post-communist clientelism to include the following concepts: corruption potential and patronage potential. It ensues from these points that in essence this approach understands postcommunist state-centred clientelism as a relatively stable form of social organisation in the transition period, whereas it views corruption and patronage as “an endemic bacillus”which belongs to a family of clientelist social interactions (Sajó 2002). Such a form of clientelism is not only political but at the same time an economic and cultural phenomenon. The aim of the interrelated political and economic clientelist structures is to attain more economic wealth and political power through a parasitical extraction of public resources. Political and economic exchanges go hand in hand, in which it is of secondary importance as to who is the patron and who is the client, whether a politician or businessman. In the higher stage of complex clientelism in the early post-communist period, the differences between the roles of patron and client are blurred. All are mutual clients. The flexible client-client pattern assumes clientelist deals are concluded within the framework of an interconnected, non-transparent political and economic marketplace, reminiscent of a Turkish bazaar. In the extreme version, clientelist politicians may concentrate within their hands not only power but also business and the media. This means that such politicians with their mandates and functions transform themselves into traders in power, i.e. political gold-diggers, and in this sense they become ‘political businessmen’ per se.1 In parallel, the same applies vice versa, meaning that actual economic businessmen can distribute jobs and goods simultaneously in order to acquire political power. They thus use their economic power, consisting of a variety of factors such as ownership, firm size, ties to the state, control over labour and the economic impact on local communities (Hellman et al. 2003). In such circumstances it is irrelevant to link the definition of post-communist clientelism primarily with the electoral arena or the buying of votes. The electoral component, namely electoralism as a party strategy suggesting the distribution of state resources in favour of an electoral and political clientele, is not incorporated as a key trait of post-communist clientelism. Without doubt, electoralism constitutes instrumental behaviour, but this nevertheless represents a ‘normal’ state of affairs. To illustrate, the traditional Social Democratic party can defend its natural left-wing strategy on ideological grounds: e.g. increasing pensions and unemployment benefits or expanding public sector employment. Furthermore, even nonideological and particularistic distribution of resources based on electoralism, and officially and legally approved by party governments, can certainly be criticised as populist. However, populist decisions and policies are common elements of politics in pluralistic democracies. This corresponds with the broader concept, which can be denoted as mass clientelism, covers a complex privatisation of public decision-making. “With clientelism, all public decision-making may become a token of exchange: from a birth certificate to a building permit, from a disability pension to public housing, from a development project to a tax exemption” (Piattoni 2001: 6).

20  Post-communism To conclude, the definition of the post-communist form of state-centred clientelism differs profoundly from the classical concept in the following key aspects: (a) Clientelism is a complex social and political phenomenon, covering a broad landscape of a non-transparent political and economic marketplace; all public decisions are potentially instruments for clientelist transactions. (b) The basic political-business interaction, i.e. the party-firm relationship, is not primarily based on the fixed hierarchical patron-client pattern, but on more fluid ‘client-client’ interconnections and exchanges; both sides of the relationship are more or less interchangeable, both are entrepreneurs per se. (c) A rent-seeking strategy prevails in the form of an interest-maximising exchange of state assets based on reciprocity, closely linked in parallel with the holding of ‘friendly’ political power. (d) Electoralism as a party strategy in the sense of a bond with partisan supporters does not constitute a key defining trait. Finally, a conceptual stretching of multifaceted clientelism can be applied within the context of the unique post-communist transformation, producing the following broader definition: Post-communist state-centred clientelism as an all-embracing and penetrating phenomenon in terms of a particular form of social organisation includes the informal, semi-legal and illegal use of positions of political and economic power in order to distribute jobs, goods and other public and private decisions to individuals and groups from the governing parties, non-transparent businesses and their allies, which altogether embodies this primary exploitative strategy: mutual enrichment at the expense of the state on all levels. Accordingly, clientelism embraces structural corruption and structural patronage. In its highest stage, it generates and thus comprises processes of ‘party capture’, and ultimately establishes the phenomena of ‘state capture’ in the predominantly economic sense and ‘clientelist democracy’ in the political sense. *** How are we to observe and measure clientelism or clientelist activities? As regards an empirical exploration, we start out from the fact of the common features of clientelist and corrupt activity, in which a key factor of both is the high degree of secrecy. It is obvious that this covert nature considerably complicates the observation and quantification of such phenomena as cronyism, kickbacks and other forms of inappropriate exchange of favours and dishonest practices. Both clientelist as well as corrupt activities can be observed and measured in two basic ways: subjective and objective (Kostadinova 2012). Attention is focused on occurrences of the misuse of privileged positions, i.e. of the interconnectedness of business-political parties and business-government. This includes

Post-communism  21 especially corruption scandals of high-level political elites, which hit the relevant parties in the form of intra-party conflicts and government crises. At the same time, it concerns improper activities with the aim of curtailing the independence and functioning of the police, public prosecution service, judiciary, public media and other elements of the political system. For the collection of information on such informal networks and their activities, the following rather subjective sources were used: reports of the Security Information Service, information from police files, materials published by investigative journalists and serious newspaper articles including interviews with politicians, economists, sociologists and businessmen. For the purpose of ensuring the validity of the data and sources, the gathered information was double-checked and verified. In this work more objective data was also used, which was gathered by means of opinion polls. Surveys were conducted among representatives of ordinary citizens, the political elite and businessmen. As a result, this book contains data from reputable institutions such as the World Bank, Freedom House, Transparency International, Eurobarometer and Economist Intelligence Unit.

1.7  State capture – the clientelist version One of the main aims of the book is to reconstitute the concept of clientelism within the post-communist environment. In this context, particular attention is given to its overlapping effects on other negative phenomena. This section thus focuses primarily on the appearance of state capture, and the following subchapter focuses on party capture. Regarding the concept of state capture, this was developed by economists from the World Bank in the late 1990s upon observing the problems that occurred in the first decade of the introduction of a market economy and liberal democracy in post-communist countries (Hellman 1998, Hellman and Kaufmann 2001, Hellman et al. 2003, Kaufmann et al. 2010). Specifically, Hellman and Kaufmann (2001) introduced the term state capture as a phenomenon typical of economies in post-communist transition. The core of the concept was ‘collusion’ between powerful firms on the one hand and politicians with bureaucrats on the other. In such tandem they were able to manipulate policy formation and shape the rules of the game on the market in order to extract exclusive private gains for themselves. This form of so-called legal grand corruption caused serious malfunctions of the economic and political systems in the form of weak governance, with the actors unable or unwilling to implement economic and institutional reforms. The main role was played by captor firms representing a small set of new large corporations and powerful state or semi-state enterprises, which were in a position to bribe or influence by other inappropriate means such actors as parliamentarians, government officials, judges, members of central banks and political parties. In these circumstances, the state operated like a restaurant in which captor firms

22  Post-communism connected with politicians and public officials were able to choose ‘à la carte’ a variety of public economic goods. Hence, state capture is defined as follows: as the efforts of firms to shape the formation of the basic rules of the game (i.e. laws, rules, decrees and regulations) through illicit and non-transparent private payments to public officials, firms do not exert direct power over politicians. Instead collusion between firms and politicians providing preferential treatment creates rents that are then shared. (Hellman et al. 2003: 756) Hellman and Kaufmann indicated that state capture became “a strategy for a few firms to create zones of relative security and competitive advantage for themselves at the expense of all other firms” (2001: 6). State capture therefore poses a threat to the long-term economic as well as political development. If new businessmen are successful with their ‘private investments in politics,’ they receive confirmation that their personal contacts and political influence are more important than competence and innovations. The market economy becomes distorted, subsequently creating obstacles to foreign and domestic private investment and “to the entry of small and medium-sized enterprises, undermining the key sources of sustainable growth” (Hellman and Kaufmann 2001: 6). Nevertheless, if we compare the concept of post-communist clientelism with this narrow economistic version of state capture, it is possible to identify several significant distinctions. These differences refer directly to the fact that the concept of state capture was invented by economists from the World Bank. Therefore, this mode of state stealing differs from systemic clientelism in the following parameters: (a) The main playing field is a distorted market economy in terms of a captured transition economy, in which monopolistic or oligopolistic structures thrive and triumph. (b) Within the central firm-state relationship, captor firms are the initiator, and thus active subjects, whereas state and public officials are objects. The firms derive their power from such factors as “firm size, ownership, ties to the state, control over labour, and the economic impact on their local communities” (Hellman et al. 2003: 755–756). (c) On the side of the state, the identified actors are elected politicians and career officials. These include not only individual agents, such as members of parliament and the president, but also institutional actors such as the Central Bank, courts and political parties. It follows that the role of political parties is not central. (d) There is a clear separation of a distinct kind of private or group benefits for captor firms on the one hand and for politicians on the other. Captor firms enjoy exclusive economic gains in terms of attaining a privileged market position by means of rent-generating legal and regulatory advantages (contract rights, security property rights). Meanwhile, politicians obtain political advantage in the form of votes.

Post-communism  23 (e) A different pairing exists within the framework of the basic parasitical relationship. State capture is about ‘firm-state’ interactions, whereas postcommunist clientelism emphasises the ‘party-firm’ pattern and at the same time differentiates between the state and political parties. *** It was Grzymala-Busse (2008) and Innes (2013) who developed a more sophisticated and differentiated concept of state capture. The essence of their approach consists of the incorporation of the political system as an equal sphere into the study of the complex phenomenon of state capture. They thus included in their theoretical framework the primary impulses stemming from politics, with a capacity to substantially influence the market economy and its broad range of firms. Grzymala-Busse took the approach of examining how different strategies of state capture in terms of the elite extraction of state assets can influence and form specific political institutions and capacities. Within this context, she distinguished four distinct configurations of state capture: clientelism, predation, fusion and exploitation (Grzymala-Busse 2008a). In any case, contrary to the original concept of Hellman and Kauffman, her focus was not on the economic but rather the political agents within the state, i.e. the incumbent elite, specifically political parties. In this way, she defined elite state capture as “the appropriation of state resources by political actors for their own ends: either private or political benefit” (Grzymala-Busse 2008a: 640). Innes differentiated and identified two types of state capture: (1) corporate state capture and (2) party state capture. However, party state capture here was defined rather in a minimalist version, since it covered ‘only’ party patronage. More concretely, corporate state capture signifies such an arrangement in which private business interests seek to subvert the official channels of political influence, and public power is exercised primarily for private gain. This refers to the more corrupted systems and is measured by the World Bank Governance Indicator ‘control of corruption’ (Innes 2013). Accordingly, in Central and Eastern Europe, five post-communist countries suffered from corporate state capture after 2000: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia. Regarding levels of corporate state capture, or more specifically the diversion of public funds “to companies, individuals or groups due to corruption,” the Czech Republic ranked equally with Ukraine. Because the case study of the Czech Republic will be examined in later chapters, it can be stated here that the country occupied the fifth worst position out of twenty-two post-communist countries, ranked even below Bulgaria, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Russia (World Bank 2011, Innes 2013). What is really important in Innes’s approach is that corporate state capture is rooted in the brokerage party system. Specifically, the brokerage parties with their brokerage networks constitute central institutional agents primarily focused on asset-stripping state resources. In fact, Innes’s notion of the brokerage party is more or less an equivalent of Grzymala-Busse’s exploitative party. Similarly, it can be referred to as a captor party or clientelist party, as presented in this book. This kind of party, no matter how it is labelled, reconstructs “independent state

24  Post-communism institutions that offer access for the capture of state assets” (Grzymala-Busse 2008a: 639). On the other hand, party state capture suggests a situation in which parties make efforts to re-politicise the state in pursuit of a political monopoly. This refers to relatively non-corrupted systems and is measured by the World Bank Governance Indicator of “government effectiveness,” composed of the quality of public services, etc. (Innes 2013). This group of post-communist countries covered Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Slovenia and Lithuania. If Innes differentiates two clusters of Central European countries, then it is important to imagine that both types of state capture – corporate state capture and party state capture – can operate simultaneously. In both modes of state seizure, or in both parts of this system, processes take place in both directions, from politics to economics and from economics to politics. In this a symbiosis of parasitic interests is realised on a hidden market of public goods. No set boundaries exist between political and economic actors. On the contrary, the brokerage networks of the non-transparent world of politics and economics manifest a tendency to spread to all areas of society and every corner of the state arrangement. They are driven by a common instrumental strategy to accumulate the maximum amount of public resources and power as quickly as possible, and at the same time to ensure their security. Such a strategy knows no boundaries and is based on the principle of ‘clientelist Schengen.’ It seems natural that in a given post-communist country, both types of state capture can exist concurrently and each at least on a minimal level. Moreover, it can theoretically even be assumed that corporate plus party types can function not only together but also in synergy to create an extreme version of state capture and thus generate huge problems in terms of macroeconomic and political instability. In this book, emphasis is placed precisely on the complexity of clientelism as well as of state capture. Therefore, the proposition that both types of state capture can operate alongside one another is important, because it facilitates a comparison of complex state capture with the previously defined post-communist clientelism. It will then be no surprise if we determine that these notions are if not completely, then more or less, identical. In other words, these broad versions of clientelism and state capture overlap substantially. To summarise, post-communist clientelism in a concentrated form embraces corporate state capture as well as party state capture, thus it covers ‘double’ or ‘two-fold’ state seizure. In a similar way, several authors to a certain degree merge both concepts  – clientelism and state capture. Besides Grzymala-Busse (2008a), also Stubbs and Zrinščak (2015) examine the clientelist form of capture. Within the circumstances of Croatia, they articulate the concept of clientelist capture in a broad sense and stress the active role of the political elite. They define clientelism as a complex structure consisting of distorted modes of governance and an asymmetric redistribution of resources. Thus, they incorporate within the concept of clientelism a “strong structural force in politics, the economy and social policy”

Post-communism 25 (Stubbs and Zrinščak 2015: 395). Within this context they use the term ‘clientelist regime.’ It follows that for the purposes of this book also, both terms will be used in the broader sense of the word: (i) clientelist regime in relation to the entire social and political system per se, and (ii) clientelist state capture within the framework of the overall clientelist arrangement, incorporating a synergy of ‘corporate’ and ‘party’ types of state capture. To anticipate the further text of this book, the proposition can be posited that the Czech Republic represented one of the purest examples of complex clientelist state capture (Figure  1.2) or of a clientelist regime. Such a conclusion can be drawn even if there is not complete empirical data. However, on the one hand, data from the World Bank from the period of 1996–2011 (mentioned earlier) shows that the Czech Republic after 2000 was a clear-cut case of corporate state capture (Figure 3.1). On the other hand, the process of two-way party capture, analysed in Chapters 2 and 3, attests to the fact that this country can be evaluated also as an example of party state capture. After all, this is also documented by the period after 2010, during which one of the most stable two-pillar party systems in Central Europe exploded over the course of three successive parliamentary elections to the Chamber of Deputies (2010, 2013, 2017). Within this context, the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic ( Úřad vlády 2013: 18) approved the document Government Strategy in the Battle against Corruption, indicating as the main problem systemic corruption which passes into the stage of ‘state capture.’

1.8  Party capture: the firm-party-firm pattern The original concept of state capture was developed through theorising based on economic arguments by experts from the World Bank in the late 1990s. Subsequently, political scientists added a political dimension in a balanced way in terms of the party aspect (Grzymala-Busse 2008, Innes 2013). However, post-communist clientelism as construed here is predominantly a political phenomenon, even though the economic component is equally inbuilt. In this book, the two-way process of party capture is introduced as the main substance of clientelism. This is examined from both sides of business interference: (1) from the side of local and regional business headed by regional bosses, referred to here as party privatisation ‘from below’ and presented in Chapter 2; and (2) from the side of giant corporate conglomerates conducted by nationwide bosses or oligarchs, denoted here as party colonisation ‘from above’ and dealt with in Chapter 3. Such an approach of the two-way development of party capture assumes that the relevant party organisations are sandwiched from both sides by non-transparent business circles. This means that the concept of party capture is based on the firmparty-firm pattern as illustrated in Figure 1.1. From the notion of party capture it follows that the political party comes to the centre of attention, since it fulfils a pivotal role in the political system. However, the term party capture implies that the most active agents in the informal

26  Post-communism firm-party-firm network are shadowy companies. The reason for this is that the main content of this relationship suggests that small, medium or giant businesses all seek to affect, subvert and ultimately capture the relevant parties. Although the relevant parties themselves are primary targets of captor firms, at the same time it applies that the party structures themselves operate more or less actively to shape the informal networks. Overall, the theorising of party capture is not an end in itself. It enables us to distinguish two phases: (a) the process of party capture is the first initial period paving the way for (b) complete party-corporate state capture or systemic clientelism. In the first phase, illustrated in Figure 1.1, the parties are mainly the object of opaque business seeking to infiltrate and occupy them from both sides. Nevertheless, in the second phase, illustrated in Figure 1.2, the already captured parties mutate into predatory subjects, that is into clientelist parties, and as such adopt a pivotal role within non-transparent political-business machinery, seeking to complete state capture for the sake of their exploitative ends. In short, the first target is the relevant political parties and the second is the state, including the capture of the political system and its elements; the first opens the door to the second. Party capture is thus an instrument for pursuing the seizure of the entire state in terms of incremental control of the main pillars of the political system. Only then can the ultimate goal be accomplished, i.e. to exploit state resources at all levels and cement the holding of political power. In other words, party capture is a fundamental element and a precondition for the development of full-scale state capture. Consequently, the phenomenon of party capture as a building block of post-communist clientelism is explored in further detail in the following chapters.

Non-transp. business from above

Parties

from below Non-transp. business Figure 1.1  Party capture based on the firm-party-firm pattern Source: Author of this text.

Post-communism  27 Non-transp. business from above

Parties

STATE

from below Non-transp. business

Figure 1.2  Captured party realising clientelist state capture Source: Author of this text.

1.9  Post-communist alternatives in Central Europe Complete party-corporate state capture and post-communist clientelism in its entirety does not represent a marginal deviation from ‘normality.’ This is not merely a matter of distortion or democratic deficit. It is a way of viewing how the state and political system and the actors therein function. This process systemically impairs the operation of all the elements of the political system and economic market, as well as political culture. Those who become the winners are parasitical predators – party and business captors – which obviate the official law and the formal channels of decision-making. This undermines basic trust in the fairness of the institutional set-up and leads to disenchantment and even disengagement of a significant part of society from democracy. It implies that the young democratic regimes in Central Europe have become fragile and thus vulnerable vis-à-vis new domestic and external turbulences. As a consequence, a number of basic evolutionary alternatives may exist in the space of Central Europe: (1) a tendency towards democratic consolidation or democratic renewal, i.e. the uprising of civic society in connection with electoral revolt and anti-corruption and anti-mafia demonstrations; a positive programme then prevails, pursuing the appropriate transparent anti-corruption provisions, separation of powers with checks and balances, and an open and fairly regulated market; (2) a tendency towards authoritarianism or democratic backsliding, which presupposes a substantial dissociation from democracy and the promotion of propaganda with regard to maintaining the social order, securing the national homeland and invoking alleged internal and external enemies; (3) a half-way position between democracy and dictatorship, thus a ‘hybrid regime.’ Regarding these three potential alternatives, it is obvious that the result will be decided not only by the domestic balance of power but also geographical location

28  Post-communism and the balance of forces within the international system. Based on the increasing role of China and Russia on the one hand, and the weakening position of the USA and the European Union on the other, the conclusion can be drawn that the contemporary authoritarian forces have a greater opportunity to succeed in reversing the post-1989 democratic setting than ever before. Last but not least, a so-called ‘fifth column’ of authoritarian forces exists in all countries of the former Soviet bloc. This relates primarily to former co-workers of the secret services, who until 1989 de facto operated under the command of the former Soviet KGB, whereas today they may be potentially activated by its successor organisations of Putin’s authoritarian regime. Within this context, a warning is sounded especially by the example of Hungary since 2010, wherein a single-party government gained a two-thirds constitutional majority, which it then abruptly utilised for the purpose of dismantling the basic pillars of democracy (Kornai 2015, Ágh 2016, Magyar 2016). This is precisely a realisation of the danger posed by the unprecedented huge privatisation of state property after 1989, without legal and administrative barriers against predatory behaviour, in which a narrow circle of privatisation insiders profited exclusively at the expense of public assets. During that time, “economic power corrupted politics and political power corrupted the economy” (Scheppele 2016). The tandem of non-transparent politics and business facilitated stability particularly in the interests of covert parasitical agents siphoning off state resources. Such a situation up to 2010 served as a hotbed for the advent of the second phase of post-communist development. It started as a second ‘economic dislocation,’ specifically a monopolisation of corruption gains in the hands of Orbán’s Fidesz party. In a highly legalistic manner, a one-man, single-party system was built, which through fundamental constitutional and legal changes curbed the independence of the Supreme Court, National Bank, Prosecutor’s Office, local governments, cultural and educational institutions, the public media, including public media councils, etc. At the same time, manipulation of the electoral system after 2010 helped to ensure another term in office for the single governing party. As a result, the rotation of power was blocked. Multi-party parliamentary democracy with its separation of powers and proper market competition was replaced by a new arrangement of semi-consolidated democracy or an illiberal state. For such a political system Magyar used the term the post-communist mafia state, which he defined as “the privatized form of the parasitic state, the business venture of the adopted political family managed through the instruments of public authority,” in which a monopoly of power is an indispensable condition (2016: 70–71). Magyar explains such a path of development as an implication of the post1989 transformation and the communist legacy of single-party dictatorship and a monopoly on state owned property. Hence, he characterises the current Hungarian political system as follows: The fundamental feature of the mafia state is the intrinsic logic of the accumulation of power and wealth which primarily determines all its actions,

Post-communism  29 and which realizes a combination of political power concentration and the growth of fortunes in the hands of the adopted political family by means of mafia culture elevated on the rank of central politics, operating a state monopoly on coercion. (Magyar 2016: 3)

1.10  Concluding remarks Clientelism, patronage, corruption, organised crime (Šmíd and Kupka 2011, Klíma Josef 2018a) and mafia structures (Magyar 2016)2 represent everyday negative practices and transactions which are present to a greater or lesser extent in all countries worldwide, and which are partially mutually linked. In the case of their systemic large-scale appearance in the form of substantial social and political problems, these phenomena can be conceptualised according to Piattoni’s previously mentioned approach: as specific systems of particular interest representation and promotion. This is because they all embody a kind of interest politics, satisfying individual or collective needs by other mechanisms than through the official institutional and impersonal channels. They embody particular interests pursued through additional and parallel channels, constituting a complementary framework of selective relationship and strategy. These individual negative phenomena have substantial similarities, and thus they more or less overlap, while they can be separated for the purpose of defining their peculiarities. As a result, the same conceptual framework of the demand-side and supply-side can be applied here (Piattoni 2001, Bolleyer 2013). This implies that the unique environment of post-communism as the demand-side creates a fertile ground for the relevant political and economic actors choosing a strategy of state exploitation in terms of the supply-side. In short, distorted circumstances produce distorted actors with distorted strategies. Therefore, efforts can be made to identify a universal definition expressing the essence of all these negative phenomena. Such a definition may read as follows: The circumstances of complex post-communist transition produce an extraordinary ‘open window’ for the negative phenomenon ‘xxxxxx,’ characterised by a specific distorted pattern of relationships between significant actors, namely from a ‘shady’ political and economic arena, who choose a rentseeking strategy in terms of pursuing their private interests through informal and non-transparent channels and mechanisms, and thus acquire an unjustifiable exclusive profit at the expense of the public. What is universal in this definition – a kind of definitional ‘perpetuum mobile’ – is on one hand the informal non-transparent context and on the other the exploitative behaviour of given agents securing their exclusive private gains. By contrast, what is variable within the framework of this definition covers the assorted relationship pairings of the main actors and their different intensity or the different quality of the relationship pattern. In other words, it comprises adequate actors

30  Post-communism with distinct interactions among them, pursuing their interests through various informal channels, mechanisms and tools for the sake of exploiting the state. After all, these phenomena have their own evolution, and hence they can be explored in variations, both within and across the transitional states and regions. Regarding more comprehensive negative phenomena such as clientelism and state capture in the post-communist systemic version, these can produce not only micro- but mostly macro-level consequences. On first sight, they all embrace more complex social processes, which substantially influence the functioning of the entire state. Unlike the concept of patronage, which is primarily linked with the operation of the political sphere, the phenomena of clientelist state capture and post-communist clientelism influence the overall state arrangement, including macropolitics as well as macroeconomics. However, the central theme of this book is primarily macropolitics, and specifically the systemic distortion of the whole political sphere and its individual elements. The following Chapters 2 and 3 will explore the clientelisation process connected with the crucial element of each political system, i.e. the political party. Two-way party capture will now come under scrutiny.

Notes 1 For example, in the Czech Republic in 2018, a court annulled the results of municipal elections in the town of Strakonice, since five members of the governing local political movement Strakonická Veřejnost (Strakonice Public) had privatised the public space. They occupied not only controlling posts in municipal enterprises but above all usurped all the public billboards and notice boards, as well as local media such as the town hall bulletin and local television. As a result, the opposition had no opportunity to present itself within the public arena, thus a fair election campaign was rendered impossible (Neprašová 2018). 2 The phenomena of organised crime and mafia structures are an integral part of the postcommunist development. In different periods and in individual countries they may prevail over other negative phenomena. Nevertheless, these processes will not be analysed in further detail, because this goes beyond the task undertaken in the book.

2 Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’

The primary aim of the first chapter was to introduce a general theoretical framework within the post-communist conditions for identifying the basic concepts such as clientelism and party capture as well as state capture. According to Hale’s approach (2015), post-communism constitutes a ‘distinct political system’ set up by local political machines and politicised giant corporate conglomerates. This second chapter therefore focuses on the first broad actor: the formation of local and regional party-firm machines with their bosses and godfathers at the top, i.e. the process of informal party privatisation ‘from below.’ From the key characteristics of the phenomenon of complex party capture as a two-way development based on the firm-party-firm pattern, it follows that informal party privatisation ‘from below’ goes hand in hand with informal party colonisation ‘from above’ (Figure 1.1 in Subchapter 1.8). The latter, covering the seizure activities of big business, is the focus of Chapter 3. This chapter thus scrutinises the informal mechanisms and structures that permeated formal party politics at local and regional levels and ultimately triggered the mutation of the governing parties into an obedient tool for the exploitation of state resources. Therefore, in the case of the Czech Republic, the chapter explores the incremental process of party privatisation by non-transparent small and medium-sized companies. In other words, it shows how opaque business affected, subverted and finally captured different party organisational levels. It is emphasised that a crucial factor which triggered the process of party capture was the recruitment of fake or paid party members, metaphorically referred to as ‘dead souls.’ This method of mass-scale recruitments of thousands of hired members was calculated to create artificial majorities, and thus allowed the seizure of first local and subsequently regional party organisations and often opened up the way to nationwide impact. This relates particularly to the two main parties, the Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD) and the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS). The chapter shows how covert networks of the political and economic elite merged into different informal political structures, more or less co-operating or competing. This process led to a vertical collusion of non-transparent parties and firms, or more precisely it established itself at all political levels and all strata of business, i.e. at local, regional and national levels. The informal structures of local business thus enmeshed with local authorities in terms of municipal and regional

32  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ self-government (Kotarski and Petak 2018). Furthermore, the chapter documents how the unofficial party-firm relationships operated in a more diffuse pattern, i.e. on a client-client basis. In the following text, the first part of the two-way process of party capture – i.e. informal party privatisation ‘from below’ – is mapped and explored within the framework of the Czech variant.

2.1  Party privatisation ‘from below’ This section focuses on a reconstruction of the subversion and takeover of the established parties by non-transparent business within the post-communist context, and mainly in the circumstances of the Czech Republic. It shall progressively uncover how informal socio-economic power structures captured party organisations at local and subsequently district, regional and national levels. Specifically, this chapter will concentrate primarily on an analysis of the informal process of party privatisation ‘from below.’ This process, which began in the 1990s and subsequently spiralled out of control in the following decade, contributed to the systemic clientelisation of the political parties, as well as of the parliamentary form of government and democracy in general. At the same time, the phenomenon of party privatisation ‘from below’ would not have taken place in such a straightforward manner had it not been for a number of accompanying factors which are typical of the post-communist party development: the weak organisational presence on the ground and the higher volatility of the electorate. 2.1.1  Recruitment of ‘fake’ party members In the Czech Republic, as a consequence of fraudulent recruitment on a local, district and regional level, in which thousands of people were involved, degenerative processes took place, especially in the two biggest mainstream parties, the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Social Democrats (ČSSD). This development, which escalated in the period of 2005–2010, had a devastating impact on their membership. ‘Fake’ party members frequently forced out and replaced the original members. Leading local business figures – for example owners of building, transport and security firms, but also traders in luxury cars and real estate – invested in politics, since this type of enterprise promised them premium profits. The mass recruitment of fake members brought local branches as basic components of the party organisation under their control through artificially created voting majorities. Subsequently, this led to their control over district and regional party organisational levels, or more precisely to their control over the assemblies and councils of large towns and individual regions. Whatever the level of party organisation it related to, such fake recruitment served to ‘steamroll’ over competitors. As a result, this method of internal party struggle was referred to in the slang of the ČSSD as the ‘steamroller.’1

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  33 If the tactic of steamrolling within the parties was successful, there was a subsequent contagious effect, namely constant races to recruit as many fake party members as possible. Sometimes one particular hidden clique of local politicians and businessmen triumphed, sometimes another. There were frequent occurrences of the phenomenon described below by Kaiser (2009: 10): The history of political parties (in the given location) is thus changing into an archaeological dig. The last layer of sediment that is being talked about now is the thickest, because it originated – at least in the town of Děčín – under the impression of reports on how many hundreds of millions would flow into the municipal coffers from European funds in the next few years. The newly hired party members became known by the media-coined terms dead souls or black souls. In the case of the political parties in the Czech Republic, the term dead souls, with its origin in Gogol’s novel,2 is used with a degree of hyperbole. In reality, it concerns ‘living’ souls, which with regard to their actual relationship to the party are essentially ‘dead.’ They have no interest in politics; they are not familiar with their party programme or its leaders and do not vote for the party. Their membership is therefore a fraud, and these souls can be conceived as false and thus ‘black.’ In its finding from 2011, the Constitutional Court also refers to the phenomenon of dead souls.3 In the following text, however, though the terms ‘dead’ or ‘black soul’ will be used, for the purposes of this political discourse it appears more appropriate to use the term hired party member. A political business operator as an investor hires such a party member in order to make free use of that member’s vote within the given local party machine for the purpose of gaining unfair advantages in political competition. The investor buys votes. This is the essence of the matter. What kind of people take payments to become hired party members? In one case they were construction workers from a local firm and their family members, another time they were taxi drivers, students or dozens of Roma citizens (Kaiserova 2009a, Pokorný 2010, Ovčáček 2010a). Whatever their motivations, the nature of the meetings, which were often held chaotically in pubs or restaurants, exposed the investors to considerable risks. It was necessary to prevent the hired party members from getting drunk too quickly in order to ensure that they didn’t leave before the desired vote took place. For this reason, they also hired a team of bodyguards, whose task it was to prevent people from leaving too early, for example by locking all the exits from the meeting room (Kaiserová 2009b). It follows that an integral component of a successful political business strategy in connection with the purchase of hired party members was to process a detailed business plan, which included a balance sheet of costs and expenditures. The costs necessarily included the individual registration fees for new party members, their membership contributions and catering services at party meetings. It was also necessary to include fees for further functions and services, for example payments for voting according to instructions and for providing their consent to be elected to the district party organs.

34  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ Further expenditures were required for the transport of hired party members to the place of the party meeting or for the security team hired in order to ensure the smooth course of voting. This logically started out from the assumption that the benefits would substantially outweigh the costs. The expected profits were as follows: privileged allocation of public tenders and access to resources from European funds, obtaining valuable information and contacts and the opportunity to fill key posts in party structures, municipal and regional self-governing bodies and state institutions. With regard to the recruitment of hired party members, a number of different tariffs and other variations applied. For example, remuneration per capita, thus per vote, ranged from 200 to 3000 Czech crowns. The costs for the catering provided at party meetings also differed. Sometimes beer and sausages sufficed, at other times grand buffets with steaks were organised (Ovčáček 2010a, Šťastný 2010b). Nevertheless, no limits were placed on innovation. Horáček, the trader in luxury cars and real estate, was the most notorious due to his offer of accompanying services. Before a recruitment event in the town of Děčín, he promised young party members rides in limousines, visits to fashion shows, evenings on a yacht with girls and even weekends by the sea for recruiting new members. Evidence that these activities met with success can be seen in the fact that whilst the ČSSD in Děčín had only 89 members at the beginning of 2009, by December the same year it numbered 212 souls (Janoušek 2009). On a number of occasions, purchases of hired party members took place by genuinely sophisticated methods and were directed on several levels, which can be documented by the case of a student described in the media who was paid three times. He received the first payment of 1000 crowns for entering the local organisation, the second for agreeing to be elected onto the district party council and the third for providing his vote for the replacement of the district party leadership and the selection of a candidate for the post of party vice-chairman. Recruitments of hired party members took on absurd dimensions in the Ústí nad Labem regions. At a district party meeting in Děčín, even people who had never entered the party cast their votes for a financial reward. Clandestine organisers provided them with party membership cards in the name of another person and did not allow them to go home until they had voted according to their instructions (Kaiserová and Šťastný 2010). *** It is evident that at the beginning of each ‘business plan’ there also had to be a strategic decision on how many new hired members it would be necessary to recruit to the local organisations in order to obtain a majority capable of declaring virtually anything, and thus to obtain extraordinary profits. One-off recruitments increased the numbers of party members in local organisations from a state of ‘x’ to a state of ‘x + 10, 50, 100’ and thereby altered the internal balance of power. Similarly, the numbers of one or more local organisations altered the balance of power on a district and subsequently regional and national level. Here, it was

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  35 necessary to take into consideration the fact that within the two biggest parties – ODS and ČSSD – local organisations usually had dozens of members, on a district level hundreds; regional organisations several thousand and on a national level, fifteen to thirty-three thousand members. In this context, the regional and district managers of the ODS and ČSSD stated that parties of their size would need to have at least 50 thousand members, otherwise they would be susceptible to negative phenomena (Linek 2004). In addition, it was necessary to include in the initial balance sheet also the factor of the passivity of a significant proportion of party members. It is possible to conclude that the situation in the Czech Republic does not differ fundamentally from other standard democracies, in which only 10–45% of party members participate actively in the workings of their local party organisations (Scarrow 2002: 79–101). In other words, a few dozen people are sufficient in order to gain control over one local party branch, whilst on a district level hundreds of members are required and within the regional grouping thousands of members. Therefore, local business operators devised a strategy to purchase the minimum number of new members who could ensure them a majority position. The development of the membership of the four largest established parties is illustrated in Table 2.1. Within this context, the Czech case confirms that party membership is significantly lower in the post-communist democracies established after 1989 than in Western Europe. In 2008, the Czech Republic recorded a sharp decline in party membership relative to the size of the electorate, as well as in the absolute numbers of members. In 2008, party membership as percentage of the electorate level was only 1.99%, compared with 7.04% in 1993. Similarly, in this period absolute numbers dropped by nearly 70%. Together with Hungary and Slovakia, these three post-communist party systems lost over 42% of their original memberships (van Biezen et al. 2012). Of course, these sharpest drops, which were most pronounced in Central and Eastern Europe, can be attributed to the sustained loss of members of the former Table 2.1  Membership of established parties (1998–2019) Established parties

1998

2004

2014

2019

KSČM KDU-ČSL ODS ČSSD Total

142 490   60 460   22 095   17 343 242 388

100 781   46 905   21 641   16 288 185 615

  50 000   28 997   18 018   23 202 120 217

34 622 21 870 13 563 13 485 83 540

Source: Linek and Pecháček (2007), Danda and Rovenský (2014), Novotný (2014), Brodníčková and Danda (2018), ČTK (2018), Janáková (2018), Brodníčková (2019). KSČM: Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy); KDUČSL: Christian Democratic Union-People’s Party (Křesťanská a demokratická unie – Československá strana lidová); ODS: Civic Democratic |Party (Občanská demokratická strana); ČSSD: Czech Social Democratic Party (Česká strana sociálně demokratická).

36  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ ruling communist parties and their satellites. But approximately after the year 2000, these drops were rather a result of new systemic and structural causes connected with the party clientelisation process explored in this book. There is a clear trend up to 2019 that other parties also have registered a continued decline in membership. As shall be illustrated in the Chapter 5 dealing with business-firm parties, some of the new parties even operate almost entirely without membership. Such an erosion of membership reflects a progressive process of partisan de-alignment or disengagement from party politics. *** From the preceding, it follows that whoever wished to gain control over the district and regional levels of the parties, and subsequently also assemblies and councils of large towns and regions, had to begin from the bottom up, thus from the lowest party element. Three tactical methods served to facilitate this: (1) takeover of the existing local organisation; (2) takeover through a split of the local organisation into two branches; (3) establishment of a new local organisation. Which parties became the most frequent target of invasions of hired party members? The targets of attacks were especially parties that met two criteria. Firstly, this concerned parties with the highest governmental or coalition potential, and secondly, parties with a relatively lower number of members, which could be more easily subdued ‘by numbers.’ Both criteria were best met by the two main parties, the ČSSD and ODS, which alternated in governments and controlled municipal and regional self-governments. All the very small parties – with a few thousand members – also faced similar clientelist infiltration. This first affected the ODA (Civic Democratic Alliance) and US-DEU (Freedom Union-Democratic Union), and later the new parties TOP 09, Public Affairs and SPOZ (Citizens’ Rights Party-Zemanites). By contrast, the Christian KDU-ČSL and the Communist KSČM, which are larger parties rather of a mass type, were virtually untouched by this phenomenon. Fake party members were written about as early as 2002 by Linek. At the time he pointed out that manipulation of the membership was taking place in numerically weaker local party organisations such as the ODS (Prague 10, Plzeň, Přerov), the ČSSD (Prostějov, Brno) and the US-DEU (Blansko region). He attributed the problem to the low average membership of a typical local organisation, i.e. from thirteen to twenty-three members, and also to the passivity of more than one half of the membership (Linek 2002–2004). What was the total extent of purchases of fake party members? It follows from the underhand nature of the entire process that it is possible to provide only very rough estimates. As regards the ODS, in mid-2008 Pečinka stated that within a few years the membership had grown from twenty to thirty thousand, of whom the dead souls, or in his terminology mercenaries, could have numbered between two and four thousand. Nevertheless, the purchases of fake party members continued

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  37 and probably peaked in the period of 2008–2010, though they continued until at least 2014. Pečinka (2008) also stated that the atmosphere of false recruitments “drove hundreds of traditional party members out of the ODS, to be replaced by hired members.” An interesting illustration is presented in Table  2.2, which progressively records the numbers of ODS members from its foundation, reflecting its periods in government and in opposition. For practical but also for theoretical reasons, it is significant to document the sectors of the economy in which the individual regional bosses operated, and subsequently to state where they recruited their hired party members from. Reasonably clear strategies were pursued by some regional bosses of the ODS. As a result, at least up to 2010, it was stated in the media with a certain degree of hyperbole and simplification that in North Bohemia members of the ODS were predominantly bricklayers recruited by the construction magnate Oulický; in West Bohemia waiters hired by the restaurant owner Jurečko and in South Bohemia fishermen bought by the entrepreneur in the branch of fisheries Dlouhý (Dolejší 2009b, Klímová 2009). Especially for a right-wing party, it was a paradox that a significant role in its membership was played by the professions of bricklayers, waiters and fishermen. A textbook example of how powerful local businessmen were able to alter the balance of power on a local, district, regional and even on a national level by means of fraudulent mass-scale recruitments of several hundred hired party members is the manipulation which took place in the regional organisation of the ODS in the Ústí nad Labem region. Shortly before the party congress held in December  2008, two cliques of local entrepreneurs clashed in the towns of Ústí nad Labem and Most. Within this context, Kubera, the mayor of the city of Teplice, spoke at this ODS congress about the flying squadrons that had parachuted in new party members, leading to an increase in the membership in this region by at least a few thousand members, and thus to extensive manipulations at district party conferences (Götzová 2008). Table 2.2  ODS membership (1991–2019) Year

Political period

Number of members

1991 2000

foundation of party “opposition agreement” de facto supporting Social Democratic government return to government fall of Topolánek government Nečas government departure of Public Affairs from Nečas government fall of Nečas government opposition opposition

18 557 17 432

2006 2009 2011 2012 2013 2014 2019

26 296 33 662 27 523 25 892 21 578 18 018 13 563

Source: ODS and Novotný (2014), Brodníčková and Danda (2018), Brodníčková (2019).

38  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ The media mapped the mass purchases of party members in the ODS within the Ústí nad Labem region, including in the surrounding area of Teplice – in Proboštov and Dubí; Most – in Mariánské Račice; Chomoutov – in Horní Jiřetín and Brandov. For example, in the city of Most the district party conference replaced all the originally elected delegates shortly before the national party congress. District conferences of the ODS in the region recruited not only new delegates who would attend the national party congress but also selected the nominations for the post of party vice-chairman. Paradoxically, the most influential was the recruitment of fake party members in a centre of sexual prostitution, namely in the small town of Dubí in the area of Teplice, where the number of members suddenly increased from 34 to 413. The regional boss Oulický, a prominent businessman from the city of Ústí nad Labem, whose construction firm obtained a range of lucrative public orders from the region, provided transport of delegates by several coaches to the district party conference in Teplice, where they approved the nomination of Gandalovič for the post of national vice-chairman. After Gandalovič had made use of these votes at the national party congress in order to become elected vice-chairman of the ODS, he also strengthened his ministerial position. This provided a classic example of how a few coaches of hired party members in a centre of sexual prostitution could decide on the top party positions as well as governmental posts in the country (Dolejší 2008, Šťastný 2008). *** What was the situation like in the second largest party, the social democratic ČSSD? Because this is a party less connected to business and because it has a shorter experience of governing in regions and large towns, it is possible to expect that the extent of fraudulent recruitments would be on a smaller scale. Nevertheless, the first ever mention of fake recruitment in the Czech Republic is linked with the name of Hulinský, the former chairman of the Prague ČSSD, who ranked among the first so-called whalers. In 1996 he bussed in fake party members in order to gain third place on the Prague candidate list for elections to the parliamentary Chamber of Deputies (Klímová 2010). The process of mass recruitments in the ČSSD accelerated especially after the election of Paroubek to the head of the party in 2005. This was connected not only with his links to the clientelist and cartel environment in Prague but also with his relationships with the then controversial chairman of the ČSSD in the Ústí nad Labem region Petr Benda and the regional chairman (hejtman) of Central Bohemia of the time, David Rath. The North Bohemian ČSSD in particular, similarly to the ODS in the same region, had become infamous for the unprecedented scale of scandals surrounding mass recruitments. On more than one occasion, the same people who had been hired by the ODS also agreed to be paid to register and vote by the ČSSD, despite the fact that the law on affiliation in political parties and political movements permits membership of only one political subject. The hiring of party members also took place on a larger scale in Prague and the Central Bohemian region (Mlejnek 2008).

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  39 Even though the media regularly published individual cases relating to the ČSSD, the party nevertheless did not express any willingness to deal with the problem until after the Paroubek’s resignation from the post of party chairman in May 2010. Specifically, in August the same year, the Central Control Commission of the ČSSD announced the launch of an extensive investigation of dead souls within its party organisations, in which the number of members had increased during the period of 2005–2010 by 175% and more. The investigation was to take place amongst other locations in the districts of Prague-East, Prague-West, Kolín, Rakovník, Pardubice, Kladno, Prague 5, 7 and 9, as well as Liberec, Domažlice, Frýdek-Místek and Uherské Hradiště. Due to suspicion of fake mass recruitments of members, re-registration of the membership was commenced in the district of Litoměřice (Ovčáček 2010b). *** To summarise the previous findings, it is clear that the phenomenon of holding key positions in the party machinery by the means of mass purchases of hired party members would inevitably have direct degenerative effects on the national level of politics. As regards the membership, the original members were progressively replaced in the sense not only of their quantity but above all their quality. Artificial recruitments led to a general disgust on the part of the programme-oriented party members, resulting in their passivity or direct exit from the party. This development ultimately led to a mass defection of voters to other political subjects. The departure of the original party members from the ODS can be documented among other factors in the example of the region of South Bohemia. It was precisely this region that for a long time represented an electoral bastion of the ODS. The party regularly won elections here, gaining an average of 30–40% of the vote and subsequently occupying positions of mayors of the majority of the towns in the region. After the regional boss Dlouhý had used his own people to ‘steamroll’ local organisations, previously successful local politicians left the party. This related for example to the towns of České Budějovice, Písek and Strakonice. Some of them went on to found their own independent movements, with which they succeeded in the local elections in 2010. 2.1.2  Withdrawal of licences in the ODS in 2013 A textbook example can be seen in the attempt by non-transparent business to take over significant local organisations of the ODS at the turn of 2012 and 2013. Although the immediate target was the intra-party power balance on a district level, the primary goal was to alter the regional power equilibrium (especially in Prague) and consequently the composition of the party leadership on a national level. The response to these events was the unprecedented decision of the executive council of the ODS taken on 28 February 2013. Under the leadership of the then party chairman Petr Nečas, the council resolved to embark upon a radical solution, in which it withdrew licences from three major district party associations

40  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ numbering over one thousand members, “due to non-transparent recruitment of new members and non-standard procedures in the selection of local and district chairmen.” Specifically, this concerned the local organisations in Prague 4, Prague 12 and Prague-West (ČTK 2013b). The following description of events is based primarily on texts by two investigative journalists, Shabu and Kalenský. Prague 4 Palounek, a controversial real estate magnate generally considered to represent the prototype of the local godfather, first of all arranged the removal from function of the local party chairman and mayor of Prague 4. Immediately afterwards, he attempted to subdue the largest local organisation in the Nusle district. He succeeded in February 2013, when he was elected chairman of the local organisation by 100% of the delegates. He would have been unable to do so without tactical transfers of larger numbers of members from local organisations to Nusle, in particular from Spořilov and Lhotka. It is symptomatic also with regard to the next chapter that Schmalz, one of the former leading representatives of the ČEZ energy company, who at the time was vice-chairman of the district organisation of the ODS in Prague 4 and chairman of the municipal commission for town planning, supported these personnel changes (Kalenský 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). Prague 12 An attempt to control this district association was made on 25 February  2013, when the district meeting was convened. Originally this was not meant to be an electoral meeting, since the incumbent chairman was only half way through his tenure. Despite this fact, the meeting, supplemented by new hired members  – including American football players among others – elected a new chairman and new district party council. The newly elected chairman was Ryba, the owner of a pawnbroker’s and gambling club. The notification that the district meeting was to be convened came only two days before it was held. Moreover, the fact that the district meeting itself had not been preceded by any meetings of local organisations which would have proposed delegates merely completes the picture of the manipulative nature of the entire procedure (Shabu 2013b). The respected politician Grulich, one of the few ODS candidates to succeed in the Senate elections in 2012, was to be removed from the post of party chairman of the Prague 12 district. By contrast, Ryba was the politician who had been behind the previous split of the district organisation in Prague 1, from which the licence was withdrawn already in 2011. Prague-West, the largest party district in Central Bohemia Although the ODS membership was in continual decline after 2009, the district organisation in Prague-West recruited 120 new members. Shabu (2013a) stated

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  41 that “over the last ten years the ODS in Prague-West has had a stable membership with approximately 300 members. In 2012 its total number expanded to 423.” A sharp increase in membership took place within the local organisations in Zlatníky, Ohrobec, Čisovice, Průhonice and Černolice. The new hired party members included for example Thai boxers, as well as students hired during their vacation, who received 1000 Czech crowns each for their ‘work.’ If we take account of the fact that for every four members, the local organisation could send one delegate to the district meeting, it was no surprise that the new majority ‘steamrolled’ the original party members upon the election of the district party council. The meeting started an hour late because the new members were still being brought to the meeting by taxi. Almost half of all the delegates of the local organisations walked out of the district meeting in protest that no discussions had been held whatsoever, and the meeting had proceeded immediately to the election of the new leadership – see the letter from twelve local organisations of the ODS in the Prague-West district in Box 2.1 (Shabu 2013a, 2013b).

Box 2.1  Letter from 12 local organisations of the ODS in Prague-West district Dear Members of the Civic Democratic Party, Several weeks have now passed since the last district meeting of the ODS in Prague-West, held on 29 October. We wish to inform you by means of this letter of our opinion regarding this meeting, and the ODS bodies elected therein. We would like once again to emphasise that we consider the elections at district meeting in Prague-West held on 29 October to be illegitimate. This meeting was convened by the chairman of the district association Mr. Ladislav Kašpar in breach of the district regulation of Prague-West. The regular district meeting was held only three weeks previously on 4 October, and as the supreme body of the district set the date for the next conference at 8 November. The district chairman had no authorisation to change the date of the meeting also due to the fact that his mandate as chairman had expired in the interim period. In addition to the fact that Mr. Kašpar breached the resolution of the meeting of 4 October, the subsequent party meeting was preceded by targeted recruitments to a number of local organisations. We hold the view that these were conducted solely for the purpose of increasing the membership specifically for the district meeting to follow. These local organisations gained more members, more delegates at the district meeting and thereby also a greater influence at the district level. The expansion in the membership of certain local organisations referred to below has its history in the preceding months.

42  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ For example, the number of members of the local organisation in Černolice increased sharply. From an original 4 members in 2010 and 10 as of 31 December 2011, the number of members in June 2012 expanded to 51. Only the original 4 members have their permanent residence within this locality. It came to light that the chairman of the local organisation Mr. Zdeborský recruited 7 students, resident in Jílové for a “holiday job,” for the remuneration of 1000 Czech crowns. On 19 June  2012, the district party council submitted a unanimous proposal for the abolition of the Černolice local organisation, which it also delivered to the regional party council of Central Bohemia. The executive council abolished the Černolice local organisation in September 2012. The local chairman Mr. Zdeborský left the ODS. For several years the local association in Čísovice had 3 members. In June 2012, the number of members dropped to only one, with the result that the district council investigated the problem and considered withdrawing the licence. Following an agreement within the district council, 2 members from the Průhonice local organisation, Mr. Pánek and Mr. Mráček (see minutes from the District Council dated 9 July) joined the organisation in Čísovice. Within a few weeks, however, the number of members of the Čísovice organisation increased to 25. Only the single original member resides in this locality. The local organisation in Průhonice was only established in the spring of 2012. By the summer it already had 17 members and in October 33 members. At the time of writing it has 37 members. Practically the same course of events took place in the local organisation in Zlatníky. This was established in spring 2012, in the summer it had 17 members and by October 29 members. The breeding ground of the chairmen of the new local organisations was the organisation in Ohrobec. In 2011, the organisation registered the new members Mr. Malich, Mr. Mráček Sr. and Mr. Mráček Jr. In the spring of 2012, Mr. Malich became the chairman of the new local organisation in Zlatníky, Mr. Mráček Sr. became the chairman of the new local organisation in Průhonice and Mr. Mráček Jr. became the vice-chairman of the organisation in Čísovice. Mr. Zdeněk Pánek, who was transferred from the organisation in Průhonice, became the chairman of the Čísovice organisation. None of these persons had or has any connection with the locality in question. The number of members of the ODS in the Prague-West district was stabilised for several years at slightly above 300. However, in 2012 there was a sharp increase to 378 members in June, rising as far as 423 members in November. In less than one year this represents an increase of 26%, which

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  43 within the framework of the region and of the entire country is an entirely anomalous number. Shortly before the elections at the district meeting held on 29 October, the local organisations in Čísovice, Zlatníky and Průhonice recruited 50 new members. It is a paradox that they were members (several employed in “holiday jobs”) from the Černolice organisation, which had been abolished by the Executive Council. As of today, these 4 local organisations have the following numbers of members – Ohrobec 33, Průhonice 37, Zlatníky 30 and Čísovice 25. The result is that these 4 organisations now constitute 30% of the entire membership base in the district of Prague-West, which numbers 81 communities and municipalities. At the district meeting in Zbraslav held on 29 October, there were several entirely new delegates, above all from the local associations of Čísovice, Zlatníky and Průhonice. Without any explanation, the chairman of the conference Mr. Kašpar opened the meeting one hour late, thus enabling the participation of the new delegates, who were still arriving at the time. Despite their late arrival, the meeting was controlled by the delegates of the abovementioned local organisations, who achieved their desired result. The delegates from our organisations (e.g. from Dobřichovice, Dolní Břežany etc.) attempted to submit various proposals, but all were rejected by the “voting machinery” of the Makovský group. For example, these delegates refused to permit the insertion into the programme of points such as a discussion of the political situation in the district before the point “elections of district executive.” This was the last straw for us, and we left the meeting. After the party meeting, Mr. Makovský referred to such organisations that had walked out of the meeting as the group of “embittered losers.” Please allow us to take this opportunity to remind Mr. Makovský that those who left the conference represented 12 local organisations (11 + 1 Jeneč), including 3 mayors of municipalities and communities, 2 deputy mayors, 6 councillors from municipalities and communities, as well as municipal representatives who have held their positions for a long time and whose signatures are attached below. Under these circumstances, the district meeting was now entirely subdued by a clique based around Mr. Makovský (the new chairman) and Zdeněk Pánek, who used dishonourable and immoral procedures in order to advance their interests. Following the departure of the 12 local organisations, 67 delegates out of the invited 122 delegates remained at the congress. And who are these “new” and “hardworking” individuals who have subdued the leadership of the district of Prague-West?

44  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ These individuals joined the ODS recently, some of them only a few months ago. They have achieved virtually nothing whatsoever in local politics in the colours of the ODS, unless we count electoral losses. Many of them have been represented on the candidate lists of other parties and electoral groupings. For example, Mr. Zdeněk Pánek did not join the ODS until May 2012, though he was active rather in 2011, when he frequently visited the meetings of the local organisation in Ohrobec. Despite this he has taken control not only of the district of Prague-West, but after five months of membership of the ODS has become a member of its executive council. In 2008, he stood as a candidate in the regional elections for STAN (Mayors and Independents). During the period 2008-2012 he was an assistant to Mr. Jeništa, a member of parliament for TOP 09, and held this post until October 2012, thus during the period in which he was a member of the ODS and was in fact working for Mr. Jeništa’s competitor, namely our former senator Karel Šebek. Mr. M. Jirout, the former deputy mayor of Černošice, brought about an historical defeat of the ODS at the last local elections. His history in local politics is riddled with various affairs relating to town planning (such as Dalmatin etc.). He contributed in no small part to the fact that the ODS in Černošice won only one seat in that municipality in 2010. Mr. M. Partík, the chairman of the local association in Jesenice, was displaced from 2nd place to 15th place on the ODS candidate list at the last local elections. At present the ODS is not represented whatsoever in the municipality of Jesenice. We know little about the previous political operation of Mr. Petr Makovský. For example, he certainly did not attend the district meeting held on 4 October 2012. His local organisation of Ohrobec sent 7 delegates to the meeting. After one hour the electoral commission determined that 6 of these delegates were present under false identities. A further twist is that 3 young ladies were from the abolished local organisation in Černolice. All the “fake delegates” then quickly left the meeting, and we received no explanation of their presence. In our opinion, the focal point of the work of local organisations should be the community or municipality in which they operate. The Political Parties Act states that parties should be organised on principle within the relevant territory. How is it possible for members of local organisations to operate when they do not reside here and are frequently not even aware of the location of the municipality in question? How is it possible that they can influence local politics, stand as candidates in local elections and explain to citizens the policy of the ODS when they themselves do not live in the communities and municipalities where the local organisations are based, but rather enter the ODS elsewhere? According to the party statutes this is not prohibited, but it is contrary to the sense of the work of a political party.

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  45 In this year’s regional elections, the ODS lost for the first time in the district of Prague-West. The party’s number of votes dropped by 9000, which is more than the number it obtained (a mere 6500). To recognise the leadership of Mr. Makovský, elected on the basis of “strategic recruitments,” would mean heading for a further electoral disaster of the ODS. We declare by means of this letter that this situation is a matter of grave concern to us. It seriously tarnishes the image of the ODS not only in the eyes of our members, but of the wider public. We shall fight against these and similar practices and seek systematic solutions in order to bring about change. Our motivation is not to obtain posts on the district party council, as Mr. Makovský and his colleagues have falsely accused us. We wish to clean up the brand of the ODS, which has suffered greatly in Prague-West, to return its credibility and purpose, and to strengthen its position on the right-wing of Czech politics. Regards, members of local party organisations: ODS Dobřichovice Chairman Václav Kratochvíl (member of municipal council) Michal Pánek (mayor of municipality) Petr Kaplan (member of municipal council) ODS Dolní Břežany Chairman Petr Lang (member of community council) ODS Horoměřice Chairman Luboš Langer (member of municipal council) Václav Kašek (mayor of municipality) Zdeněk Babka (deputy mayor of municipality) ODS Jeneč Chairman Miroslav Šrotýř Pavel Burgr (mayor of municipality) ODS Jílové u Prahy Chairman Bohuslav Kohoutek ODS Lety Chairman Jiří Hudeček ODS Libčice Chairman Ilona Chrtová ODS Roztoky Chairman Roman Jandík (member of municipal council) Tomáš Pařízek (member of municipal council) ODS Statenice Chairman Michal Pokorný

46  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ ODS Vonoklasy Chairman Helena Šveňhová ODS Všenory Chairman Karolína Stojneková Written and signed in the municipalities of the district of Prague-West 26 November 2012 Source: Shabu (2013a). Text presented in original form and reproduced with permission.

*** It would be naïve to assume that the abolition of these three district associations represented a clear triumph of good over evil. The intrinsic structure of the ODS involves clashes of various local cliques backed by controversial local businessmen. Nevertheless, through this unprecedented decision the ODS rid itself of the most flagrant manifestations of the phenomenon of the ‘godfathers.’ This procedure would only become counterproductive at the moment when the party leadership began to use this method in order to rid itself of its ideological opponents. It is also important to note that the previously stated personnel purges within the ODS were motivated by attempts to gain influence in the running of city firms and their money supplies. The political winners prepared a plan, specifically a list of names for the deployment of party cadres in municipal companies. For example, in Prague 4, soon after Palounek had captured power, his people began to seize control of the management of firms such as 4-Energetická (4-Energy), 4-Majetková (4-Real Estate) and Pražské služby (Prague Services). It is also symptomatic that Palounek maintained contacts with former police officers from the Unit for Combating Organized Crime (Kalenský 2013a). To summarise, the case of withdrawal of licences from three district organisations attests to the depth of degeneration of the ODS. It clearly demonstrates how the operators of power – predominantly from the environment of non-transparent business or even organised crime – are able to make use of manipulative recruitments of hired party members. It shows how targeted transfers of existing party members across local organisations can build artificial intra-party majorities with the potential to accomplish: (a) a change of the intra-party balance of power, with an impact on the party leaderships on a district, regional and national level, and subsequently also in the composition of the national government; (b) changes on the level of municipal and regional self-governing assemblies and councils; (c) influence in the running and financial flows of municipal and regional firms, state and semi-state enterprises; (d) influence on the system of allocation of public tenders and other kinds of public goods.

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  47 The largest problem for the future nevertheless resides in the fact that this withdrawal of licences related to only three district associations. It is after all generally known that in the ODS this does not represent an exception, but rather the tip of the iceberg. This is also reflected in the dramatic collapse in the ODS vote nationally from an original 35% in 2006 to barely 8% in 2013 and 11% in 2017. There is certainly a chance of recovery; nevertheless, with regard to the depth of affliction of the ODS by clientelism, including corruption, patronage and organised crime, it will not be easy to democratise party structures. A second problem lies in the fact that on this covert market of interconnected shadowy politics and economics, there is a flexible mass of several thousands of individuals who are willing, for a financial reward, to enter any party or movement at any time and corrode it from within. Resisting this will require considerable endeavours and the implementation of specific measures. 2.1.3  Withdrawal of licences in the ODS in 2014 A further phase of the withdrawal of licences from discredited district associations of the ODS continued under the new ODS chairman Petr Fiala. The events of 2014 completed a certain party development, in which the Prague regional organisation in particular divested itself of the most compromised district associations from the era of the mayor of Prague Bém as well as the Prague bosses Hrdlička and Janoušek. If this process was commenced in 2013 by the chairman of the Prague ODS Svoboda, one year later it was followed up by his successor Humplík, who in December 2014 initiated the abolition of the district associations in Prague 10 and Prague 11. The national congress of the ODS subsequently decided upon the withdrawal of licences from both organisations. Similarly, as in the case of the previously stated ODS district associations abolished in 2013, here too there were also false recruitments of hired party members. Amongst other matters, this involved the following: In Prague 10 and Prague 11, the town halls hired out the premises to local boxers, in both cases for an unusually discount price. At the same time, both boxing clubs contained a remarkable number of members of the local ODS, and at both town halls the local citizens had reported unpleasant experiences with the appearance of muscle-bound goons even at meetings of the municipal assembly. (Kalenský 2014: 3) With regard to Prague 10, this always concerned a significant domain of influence, which exceeded the significance of the given territory and a single party. In terms of population size it was the sixth largest district in the country. Prague 10 became infamous for the long-term cartel co-operation between the ODS and ČSSD that existed under the patronage of the leading Prague boss Hrdlička. With regard to Prague 11, this district association entered the public awareness in particular thanks to the controversial politician and local mayor Mlejnský in

48  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ the period of 2006–2014. The leading investigative journalist Kmenta described the practices of intimidation which accompanied Mlejnský’s election as mayor, replacing Šorfová in 2006. At that time, Mlejnský was elected by a show of hands, thus in public, instead of by a standard secret ballot. According to the testimonies of Vašíček and Šimůnek, two former deputy mayors for the ODS in Prague 11, it was precisely at this district meeting that the Thai boxers intimidated the other delegates. Šimůnek stated: When anyone began to express disagreement with the decision, the thugs started on them [. . .]. Everyone was scared of them. And then, when the mayor was being elected, one of those thugs went up to Mlejnský and told him: We’ve quietened down a few of the rebels. It’ll be okay. I remember those words to this day. I was standing right there. I was shocked. (Kmenta and Viktora 2010) In addition, Mlejnský’s tenure as mayor was linked to the organised surveillance of his critics within the ODS. According to the records of the municipal district from that time, he had the former mayor Šorfová followed by a private security agency. *** Finally, the ODS national party congress voted by a slim majority of four votes to withdraw the licence from both district associations. The party chairman Fiala, a professor of political science and former chancellor of Masaryk University in Brno, commented on the matter with the following words: “This decision gives none of us cause for celebration, but it was a necessary decision. I see it as a great opportunity for the members in Prague 10 and 11 to build a new and credible association” (Eliášová 2014c). 2.1.4  Regional bosses – a new layer Since this section of the book aims to map only the process of privatisation of the established parties and politics ‘from below’ or ‘from the bottom up,’ it will be theoretically beneficial to define the term regional, as well as national boss, and to determine the role played by these figures in the party machinery, or more precisely in the purchase of hired party members. However, it is impossible to do so without taking into account the factor of regionalisation of politics in the Czech Republic. After the year 2000, fourteen higher territorial self-governing units were constituted, and the new regional assemblies and councils headed by regional chairmen were allocated their own budget. The centre of gravity of political and economic transactions thus shifted to a certain extent to the regions. In 2010, the prominent ODS politician Říman stated the following: The grassroots membership became closed off, and in the regions politicians obtained their own little castle, namely the regional authority, their

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  49 own budgets, and began to live together. They discovered that in the regions they could get by on their own, and the national politics and central themes ceased to be of any interest to them. (Kaiser 2010a)4 The regional bosses, referred to on a number of occasions in the media as the regional godfathers, represented a further phase in the redistribution of economic and political power in the country. The 1990s, connected with the transition to a market economy and therefore mass-scale privatisation, were the golden years for those who during this process participated in systemic frauds and ‘tunnelling.’ It was thanks to this development that a specific parasitic layer – already formed during the final stage of socialism in the late 1980s – was able to accrue even greater fortunes during the post-communist transformation. Mlejnek characterised this parasitic layer, which had become a kind of new elite of the post-1989 period, as made up of “black marketeers, members of the former secret service machinery, snitches, former communist nomenklatura cadres and their flunkies” (Mlejnek 2008). It was precisely from this parasitic matrix, close to the edges of organised crime, that the majority of the new regional bosses or godfathers were recruited. At the ODS national party congress in 2010, the newly elected vice-chairman Němcová declared that these party structures consisted of individuals who were attempting to manipulate the party in the shadows, who in reality were “curious characters from the realm of so-called business. So-called, because they have nothing in common with true entrepreneurship” (Bek and Danda 2010). In an address to his fellow party members from the regions, another leading ODS politician, Zahradil, pronounced the following memorable words (Klíma 2015: 94): Isn’t it in fact your very district, your region, where the symbol of the ODS has become, for example, a thick bull neck wrapped in a gold chain, or a black marketeer with previous convictions for fraud, alternatively a so-called ‘businessman’ operating with European Union funds and public finances, or a local don Vito Corleone, without whose agreement it’s not possible even to appoint a public toilet attendant? Pečinka (2008: A10) noted that approximately in 2005 a system of party bosses became established in the ODS. He then continued, “in 2008 the bosses and their satellites gained a majority on the national executive council of the ODS. Such a party development began to threaten even the incumbent party chairman Mirek Topolánek, who protested against this, despite the fact that he had played a part in creating this system.” 2.1.4.1  The regional boss – the narrow and broad approach How can the terms regional boss or regional godfather be best defined in political science? In both cases it concerns a specific kind of political entrepreneur with parasitic features. If the title regional boss is more general and somewhat

50  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ more neutral, then a sub-category is the term regional godfather, distinguished by criminal and mafia traits. Also worthy of mention are further expressions used in the media as equivalents of the title of regional boss: oligarchs, grey eminences, pimps or political puppet masters. The media also referred to them as whalers, because they organised mass purchases of hired party members, whilst their dirty work in the field was performed for them by their ‘henchmen.’ These terms evoke a certain definition of the regional boss. The typical regional boss and leading local business figure combined in the same person was the most influential party representative within the given region, regardless of whether or not this person was a party member. The regional boss derived power from the mass purchase of hired party members for the local party organisations within the given districts of the relevant region. Such dubious conduct cleared the way for him to gain voting majorities and subsequently a decisive influence in the formal nomination mechanisms on all levels of the party (local, district and regional candidate lists). This power base was then used to achieve the regional boss’s business plan, which was specifically to act as a parasite upon public tenders. It was the boss who could influence the career of party politicians as well as officials within the municipal and regional self-governing bodies and institutions. The new layer of regional bosses that had carved out its niche among the top business figures on a district and regional scale brought its commercial activities into both local and national politics. The regional bosses thus operated in a grey zone in between business and politics. Noteworthy here is the degree of their anchoring within the political parties. Although they generally became the most influential representatives of the parties in question within the given region and operated more or less in the political wings, with regard to their party affiliation the regional bosses were a diverse group. They included not only high-ranking party functionaries but also politicians on a local level and even those without formal membership. In summary, in addition to the official party structures, more or less parallel power structures of informal leaders formed in the backstage area of politics. In the ODS, the regional bosses met up to several times per year, especially before party congresses and in the period of elections. For example, before the ODS party congress in 2010, the aforementioned Dlouhý hosted regional bosses at his chateau (Kreč and Valášková 2009). A particularly spectacular meeting of the parallel structures took place at the Prague leisure complex Žluté lázně (Yellow Spa), literally a few hours after the closing of the ballot boxes at the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2010. Hundreds of people met at this event, the core of whom was composed of grey eminences representing the entire political spectrum. The meeting was attended by regional bosses and other controversial business figures and lobbyists, together with representatives of Prague ‘cartel’ politicians. The purpose was to discuss how to maintain control over politics in the aftermath of the elections, and at the same time to demonstrate the power of the regional bosses to the new ODS leader Petr Nečas, who had demanded a purge of the party from the bosses and godfathers. It was symptomatic that none of those in attendance wanted to say who had organised the event and who had hired out the premises of the Žluté lázně.5

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  51 2.1.4.2  The regional boss – godfather As concerns the godfathers specifically, these represent a certain kind of regional boss located in a zone connected to criminal business and the underworld. They are further distinguished by the fact that they live in their family residences protected by high walls. At the same time, they travel in SUVs with tinted windscreens and personalised registration plates, generate an atmosphere of fear and behave as if they are above and beyond the law. Petr Benda, the former regional chairman of the ČSSD, brandished his status with his satanic personalised registration plate bearing the numbers 66–66. In the ODS, from 2008 onwards, the regional bosses established the tradition of arriving at the party congress in cars with an ostentatious symmetrical registration plate, thereby demonstrating not only that they belonged to the regional elite but thereby also flaunting their untouchability and thus their immunity from prosecution.6 The political godfather class embedded itself above all in North Bohemia, in the region of Ústí nad Labem. The regional bosses here rather represented an offshoot of the regional godfathers who rule the “local underworld bejewelled by former black marketeers, corrupt police officers and brothel operators.” As the political scientist Mlejnek (2008: 10) noted, the Ústí nad Labem region can be considered the prototype region where politics and criminal business were intertwined to a substantial degree. In this region the political elites of the ČSSD and ODS governed not only thanks to artificial mass recruitments but also by means of spreading fear. Threats and intimidation were nothing unusual within the ranks of the North Bohemian ČSSD. For example, cases were described of the hiring of extortionists with the aim of intimidating party opponents in their homes and the sending of threatening text messages and letters containing bullets. Intra-party disputes of the ČSSD in the Ústí nad Labem region had to be investigated by the police (Holec 2009). In 2010, almost the entire leadership of the regional organisation of the ČSSD in the Ústí region had some form of past and sometimes also present connection with criminal activity. It can be stated that at least up to 2010 there was virtually no difference in this region between the two largest parties, which formed regional coalition councils and divided up the spoils among themselves. During this time there were large internal conflicts within both parties, in which individual district cliques battled for supremacy. At times it was reminiscent of a mafia war (Mates 2007). In this context, Pečinka provided the following accurate picture of the political situation in the Ústí region: The political spectrum, whether it concerns the ODS or ČSSD, is indistinguishable in this region, there are no alternative elites, so all politicians de facto form one grand lumpenproletarian party of power. It is worth noting that the regional organisations of the ČSSD and ODS in the Ústí nad Labem region became numerically the largest regional organisations in

52  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ the country as a result of their false recruitments. They thus gained a considerable influence on the formation of the national leadership of their parties as well as on the composition of governments. 2.1.4.3  The regional boss – trader In addition to the godfather section, it is possible to detach from the broad category of the regional bosses a certain more cultivated group, namely the section of traders. In fact, this sub-category includes mostly typical lobbyists who, however, under the post-communist circumstances, are engaged in ‘corrupt lobbying.’ Among those who can be classified as pragmatic traders with political influence were the two backstage rulers of the Prague ODS, Janoušek and Hrdlička, as well as Dlouhý from South Bohemia. It was stated in particular about Hrdlička, the owner of a chain of petrol stations, that he presented a different style from that of Oulický. “He thanks you for everything twice, he’s eloquent and provides inside information relatively willingly” (Nosálková 2010: 16). Dlouhý, the regional entrepreneur from South Bohemia, was nicknamed the ‘prince of Hluboká,’ since he owns a neo-gothic chateau in Hluboká nad Vltavou. Several years ago, this de facto ruler of South Bohemia as an ODS politician held the official post of deputy mayor in the town of Hluboká nad Vltavou. It is symptomatic that the actual prince and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg declared about Dlouhý that “he would like to see the person who had managed to accumulate as much property over the course of twenty years as his own family had built up over three centuries” (Nosálková 2010: 15). Also worthy of mention is the case of Dědic, a regional boss trader who was monitored by the anti-corruption police (Blažek and Kalenský 2014). The case is theoretically interesting, since it took place in Ostrava, the third largest city in the Czech Republic, especially because to a considerable extent it follows the model of the Prague bosses Janoušek and Hrdlička. For the sake of clarity, it can even serve as an example of how regional bosses generally acted as parasites on the system of public tenders and on the possibility of founding companies in anonymous ownership. It was determined on the basis of five thousand bugged telephone calls and text messages with the regional chairman that over a period of fifteen months, Dědic had improperly influenced public tenders of the Ostrava Transport company, hospitals or roads administration (Blažek and Kalenský 2014). He legalised the revenues from these activities by taking payments from the winners of the tenders for fictitious consultancy services. For this purpose, he used anonymous shares to establish the consultancy firm Business Advisor, whose sole employee was the wife of the regional chairman. In addition, Dědic arranged personnel matters of local firms, including the composition of their supervisory boards. In 2012, Dědic was the most generous sponsor of the ČSSD. He was also suspected of organising purchases of hired party members.

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  53 2.1.4.4  The regional boss – authentic party politician The individual sub-categories of regional bosses represent certain theoretical constructions. As a result, it is not always entirely clear to which sub-category a particular politician belongs. For example, we could place Ivan Langer of the ODS or David Rath of the ČSSD within the broad category of party bosses, but with certain reservations. These cases could represent a further sub-category under the working title of authentic political boss or party boss. Unlike the majority of regional bosses, they are not primarily businessmen but emerge from their mother political party. Their positions as party bosses depend on their political career, or on a high concentration of party and political power. Among the positions held, a key role is played by holding the post of chairman of the regional party organisation. Nevertheless, their power base is also formed by a clientele from the sector of non-transparent business. With regard to Rath, unlike the classic regional bosses, he did not fulfil one fundamental characteristic, namely that he was not a leading local businessman in the relevant sector of the economy. As a career politician, at a certain moment he concentrated in his hands sufficient political power to handle the regional organisation of the ČSSD in the Central Bohemian region, and at the same time, in the post of regional chairman he also commanded the regional authority in the period of 2008–2012. This enabled him to treat the region as his own fiefdom. With the help of a narrow circle of people and in the absence of sufficient control mechanisms on the level of the party and the region, he used his power base as a tool for conducting parasitic business. Specifically, he constructed a sophisticated system of corruption in the form of organising non-transparent public tenders, for which he was finally sentenced to seven years in prison in 2019 (Pokorný 2019).7 Similarly to other regional bosses, Rath used the method of intimidation.8 Also, as already mentioned, mass purchases of hired party members took place in Rath’s Central Bohemian region during the period of 2005–2010. Rath abused his political power also for the purpose of personnel purges and to obtain further profits. Almost immediately after commencing his function as regional chairman, he launched extensive personnel changes. Among others he removed the directors of the regional hospitals. From the very limited resources of the regional subsidies, his home town of Hostivice obtained a contribution of 60 million Czech crowns. At the same time, he had remuneration earmarked from the regional budget for the community in which his brother held the post of deputy mayor. Furthermore, his brother’s career was advanced at the regional authority to the position of head of department. Certain megalomaniac ambitions are reflected in Rath’s proposal to establish his own university with the grandiose title of the Royal University of Central Bohemia. This was despite the fact that Prague, located in the very heart of the Central Bohemian region, was already overfull with universities. The specifics of this political boss operating under the name of the Social Democrats is aptly

54  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ described by Němeček’s observation (2013) that Rath is among those types of corrupt figures who do not have only malign intentions. On the contrary, through his activities he combines the public good with his own benefit, and even considers himself noble for doing so. The era as regional chairman [. . .] was typified by precisely such visible actions of a beneficent emperor: free travel for school pupils, reimbursement of public healthcare charges, a grand renovation of the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region. (Němeček 2013: 10) With regard to Ivan Langer, for a long time a high-ranking politician in the ODS, similarly to Rath he became a party boss as a result of a uniquely high concentration of power. However, unlike Rath, he never became regional chairman. On the other hand, he accumulated the following posts: chairman of the regional organisation of the ODS in the Olomouc region, member of the party national executive council and vice-chairman of the party, and above all Minister of the Interior. He also attempted to found a university, and unlike Rath he succeeded. Investigative journalists mapped his contacts with the unofficial king of the Czech underworld Mrázek. Langer also maintained close contacts with leading business figures. Before the elections in May 2010, he was regarded as one of the symbols of the godfathers in politics, and despite the fact that he was nominated in first place on the ODS list of candidates in Olomouc, the voters ejected him from politics by means of preferential voting. 2.1.5  National bosses For some of the most influential regional bosses, the boundaries of the regions were too limiting, and so they extended their operation to a national level. In this case, it is more precise to use the term national boss. This category primarily included three prime movers from the grey zone of non-transparent business and politics: the two Prague bosses – Roman Janoušek and Tomáš Hrdlička – and Ivo Rittig from Central Bohemia. The bulwark of their power became their penetration into the two main parties of the time – the ODS and ČSSD. As a rule, they groomed their stables of Civic and Social Democrats, either in Prague 10 (Hrdlička), the Prague municipal assembly and council (Janoušek and Hrdlička) or the regional chairmanship of Central Bohemia (Rittig). By means of these ‘stables’ they exerted a significant influence on the events within the given parties. In other words, the biggest established parties represented – approximately up to 2010 – a kind of unsinkable aircraft carrier from where they could extend their political dominance. When it became clear that ‘water was leaking’ into the clientelised parties, the bosses tried a new tactic. They began to experiment with founding new parties and movements intended to appeal to disaffected voters. First of all, Janoušek and Hrdlička invested in the launch of the project of Vít Bárta, who in 2004 took

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ 55 over the initially local anti-corruption Public Affairs party (Věci veřejné). Later, in 2013, they unsuccessfully attempted to introduce the new party Head Up (Hlavu vzhůru), led by Jana Bobošíková and supported by the then president Václav Klaus. At the local elections in 2014, Hrdlička stood behind the launch of several would-be uncorrupted political subjects, with the aim of maintaining his power in the municipal districts and on the Prague assembly and council. All three national bosses co-operated very closely and concluded suspicious transactions with the largest Czech energy company ČEZ, which was headed at the time by the director general Martin Roman (Chapter 3). It is no secret that all three also attempted to infiltrate the intelligence services and police units with their cadres. For example, they maintained contacts with high-ranking officials at the Security Information Service (Bezpečnostní informační služba – BIS) and affected the running of Military Intelligence. At the same time, they attempted to influence the leadership of the Corruption and Financial Crime Detection Unit and to gain the strategic post of director of the Special Operations Unit of the police. And finally, these three national bosses had close links to the elites of the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office and also within the judiciary, at least until January 2011 (Chapter 4). The preceding provides us with an understanding of the peculiar web of personal connections that gave rise to what was for a long time the unshakeable political, economic and security power base of these three national bosses. One of the key features was the untouchability or impunity they enjoyed during that period, a strategic feature that stood behind their privileged position. It was precisely in the hands of these three national bosses that the threads of the central clientelist networks met. And it is precisely for this reason that each of these three national bosses represents an ideal textbook example in which it is possible to study the causes behind the inception and development of the phenomenon of systemic clientelism, or more precisely clientelist democracy in the Czech Republic. 2.1.6  The ‘Kens’ – an appendage of the bosses In order to understand the character of the political system, it is also of fundamental significance that in general all the versions of the regional and national bosses shaped and implanted similarly oriented politicians in their own image. Especially within the context of the Prague bosses, much has been written about the so-called second generation of post-revolutionary politicians. This concerns the fact that the regional bosses produced a mirror image of themselves in a new group of slick and pragmatic politicians who became referred to as the Kens. In their smooth appearance, incorporating designer label suits and luxury watches, they were reminiscent of the plastic doll Ken, the boyfriend of Barbie. They were predominantly from the younger generation of Prague politicians, in their thirties, who had joined the ODS and ČSSD purely for career purposes, driven by a desire to get rich quick through political-economic schemes. They were distinguished by their ideological vacuity and minimal professional knowledge. Their membership on supervisory boards and boards of directors of firms

56  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ owned by municipalities and the state enabled them to increase their influence and make financial gains.9 The classic example of the Ken type of politician at the time was considered to be embodied by David Vodrážka, the former first vice-chairman of the ODS, and Milan Richter, the former Prague councillor for culture. In the ČSSD they were mirrored by the upper echelons of the Prague organisation, who obtained their dubious millions through their operation on the bodies of municipal firms. During the period of 2006–2010, the ODS in Prague thus ‘groomed’ a ‘friendly opposition,’ at other times a ‘friendly coalition partner.’10 2.1.7  A list of selected bosses The new informal layer of regional and national bosses, whether the godfather, trader or authentic party politician, represents a parasitic component of the postcommunist political and economic elite. In summary, it is distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) it manifests an entrepreneurial approach to politics; (2) it covers the non-transparent activities of informal politics; (3) it acts parasitically on public resources and produces high corruption potential; (4) it accumulates political power and wealth; (5) it enjoys the exclusive privileges of new nomenklatura; (6) it attempts to secure immunity from prosecution; (7) it usually organises mass purchases of fake party members; (8) it deforms the functioning of democracy. Moreover, the systemic nature of the regional and national bosses, in particular the regional godfathers, constitutes a security threat to the given country. Primarily, it concerns the potential risk of their connection to domestic or foreign criminal infrastructures. Who specifically can be classified among the pivotal bosses? This terrain was mapped thoroughly by investigative journalists and political commentators in the period up to 2010. Where the situation so requires, the facts are updated, with more specific details provided in the footnote to Table  2.3. However, the list of selected regional and national bosses does not include representatives of the authentic party politician, since this concerns typical leading figures of informal politics. To summarise the situation as of 2010, it is possible to state that journalists in all the serious media essentially agreed on the following list of bosses, presented in alphabetical order: Petr Benda, a real estate magnate and until 2010 the chairman of the Ústí nad Labem regional organisation of the ČSSD, secured the power base for the then party chairman Paroubek. He made his fortune in the 1990s by running discotheques and trading in real estate. He earned his reputation as a black marketeer by buying the building that had housed the Teplice outlet of Tuzex under the

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  57 socialist regime. His ostentatious car, bearing the satanic registration plate 66–66, spread an atmosphere of intimidation throughout Northwest Bohemia. Pavel Dlouhý, a South Bohemian businessman in the branch of fisheries, forestry and agriculture, then a member of the executive council of the ODS and deputy mayor of the town of Hluboká nad Vltavou. Involved in the mass purchases of hired party members. Roman Houska based his power upon an ‘empire’ of mutually provided favours and by spreading fear in the city of Chomutov and throughout the whole of Northwest Bohemia. As a member of the executive council of the ČSSD in the Ústí nad Labem region, he was regarded as the de facto party ruler in the region. Houska was convicted of attacking a police officer, though his conviction did not become legally binding. He was also accused of blackmail and fraud. He had originally been a black marketeer operating in front of the Chomutov ice rink. In 2013, he was murdered in unclear circumstances. Tomáš Hrdlička, the owner of petrol stations; an active politician in the ODS in its district association of Prague 10 and the backstage ruler of Prague. At the ODS party congress in 2010, he unsuccessfully supported one of the so-called ‘Kens’ – Vodrážka – to be elected to the post of first vice-chairman. Roman Janoušek, the businessman and grey eminence of Prague politics, nicknamed Lord Voldemort; connected to the then mayor of Prague and former first vice-chairman of the ODS Bém. He was investigated by the Swiss public prosecution service. In 2014, he was legally sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment for grievous bodily harm, having knocked over a woman when driving in an intoxicated state. Towards the end of the totalitarian regime, thus up to 1989, he worked as a waiter and at the same time operated as a black marketeer and speculator. Roman Jurečko, an owner of prestigious restaurants, was the informal ruler of the ODS in the Plzeň region. He was vice-chairman of the regional organisation of the ODS and a member of the party’s executive council. In the past he had been in conflict with the law and had been sentenced for a physical attack on a public official. He was involved in the mass purchases of hired party members. Alexandr Novák, a former ODS senator and mayor of the city of Chomutov. In 2012, he was legally sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for corruption. Ivo Rittig, a businessman who owned fashion outlets and companies representing international clothes brands, was close to the former vice-chairman of the ODS Petr Bendl. A  former black marketeer, in 1985 he was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment as a ‘common criminal’ for stealing unprecedentedly large sums from the cash register of a self-service outlet in Prague. He was not released from prison until the post-revolutionary amnesty of 1990. In 2014–2019 he was under criminal investigation. Patrik Oulický, a North Bohemian construction magnate. His company obtained tenders in the Ústí nad Labem region worth hundreds of millions of Czech crowns. In North Bohemia he helped Gandalovič gain the post of vicechairman of the ODS by means of mass purchases of hired party members. He first became renowned for flamboyantly paying his bar bill in the Clarion hotel

58  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ with a wad of five thousand crown notes, and secondly for building his family residence in a protected landscape area without proper permission. He became a symbol of the godfathers in the ODS. 2.1.8  The new black marketeering The previously named bosses and godfathers of Czech informal politics featured a large number of former black market hard currency dealers (black marketeers) or speculators from the period of the final stage of the communist regime. It was precisely this underworld of black marketeers – producing corruption and mafia structures – that was depicted by the director Olmer in his 1987 film Bony a klid (a play on words, referring not only to Bonnie and Clyde but also to Tuzex ‘bons’).11 In 2014, Olmer stated the following about the former elite of the money changers: With only a few exceptions they’ve all made successful careers for themselves. As businessmen, godfathers, lobbyists. There have been – and apparently still are – several of them directly among politicians. Some of them are completely shameless about their past. One West Bohemian godfather even held a retro celebration for his birthday, throwing about Tuzex bons among his minions and buying himself two rare Saanen goats, brought to him on leads with gold-plated collars, named Hugo and Boss. He even brought them to the Karlovy Vary film festival as if they were his lapdogs, where they stayed together in an apartment in the Pupp hotel. (Vrabec 2014: 35) It is clear that certain semi-mafia structures from the 1980s, formed by black marketeers with contacts to the police, judiciary and politicians, represented the underbelly from which organised crime linked to the sphere of politics. After 1989, it grew to enormous proportions in the environment of embryonic democracy and mass privatisation. The new democratic system did not create sufficient defence mechanisms in order to effectively limit predatory and parasitic groups in their expansion, based on the possession of initial financial and social capital. A certain parallel between the godfathers of today and the black marketeers of yesterday, though with a somewhat altered meaning, was also referred to by former president Klaus, who stated the following in his publication: The despised and maligned ‘godfathers’ play an important role on today’s political stage, similar to the important role performed in the economy of the previous regime by the black marketeers – they clear the path in the totally broken and blocked system of government within the country. They ensure that the hapless party leaderships are capable of doing anything whatsoever in the non-functional, loose confederation of regional party organisations, into which [. . .] our leading political parties have transformed themselves. Without the ‘godfathers’ it is also impossible to ensure the foreseeability of the functioning and decision-making of the judiciary and bodies active in

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  59 criminal proceedings. The ‘godfathers’ unblock the completely jammed bottlenecks of non-functional government coalitions. (Klaus 2013: 166) If we overlook the sarcastic tone of the statement, these are brilliant observations by the former president, who contributed to a substantial extent to the formation of this Czech political system. Over the course of the last twenty-five years he successively held the positions of Prime Minister, Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies and president. It was Klaus who became the central figure and thus the chief political winner of the post-revolutionary development. It was above all Klaus who was the most capable of all politicians to take advantage of all kinds of ‘bottlenecks of governance.’ The fact that the bosses feature a large number of the original black marketeers and speculators from the period towards the end of so-called ‘real socialism’ is not surprising. After all, the very post-revolutionary phenomenon of informal networks and informal politics, jointly formed by actors from a shadowy zone of politics and business, is in its essence based on a contemporary form of black marketeering and speculation. It is a continuation of a more or less identical activity under new conditions. This activity is based on the principle of ‘something for something,’ played out on and often beyond the limits of the law. Under the conditions of systemic clientelism, it is possible to arrange or influence virtually everything for an exclusive profit, including the formation of the government or its downfall, as well as the result of the presidential elections by parliament. By means of the informal part of politics, it is also possible to parcel up influence not only in the police, the public prosecution service, judiciary and administration, but also in hospitals and insurance companies. And if ‘positive’ conditions were generated, they would also parcel up for example universities, etc. It is obvious that informal political-business networks exist in every country. However, a problem occurs when clientelism including corruption and patronage becomes a universal phenomenon, or more precisely a systemic manifestation. In this context, such covert informal structures form a new nomenklatura (Subchapter 1.4), a kind of contemporary parasitic elite, which creates nothing new but merely drains public resources and corrodes the market economy and pluralistic politics. It is precisely this parasitic type of nomenklatura that has ultimately become the main winner in the post-1989 development in the Czech Republic. 2.1.9  Decline of the bosses – what next? Since an alphabetical list of the most prominent bosses up to 2010 has been presented here, it is also relevant to show a picture of the situation four years later. As documented in Table 2.3, it is evident that the circumstances surrounding the regional and national bosses has changed fundamentally. Some were facing investigation by the police or had been sentenced to imprisonment; one had been murdered; others had been expelled from the parties or cancelled their membership by themselves; others had lost their influence within the parties.

60  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ In order to illustrate the type of people who have had a fundamental influence on the party elite in the Czech Republic and how they have fared since 2010, it is possible to present the case of the Prague boss Janoušek. In September 2014, he was legally sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment for grievous bodily harm. In an intoxicated state, he intentionally drove his car at a woman and then fled the scene. At the court hearing a tape was played of Janoušek’s words, recorded by a previous police wiretap: I was just driving along, and then a kilometre before the roundabout someone slammed on the brakes in front of me. So I bumped into the back of her. This little Vietnamese woman got out, kicked my car door and started shouting about everything she was going to do to me. I started the car up and she did a double somersault, a triple backflip, she broke her arm, her leg, her ears, her arse. (Kolmaš 2014: 4) It is clear from Table 2.3 that the consecutive electoral revolts of 2010 and 2013, like the changes in the upper echelons of the public prosecution service and the police, substantially weakened and disrupted the informal political-economic

Table 2.3  Situation of regional and national bosses in 2014 First name and surname

Relationship to party

Situation in 2014

Petr Benda Pavel Dlouhý

ČSSD ODS

Roman Houska Tomáš Hrdlička Roman Janoušek Roman Jurečko

ČSSD ODS non-member, influential in ODS ODS

Alexandr Novák

ODS

Ivo Rittig

non-member, influential in ODS ODS

cancelled membership of ČSSD still a member of ODS, not active in party leadership murdered expelled from ODSa) sentenced to imprisonment, lost political influence still a member of ODS, not active in party leadership sentenced to imprisonment, cancelled membership of ODSb) under criminal prosecutionc)

Patrik Oulický

cancelled membership of ODSd)

Source: Author of this text. Notes: a) The executive council of the ODS expelled Hrdlička from the party as of 9 August 2013 for causing damage to the reputation of the ODS (Švec and Paclíková 2013). b) In 2012, Novák was legally convicted of corruption and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Immediately afterwards, Nečas, chairman of the ODS, called upon him to leave the party. Novák cancelled his party membership (Česká televize 2012b). c) In 2014, Rittig was investigated by the police due to suspicion of laundering revenues from criminal activity in connection with the Prague Public Transport Company (iDNES.cz. 2014). d) In 2013, Oulický cancelled his membership (Česká televize 2013).

Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’  61 structures of clientelism and corruption. Nevertheless, the previous bosses of regional or national informal politics adopted a strategy of retreat. After they had lost their immediate influence on the leaderships of the established parties, they began to found new parties and movements, which presented themselves as the authentic right wing or a genuinely new and untainted political formation. Their aim was to fragment and confuse the political scene or to complicate the forming of municipal coalitions, and in the ensuing chaos to maintain their influence on selected politicians. Whether the overall decline of the regional and national bosses or godfathers is merely transitional or represents a desirable and permanent change will further depend on the future activities of both politicians and civil society. Moreover, as regards the excessive influence of the country’s largest firms on politics, this development is ambiguous. Since 2010, it seems that the power vacuum in the political sphere has been partly and gradually fulfilled by new political entrepreneurs, including the oligarch Andrej Babiš, who have established a set of new political parties. This shall be dealt with in Chapter 5.

Notes 1 For example, in the ODS in Prague 5, when support for the controversial mayor Jančík was falling, approximately 140 new members suddenly joined the local party branch (Dolejší 2008, Pokorný and Janoušek 2009). 2 The landowner Chichikov in Gogol’s novel bought actual ‘dead souls’ – dead serfs. He took advantage of the fact that in Tsarist Russia the souls of dead serfs were written off from the property of landowners always once a year, on a specified date. As a result, a serf who had died before this date temporarily had the status of a living person. Although he was dead, he could be sold, donated or used as a guarantee for the bank. 3 However, this term is used in brackets (Constitutional Court 2011). 4 In 2010, Říman became chief advisor to Prime Minister Petr Nečas. 5 The Žluté lázně belonged to the City of Prague, and was hired out to a company which figured the wife of the Prague boss Janoušek, a close friend of the then mayor of Prague Bém (Berný 2010). 6 In the case of a traffic violation, the ostentatious symmetrical number was intended to warn the local police not to intervene (Regionální šlechta parkovala v podzemí 2010) [The regional elite parked underground]. 7 The final ruling related to rigged construction orders, for example the reconstruction of the Buštěhrad chateau (Pokorný 2019). In addition, an investigation was conducted on the basis of police wire taps into the circle around the regional chairman Rath, who had constructed a sophisticated system of corruption concerning the organisation of tenders in Central Bohemian healthcare facilities, in which those involved pocketed approximately one tenth of the price of each tender. In three traced tenders for equipment for hospitals in the cities of Kladno, Mladá Boleslav and Kolín, the full sum of bribes reportedly came to 20 million Czech crowns (Dolejší 2012). 8 In his home town of Hostivice, Rath used the method of intimidation against those who refused to collaborate with him. Iva Koptová, then the mayor of Hostivice for the ODS, stated in an interview that following his election to the post of regional chairman, Rath sent a regional representative to her office at the secretariat of the Municipal Authority in Hostivice in order to threaten her in front of witnesses (e.g. deputy mayor Kratochvílová) that “if she doesn’t obey him, she’ll be politically destroyed.” Eventually Koptová was removed from the post of mayor in January 2009. Koptová

62  Party capture: privatisation ‘from below’ also confirmed a false increase in the membership of the ČSSD in Hostivice (Koptová 2013). 9 These politicians were also referred to as ‘young predators’ by the former ODS mayor of Prague Jan Kasl (Dolanský and Klapalová 2009). 10 These were not negligible financial sums. For example, according to his declaration of assets, the chairman of the Prague ČSSD Hulinský came into 12.3 million Czech crowns over the course of three years on the bodies of municipal firms. The Social Democrat Poche also earned an extra 1.68 million crowns in 2009 for his membership of the supervisory board of Pražská energetika (Syrovátka 2010, Kendroň 2010). 11 Bons or Tuzex crowns were coupons used in socialist Czechoslovakia to pay for scarce Western goods in special Tuzex outlets. The communist regime thereby motivated citizens who had legally obtained Western currency, either by working abroad or as a gift, to sell it to the state, which they otherwise would have been obliged to do. Under the conditions in which the Czechoslovak crown was not a freely convertible currency, the state provided bons at an exchange rate of 1:1, meaning that one bon was valued at one crown. The black marketeers took advantage of the fact that the demand for purchasing scarce, quality goods (jeans, watches, chocolate) was very high and embarked upon illegal trading in foreign currencies, in which they sold one bon for approximately five crowns (Cvrček 2014: 36).

3 Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’

According to Hale’s approach (2015), post-communism generates a ‘distinct political system’ set up by local political machines (Chapter  2) and the largest business conglomerates (Chapter 3). Thus, this third chapter concentrates on the second set of collective actor: giant politicised corporate conglomerates. In other words, to understand the full nature of the crisis of the party system and politics it is necessary – in addition to informal party privatisation ‘from below’ – to conduct a parallel analysis of informal party colonisation ‘from above.’ This sequence of analysis corresponds to the two-way process of party capture based on the firm-party-firm pattern (Figure 1.1 in Subchapter 1.8). Because the process of capturing party politics from above did not concern direct control of the party rank and file but rather a strategic influence on the party elites, this phenomenon is referred to not as privatisation but instead by the term colonisation. At the same time, the colonisation of the established parties implemented from the top down is also based on the same client-client relationship between the sphere of non-transparent business and politics. However, this concerns the relationship between big business and the party elite. Such nationwide firm-party ties therefore develop within qualitatively different circumstances. On one side, informal party privatisation from below was often played out backstage in dingy pubs or cheap restaurants, and led to the triumph of the regional bosses or godfathers. By contrast, informal party colonisation ‘from above’ was conducted discretely by director-generals and direct owners of the largest companies, meaning within a more exotic environment of luxury five star hotels and yachts. Informal party colonisation ‘from above’ in many aspects overlaps the concept of corporate state capture introduced in Subchapter 1.7 (Hellman 1998, Hellman and Kaufmann 2001, Innes 2013). Hellman and Kaufmann indicated that the process of state capture typical of post-communist transition economies became a strategy of the biggest captor firms “to create zones of relative security and competitive advantage for themselves at the expense of all other firms” (2001: 6). These kinds of enterprises derive their economic power from factors such as “firm size, ownership, ties to the state, control over labor, and the economic impact on their local communities” (Hellman et al. 2003: 755–756). Therefore, the captor firms covering only a small set of new large companies and giant state or semistate firms were in a position to use inappropriate means in order to influence

64  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ political actors such as political parties, parliamentarians, government officials as well as judges and members of central banks. This implies that the core of both, namely party colonisation ‘from above’ and corporate state capture, is collusion between powerful firms and national politicians with bureaucrats. In such tandem they are able to manipulate policy formation and shape the rules of the game on the market in order to extract exclusive private gains for themselves from the economy. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of party colonisation ‘from above’ itself concentrates predominantly on a particular symbiosis at the national level between big business and mainly the upper echelons of political parties. As a result, this relationship provides competitive advantages not only for economic but also political actors, and thus an opportunity for the large-scale exploitation of state resources. As a result, the individual parts of the non-transparent clientelist structures of the political-economic elite constitute diverse informal hierarchical networks which more or less co-operate and compete. On the whole, the main playing field is not only a distorted market economy in terms of a captured transition economy but at the same time a distorted partypolitical arena prone to the formation of a party cartel. It is clear that the domination of two parties prepares fertile ground for the processes of party colonisation and privatisation. For example, this situation was typical in the Czech Republic, Croatia (Kotarski and Petak 2018) and Mongolia. Such an institutional set-up provides optimal conditions for the collusion of the two biggest parties in order to engage in a concerted practice of capturing the legislature and executive. The party cartel is then an ideal object of the attempts of large business to manipulate the transitional economy in the direction of forming monopolistic or oligopolistic structures. In other words, the cartel of both interconnected dominant captor firms and captor parties is a precondition for the completion of state capture, clientelist democracy or a clientelist regime (Chapter 4). In this chapter the process of informal party colonisation ‘from above’ is explored within the context of the Czech Republic, thus within a two-pillar party system composed primarily of the Social Democrats (ČSSD) and the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS).

3.1  Pro-business politics – oligopolies and monopolies In 2011, David Ondráčka, the director of Transparency International in the Czech Republic, classified the following subjects within the category of the largest financial and business groups which de facto stood behind the political representation and controlled the state: “ČEZ, PPF, Penta, Babiš, Bakala, Tykač and Mostecká uhelná” (Wolfová 2011). To a certain extent it is also possible to include the financial group J&T within this category, as well as Škoda Holding, both of which cooperated closely with the electricity giant ČEZ, as documented by the following text. At least until 2010, it was of key importance for the largest corporations – whether state, semi-state or private  – to maintain an influence on politicians especially from the two dominant parties, the ODS and ČSSD, which together commanded between 60 and 65% of the vote.

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  65 According to experts and investigative journalists, in the first place within the category of the economic players with political ambitions is the most powerful Czech firm, the semi-state energy giant ČEZ group. This company produces approximately 75% of the electricity in the Czech Republic and enjoys a monopoly position on the energy market. It was the European Commission that investigated whether ČEZ was abusing its dominant position.1 Within the Czech circumstances, the economist Kříž (2010) criticised the oligopolistic (the dominance of two or a small number of firms) or even monopolistic tendencies that had prevailed in the branches of the energy industry, as well as water supplies, telecommunications and banking. With respect to the energy industry, he stated that by combining production and distribution, the ČSSD had created a ‘golem’ out of ČEZ without taking any measures in order to ensure a competitive market environment. The Social Democrats thus did not ensure the universal implementation of market regulations and laws which would protect the market against monopoly practices. As a result of its monopoly standing, ČEZ had the highest level of profit in Europe, which in terms of a comparison with other European countries meant that the burden of inflated electricity prices was borne not only by citizens but also by Czech companies, for whom high operating costs reduced their competitiveness on foreign markets. Kříž drew attention to the fact that this represented a failing on the part of politicians and their parties, since rather than regulating the market appropriately they instead accommodated the interests of the firms that occupied a powerful market position. Above all, he criticised the largest right-wing party of the time as follows: The ODS was once a ‘pro-market’ party, thus a party in favour of stipulating clear market regulations for all, and for the enforcement of these regulations by all. Now, however, its politicians are deeply mired in the aforementioned sectors, in which their thinking is ‘pro-business,’ thus in the interests of the firms with which they are in contact, or where they even represent the state [. . .]. The state has its limited but irreplaceable function within the economy, and must not permit its regulatory bodies to be toothless and controlled by the dominant players on the market – in which case the tail wags the dog. (Kříž 2010: 10) This analytical view of the ODS as a pro-business and not a pro-market party enables a better understanding of the fact that other governing parties, in particular the ČSSD and KDU-ČSL (Christian Democratic Union-People’s Party), were also transformed into pro-business parties. This took place despite the fact that they formally claimed to represent the interests of other groups within the electorate. The risks in connection with the pro-business policy of the governing parties in the Czech Republic, thus the threat of an excessive convergence of national politics and big business, were similarly noted by Pšenička. When mapping the situation up to 2010, he came to the same conclusion that oligopolistic and

66  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ monopolistic tendencies were being advanced above all in the sectors of energy, water supplies, banking and telecommunications, as well as in sectors which are markedly dependent on public tenders: “in state-owned forests, in the building of roads, motorways and railways or in the remediation of ecological loads.” In summary, this concerns sectors which the state influences either directly or indirectly via decisions taken by the political elite. He further stated that “the state not only fails to protect consumers and taxpayers against monopolies and oligopolies, but paradoxically breathes life into these structures” (Pšenička 2010: 12). The progressive cartelisation in individual sectors of the economy did not take place by chance. It represented a logical outcome of the negative development in the political arena, in which the rules of clientelism and its informal networks began to dominate. The narrow political elite formed by the highest-ranking representatives of the governing parties, in particular the ODS, ČSSD and KDU-ČSL, spawned a privileged group of large firms in the individual economic sectors. The cartelisation of the political arena occurred as a consequence of the conclusion of the 1998–2002 ‘Opposition Agreement,’ which in reality was rather a cartel contract between the ODS and ČSSD. Through this specific pact, the ODS thus provided support for “a minority Social Democrat administration to take office, which also ushered in an era of ODS-ČSSD Grand Coalitions at the regional and city levels” (Hanley 2016: 275). This political cartel gradually set the parameters by which future governments also were guided on a trajectory of creeping cartelisation of the market within given sectors of the economy. As a result, the political cartel produced economic oligopolies and monopolies. At the same time, a reverse process was also in motion, in which the largest economic subjects aimed to subdue the highest ranks of politics. The reality was that such a controlled and cartelised political market suited the requirements of the largest firms with a dominant position. The colonisation of politics ‘from above’ thus had its logical foundation. Also under control was the Office for the Protection of Competition (Úřad pro ochranu hospodářské soutěže), whose original task was to ensure fair competition and implement anti-monopoly measures. Its chairmanship was occupied by a politician from the relevant parties on the basis of a selection in the parliamentary Chamber of Deputies. And if politicians were determined to raise the topic of the battle against monopolies and the creation of a genuine market environment, then this took place as a consequence of populist motivations, either as a part of pre-election promises or as a government’s initial programme declaration. 3.1.1  Actors of colonisation ‘from above’ – the example of ČEZ At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the semi-state enterprise ČEZ group (České energetické závody) became the largest firm in the Czech Republic, in which the state retained an approximately 70% majority share. In fact, ČEZ is the biggest public corporate conglomerate in Central Europe, embracing about 100 companies not only in the Czech Republic but also in Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey.2 If ČEZ was the largest and

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  67 most powerful firm, it logically ensued that its director general ranked among the most powerful men in the country. With regard to the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of ČEZ, the play on words came into use that the state of ‘Česko’ (‘Czechia’ as an abbreviation of the Czech Republic) was in reality ‘ČEZko.’ As a consequence, it is possible to consider the director general of ČEZ at the given time as a national boss of his type, or a puppet master of politicians in this country in the sense of his ties to key politicians throughout the entire political spectrum. This applied especially in the case of Martin Roman, who was director general in the period from 2004–2011. During his seven year ‘energy government’ – a company record in terms of the length of his tenure – he politically outlived five Prime Ministers, namely Vladimír Špidla, Stanislav Gross, Jiří Paroubek, Mirek Topolánek and Jan Fischer. The majority of the media then covered the forced departure of Roman from the post of director general of ČEZ in a similar manner as it would cover the resignation of a Prime Minister. Thus, in the broadsheet newspapers, there were such titles as “End of the vast empire of King Roman I” or “Roman: the fall of the ruler of ČEZ, investigation pending” (Dolejší 2011, Klímová 2011b). The following year, which marked twenty years of the existence of ČEZ, one newspaper title read “How ČEZko was born” (Tramba 2012). It was ČEZ and its director generals that had a very close relationship primarily to the two largest parties of the time – the ODS and ČSSD. They created a certain personnel union with both parties through the fact that leading politicians from both parties sat on the supervisory board of ČEZ. For example, the economic expert from the ODS, Kocourek, who at the beginning of 2010 was still the chairman of the supervisory board of ČEZ, in the same year became Minister of Industry and Trade. Another chairman of the supervisory board of ČEZ was Říman, a high-ranking representative of the ODS and also the chief consultant to the then Prime Minister Nečas. And Pecina, twice Minister of the Interior in the caretaker governments of Fischer and Rusnok and a former member of the ODS and ČSSD, also held the post of member of the supervisory board of ČEZ (Stuchlík 2011). This certain personnel union between ČEZ, the ODS and ČSSD was also manifested in the fact that Daniel Beneš, the ‘second in command’ within ČEZ in the post of executive director and first vice-chairman of the board of directors (from 2011 new director general) was formerly a member of the ČSSD and had close ties for example to the then Prime Minister Paroubek (John 2011, Klímová et al. 2013). On the other hand, Vladimír Schmalz, the head of the division of mergers and acquisitions in ČEZ during the period of 2004–2011, was elected to the municipal assembly of Prague in 2010, where he held the position of chairman of the influential town planning committee, which among other matters approved changes to the territorial plan of Prague (Janiš 2014). The capital city has always been a strategic territory in both political and economic terms. Furthermore, the city became renowned for the fact that both the key parties, the ODS and ČSSD, were highly clientelised, interconnected by cartel links and permeated by corruption scandals, as well as by mass recruitments of hired party members.

68  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ Although personal ties between ČEZ and the top politicians of the ODS, ČSSD and KDU-ČSL existed in the form of direct contacts, they nevertheless predominantly developed indirectly, thus in the wings by means of a circle of selected lobbyists. For example, ČEZ contacts with the Prime Minister and chairman of the ODS, Topolánek, were mediated by his closest advisor Dalík. Relations were established with Urban, then the vice-chairman of the ČSSD and former Minister of Industry and Trade, by the ČEZ lobbyist Johanes. ČEZ ties to the Prime Ministers and chairmen of the ČSSD of the time, Gross and Paroubek, were secured by another lobbyist, Miroslav Jansta. (It is no coincidence that ČEZ sponsored Jansta’s basketball team in the town of Nymburk.) Tvrdík, the former high-ranking representative of the ČSSD and ex-Minister of Defence, was the link between ČEZ and ČSSD vice-chairman Hašek. Also the lawyer Pokorný, who received contracts from ČEZ, secured contacts with the existing chairman of the ČSSD and later Prime Minister Sobotka. Last but not least, the lobbyist Háva guaranteed ČEZ ties to Kalousek, initially the leader of the KDU-ČSL and later of TOP 09 (Dolejší 2011). Roman, as director general of ČEZ, thus created a circle of lobbyists who had a strategic influence on leading politicians from all the relevant parties. This circle of key lobbyists was able to provide material incentives for the politicians either by allocating work, contracts or sponsoring their hobbies. However, in addition to certain manifestations of the personnel union between ČEZ, the ODS and ČSSD, there were also endeavours to co-ordinate the personnel or patronage policy within a broader scope, specifically (i) with respect to the composition of the government, and (ii) in occupying important posts in state and semi-state enterprises and institutions controlled by the state. As regards the influence on personnel policy in occupying important posts, either within state and semi-state enterprises or in institutions controlled by the state, it is appropriate here to make note of the following events which were recorded by police wiretaps. These were used in the investigation into the allocation of lucrative jobs referred to as ‘trafika’ (Kopecký 2012),3 namely posts within the bodies of state organisations. Firstly, it came to light that Beneš, Roman’s successor in the post of director general of ČEZ, had been asked for advice several times during the autumn of 2012 by Nagyová, the chief cabinet secretary of Prime Minister Nečas. In telephone conversations Beneš recommended that the Prime Minister concede to the demands of the rebels within his party by allocating posts to them within the Supreme Audit Office (Nejvyšší kontrolní úřad) and the General Health Insurance Agency (Všeobecná zdravotní pojišťovna). This involvement on the part of Beneš ensued from ČEZ’s interest in ensuring the stability of the government, which had close clientelist links to ČEZ (Klímová et al. 2013). Secondly, in 2012, Beneš even recommended to Nagyová that she place an affiliated person in the strategic post of director of the Special Operations Unit of the police (Útvar zvláštních činností). This concerned a key element of the police

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  69 whose jurisdiction covered wiretaps and surveillance of individuals. Beneš stated directly that “this position is more important than some ministers” (Syrovátka and Paclíková 2014). It follows from the logic of the systematic coverage of all the relevant political players on the part of ČEZ that the country’s largest firm also cultivated close links with another power base – the Castle as the seat of the president. With regard to president Václav Klaus (tenure 2003–2013), the director general of ČEZ Roman maintained privileged relations with both of Klaus’s sons. In 2008, the president’s older son, Václav Klaus Jr., obtained a sponsorship donation for his private grammar school, where he himself was the head, of an unprecedented amount of 100 million Czech crowns, predominantly in the form of shares. The president’s younger son, Jan Klaus, was then employed by ČEZ in the top managerial position of head of the risk management division (Dolejší 2011, Tramba 2012, Blažková and Holub 2014b). Therefore, with the personnel interconnection, co-ordination of personnel policy and other tools and methods that contributed to the interlinkage of ČEZ business and the political arena, the British weekly journal The Economist wrote that even if ČEZ is nominally run by the state, many people are of the opinion that power operates in the opposite direction, from the administrative board of ČEZ into politics. (CEZ and Czech Energy 2010: 60) Radim Bureš, a representative of the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International in the Czech Republic, made the similar statement that since its establishment, ČEZ had grown into a unique political-economic centre [. . .]. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that politicians do not control ČEZ, but that ČEZ controls politicians. (Toman 2012) With regard to the aforementioned personnel links to the elites of Czech politics, it is no surprise that representatives of the governing or opposition parties did not permit any criticism of the director general of ČEZ Roman. He was not criticised “either from the left, by the Communists, for the sharply increasing prices of electricity and fat profits, or from the right, by the Civic Democrats, for creating an anti-market monopoly” (Dolejší 2011: A2). In general, it was considered a given that Roman as the director general of ČEZ would be able to exert his influence on the legislative process. The particularly controversial law on emission permits approved by parliament in 2009, which meant gains of tens of billions of Czech crowns for ČEZ, is presented as a prime example. Another is the amendment to the energy act, which enabled ČEZ to cut off supplies to suspicious clients before they had been declared guilty by a court (Syrovátka et al. 2010). There were further similar victories for ČEZ in the period

70  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ of 2008–2009. For example, according to Kubátová (2009), by influencing parliament and the government, ČEZ succeeded in enforcing an adjustment of the mining limits for Severočeské doly (North Bohemian Mines). An enumeration of the lobbying activities of Roman in the position of director general can serve as a textbook example of how it is possible to maintain and extend influence on the political arena. These concerned the following methods of furthering his influence: (1) sport diplomacy enabled Roman to invite selected politicians to the VIP lounges at the ice hockey world championships in Prague, to Davis Cup tennis matches or golf tournaments; (2) cultural diplomacy ensured that leading politicians and other ‘useful people’ were invited to the annual Karlovy Vary film festival at the expense of ČEZ; (3) recreational diplomacy abroad offered selected politicians luxury holidays – for example in Tuscany or Dubai; (4) recreational diplomacy at home – for example in the Špindlerův Mlýn ski resort – thus in the location with the highest concentration of billionaires, lobbyists and politicians in the Czech Republic. A mark was made on the history of Czech politics above all by an ostentatious foreign holiday in Tuscany, specifically in Monte Argentario in the summer of 2009. The director general of ČEZ Roman, the ČEZ lobbyist Johanes, the chairman of the ODS and then incumbent Prime Minister Topolánek and the then vicechairman of the ČSSD Urban spent a holiday together in luxury villas and yachts. The holiday was accompanied by at least four suspicious circumstances: firstly, it was not clear as to who owned the luxury villa in which Topolánek was residing; secondly, it was not clear as to whom Topolánek had paid for the lease of the villa; thirdly, Urban also concealed how he paid for the holiday; and fourthly, this meeting took place only a few weeks after parliament, with a large contribution from the ODS and ČSSD, had approved an amendment to the law relating to trading with emission permits, bringing revenues of tens of billions of Czech crowns for ČEZ (Švehla 2009, Drchal and Plesl 2009). It was not by chance that this holiday was viewed as a reward from ČEZ for services provided within the legislative process. Another event to go down in history was the golfing trip to Dubai organised by ČEZ director general Roman, which was intended especially for the chairman of the influential budgetary committee of the Chamber of Deputies and ODS party member Suchánek, as well as for the controversial boss of Prague politics Janoušek. They were accompanied by managers of state-owned and private firms, for example the then highest-ranking representatives of the Prague Public Transit Company and Škoda Plzeň (Šťastný 2011). The trip to Dubai represented another example of the camouflaged and unregulated manner in which politics, business and lobbying had become intertwined. It follows from the aforementioned lobbying and clientelist activities that Roman established an extensive system of hidden sponsoring of key politicians and parties. Kubátová (2009) stated that huge amounts of finances were directed

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  71 into politics by ČEZ, reaching hundreds of millions of crowns per year. Specifically, she recorded three ways in which the finances were paid: (a) sponsoring of sports and social events, (b) tenders allocated to affiliated firms, (c) payments to consultancy agencies. From the previous enumeration, it is evident that the acceptable limit between effective lobbying and improper influencing of politics was manifestly breached. However, the main problem resided in the configured environment, or more specifically in the deformed economic and political market in which only the most skilful clientelist players triumphed. Also operating within this ‘successful corridor’ was the director general of ČEZ Roman. It is paradoxically precisely thanks to the fact that he became virtually the most powerful person in the country that he could ensure the expansion of ‘his’ firm. *** Particularly alarming were Roman’s activities in connection with certain regional or national bosses of the type of Roman Janoušek and Ivo Rittig. Because the contacts between Roman and Janoušek have already been mentioned here (the trips to Monte Argentario and Dubai), it will be useful to deal at least briefly with his joint enterprise with Rittig. This mosaic of non-standard relationships between representatives of ČEZ and the national boss Rittig (Section 2.1.5) includes the information that as early as in 2009 he flew in a private Gulfstream G550 jet together with Roman and Beneš to a tennis match of the Czech Davis Cup team held in Poreč in Croatia. This was precisely at the time when the billion crown purchase of the Amun-Re project linked with Rittig was in its concluding stages. At the same time, preparations were under way for the issuing of a ten billion crown tender for the operation of data boxes, for which the non-transparent company Alseda, also connected with Rittig, was competing (Kendroň and Pálková 2014).4 The activity of ČEZ is accompanied also by further suspicions. The investigative journalist Klímová (2013a, 2013b) stated that the police were investigating the electricity company in at least five cases. The first of these related to the suspicion of improper sale and misrepresentation of information in the case of the German Milbrag mines; the second was in connection with uncertainties surrounding the contracts between ČEZ and ČEZ Albania; the third affair related to discrepancies concerning the scope and price of a tender for a subcontractor in the construction of a waste isolation pilot plant at the Temelín nuclear power station; the fourth case was in connection with suspicions as to whether ČEZ was abiding by the law in allocating billion crown tenders via its subsidiary company Škoda Praha Invest, and therefore whether the selection proceedings were merely of a formal character; and fifth, the anti-corruption police were investigating ČEZ for its sale in 2008 of its key and lucrative firm I&C Energo under disadvantageous conditions and suspicious circumstances to the Hungarian oil giant MOL.

72  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ It is also symptomatic that the semi-state company ČEZ, which built a unique power base around itself, created a private armed unit with military training, which in the period of 2005–2009 intervened as a special enforcement unit for detecting unauthorised consumption of electricity. With the aim of intimidating persons under their investigation, the ČEZ enforcers used police clothing – green reflexive vests emblazoned with the word Police and cars which were distinctly similar to actual police vehicles (Keményová and Weikert 2010, Lukáč 2013). It is also worth mentioning that the director general of ČEZ Roman introduced the share option programme, which brought him alone a profit of approximately half a billion Czech crowns. For example, in 2010, he made tens of millions of crowns by first of all investing in the purchase of ČEZ shares in order to sell them later for a profit. His successor at ČEZ Beneš profited in a similar manner. The leading ODS politician Vojíř also made financial gains of approximately 15 million crowns during his period of office on the supervisory board of ČEZ within the motivation programme for share purchase (John 2011, Tramba 2012, Toman 2012). 3.1.2  ČEZ, Škoda Holding, I&C Energo and Appian The resignation of Roman from the position of director general and his transfer to the post of chairman of the supervisory board of ČEZ in 2011 took place suddenly and without explanation. The majority of experts hold the view that the most probable reason was serious suspicion of a conflict of interests (Klímová and Kroupa 2011, Tramba 2012, Toman 2012). Specifically, this concerns the suspicion that following his departure from his managerial position in the Plzeň engineering group Škoda Holding in 2004, Roman secretly retained a share in the ownership of the company via the nontransparent conglomerate of the Appian group. Subsequently ‘his’ ČEZ provided Škoda, operating in the field of transport engineering and classic power engineering, with contracts with a value of tens of billions of Czech crowns. According to the investigative journalist Klímová (2011a), this related to a series of more than 650 tenders which ČEZ did not assign on the basis of public contracts. The contractor was chosen by the subsidiary company Škoda Praha Invest, the supervisory board of which included the lobbyist Johanes. Within this context, the director of the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International Ondráčka stated the following: Naturally, the most serious matter is the potential conflict of interests in which Škoda received tenders from ČEZ and was controlled by Roman. In my view, there is a problem also in other firms in which Roman or other managers exerted an influence, such as Czech Railways or the Prague Public Transit Company. I believe the gravity of the matter is documented also by the fact that in the past the German company Siemens left the Czech Republic in disgust because it had no chance of success against Škoda in state and semi-state tenders. (Ondráčka 2011: A3)

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  73 Like many other investigative journalists, Pšenička (2009b) also pointed to the connection of Roman as the director general of ČEZ to the Plzeň engineering group Škoda Holding, via the non-transparent company Appian. Pšenička stated directly that Roman was the hidden majority owner of Škoda. He further drew attention to the fact that since 2004, thus since Roman’s so-called departure from Škoda and his transfer to the head of ČEZ, a unique managerial and entrepreneurial mini-private community had been established in Na Hvězdárně street in the Prague district of Velká Chuchle, with a superb view of the capital city. This mini-private community – a kind of parallel headquarters of the Plzeň engineering company – included houses and lands within the ownership of the two chiefs of ČEZ, Roman and Beneš, and the three top managers of Škoda Holding – Krsek, Korecký and Zapletal. “We wouldn’t find such a strong interlinkage of professional and private life even in a range of family firms. This is documented by the unusual degree of mutual trust” (Pšenička 2009b). An important matter is that Škoda Holding was privatised in 2002, and more precisely that it was acquired from the state under preposterously advantageous conditions by the international investment group Appian (specifically Appian Machinery with its headquarters in Amsterdam, whose ownership structure remains anonymous). Taking into account the fact that the Appian group acquired Škoda Holding for 800 million Czech crowns in 2009, it then sold only a part of this engineering colossus – the Škoda Power division – to the South Korean Doosan company for the exorbitant sum of 11.5 billion crowns [. . .]. Incidentally, in the transaction between Škoda Power and Doosan, consultancy assistance was provided by the Caribbean firm Cokeville Assets, which co-operates for example with Ivo Rittig and which figures in the case of the tickets of the Prague Public Transit Company. (Koutník 2014a: 2) Within this context, it is necessary to state that the privatisation and takeover of Škoda Holding was not the only contentious privatisation. There is also the aforementioned case in which ČEZ sold its key and lucrative firm I&C Energo to the Hungarian oil giant MOL in 2008. It was suspicious that shortly after acquiring the Czech firm, MOL, on whose board of directors Roman was a member, concluded a “secret pre-purchase agreement on control of the firm with the newly founded anonymous Dutch company Yellowraazd. Its main protagonist was the Czech lawyer Josef Brož,” a specialist in the establishment of a non-transparent networks of firms and a long-term collaborator of Roman, who had previously been involved in the sale of the Plzeň company Škoda Holding. Moreover, the investigative journalist Klímová (2013b) commented that  – in addition to the inexpedient price – there was no reason to sell I&C Energo, since the company has at its disposal unique know-how concerning the servicing and supply of technologies for the nuclear power stations at Temelín and

74  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ Dukovany, and has a range of tenders also for repairs to coal-fired power stations. Additionally, in 2008, ČEZ began to prepare for the construction of further blocks at Temelín, and more tenders worth billions could be expected in future. (Klímová 2013b: A8) Koutník (2014a) also stated that ČEZ had few reasons to dispense with I&C Energo. Quite apart from the fact that I&C Energo as the subsidiary company of ČEZ could expect further tenders, it was also in good financial condition. Furthermore, “according to the website Motejlek.com, MOL valued the specialised Czech firm at 1.5 billion crowns, i.e. twice the amount of the purchase price from ČEZ” (Koutník 2014a: 2). To return to Škoda Holding, Pšenička – similarly to the director of Transparency International Ondráčka – pointed to the fact that the director general of ČEZ had a direct influence on the allocation of tenders for this Plzeň firm, since he simultaneously maintained unusually close relationships with Czech Railways and the Prague Public Transit Company. In 2007, Roman – as the highest representative of ČEZ – also became a member of the supervisory board of Czech Railways. And thus Škoda Holding, with its non-transparent ownership structure, gained an absolute position when it obtained virtually all the tenders for the purchase of new or older railway vehicles (locomotives and carriages) from Czech Railways or its subsidiary company ČD Cargo for modernisation in the Czech Republic. This took place despite the fact that the German Siemens company, which manufactured better quality locomotives (the new generation of more advanced foursystem Taurus locomotives), was operating here. Similarly, thanks to its special relationships with the Prague Public Transit Company, Škoda won contracts for the supplies of trams for Prague and for the modernisation of Metro trains.5 3.1.3  ČEZ, J&T and Czech Coal The non-transparent and clientelist activity of ČEZ is analysed here for the reason that this concerns the largest and most powerful firm in the country, and also because its activities have been the most comprehensively mapped by the investigative media. However, the media similarly recorded the activity of the financial group J&T, also in connection with joint projects realised together with ČEZ. Specifically, the Slovak-Czech financial and real estate group J&T, established in 1993, focused on banking, the energy sector, engineering and media. It is again symptomatic that politicians from the ODS and ČSSD have alternated on its supervisory board and board of directors, and that they have been the most controversial politicians from these parties. In 2009, the chairman of the Prague ČSSD Hulinský became the chairman of the company supervisory board, and in addition one of the members of the board of directors was the controversial figure of the Prague ODS and mayor of Prague 5 Jančík (Malý and Hympl 2009). The J&T group maintained especially close ties with the chairman of the ODS Topolánek, for example through its involvement in his notorious holidays. First of

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  75 all, in 2008, the then incumbent Prime Minister Topolánek – together with Minister of Transport Řebíček – flew on holiday to Sardinia on a luxury airliner owned by one of the subsidiary companies of J&T, in order to play golf with one of the top representatives of this group. Here he stayed in a luxury villa, the owner of which could not be determined. It eventually came to light that a top J&T manager and member of its supervisory board assisted with the purchase of this house. It is a paradox that in 2009 Topolánek allowed the ODS to be indebted to a firm that belonged directly within the J&T structure, to such an extent that in 2014 the party had to close down a part of its regional headquarters with a total value of approximately 70  million crowns as a result. Specifically, due to an unpaid loan, the party was forbidden access to its headquarters in cities such as Hradec Králové, Pardubice, Plzeň, Ústí nad Labem, Jihlava and Ostrava (Koutník and Shabu 2015). Last but not least, it is necessary to present the fact that the J&T group lent eight million crowns to Horáčková, the spouse of Topolánek’s advisor Dalík, as start-up funds for a luxury goods shop in Prague. This took place despite the fact that J&T did not ordinarily provide loans for similar smaller commercial activities (Kolář 2009, Kreč and Kubátová 2009). In order to understand the process of the party colonisation ‘from above,’ it is important to grasp the complex of co-operation of the semi-state enterprise ČEZ with the private group J&T, as well as with the private financial group PPF. Especially during the period of two Topolánek’s governments from 2006–2009, ČEZ and J&T co-operated closely. For example, they collaborated together on controlling the German Milbrag company, which owned brown coal mines; they also arranged the sale of Pražská teplárenská (Prague Heating company) or the Mělník power station. ČEZ then bought a network of heating plants from J&T (Kreč and Kubátová 2009). Moreover, ČEZ and J&T gained a powerful ally in the financial group PPF, controlled by Petr Kellner. In 2009, J&T and PPF thus created Energy and Industrial Holding (Energetický a průmyslový holding  – EPH), in which both firms held shares (Drchal and Plesl 2009). Nevertheless, the criticism regarding Roman’s close collaboration with EPH was in connection with the fact that the holding earned more in this joint venture than ČEZ (Tramba 2011). It is also necessary to consider that ČEZ also paid J&T for servicing some of its facilities to be of fundamental significance. In 2009, representatives of both companies also provided the momentous information that ČEZ was to pay J&T ‘tens of millions of Euro’ for J&T’s agreement to surrender its rights to build a new power station at the jointly owned Milbrag brown coal mine. These circumstances, as well as the new facts coming to light concerning Topolánek and Urban’s suspicious holidays in Monte Argentario in Tuscany, led investigative journalists to express the suspicion that “J&T was serving as a financial conduit from ČEZ to politicians” (Kreč, Kubátová 2009: 5). To provide a better understanding of the aforementioned phenomenon of the colonisation of the parties and politics ‘from the top down,’ it is useful at least briefly to present the circumstance that in addition to ČEZ and J&T, other large financial

76  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ and commercial groups were engaged in similar clientelist conduct on the interconnected economic and political market in the Czech Republic. It would therefore have been contrary to the logic by which the system of clientelism functioned if ČEZ had abandoned such practices. Competitors were waiting in the wings in order to take advantage of any weakening of this energy firm and strengthen their own positions. This competition could then use far more unscrupulous methods in order to promote its interests. It is clear from the earlier comments that ČEZ and J&T co-ordinated their activities and at the same time devoted their attentions to politics in order to maintain the oligopoly status on the energy market and to force out their at least equally controversial competitor, the Czech Coal group. It was the competing Czech Coal group that battled with ČEZ for political influence. Within this context, the ambitions of this giant energy company and its controversial figurehead Tykač, one of the wealthiest Czechs, became the subject of investigative media attention on a number of occasions. It was precisely in connection with the control of Most Coal Mines (Mostecké uhelné doly) in 2010 that Tykač focused on re-establishing the political influence that he had enjoyed during the period of the 1998–2002 ‘Opposition Agreement’ pact or rather cartel contract between the two biggest parties, the ČSSD and ODS. Thus, before the parliamentary elections in 2010, the investigative media provided a reminder of Tykač’s circle of potential political allies. These included Jana Bobošíková, the original chairman of the political party Sovereignty (Suverenita), plus within the framework of the ČSSD of the time the regional boss Benda, who exercised an influence on the party chairman Paroubek, as well as Zeman and his Citizens’ Rights Party-Zemanites (Strana práv občanů-Zemanovci; SPOZ) (Plesl 2010). Following the failure of Sovereignty and SPOZ to make an impact in the elections of 2010, and after Paroubek had resigned from his post as party chairman of the ČSSD, the position of Czech Coal was weakened, whilst ČEZ defended its dominant standing.

3.2  A comparison: party privatisation and colonisation As stated previously, on the one hand, local figures from non-transparent business primarily appropriated for themselves the local, district or regional branches of the two biggest parties within the framework of privatisation ‘from below.’ On the other hand, in the case of colonisation ‘from above,’ giant politicised corporate conglomerates primarily bound and subjugated the same parties, but at the national level through the use of opaque practices. From a comparative perspective, it is plausible to state that party privatisation ‘from below,’ thus predominantly on a district and regional level, took place more or less crudely in the form of mass purchases of hired party members controlled by regional bosses (Subchapter 2.1.1). Party colonisation ‘from above’ then took place rather discretely. In other words, instead of the blunt methods of steamrolling local and district party organisations by means of fake members recruited in cheap bars and restaurants, the most powerful financial and business groups in the country used more delicate methods, for example organising luxury holidays for

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  77 the select party elite. This does not mean that they did not also exercise methods beyond the limits of the law. In reality, legal lobbying and clientelist activities systematically merged together with illegal practices. It is feasible practically and theoretically to separate both dimensions, namely the privatisation and colonisation of parts of the parties ‘from below’ and ‘from above.’ Nevertheless, while these processes functioned more or less autonomously, under certain circumstances they were also interconnected. This occurred for example when the largest financial and commercial groups entered into business relationships with regional and national bosses or godfathers. It also took place when heads of giant companies met together with politicians in luxury locations, either in the Czech Republic or abroad. Through this activity, intertwined business groups from the regional and national level colonised a significant part of the political arena to a substantial degree and ultimately created a grey area of informal politics. Within such a political backstage setting, it was possible to arrange virtually anything on the basis of a system of mutual favours. Under certain circumstances, the actors in both processes – privatisation ‘from below’ and colonisation ‘from above’ – not only co-ordinated their activity but also by contrast mutually competed or even clashed for the redistribution of spheres of influence. This disharmony of interests often spilled over into clientelistically linked political structures, which led to periodic crises within the individual parties and governments and ultimately to overall political instability. For example, during the performance of his function as Prime Minister and chairman of the ODS in the period 2006–2009 and also in 2010, Topolánek, with the help of his closest advisor Dalík, concentrated especially on serving the interests of big business, thus reinforcing contacts with ČEZ and the J&T group, among others. However, at a certain moment Topolánek began to encounter obstacles in the form of ambitions of the regional bosses from his own ODS party. As previously mentioned, Pečinka (2008) noted that approximately in 2005 a system of regional party bosses became established, and “in 2008 the bosses and their satellites gained a majority on the national executive council of the ODS.” When the local bosses began to threaten him, Topolánek launched into a sharp criticism of them. In order to weaken them, he chose the tactic of discrediting them in the media. He publicly referred to all of them as godfathers. Eventually, in the interest of defending his position as party chairman and Prime Minister, Topolánek was forced to adapt and thus instrumentally engage with regional bosses, to make compromises with them and form alliances with some bosses against others. Referring to the chairmen of the largest established parties, Mlejnek stated pertinently that they are forced to become mere tenacious rodeo riders, who in order to maintain their positions must “start to collaborate pragmatically with a part of the clientelist cancers within their parties” (Mlejnek 2010: A13). It is no coincidence that when Topolánek was elected chairman of the ODS in 2002, he represented the interests of coal and steel, specifically business groups in North West Bohemia and North Moravia. Virtually throughout his seven-year period of office in the top party functions, Topolánek enabled regional bosses to

78  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ be supported and elected. This was a classic example of the interconnection of politics and non-transparent business. Nevertheless, a specific feature of Topolánek was that he personified the prototype of the clientelist politician snob. Through his orientation towards the biggest business interests, he succeeded in achieving a practically ideal symbiosis of power, money and luxury. Such a privileged politician might feel that he had become a chosen member of some kind of modern nobility or elite club. Hence, it was only a short step to accepting invitations to holiday in tourist paradises, staying in grandiose villas and sailing on luxury yachts. And it is irrelevant as to whether this was in Tuscany, Sardinia or at the holiday home of the Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi. It is then far easier to understand that when such a ‘pampered politician’ clashed with the unwelcome competition of regional bosses or unpleasant media criticism, he felt frustrated at the ‘pettiness’ of politics and the media. The proverb ‘the apple didn’t fall far from the tree’ was confirmed by the fact that after his departure from politics, Topolánek remained close to the J&T group. “In September 2011, he became head of Association for District Heating (Teplárenské sdružení) and soon afterwards chairman of the supervisory board of the Opatovice power station, which belonged to Energy and Industrial Holding (EPH), then owned by the billionaires Křetínský and Tkáč, and by J&T” (Koutník, Shabu 2015: 3).

3.3  Political and economic cartels ČEZ illustrates a pure example of the phenomenon of party colonisation ‘from above,’ meaning implemented by big business with a non-transparent background. With a certain degree of hyperbole, ČEZ can be likened to a black hole, which sucked into itself the party elites and a chain of opaque business. It served to act as a massive drain upon public resources, with the aim of satisfying private and group interests. Within its circle, ČEZ created the most sophisticated and powerful economic-political network based on a system of mutual favours. As a result, similarly to the actors in the party privatisation ‘from below,’ those acting ‘from above’ also contributed to the phenomenon referred to as state capture. In its intentions, in which party politics was partially privatised and colonised, there was also a privatisation or colonisation of democracy under the control of a broad non-transparent zone of economic and political agents. In general, it is possible to apply to such a situation the term clientelist democracy or a clientelist regime (Chapter 4). It follows that the main winners of the post-1989 development in its first two decades include the central actors of clientelist networks. With a certain degree of simplification, the original networks of personal relationships from the era of communism were transformed into the contemporary clientelist structures. The segment of shadowy business represented the best organised interest group in post-communist society, since it manifested an ability to advance its interests effectively within the decision-making process.

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  79 The objective of mapping the process of colonisation of party politics from the top down was to draw attention to a phenomenon in which the largest business and financial groups not only blended together with politics but also created politicaleconomic cartels. The danger of the intertwined economic and political cartels lay in the fact that they created a non-transparent milieu for the development of systemic corruption, deformed economic and political competition and ultimately produced a tendency leading towards the weakening of the legal environment. The logic of their functioning meant that these interconnected political and economic cartels had an interest in clientelist patronage, i.e. in incorporating the broadest possible range of key decision-making posts. This refers to the top positions within the state administration, the Office for the Protection of Competition, the Supreme Audit Office, bodies involved in criminal proceedings, the judiciary and the intelligence services. In general, such cartels of the biggest political and economic players produced a situation which could be termed clientelist and thus limited democracy. Such a state of affairs could, in a concurrence of specific conditions and events – e.g. economic crisis, chronic crisis of the relevant parties, the collapse of the government due to large scandals or corruption – give birth to social circumstances susceptible to the advent of authoritarian tendencies. This negative trend was fed by the development in the Czech economy, at least leading up to 2010, in which individual sectors witnessed a transition from an atomised “post-privatisation” market to an environment of monopolies, oligopolies and cartels. This was typical of the energy sector, in which ČEZ has enjoyed a long-term dominant position. Nevertheless, at the same time ČEZ operated as a super-institution with political ambitions. “ČEZ has become a kind of parallel economic structure, which though controlled by the state can also present itself as an entirely private subject” (Pšenička 2010: 16). As the largest firm in the country, ČEZ transformed itself into a labyrinthine colossus that could not be effectively monitored and controlled either directly by company managers or indirectly by top politicians of the governing parties. Among other matters, the politicians in question held high-ranking executive and legislative positions or operated in the anti-monopoly office, as well as on the supervisory board of ČEZ. The British lobbyist James de Candole, originally a political scientist, termed the situation within the Czech energy market as a party cartel model. At the same time, Pšenička added that “ČEZ is a symbol of the silent grand coalition (ODS and ČSSD), also functioning long-term in the field of transport, in which the left-right exchange of opinions ceased to function” (Pšenička 2010: 12). Such a relationship of the biggest business with the highest echelons of party politics constituted a serious failure of the post-1989 democracy. The situation in which the largest firms in the country are linked with the state, or more precisely with party politics, entirely suited the most eminent party players. In particular, this related to state and semi-state enterprises and organisations, which became a kind of fiefdom of politicians. Consequently, such a connection of politics to the largest state business on the part of managers generated a phenomenon which was typical of rampant clientelism, namely ‘toadying.’

80  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’ Within an environment in which oligopoly and monopoly tendencies prevail, ‘toadying’ among heads of the largest commercial and financial groups is a logical reaction, especially in the case of their interest in state contracts and the privatisation of various firms. Páral (2010: A12) commented: Maintaining political contacts takes up more working time for the majority of chiefs of state firms than managing the assets entrusted to them. They are mostly shrewd individuals and they devote their time primarily to what keeps them in their positions. Naturally, this clientelist style of behaviour also inextricably incorporated a parasitism with significant corruption and patronage potential. This involved specifically the distribution of posts – so-called ‘trafika’ in terms of lucrative jobs – to partisan supporters on the supervisory boards and boards of directors of these state and semi-state enterprises. It is not by chance that after its formation, every party government filled these posts with its own people. In addition to ČEZ, this included Czech Railways, Czech Aeroholding, Czech Post, Czech Forests, Čepro, etc. Such a distribution of posts related not only to the boards of state and semi-state enterprises, but also to firms belonging to regions and municipalities. As a result, local politicians occupied these posts for example in local hospitals, transport authorities and municipal services. The problem lies in the fact that to date no law has been passed that would stipulate the rules for the occupation of supervisory boards of state and semi-state companies, as well as firms belonging to regions and municipalities.

3.4  Concluding remarks The informal party and state colonisation ‘from above’ examined in this chapter substantially overlaps with the concept of corporate state capture (Subchapter 1.7), since these phenomena are typical of the environment of the post-communist transition. The essence of both is the same, namely collusion between powerful firms and national politicians with bureaucrats. In this tandem they are able to manipulate policy formation and shape the rules of the game on the market to exploit state resources for private gain. In other words, corporate state capture indicates such an arrangement in which business interests seek to subvert the official channels of political influence, and public power is primarily exercised in terms of a rent-seeking strategy (Hellman 1998, Hellman and Kaufmann 2001, Hellman et al. 2003). The Czech Republic – together with Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia – was placed within the category of a high level of corporate state capture after 2000 (Kaufmann et  al. 2010, Innes 2013). This finding is highly consistent with the data of the corporate state capture index for the period of 2012–2014, according to which the Czech Republic emerged at the very top of eleven post-communist

Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’  81

14 2002

2012-14

Poland

Hungary

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Bulgaria

Latvia

Slovakia

Lithuania Romania

Croatia

Estonia

Czech Rep.

Slovenia

Figure 3.1  Corporate state capture index

countries as illustrated in Figure  3.1 (Kotarski and Petak 2018). Moreover, the Czech Republic occupied the fifth worst position out of twenty-two postcommunist states in connection with the diversion of public funds to “companies, individuals or groups due to corruption” (World Bank 2011). This means that the Czech Republic was ranked equally with Ukraine and even behind Bulgaria, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Russia (Innes 2013). These findings can be linked methodologically to the approach of McMenamin (2004), who conducted extensive research in Poland for the purpose of reaching a theoretical understanding of the essence of the relationships between party politics and big business. McMenamin came to the conclusion that under the conditions of a high degree of politicisation of the economic sphere, the promiscuous hypothesis applies. This means that big business does not prefer special relationships with individual parties, but rather prioritises good relationships with all the relevant parties simultaneously, establishing close relationships with all the governing parties. And because the governments change quite frequently, this promiscuity strategy in the relationship of big business towards the parties makes sense, since it is in the interest of the businessmen themselves as well as of top politicians. It is evident that such exclusive relationships have developed in the countries of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, where politics was not optimally separated from the economic sphere and where the state retained ownership of a number of large firms. It is precisely in such a case that a change of government can cause personnel earthquakes on the supervisory boards of these enterprises. Furthermore, the economic policy of the cabinet or the governing parties can intentionally influence the competitiveness of individual economic subjects, including the largest corporations.

82  Party capture: colonisation ‘from above’

Notes 1 In 2012, the European Commission launched an investigation into the energy company ČEZ due to suspicion of the restraint of competition on the Czech wholesale electricity market. As a result, ČEZ was threatened with a fine of billions of Czech crowns. Finally, the European Commission concluded its investigation with an agreement on a settlement, in which ČEZ was obliged to sell one of its power stations (ČTK 2012a). 2 More information in the text (ČEZ group 2019). 3 “Trafika” (Kopecký 2012) means a traditional newsagent, but in the transposed sense of the word refers to the securing of a stable and lucrative job. 4 Concerning the non-transparent business in the field of the sale of solar power stations between the company Amun.Re and the semi-state ČEZ, it was determined that financial flows took place from ČEZ to a non-transparent firm connected with Rittig (Macháček 2011, Klímová and Syrovátka 2013a). As to the unknown company Alseda Data, which competed within the framework of a wider consortium for an enormous ten billion crown tender from ČEZ for the operation and administration of a large part of ČEZ’s information technology, this firm did not have a clear ownership structure and had no experience in the field of information technology. According to investigative journalists, it was Rittig who was behind the Alseda Data company. His role consisted not in ensuring “individual professional consultancy,” but rather in directly guaranteeing victory in the tender thanks to his close links with the top management of ČEZ (Farghali and Klímová 2010). 5 An immense tender from the capital city of Prague in 2005 for 250 trams, for the amount of 17 billion Czech crowns, was shown to be problematic with regard to its financing and the impossibility of withdrawing from the contract or at least reducing the number of ordered trams. A further problematic transaction in which Škoda, owned by the Appian group, was engaged in activities intersecting with the Prague Public Transit Company, was a tender for the operation of a system which enables passengers on municipal public transport to buy tickets by SMS message via mobile telephone. In 2007, the Erika company, once again owned by Appian, obtained this order without any selection proceedings (Pšenička 2009b).

4 The clientelist party, clientelist parliamentarism and clientelist regime Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime

Following the analysis of the phenomenon of party capture in the two previous chapters, a number of fundamental questions arise. First, what happened to the substance of the party organisations after the two-way informal process of party capture based on the firm-party-firm pattern had been completed? In other words, what happened after the relevant parties had been occupied by non-transparent local and regional business from one side and colonised nationwide by the largest companies from the other? Second, how far could such mutated party organisations modify the functioning of the whole political system? To pose the question slightly differently, how does party capture within the context of a two-party cartel at national, regional and municipal levels exert an influence on state institutions and public resources? In seeking an answer to these questions, this chapter follows on from the approaches of Hale (2015) and Grzymala-Busse (2008a). In the case of Hale (2015: 10), of significance here is his influential idea that the unique post-communist circumstances produce a distinct political system rooted mainly in three broad sets of collective actors: local political-business machines, giant politicised companies and “various branches of the state.” At the same time, we can take inspiration from Grzymala-Busse’s standpoint, focusing on the constitutive impact of pervasive clientelism on the formation of specific political institutions and their capacities. According to her approach, clientelist or state capture strategies “substitute party structures for the state’s, becoming the key agents of administration, distribution, and regulation and ‘hollowing out’ of state institutions as the party takes over administrative roles” (Grzymala-Busse 2008a: 639). This assumes that the party capture process analysed in previous chapters cannot be regarded as an aim in itself, but rather as a means of leverage for achieving fundamental changes in the social and political system itself. Party capture thus became an instrument for the completion of clientelist state capture and the installation of a clientelist regime involving the stripping of public assets (Subchapters 1.7, 1.8 and Figure 1.2). Because the relevant parties in such a political-economic environment gradually took on a parasitic and exploitative role towards the state, this kind of political organisation is conceptualised and defined here as the clientelist party. Similarly, we can apply the terms exploitative party (Grzymala-Busse 2008) or brokerage party (Innes 2013). Therefore, this chapter, within such a

84  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime comprehensive context, identifies first of all clientelist parties and consequently clientelist parliamentarism as a form of government, and clientelist democracy or a clientelist regime. All of these are examined within the case of the Czech Republic.

4.1  The client-client relationship The party elites approve budgets, pass laws and decrees, allocate public tenders and grants, privatise state assets, sell land and property, determine the method and price of leases, alter territorial plans, etc. The clientelistically oriented parties throw all of this into a metaphorical basket of special political goods, which they exchange on a hidden political-economic market. Under the unique conditions of post-communist transformation, the established parties then transform themselves into privileged commercial subjects, clientelist organisations of their kind (Subchapter 4.13). The clientelist parties as a whole, as well as their individual parts on a local, municipal and regional level, primarily act as privileged commercial subjects which are parasitic upon public resources, thereby extracting exclusive profits and reproducing their power base. It is precisely within this context that strong economic players approach parties as their clients. They offer them extra remuneration for mutual favours. At the same time a reverse relationship applies, in which individual elements of parties seek clients in the form of strong commercial subjects. They offer them their influence, thus the use of their political mandates and positions in important decision-making institutions and bodies. Such parties therefore serve their clients, whilst at the same time receiving a service in return as clients themselves. They form a mutual client-client relationship (Subchapter 1.5). In order to understand the essence of the symbiotic informal client-client relationship, it is worth noting that in addition to the tobacco industry and solar energy, the gambling industry became a privileged sector of the economy in the Czech Republic. Over a period of more than ten years, gambling firms were special clients of the established parties. As a consequence of defective legislation, they were not obliged to pay taxes to the state. This is something unimaginable within a standard democratic environment. Nevertheless, it is an entirely understandable and logical product of a clientelist state of democracy, in which politicaleconomic power-trading networks predominate. In the period of 1998–2012, gambling firms obtained the privilege that in return for their tax-exempt status they were obliged to provide sums of billions of crowns for services to the public. For example, in 2011 this represented an amount of 3.5 billion crowns. This created an incredible system of lottery donations, thus a system of non-transparent financial flows which enabled hundreds of millions of crowns to be laundered via fictional civic associations. These funds were then secretly returned to the casino owners or ‘diverted’ for the purpose of maintaining clientelist networks, in which affiliated politicians and parties played a key role.

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  85 The owners of gambling firms became important players in hidden economicpolitical business. Politicians from all parliamentary parties kept this fraudulent machinery running, thus contributing to the degradation of towns and municipalities with the largest number of gambling clubs in Europe. Although it was common knowledge that these businesses were engaged in fraudulent practices at least up until 2011, the Ministry of Finance did not effectively monitor lottery companies, and the police did not manage to investigate a single suspicious case. It is no accident that the country was referred to as the gambling republic.1 The mutual client-client relationship between non-transparent politics and business may also take on forms which become personnel reshuffles or personnel unions. On one hand, representatives of business as a rule endeavour to gain the favour of politicians. But as previously shown in the cases of certain regional bosses, they may also enter parties where they promote their own interests (Subchapter 2.1.4). A classic example of a personal interconnection of a businessman with politics is the story of the entrepreneur and later Minister of Transport Řebíček and his Viamont company. This businessman provided significant support for his political career in the ODS by means of mass purchases of hired party members in the Ústí nad Labem region. “During his tenure as minister from September 2006 to May 2008, what had hitherto been rather a regional firm obtained contracts for 3.5 billion crowns,” multiplying its value several times over (Viktora 2012: A4). One year after Řebíček had left the government and quit politics altogether, his company recorded a loss and in 2012 filed for bankruptcy. Clientelistically oriented politicians are able not only to offer their political services on a hidden economic-political market, but can also shift into the world of business. This happens in a dual manner. Either they remain in politics, while at the same time becoming members of supervisory boards and boards of directors of various state and semi-state firms, or following their departure from politics cross over into already clientelised and beholden business.

4.2  The triangle: parties-business-civil service The client-client relationship between parties and business cannot function smoothly without incorporating the third tip of the clientelist triangle, namely the civil service. It is civil servants within the state and public administration who ensure the approval and therefore legalisation of hidden business agreements by means of the official decision-making process. As a result, it becomes an imperative of political clientelists to subjugate this level of decision-making and transform it into a subservient tool of interest groups. The occupancy of authorities through party patronage becomes a certain ownership and strategic capital of political business. It is precisely this fact that represents a further anomaly of democracy in the Czech Republic. Until November 2014, it was the only member state of the European Union in which there was no valid Civil Service Act that could ensure the protection of state employees against undesirable political influences.2 The party elites intentionally endeavoured to conserve an extreme dependency of civil

86  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime servants on the current political representation. No clear rules had been set for career advancement. As a result, politicians were able to fill posts not only of deputy ministers but also of heads of departments, section heads and heads of units, whose functions should be performed by career professionals. As a rule, personnel earthquakes in ministries always take place after elections, without open selection proceedings. Furthermore, senior functionaries could be removed from their posts without stating the reason. It is clear that such systemically configured relationships eliminated the principles of impartial professionalism and personnel stability and had negative impacts on the functioning of civil service (Jansa and Bureš 2011). The extensive personnel purge in the Ministry of Environment following the elections in 2010 can be considered an exemplary case of such party intervention. The finding of the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ) revealed that during the period of 2010–2013, two consecutive ministers from the governing ODS sacked 427 employees and hired another 318. Over the course of these three years they concluded contracts with a further 346 external employees. In addition, according to the report of the NKÚ, a substantial part of the ministry was transformed into a form of advertising agency for the promotion of the minister, in which the number of employees in this section was multiplied threefold.3 *** The strategic incorporation of the civil service into clientelist networks was described by Pečinka, who stated that this embraced a very broad scope of patronage. In addition to party functionaries, it included also holders of posts in all the significant authorities. Their status is determined by occupying positions in public authorities, which are the source of various types of assets. These people approach the ownership of public institutions, from ministries to hospitals, from schools, via the courts and public prosecution service up to consulates abroad, as a means of extracting revenues. Whilst their wage represents their source of income, various commissions and bribes serve as capital which makes more money off their money. (Pečinka 2009: 12) It is precisely this method that represents the easiest way to acquire fast money and property. As a result, the demand for work in the public sphere, or more precisely for the occupancy of certain offices, was an optimum commercial interest. Pečinka termed this parasitic group the new political class or new political aristocracy, which has much in common with the so-called nomenklatura that operated under the communist regime (Subchapter 1.4). The economic analyst Zlámalová (2012: 11) described this less visible part of the civil service which approaches the occupancy of public offices as a parasitic method of conducting business. She emphasised that in addition to regional bosses or godfathers, these power-trading clans are also centred around inconspicuous people who are personally connected from the past and “whose names and faces

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  87 are completely unknown.” In other words, the entire system of political-economic power-trading networks cannot be understood and restricted without focusing attention also on its individual layers. In this situation, all its elements and individuals have an ability to adapt, meaning that they are able to pass over from one office to the next, change their party colours like chameleons and even present themselves with populist anti-corruption slogans, in extreme cases even changing their names. At the same time, it applies that for them party membership is of less importance than loyalty to their clientelist network.

4.3  Concentric circles of clientelist networks Around the core of clientelism as defined by the triad political parties- businesscivil service there form concentric rings of further allies, who augment the overall power of the clientelist networks (Figure  4.1). The first, closest ring is formed by a circle of representatives from the ranks of the judiciary and bodies active in criminal proceedings, thus the police and public prosecution service. It includes those employees who have been recruited either with a promise of a share in the profit or as a consequence of political influence or pressure. In general, these professions represent a necessary systemic addition, the role of which is to ensure premium protection and immunity for clientelist players.

Civil Service

Parties (pivot)

Bosses or Godfathers

Nontransp. business

Figure 4.1 Multi-layered clientelist networks surrounding the established parties and their links to non-transparent business Source: Author of this text.

88  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime As regards the interconnection of representatives of the judiciary with clientelist structures, the most affected were the regional courts in the cities of Ústí nad Labem and Brno. The Security Information Service (BIS) as an intelligence institution – the jurisdiction of which covered the protection of the constitutional order, significant economic interests, security and defence of the Czech Republic – drew attention in its annual report from 2011 to the phenomenon of the intergrowth of clientelist networks with links to the underworld into the regional courts in Ústí nad Labem and Brno. It stated the following: Within the framework of certain regional courts, there formed clientelist or otherwise interconnected groups who manipulated insolvency proceedings [. . .]. In addition to judges, these groups were formed by insolvency administrators, representatives of the legal professions, commercial subjects and if applicable also figures from the environment of organised crime. (BIS 2011: 8) In the case of the public prosecution service, it was generally known that this ranked among the greatest obstacles to the investigation of corruption in the highest echelons of politics. The situation began to change only in connection with personnel changes at the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office and in regional public prosecution services. Specifically, investigation of these corruption affairs began only after the appointment of Pavel Zeman as the Supreme Public Prosecutor in January 2011. A significant contribution was also made by the appointment of Lenka Bradáčová to the position of High State Attorney in Prague in July 2012, and thus also by the departure of Vlastimil Rampula and his deputy Libor Grygárek. As regards the police, it is symptomatic that at least until 2011, the most sensitive cases of organised crime and corruption that have penetrated into the highest spheres of politics were not investigated by the Czech police but by foreign police forces. This was possible because they concerned cases of cross-border corruption. They related predominantly to the system of suspicious tenders at the Ministry of Defence. The British and Swedish police thus investigated the leases of supersonic Gripen aircraft, the Austrian police investigated the purchase of Pandur armoured vehicles and the Swiss police the privatisation of the Most coal mines. It is no surprise that the Czech police did not act when the relevant police units, especially those involved in the detection of organised crime, were instrumentally dissolved and pressurised, since they found themselves subjected to the will of political parties and thus clientelist group interests. In 2012, the director of the anti-corruption police, Martinec, stated that under the previous police president there had been an instruction in place according to which cases that involved politicians had to be reported to the deputy of the police president. Consequently, the leadership of the police unit was eventually able to prohibit the continuation of the investigation (Honzejk and Šídlo 2012). The political sphere within the Ministry of the Interior contributed to the ineffectiveness of police work, since it intentionally maintained personnel instability

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  89 in the post of director of the anti-corruption police. In the period of 2006–2011, the Corruption and Financial Crime Detection Unit was headed by four different directors. According to experts, a director should remain in the post for at least five years in order for the unit to be stabilised and function effectively. The fact that the highest echelons of the bodies active in criminal proceedings became the centre of attention of clientelist and corrupt networks is attested to among other factors by transcripts from wiretaps of interviews of the national boss Janoušek dating from the turn of 2012 and 2013. After these informal networks had lost their influence on the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office in Prague and the Unit for Combating Organized Crime (ÚOOZ – Útvar pro odhalování organizovaného zločinu), which under the leadership of Robert Šlachta had begun to uncover corrupt activities, they started attempting to gain influence at least over the leadership of the Corruption and Financial Crime Detection Unit (ÚOKFK – Útvar odhalování korupce a finanční kriminality služby) in order to restore some kind of equilibrium for them, or more precisely to safeguard their immunity. According to the wiretap, the national boss Janoušek compares the simultaneous influence of three bodies active in criminal proceedings to the strategic military importance of the three Prague heights – i.e. Vítkov, Vyšehrad and Prague Castle – in the Hussite era of the fifteenth century. Subsequently, he sets as his goal the occupation of Vítkov, thus ÚOKFK, with his own stooge. Specifically, he states: In Prague it’s necessary to occupy Vítkov, because Vyšehrad and Prague Castle are now in the hands of Zikmund, and if we don’t have Vítkov then we’ll be in the shit. It’s the same thing that you’ve got Šlachta, that’s Vyšehrad, then you’ve got Bradačová, that’s the Castle, and we have to go for Vítkov. (Golis 2014: 2) The wider concentric ring around the core of clientelism also recruits employees from the ranks of other state or public institutions. This concerns representatives of institutions such as the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ),4 the Office for the Protection of Competition, public media councils, as well as the Security Information Service (BIS) and Military Intelligence. These utilitarian links are based on a kind of coherence or complex character of clientelist activities assuming structural party patronage. In its parasitic activity – endeavouring to attain an exceptional degree of power and profit – clientelism is internally driven by a need for constant expansion and to encroach upon all spheres of the life of society, and thus absorb ever more clients into its networks and clans. Especially alarming were the cases in which the secret services – the civil counter intelligence service BIS and Military Intelligence – shared in discrediting witnesses in corruption cases reaching up to the highest levels of politics, above all to the Ministry of Defence at the time. A common feature of such secret service operations was that they also involved other armed units, as a rule the police. The common goal was an endeavour to break witnesses economically, psychologically and professionally, and thus to discredit them entirely.

90  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime As mapped by investigative journalists, a highly suspicious feature in this respect was the circumstances surrounding the arrest of key witnesses in the case of military tenders. For example, a police patrol ‘by chance’ stopped Štefec, the former director of the office for armaments and a witness in the case of the purchase of Tatra terrain goods vehicles, in order to find an illegal weapon in his car. Eventually it was proven that the weapon had been planted. Nevertheless, after this episode Štefec no longer received security clearance for the level of classified and was forced to leave the profession (Syrovátka 2012a). Another victim of a similar scenario was the army pilot Daňhel, who prepared source materials for the purchase of CASA aircraft for the general army staff and testified in this case. He was also detained by the police, this time due to an accusation of sexually abusing a minor. The girl later admitted that she had fabricated the entire story. He was also refused security clearance for the level of classified and was forced to leave the army. Finally, the municipal court in Prague confirmed a verdict acquitting Daňhel in July 2013. It is most probable that this case also involved further abuse of Military Intelligence. All these manoeuvres of the secret services aimed at eliminating witnesses had a common denominator, namely that they were intended to serve top ranking politicians. In this case, their aim was to overturn the investigation of the former Minister of Defence Martin Barták, who was suspected of corrupt activities. During his tenure at the Ministry of Defence, suspicious purchases were made not only of Tatra vehicles and CASA aircraft, but also of Pandur armoured vehicles and Dingo light armoured vehicles. The political scientist Dvořáková stated: I consider it highly dangerous that practices are being applied here in which witnesses are directly hounded. This is a tactic we encounter regularly in practices relating to organised crime. A witness who has the courage to appear faces not only a campaign of slander, but the clear aim is to discredit him. (Syrovátka 2012a) The systematic abuse of Military Intelligence is also substantiated by the fact that this secret service conducted surveillance of inconvenient persons upon private orders. In 2012 and 2013 Jana Nagyová, then the chief cabinet secretary and also the Prime Minister’s mistress, illegally arranged for the Prime Minister’s lawful wife to be followed by Military Intelligence agents. In this case, the law had been broken, since the surveillance of the persons in question had not been assigned to the intelligence service by the government or the president, and not even the Minister of Defence had granted written consent. As a result, in 2019, Jana Nečasová (formerly Nagyová) received a legally binding three-year suspended sentence for the misuse of Military Intelligence for private purposes (Slonková 2019). If we are to summarise such information, whether it concerned purchases for inflated prices, subsequent attempts to discredit inconvenient witnesses in criminal cases or unlawful spying on officials and private persons, it was evident that Military Intelligence as a secret service operating within the state, as well as

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  91 abroad, was not serving the interests of the state but of clientelist groups connected to the highest echelons of politics (Kmenta 2013). Not only was Military Intelligence compromised, but even the Army of the Czech Republic did not remain untainted by the influence of clientelist links. It was precisely this clientelist patronage system that deformed the personnel policy in the army and at the Ministry of Defence. This led to several corruption scandals and contributed to the chronic underfunding of the army, which resulted in a weakening of its capacities and a reduction of the country’s defence capability to a critical level. At the very least up until 2010, the army and Ministry of Defence were hit by a wave of scandals in connection with the non-transparent system of allocating tenders and privatisation of property. The former Commander of the General Staff Jiří Šedivý (2013) noted: What is at fault is the system that was progressively built up and is connected with clientelism, and in the case of the army is also connected with the lack of interest on the part of the political representation in what was actually happening in the Ministry of Defence. As a rule, their interest is only in large tenders, privatisation of property. Šedivý criticised the fact that the army had been weakened by a personnel purge from the era of Barták as Minister of Defence with the following words: Now that an entire generation of promising generals with Western education and experience from combat missions has been systematically liquidated during the era of Barták as Minister of Defence, I tell you: the army is lacking an entire generation of generals. (Gadzík 2015)

4.4  The contagion of clientelism Attention was drawn to the systemic nature of clientelist and corrupt behaviour in the Czech Republic by Rajlich, a professor of computer games, using game theory, specifically the game Prisoner’s Dilemma. Rajlich outlined that under certain circumstances, the most advantageous option is simply to bluff the opponent. After a number of such bluffs, the system can easily degenerate into a destructive race. The standard of behaviour is continually lowered, one player tries to cheat the other, worse and worse methods are used, and only the least scrupulous prevail. (Rajlich 2007: 11) He considers a bad political system to be one in which “corruption, injustice, nontransparency, arrogance and manipulation” succeed and in which “the dubious winners are those who are rewarded for playing dirty” (2007: 11).

92  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime As a result, Rajlich pointed out that in the Czech Republic the balance had been upset in the psychological-economic sphere, since clientelist and corrupt conduct had begun to pay off. The main winners of the political and economic transformation became those who had engaged and integrated themselves into these non-transparent structures. It is precisely these parasitic networks that drain public resources and deform fair economic competition to such an extent that they strangle economic development and limit the productive layers. However, they also deform political relationships, since they undermine basic trust in political elites and the institution of the democratic state. It follows that the clientelist behaviour of the party elites is no chance phenomenon. On the contrary, it is a systemic manifestation of the functioning of the political parties within the framework of the given society, which is located in a specific phase of development. Clientelist behaviour brings advantages to all, both to parties and individuals. In the case of the individual, the person who is able to distribute lucrative posts and personal enrichment for his or her party colleagues has better political career prospects. By contrast, within this system someone who wishes to advance clean and ideologically based politics is like a Don Quixote tilting at windmills. The party-clientelist system works absolutely unfailingly, infecting virtually all, even those who were initially enthusiastic reformers. An example is the career path of Bém, the former vice-chairman of the ODS, then the largest right-wing party, who was at the same time the mayor of Prague. In the past many people had invested hopes in Bém that he would become the leader to declare war on clientelist and corrupt practices. Their subsequent disappointment is well captured by the reference to Bém as a “former metropolitan liberal,” condemning him for allowing himself to be “ground down by all the Prague lobbyists, who are concerned only with the billions from the municipal budget. Today this can serve as a cautionary example of what politics is capable of doing to people” (Plesl 2008: 2). However, it is not only individuals that are infected by the clientelist system in terms of their conduct. The contagion of clientelism spreads above all among the relevant parties. It ensues from the logic of clientelism that it is primarily of a cross-party nature and thus manifests tendencies to operate across all parties or on an inter-party basis, regardless of ideological differences. The beginning of this inter-party cohabitation in the Czech Republic was the so-called opposition or cartel agreement in the years 1998–2002 between the left-wing ČSSD and the right-wing ODS (Klíma 1999). It is of no little interest that clientelists of all parties value in particular the ability to keep one’s word and stick to agreements. This is documented in a statement by Dalík, a former leading lobbyist and the closest collaborator with the right-wing former Prime Minister Topolánek, in relation to the renowned lobbyist from the left-wing Social Democratic party Šlouf. “I’m an anti-communist and I’ll never forget what the communists did to this country. Nevertheless, for me Mr. Šlouf is a man [. . .] who keeps his word and who can be trusted” (Plavcová 2008: 8). Within this context Mlejnek hinted that a substantial section of the relevant parties had transformed itself into a “disunited bundle of local and national clientelist

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  93 networks and political-economic mafias, in which it is impossible to trace not only ideas but frequently even any residual awareness of any kind of common interest of the party as a whole.” As mentioned previously, the leaders of such parties necessarily become “mere tenacious rodeo riders,” who in the interests of maintaining their positions must “begin to co-operate pragmatically with the part of the cancerous clientelist tumours in their parties” (Mlejnek 2010: A13). Another prerequisite for success of the party leaders is the maintenance of a team of lobbyists, dominated by a central lobbyist. One of the most influential of these lobbyists, Ulčák, noted: “Every key politician has his Dalík. In motion around every new Dalík there are five or so more Dalíks, one of whom gradually begins to dominate” (Klímová 2009: A15).

4.5  Structural corruption Another feature that can be considered a key characteristic of the analysed form of party organisation and political system is its high corruption potential, thus the high occurrence and scope of corruption cases and affairs. According to Sajó (2002: 1, 3), clientelism as a form of post-communist social organisation presupposes that corruption becomes a foundation stone of the region’s emerging ‘clientelist social structure.’ It implies that the phenomenon of clientelist corruption is a form of structural corruption, and as such it should be distinguished from discrete individual acts of corruption (Subchapter 1.6). Structural corruption affects not only the entire vertical organisation of the established parties, but also for example virtually all the government ministries. Corrupt behaviour then has a malign influence on the functioning of the overall political and economic system, since the acquisition of illegitimate advantages leads to a general lack of respect for the rules and for fair competition. Generally, it applies that the level of corrupt activities in the political sphere is mirrored by the circumstances of the whole society.5 The negative trend in the development of corrupt behaviour was confirmed in a study conducted by economists, who compared the data for the Czech Republic with other states in Europe and worldwide. In their studies, they recorded this trend on the basis of the internationally recognised corruption perception index (CPI index).6 Whereas in 1998, the Czech Republic was ranked in 37th place out of 85 countries, with 4.8 points, in 2010 it obtained 4.6 points and fell to 53rd place. By 2011, according to the worldwide corruption perception index, the Czech Republic had fallen further, to 59th place, meaning on the same level as Namibia and Saudi Arabia (Transparency International Czech Republic 2011). Within the category of the European Union and Western Europe, the Czech Republic occupied the position of 24th place out of 30 countries (Lízal and Kočenda 2001, Novotný et al. 2011). A very similar conclusion concerning the dramatically deteriorating corruption performance of the Czech Republic in the period of 1996–2011 is supported by the World Bank Governance Indicator ‘control of corruption’ (Kaufmann et al. 2010: 4, Innes 2014). In connection with these figures, the economists stated that corruption  – in addition to the negative effects on the political sphere – deformed the market and

94  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime strangled economic development or more specifically contributed to a reduction in the growth of GDP.7 A negative role is played especially by the market for public tenders, which demonstrated very low transparency and insufficient functioning of control mechanisms.8 The study presented the fact that a total of 80% of public tenders issued by the ministries of the Czech Republic during the period of 2006–2010 were allocated behind closed doors or without competition. Specifically, in 67% of cases the ministries placed tenders outside of the Information System for public tenders. A  further 14% of the volume of tenders featured only a single candidate. The value of these non-transparent tenders during this period came to 276 billion Czech crowns, which represents approximately one fifth of the country’s current debt. Furthermore, this amount does not include public tenders from state and semi-state enterprises and other authorities (zIndex 2011).9 Naturally, corruption networks acted as parasites that attached themselves not only to the state but, as mentioned previously, also to the fourteen territorial self-governing units. A separate problem was the draining of finances from European subsidies. In addition to the ministries there were seven regional subsidy authorities, which in the period of 2007–2013 distributed hundreds of billions of Czech crowns to seventeen operational and seven cross-border programmes. In the Czech Republic, European subsidies were within the jurisdiction of two and a half thousand officials, wherein their structures were so complex that they could be monitored only with great difficulty. It was the directors of the regional subsidy authorities who on a number of occasions co-operated with the regional bosses or godfathers and who “were most often arrested due to corruption” (Holub 2014: A10). As regards the drainage of finances from the ministries – by means of nontransparent allocation of tenders and overpriced or unnecessary services, this often took place with the assistance of a peculiar entanglement of various firms with the civil service. In particular, this concerned contracted legal, marketing, advertising, consultancy and IT services which were frequently realised by external firms by means of outsourcing. It was possible to gain access to public resources also indirectly, for example by means of non-transparent support for sectoral oligopolies and monopolies as well as the gambling industry (Subchapters 3.1 and 4.1). The flows of finances diverted via these paths became sources of covert financing of political parties, profits of opaque business and organised crime, as well as private enrichment. Sophisticated chains of corruption were formed for the purpose of acting as parasites upon the system of public tenders or the legalisation of diverted finances, taking advantage of the opportunity to establish a company in anonymous ownership with its headquarters in a tax haven. A model functioned in which competing companies were eliminated at the beginning of the so-called public competition, after which a company created for this specific purpose obtained the overpriced tender. However, this firm operated in synchronicity within the chain with dozens of other firms, which were controlled behind the scenes by the same people. The chain of firms was used to drain off the financial resources obtained for

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  95 this tender via non-transparent transfers of finances and fictional remuneration charged between the companies. At the end of the chain of transfers, the cash was withdrawn and divided between the actors involved. It is apparent that similar sophisticated corruption methods could function successfully also on the precondition of the possibility of establishing an anonymous offshore company with its headquarters abroad. Anonymous ownership in the form of a joint stock company owned via bearer stock involves a high risk of corruption. A study by economists noted the increased risks of corruption in connection with anonymous ownership. When they compared the success rate of companies in obtaining public tenders, they came to the following conclusions: It was statistically verified that companies with bearer stocks attain significantly higher profits in realising public tenders than is the case for other firms. From the available data, it is possible to estimate that the profits of these more or less anonymous companies are between 15% and 71% higher than for companies with a different ownership structure. (Chvalkovská et al. 2012: 359–360) The fact that the corruption cases in the Czech Republic were not random and isolated but rather an instrumentally established system is documented by a number of statements. The aforementioned lobbyist Ulčák declared: The government decides, but it is a point of intersection between spheres of influence. Whereas under Zeman (Prime Minister during the 1998–2002 period) these were individual cases which were more or less lobbied, which is normal everywhere in the world, now it’s become a system. Lobbying and power structures have stabilised themselves around ministries. (Klímová 2009: A15) He further stated that for lobbyists, “the price list under Zeman was ridiculously low in comparison with today’s prices. Then we were operating within the realm of hundreds of thousands or millions, today it’s tens or hundreds of millions” (Klímová 2009: A15). Structural corruption was logically accompanied by two phenomena: firstly, an inability to punish the offenders, and secondly, an overloading of the public with the amount of cases of clientelism and corruption. As mentioned previously with regard to the judiciary and the bodies active in criminal proceedings, the governing parties entirely infected, corroded and immobilised anti-corruption mechanisms with their clientelist activities and therefore intentionally weakened society’s anti-corruption immune system. As concerns the overloading of the public, for example, the attorney Vlk (2008) wrote of “the inflation of lawsuits and zero results,” which were leading to a general fatigue and apathy. It was not only that matters were not being resolved and the public was losing faith in institutional corrective mechanisms, but also a large

96  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime number of cases dragged on for so long that even political scientists and journalists lost the connections. *** As a result, in many respects the Czech party system was reminiscent of the situation in Italy at the beginning of the 1990s, thus shortly before the launch of the ‘Clean Hands’ campaign, which culminated in a crisis of the parliamentary parties and the entire political system. This link between the situation in the Czech Republic and Italy was summarised by the political scientist Balík with the following words: World history knows examples when the political system collapsed after corruption affairs erupted afflicting not just one politician or party, but in addition to the political arena also various constituent elements of state power. The closest example temporally and geographically is the collapse of the Italian First Republic twenty years ago. (Balík 2012a: A10) A symptomatic illustration of the large-scale political clientelism and its structural corruption is the foundation of the travel agency ‘Corrupt Tour,’ which organised entertaining excursions for ‘tourists’ around locations linked with corruption. For example, in 2012, it was possible to order a tour entitled ‘Prague Safari’ around the luxurious residences of the bosses and godfathers – Janoušek, Hrdlička and Rittig, as well as the former director general of ČEZ Roman. The offer also included a trip entitled ‘The Prague Big Three,’ in which the tour guide presented three locations where the largest amount of public finances were ‘lost’ – the Blanka tunnel, the Škoda palace and the Letňany metro station. Excursions were ordered even by school parties and foreign tourists, for whom the agency prepared tours in English and German languages.

4.6  Security and surveillance potential Wiretaps and surveillance, used as extreme methods of criminal investigators and intelligence services, became an everyday part of politics. This reached a climax in the years of 2010–2013, when the new business-firm party Public Affairs (Věci veřejné) entered parliament and the government, including the Ministry of the Interior. Public Affairs thus installed and subsequently refined the entire ‘surveillance system’ to perfection. Vít Bárta, the informal party leader, had the private security agency ABL at his disposal, employing over one thousand people, among them many former detectives from the Security Information Service (BIS), who had contacts with official police and intelligence sources. This did not represent partial errors or failures of individuals, but a strategically interconnected system which penetrated to the very core of the constitutional and democratic order of the Czech Republic. When Public Affairs – or the private security agency  – controlled the Ministry of the Interior, there was no defence against this privately controlled state police machinery. What further evidence

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  97 needs to be presented in order to document that state capture had been accomplished (Subchapter 1.7)? In other words, the phenomenon of systematic wiretapping and surveillance was merely another factor which documented the reality that politics itself had become its own form of non-transparent business. This deeper trend in Czech politics was appositely described by Pečinka in the following words: The entire crisis is above all a manifestation of the failure of the security elements of the state, which did not draw attention sufficiently in advance to the threat of infiltration of Bárta’s group inside the ‘Public Affairs’ party into the state administration. [. . .] Vít Bárta’s security company strategy of 2008 for occupying the important arteries of the public administration [. . .] is precisely the type of threat to democracy that we pay these services to prevent. The political elites and the public should be informed of such activities long in advance, so that they have sufficient information in order to make their electoral decisions. Instead of this, we are witnesses of the precise opposite: the spontaneous ‘privatisation’ of the security components, their penetration into politics, illegal wiretaps and interference in the private sphere. (Pečinka 2011: A10) The practice of using entirely unlawful police and intelligence methods pervaded throughout the whole political environment, specifically the political parties and interest groups. As a result, up to 2013, it was possible to speak with a minimal degree of hyperbole of a bugged democracy. The basic equipment of every relevant political force, and therefore also political party that wished to succeed within a clientelist environment, included capacities such as (1) effective deployment of wiretaps and surveillance, and at the same time (2) effective use of similar techniques and methods in one’s own defence. If we return to the peak of the ‘surveillance mania,’ namely to the Public Affairs party, it is possible to state that during the party’s three-year operation in the government, namely the 2010–2012 period, it was virtually permanently embroiled in a series of affairs whose common denominator lay in the systematic collection of compromising information about its political competitors and other prominent figures. Of a whole range of scandals in connection with surveillance, it is possible to present the following as examples: (a) spying on local politicians in Prague 1 and Prague 11 (Kmenta 2011a, Kmenta 2011c, Kmenta 2011d, Kmenta 2011f, Kmenta and Dolejší 2011); (b) surveillance of Prime Minister Topolánek via his closest advisor Dalík (Kmenta 2011e, Kmenta and Dolejší 2011); (c) illegal monitoring of telephone calls of influential figures – politicians, entrepreneurs, lobbyists, journalists, representatives of the judiciary (Syrovátka 2011, Syrovátka and Šťastný 2011, Syrovátka 2013b, 2014b);

98  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime (d) leaks of information from the Security Information Service (BIS) to the private security agency ABL (Hrubeš 2014); (e) mutual wiretapping of leading politicians from the Public Affairs party itself (Syrovátka 2012b). It is certainly no surprise that every significant political party within this environment – full of systemic clientelism, corruption and surveillance  – had to have experts from the field of intelligence at its disposal. For example, the ČSSD recruited into its ranks the former representative of the Military Intelligence service Miroslav Krejčík, as well as Miroslav Antl, who had previously been the head of the public prosecution service in the Hradec Králové region. The ODS co-operated most frequently with Andor Šandor, who had been the head of Military Intelligence in the past, and the KDU-ČSL co-operated with the former head of the Security Information Service Jiří Růžek (Valášková 2008). The national bosses – Janoušek, Hrdlička and Rittig – logically also made use of former employees of the security services and police (Subchapter 2.1.5). And likewise, the largest anti-corruption foundations co-operated with leading security experts. To summarise, influencing politics using former agents or functionaries of the secret services and experts from the police was a commonplace matter. It follows that: Whoever did not have a quality team of people from the intelligence services and police at his or her disposal within this defective political and economic environment was essentially non-existent and had no chance of surviving such political competition. In order to complete the illustration of the atmosphere within the so-called bugged democracy, it is worth presenting the following experience of wiretapping, which was a common practice in the Prague municipality. This is documented by an interview conducted in 2014 by the investigative journalist Koutník with the first deputy to the mayor of Prague for finance, Jiří Vávra. First of all, Koutník asked the following questions relating to the situation in Prague City Hall: “How far has the struggle for power escalated? There has been talk that individual groups have been kept in check by means of surveillance by detective agencies. Apparently your office has been referred to in the town hall as ‘By the Waterfall,’ because the hiss of signal blockers can be heard in the corridor.” The deputy replied: “That’s the absolute truth. It wasn’t just an inter-party struggle, but rather a universal one. Interest in what is being discussed – I mean at regular consultations in my office – has been enormous.” (Koutník 2014c: 2)

4.7  Reduction of the significance of elections It also follows from the logic of the clientelist links between politics and business that the regional and national bosses and godfathers have attempted to ensure

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  99 the promotion of their interests under all circumstances and in all phases of the pre-election and post-election processes. They began by influencing the nomination process of party candidate lists and ended with an attempt to intervene in the post-election negotiations. This related especially to the period of government formation, not only nationally, but also on a regional and municipal level. In the demarcation of spheres of influence, inter-party cartel agreements played a key role. It ensues that even when the elections did not produce results they desired, the clientelist networks nevertheless attempted to overturn the negative results in their favour. Backstage pro-business players attempted to ensure a course of post-election negotiations which would guarantee them victory under every possible constellation of political forces. In other words, they attempted to steal the election results. The significance of elections was thus cast into doubt, as well as the very meaning of democracy itself. This corresponds with the opinion of Mlejnek, who considers the influence of lobbying groups on politics to be so inappropriate and also dominant that it diminishes the significance of elections. He states directly: “The influence of various economic-lobbying groups backstage in politics, which as a rule are not far from organised crime, is increasing, and is so large that voting is gradually ceasing to make sense.” These are the “tentacles of various octopuses,” which are attempting to “bend the election results to their interests” (Mlejnek 2008: 10). A particularly spectacular meeting of the parallel structures took place in the Prague leisure complex Yellow Spa (Žluté lázně), literally a few hours after the closing of the ballot boxes at the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2010. Hundreds of people met at this event, the core of whom was composed of grey eminences representing the entire political spectrum. The meeting was attended by regional bosses and other controversial business figures and lobbyists, together with representatives of Prague ‘cartel’ politicians. In addition, it is possible to mention cases of the formation that same year of grand coalitions in the two largest cities, Prague and Brno. Both cases are pure examples of backstage negotiations on the configuration of the political representation against the will of the voters, and even against the will of the chairmen of the largest parties, at the time the ODS and ČSSD. The case of Prague is particularly instructive. After the ODS had lost an unprecedented 30% of its votes in 2010 as a consequence of corruption scandals, nobody expected it to return to the Prague municipal council. At the time even the ČSSD had declared that it would not co-operate with the ODS. The result was the opposite. The clear winner of the Prague elections, TOP 09, which had promised immediate anti-corruption measures and which was headed by the widely respected former governor of the Czech National Bank Zdeněk Tůma, was ‘outmanoeuvred’ in the post-election negotiations. The municipal council was eventually controlled by a coalition of the ODS and ČSSD. In this process, the cartel structures in the Prague Social Democrats also succeeded in sidelining Jiří Dienstbier, whom they had previously installed in first place on their electoral candidate list as a new and clean politician.

100  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime

4.8  Business and parasitic functions The clientelist kind of political party, based on a symbiosis between the world of politics and business, produces a primary tendency leading to a substantial weakening of ties between politics and society. This may culminate in a situation in which the parties become so remote that the majority society views them with hostility. The parties then lose the ability to fulfil their essential functions in a democracy, in particular their classic representative role. Instead of reflecting the relevant cleavages within society and representing the interests of significant social groups, the relevant parties ever increasingly promote the interests of non-transparent business. In addition, instead of performing such functions as socialising citizens and mobilising them in the course of elections, they bring about a situation in which the opposite takes place: voters are mobilised against the established parties and their leaders. A similar atmosphere of protest culminated in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2010, 2013 and 2017. In addition, the ideological expression of the standard cleavages in society, thus the ideological party equipment, loses its relevance and becomes a secondary phenomenon. Such parties, hollowed out by non-transparent business from below and above, used a façade of left-right competition in order to conceal that they had been transformed into a tool of a corrupt vested interests. This was aptly described as follows: People do not trust politicians and suspect that their programmatic presentation of the conflict of left versus right is merely a question of their current career prospects, and that they are in politics only in order to make contacts which they’ll later capitalise upon in business. (Weiss 2008: 2) However, this does not mean that the ideological equipment of each party should be entirely dismissed. The parliamentary parties continue to hold their programmatic conferences and maintain their own think-tanks. Ideas and ideologies continue to have their mobilising function internally within the parties as well as externally against their ideological opponents. The undesirable changes with regard to the functions of political parties in the Czech Republic were described by the lawyer and political scientist Pospíšil (2012). He stated that through their operation political parties cast doubt upon the axiom of all democrats that has applied hitherto, namely as to whether they are capable of guaranteeing plurality and an open society. In reality, it appears that the post-communist mainstream parties were rather curtailing democracy and that corrupt business groups inside the parties were endeavouring to usurp it. Similarly, the Constitutional Court stated in its finding that there was a gradual “turn of the political parties away from their original functions within society, i.e. as a vehicle for the articulation and aggregation of societal interests, mobilisation and socialisation of society and participation in public life” (Constitutional Court

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  101 2011). With reference to the deficit in terms of the insufficient fulfilment of the classic functions of political parties, Balík also noted the following: “The party leaderships on various levels do not emerge from a competition legitimised by hundreds of thousands of members, who would reflect the structure of society. The party programmes are not compiled in the interest of various social strata and groups, but are created in PR departments” (Balík 2012b: 8). Instead of their traditional role as representatives of significant social groups, the parties ever increasingly performed a ‘vulgar’ business function. This process took place not only by means of the progressive interconnection of some party components with non-transparent business, but also some party leaderships themselves developed direct commercial activities. This primarily concerns the relevant parties with coalition potential on a national level, thus the ODS, ČSSD and KDU-ČSL, but also the KSČM on a regional level. For example, in the Ústí nad Labem region, which was governed by a coalition of Communists and Social Democrats, in 2014 the local regional representatives of both parties de facto controlled the largest firm within the ownership of the region.10 From the logic of their activities, the parasitic business function of the clientelist parties comes to the forefront. The established parties first of all acted as parasites upon the process of mass privatisation, and then generally on the resources of the state and regional self-governing units and large cities. They were therefore parasitical on all the financial flows from the public budgets of the Czech Republic and European funds.

4.9  A modified concept of fundamental cleavages Political science generally starts out from a theory which outlines that in democratic societies party politics is primarily structured by key conflict lines or cleavages. In established democracies, politics as a rule is dominated by socioeconomic conflict, represented by a left-right competition. However, the post-1989 party systems in Central and Eastern Europe were new and fragile. The unstable nature of the post-communist transition did not allow for such a comfortable period which would bring about a ‘freezing’ effect on party systems, as had been the case in Western democracies. This is because there were no social-structural conditions for the development of traditional cleavages, which could underpin the post-communist parties and politics in general over the long term. On the contrary, the turbulent economic and political transition proved to be a major source of specific political mobilisation (Subchapter 6.1). From the previous chapters (mainly Subchapters 1.1 and 1.2), it follows that the unique post-communist and post-transformation circumstances, not only in the Czech Republic, produced a new kind of social cleavage. Specifically, the main cleavage that polarised politics in Czech democracy – in the three consecutive parliamentary elections of 2010, 2013 and partially in 2017 – represents a sharp division between informal clientelist-corruption networks (Subchapter 1.3) and civil society. On the level of the party system, such a social cleavage

102  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime constitutes a dividing line between the ‘old’ established clientelised parties and the ‘new’ protest subjects with an anti-clientelist and anti-corruption appeal (Chapter 5). As a result, all three electoral earthquakes caused unprecedented damage to the two originally largest parties, the ODS and ČSSD. In the period of 2006–2017, the combined share of both parties fell from 68% to 18.5% (Table 5.1 in Chapter 5). At the same time, compromised established politicians were also dramatically affected by these elections. For example, in 2010, voters removed some 47 politicians from their electable positions on the candidate lists with the help of preferential votes. In the case of the cleavage of informal clientelist networks versus civil society, this undoubtedly concerns an unorthodox form of division, which falls outside of the classical concept of the historical cleavages as formulated by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967), and further specified by Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair (1990), among others. This differs fundamentally from the situation which is the norm in the region of West European democracies. A specific feature of the previously stated cleavage consists in the fact that it does not concern a mere product of the industrial or post-industrial development of society, but a consequence of a unique phase in the development of the postcommunist transformation within the area of Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular the Czech Republic. Another specific feature is that this cleavage is of a more or less hidden nature. In other words, the cleavage of informal parasitic networks versus civil society is reminiscent in its significance and emotional component of the conflict of democracy versus authoritarianism. Even if it is not the goal of the clientelist forces to destroy the democratic regime, they nevertheless create a certain new and despised nomenklatura of predatory structures and organised crime exploiting the public resources (Subchapter 1.4). In this sense, the formation of the new anticlientelist and anti-corruption parties, movements and civic associations represents, at least at the beginning, a qualitatively new phase which sets out to remove the systemic defects of post-communism, or more specifically to democratise the incomplete democracy. The cleavage between the established parties linked with non-transparent business on one side, and disillusioned civil society on the other, first manifested itself just before the 2010 elections. This was illustrated by the campaign conducted on the internet. Several activities immediately appeared, calling for a sweeping-out of well-established politicians and a redrafting of party candidate lists. One of the projects was a website entitled replace politicians (vymentepolitiky.cz). The aim was to mobilise voters not to vote for the established parties but for new and smaller subjects. Another event in the 2010 elections was the civic initiative defenestration. This called for voters to throw out compromised politicians with the help of preferential votes. Voters were called upon to circle exclusively the last four candidates on the party candidate lists, enabling these candidates with 5% of preferential votes to jump over the established politicians nominated in the first four positions.

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  103 Even though the cleavage between the official party establishment and the new political subjects was not openly manifested in electoral behaviour until 2010, it had nevertheless been fermenting for a long period of time. The new schism appeared as early as the second half of the 1990s, and increased in intensity during and after the so-called opposition or cartel agreement between the ČSSD and ODS (1998–2002). The results of an extensive empirical survey of attitudes towards the political regime conducted over the period of 1996–2006 demonstrated that political dissatisfaction and lack of trust in political institutions had increased, together with a negative evaluation of the functioning of democracy (Linek 2010). The Public Opinion Research Center (CVVM), which mapped opinions on the causes of social tension within Czech society, also stated as early as in 2005 that the factors considered most conflictual were the differences between politicians and other citizens. A total of 48% of respondents stated that it was precisely these differences which had led to deep-seated social tensions. This was considered more fundamental than differences in wealth (40%), and thus differences between the upper, middle and lower classes (CVVM 2005). To summarise, as a consequence of the formation of the clientelist parties within the post-communist and post-transformation context, the classical concept of fundamental cleavages in the Czech Republic was significantly modified on the following levels: (1) On a national level, a new social cleavage was determined in the form of the aforementioned conflict line between non-transparent clientelist networks and outraged civil society. This cleavage corresponded with the atmosphere within society, which was defined by a crisis of trust and a weakening of the legitimacy of the political representation. In elections, there was a predominant tendency towards mass protest voting aimed against the political establishment. (2) On the level of the party system, such a socio-political cleavage was manifested as a sharp division between: (a) the ‘old’ established clientelised parties and (b) the ‘new’ protest subjects with an anti-clientelist and anti-corruption appeal (Chapter 5). Within the first side of the socio-political cleavage, namely inside the informal clientelist networks (headed by local, regional and national bosses or godfathers – details in Subchapter 2.1.4) embedded in the established parties, there were additional hidden party divisions, which were situated on intra-party and inter-party levels. Such hidden divisions further polarised national politics. As a result of their multiple loyalties, mutually competing clientelist clans thus generated intensified conflicts within the relevant parties and so produced constant tension within the governing parties as well as between them, causing a chronic cabinet crisis. This time it was no longer the standard cleavages between left and right or relationships between opposition and government that most polarised party politics and destabilised the government, but rather more or less hidden conflicts between

104  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime the clientelist clans inside the given parties, which were battling for a redistribution of spheres of influence. *** The phenomenon of a chronic cabinet crisis is clearly documented by the series of government crises and intra-coalition conflicts following the elections in 2010, which emerged as a consequence of the battle to seize control of the national security components of the entire political system. This involved bodies active in criminal proceedings and the judiciary (clashes for key ministerial positions in the Ministries of the Interior and Justice, for the highest posts in the police and public prosecution service), as well as a struggle for influence over key financial and economic decisions (the largest state tenders, for example the purchase of military aircraft or the Ministry of Finance’s mega eco-tender). Such political crises cast doubt upon the premise that applies to standard parliamentary democracy, namely that the stability of a coalition government is guaranteed by the size of the parliamentary support of parties with a similar political programme. It therefore follows that post-communism in Central and partly also Eastern Europe represents an interesting laboratory for political science, in which it is possible to examine the specific development of the cleavage structure within a unique set of circumstances. Similarly, unique conditions and thus ensuing territorial distinctions can also be identified in other regions throughout the world, such as Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

4.10  The party organisational model – confederation What kind of model of the post-1989 political party has developed in the Czech Republic after two decades? As presented in Subchapter 2.1.4 dealing with regional bosses, the regional organisations became virtually untouchable bastions within the established party structures. A significant contribution to the infiltration of the regional bosses into party structures was made by three previously mentioned factors, namely (a) the mass recruitment of fake party members, (b) low party membership and (c) the regionalisation of the state. As regards the decentralisation of the state after 2000, it was originally expected that the establishment of fourteen higher territorial self-governing units, thus the creation of fourteen regional assemblies and councils, would contribute to enhancing the quality of democracy. It was believed that this would provide the basis for a new generation of local and regional politicians who would breathe life into the established parties. The arrival of a new generation of politicians was also expected due to the completion of the process of mass privatisation by the end of the 1990s. In this context, the political scientist Dvořáková referred to the naivety of those commentators who had failed to identify the ability of the parasitic structures to adapt to the new conditions of the regionalisation of politics. This was facilitated both by the excessive number of territorial self-governing units and by the fact that the media did not have the capacity to monitor regional politics sufficiently.

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  105 Overall, a new trend emerged: the newly formed regional bastions of clientelist politics gradually began to undermine the national level of decision-making. This also led to an inability of the party leaderships to prevent ideologically undesirable coalitions from forming in cities or on a regional level. Regarding the impact of this party development, Dvořáková (2011: 7) noted that whereas the previous form of interconnection of economics and politics strengthened the centre, i.e. the party leaderships, the present situation is that regional politicians are becoming ever increasingly emancipated and are gaining independence of the leadership, or even bringing the party leadership under their own control. In reference to this theme, Balík wrote: “The regional organisations do what they want.” At the same time, he pointed out that “both of the large parties have excessively loosened their organisational structure. Their regional and district organisations have too much autonomy” (Balík 2012b: 8). Similarly, Pehe characterised the two largest established parties as “barely manageable federations in which the national bodies can push through their decisions on a regional level only with great difficulty.” He noted that problems with clientelism and corruption could metastasise from a local and regional level to the centre. This occurs when politicians from the regions occupy posts within party leaderships (Pehe 2012: 6). As a result, both of these political scientists regard the deficit of centralism in the two formerly largest parties as a serious problem which can be rectified by the renewal of a certain degree of centralism. The loosening of ties between the district, regional and national levels reached such an extent that the central party leaderships lost the ability to influence the selection process of electoral candidate lists in the regions and the subsequent post-election negotiations concerning the regional and municipal councils. Under standard conditions this would not represent a deficit, but would rather attest to the functioning of democratic principles inside the parties. However, a problem occurs if the party leaderships are unable to correct pathological phenomena, specifically flagrant non-transparency and clientelism on a regional level. For example, in 2010, the leaderships of the ČSSD and ODS were incapable of preventing their regional organisations from concluding agreements on the formation of grand coalitions in the two largest cities – Prague and Brno. In addition, the national leadership of the ČSSD did not have sufficient strength to enforce the resignation of Jaroslav Palas, the compromised regional chairman of the MoravianSilesian region in the period of 2008–2012. The party leadership similarly failed to push through its demand for the resignation of the Social Democratic regional council following the corruption affair surrounding the regional chairman of the Central Bohemian region David Rath (Subchapter 2.1.4.4). A factor that significantly influenced the quality of the grassroots membership primarily of the formerly two largest parties is the aforementioned speculative recruitment of hired party members (Subchapter 2.1.1). False recruitments first of all had a fundamental impact on the overall composition of the party membership,

106  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime since the influx of ‘negative members’ led to the departure of traditional, ideologically oriented party members. Secondly, the influx of the new wave of fraudulent party members led to the partial privatisation of district or regional elements of the party, in which the narrow interests of non-transparent business subsequently predominated. Specifically, substantially independent regions as well as district elements of the relevant parties focused primarily on trading with power. The low membership of the parties (Table 2.1) and their gradual clientelisation is also linked to the existence of nepotism or cronyism. If we add to this the passivity of a considerable proportion of party members, a group of family members and their circle can upset the balance within a local organisation or exercise a substantial influence on the running of an entire city.11 A specific accompanying phenomenon of the clientelist party model, especially in its peak phase around 2010, was the presentation of two faces of the party leadership. However, such leadership duality in the personnel policy was instrumentally based. Its purpose was to ensure that compromised leaders or other groups from the shadowy zone were able to retreat into the background in order to install new, clean and popular faces in front of them, i.e. new party chairmen. The real leader was therefore not the official head of the party organisation but a figure who remained more or less backstage. On a national level, this leadership duality was installed in two of the governing parties in the period of 2010–2013. In the Public Affairs party, the television star Radek John became the official chairman, whereas the grey eminence who pulled the strings of power was Vít Bárta, originally the boss of the largest private security agency in the country. In TOP 09 a pairing was established with the prince Karel Schwarzenberg as the official party chairman and Miroslav Kalousek as the actual leader. A similar leadership duality of personalities applied on a regional level. This trend was advanced in virtually crystallised form in the Prague party organisations of the ČSSD and ODS. In 2010, the dominant structures in both parties, which had been compromised over a decade of mutual cartel co-operation, placed new faces at the top of their candidate lists – Jiří Dienstbier and Bohuslav Svoboda (Subchapter 4.7).

4.11  Clientelist parliamentarism Paradoxically, the coalition government (2010–2013), which initially enjoyed the largest parliamentary majority of the post-1989 era in the Czech Republic – i.e. 118 out of a total of 200 members of the Chamber of Deputies  – was one of the least stable executives. Over the course of three years, as a result of various internal crises, a total of twenty-nine ministers alternated in posts within Nečas’s seventeen-member cabinet. For example, during the period of 2010–2013, the police and judiciary took an interest in the Minister of Culture Besser in relation to his flat in Florida, as well as in the Minister of Industry and Trade Kocourek due to the ‘diverted millions’ in connection with his divorce. Also investigated was the Minister of Transport Bárta, who eventually was not convicted of providing dubious loans to members

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  107 of parliament from his own Public Affairs party only thanks to his parliamentary immunity. The Minister of Environment and vice-chairman of the ODS Drobil also announced his resignation from a government post after only a few months due to suspicion of manipulating tenders in the State Environmental Fund. It follows from the nature of the clientelistically established parties that there is a tendency towards the formation of unstable and ineffective governments. As a result of the variability of clientelist links within the Czech environment, the parties therefore became internally divided and undisciplined groupings which placed a burden even on the minimal intra-party unity necessary for the functioning of party-based parliamentarism. Of primary significance is the fact that the loyalty of members of parliament is divided or shared; this means that it relates not only to their own party but also to their clientelist networks. Under certain conditions – as a rule at the moment of a conflict concerning the redistribution of spheres of wealth and influence – links to the relevant business clients may outweigh the interests of the party. Such schizophrenic behaviour within the parliamentary factions of the individual parties in the Chamber of Deputies led to the unpredictable functioning of parliamentary majorities. A similar situation was noted by Innes in the following words: “Although the factionalism of the major parties might imply a vibrant ideological life, these factions are defined by the competing interests of different networks rather than by differences in policy, ideology or personality” (2013: 25–26). In the degree to which clientelist links impair party cohesion, the deficiencies in the functioning of parliamentarism may be reminiscent of the model of parliamentary government referred to by Giovanni Sartori as assemblearism. For this reason, in the Czech Republic at least until 2013 it was possible to speak of clientelist parliamentarism, which manifests certain fundamental characteristics which are typical of the parliamentary form of government of the French type (Third and Fourth Republics). This concerns the following characteristics: (i) “power is not unified, but scattered and atomised;” (ii) “party discipline goes from poor to non-existent;” (iii) “coalitions seldom resolve their disagreements and are always uncertain of legislative support.” (Sartori 2001: 111) Clientelist parliamentarism in the context of the Chamber of Deputies is a complex phenomenon, and as such can be defined not only by the factor of (a) the systemic proliferation of members of parliament with divided loyalties and blackmail potential within the individual parliamentary factions and subsequently within parliamentary majorities but also (b) by the excessive presence of unaffiliated members of parliament and even (c) by a certain number of legislators who are currently in custody or serving sentence. This links to a further defining factor, namely (d) frequent splits in the original parliamentary factions and the formation of entirely new parliamentary groupings as well as new parties within a single legislative period.

108  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime With regard to the composition of the Chamber of Deputies at the beginning of June  2013, three years after the elections of 2010, the following situation had crystallised: seventeen unaffiliated members of parliament, of whom one (David Rath) was in custody and a second (Roman Pekárek) was serving sentence; two unaffiliated members had quit the Social Democrats and founded the new party National Socialists-Left of the 21st Century (Národní socialisté-levice 21. století); a further eight members of parliament, following their departure from the original parliamentary faction of Public Affairs, formed the new party LIDEM.12

4.12  Clientelist democracy If parties ever increasingly represent closely linked non-transparent commercial subjects, it is possible to draw the conclusion not only that the representative function of political parties has been substantially modified, but that the very nature of democracy is changing. By a hidden and gradual method, democracy is being partially privatised and colonised in the hands of non-transparent political and economic subjects. As a whole, this situation can be referred to as clientelist democracy or a clientelist regime. ‘Clientelist democracy’ or a ‘clientelist regime’ can be defined as a government of the captured parties operating in symbiosis with non-transparent business and systematically acting as parasites on the public resources provided by taxpayers, and thus transforming the state and its elements into a service agency for affiliated informal corrupt business groups in terms of the completion of clientelist state capture (Subchapter 1.7). The concept of clientelist parties, that is the captured party based on the firmparty-firm pattern (Subchapter 1.8, Chapters 2 and 3), which is the starting point for an understanding of so-called clientelist democracy or a clientelist regime in the Czech Republic, is in accordance with the view of the sociologist Skovajsa. On the basis of a differentiation between the formal and actual state of democracy, he came to the conclusion that an ‘insufficient democracy’ had been established. His approach is based on a comparison of data from three independent institutions: the magazine The Economist (Kekic 2007), the non-governmental organisation Freedom House and Transparency International. It follows from this data that the Czech Republic very well meets the basic minimum requirement of democracy, meaning such criteria as fair elections, political pluralism, freedom of the press and upholding of human rights. Nevertheless, there are serious deficits, specifically “in citizens’ attitudes towards politics, public participation in political life, and above all in the behaviour of individuals and institutions within the spheres of political, administrative and economic power” (Skovajsa 2008: 21). The high level of corruption is also generally considered a significant problem.

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  109 In summary, the Czech Republic manifests accompanying features of insufficient democracy. In other words, from a formal-institutional perspective, only a minimal framework of democracy is secured. However, with regard to the content of democracy, and specifically the behaviour of the actors themselves, there are serious defects within the political system, with the result that the overall quality of democracy is reduced. Such a view corresponds more or less with the concept of defective democracy (Merkel 1999, 2004).

4.13  The concept of the clientelist party This part of the book aims to present a generalisation of the phenomena described in this chapter as well as in the previous text (Subchapter 1.8, Chapters 2 and 3), specifically to proceed to a conceptualisation and definition of the clientelist party. The presented concept of the clientelist party does not aim to define a completely new type or new model of party which could be typical of the whole region of Central Europe. The author is aware of the plethora of already existing party typologies. Therefore, the clientelist party constitutes a slight party variation in terms of a negative mutation forming under the unique conditions of the post-communist transition. Such a clientelist party crystallised in its purest form in the case of the Czech Republic. A narrow and broad concept of this party version is formulated here. The narrow or minimal definition delineates the clientelist party by means of two fundamental characteristics. The minimal definition then provides the basis for a broad definition, which in addition to the original core also incorporates other significant features. Nevertheless, if the concept of the clientelist party is to be fully fledged, it is necessary that the defining characteristics of the individual party version are related also to the level of the party system, as well as the political system in general. It is possible to conclude that after two decades of post-communist development, the political parties completed a kind of Copernican revolution. Above all, they sidelined their role as a mediator of interests between a pluralist society and the state and ever increasingly attached themselves firstly to non-transparent business and secondly to the state (Figures 1.1 and 1.2), and after the year 2000 they also attached themselves to the fourteen regional self-governing units. Political parties as privileged organisations with access to the state and to public resources became accustomed to occupying the state and treating it like a conquered territory, the spoils of which must quickly be divided up with the help of their clients. It is precisely these two fundamental characteristics that are of a constitutive nature and represent a certain minimal definition of the clientelist party (Figure 4.4). All further significant features are to a greater or lesser extent derived from these two, and as a result constitute the broad definition. Therefore, clientelist parties, in their individual aspects and in their entirety, are defined by the following basic characteristics and contingencies: (1) Political parties attach themselves primarily to the sphere of non-transparent business, by which they form client-client relationships on a local, regional and

110  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime national level. Clientelisation of the parties, i.e. a process of party capture, takes place by means of a two-way development (Subchapter 1.8 and Figure 1.1): (a) privatisation ‘from below’ (Chapter 2) – organised through the method of fraudulent mass purchases of hired party members by local nontransparent business headed by regional bosses or godfathers; (b) colonisation ‘from above’ (Chapter 3) – implemented by subjects from the sphere of giant politicized business headed by national bosses or oligarchs. (2) Such captured parties attach themselves excessively to the state and the regional self-governing units, with the aim of controlling strategic resources of power and wealth to such an extent that they produce a tendency towards state capture (Subchapter 1.7 and Figure 1.2). (3) The strategic incorporation of the civil service as the third tip of the clientelist triangle enables the client-client relationship between political parties and non-transparent business to function effectively (Subchapter 4.2 and Figure 4.1). (4) Sophisticated multi-level concentric rings of further allies develop around the clientelist triangle of ‘party politics-non-transparent business-civil service’ for the purpose of augmenting the overall power and wealth of the informal hierarchical networks (Subchapter 4.3 and Figure 4.1): (a) the closest circle of allies is formed by certain representatives from the environment of the judiciary and bodies active in criminal proceedings – the police and the public prosecution service; (b) the wider circle can be formed by representatives of the Office for the Protection of Competition, the Supreme Audit Office, the public media councils, the Security Information Service and Military Intelligence. (5) A tendency to spread the contagion of clientelism is produced among the relevant parties in two ways (Subchapter 4.4): (a) on an intra-party basis, (b) on an inter-party level. (6) Structural corruption is reproduced as a systemic feature of the clientelist parties (Subchapters 1.6 and 4.5). An accompanying phenomenon is the excessive incidence of uninvestigated and unpunished corruption affairs in the highest echelons of politics. (7) Security and surveillance potential is developed as a basic accessory of the clientelist parties (Subchapter 4.6). The purpose of the systematic manufacturing and collection of compromising materials is to blackmail, intimidate and discredit political competitors and thus gain a comparative advantage on the hidden political and economic markets. This potential includes such capabilities as: (a) deployment of bugging and monitoring, (b) use of similar techniques and methods for the parties’ own protection.

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  111   (8) Regarding the organisational dimension of the clientelist party, a degenerative process takes place in terms of: (a) the quantity and quality of party membership (Subchapter 2.1.1) due to the fraudulent mass purchase of hired members resulting in the departure of traditional, ideologically oriented party members; (b) fundamentally limited intra-party democracy as an implication of internal and external clientelist manipulation with party structures ‘from below’ and ‘from above;’ (c) transformation into a loose confederation of regional party organisations as a consequence of the decentralisation of the state (Subchapter 4.10). The regional organisations are prone to domination by the regional bosses or godfathers.   (9) Concerning the ideological dimension of the clientelist party, the programmatic equipment becomes a side product of non-transparent business activities (Subchapter 4.8). It is used especially as a façade and a marketing tool, intended to divert attention from backstage private interests. (10) Parties primarily produce clientelist, thus business and parasitic functions (Subchapter 4.8). They dramatically reduce their central role as representatives of significant social groups reflecting the cleavage structure of society. (11) The concept of fundamental cleavages is modified on two levels (Subchapter 4.9): (a) on a national level, the new social cleavage consists of the conflict line between non-transparent clientelist networks and outraged civil society; (b) on the level of the party system, the socio-political cleavage is manifested as a sharp division between the ‘old’ clientelist parties and the ‘new’ protest subjects with an anti-clientelist and anti-corruption appeal. (12) The concept of party anti-systemness is modified in two ways (Klíma and Mendilow 2016): (a) the narrow concept applies the term ‘hard anti-systemness’ to parties which manifest characteristics of original extreme left and extreme right-wing parties; (b) the broad concept uses the term ‘soft anti-systemness’ to refer to parties in such a phase of clientelism wherein the entire parties or substantial sections thereof are overburdened or directly dominated by criminal, mafia or other types of risk clients (e.g. authoritarian superpower) who threaten the internal and external security of the country. Such parties substantially reduce their coalition potential. (13) On the level of the entire party setting, clientelist party organisations form a defective party system in terms of defective partocracy. They are thus prone to complete a process termed state capture in symbiosis with

112  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime non-transparent business and partially with organised crime. Such parties become hypertrophic in the sense of ubiquitous intervention in the running of all spheres of society. From this enumeration of the basic characteristics of clientelist parties, it is evident that the first four characteristics determine the relationship of the political parties towards pluralist society, to business and the state. As stated previously, it is possible to consider the first two fundamental characteristics to be essentially constitutive. Points 5–9 represent further systemic features, namely organisational and ideological parameters of these parties. The closely associated points 10, 11 and 12 demonstrate the extent to which the fundamental characteristics of the clientelist parties have a pronounced modifying influence on the classical party-political postulates. A  fundamental modification thus takes place in three key aspects: in the concept of party functions, the cleavage structure and party anti-systemness. This analytical approach is completed by point 13, in which a conclusion is drawn with reference to the overall party system concerning the transformation in a direction towards a defective partocracy.

4.14  A modified political system If the very essence of parties is transformed, then the functioning of the entire political system will inevitably be modified. For this reason, the contextual contingencies that ensue from the aforementioned defining characteristics of clientelist parties will now be defined. The following theoretical conclusions are drawn: (1) The workings of clientelist parties reproduce the phenomenon of ‘a bifurcation of politics,’ which assumes the parallel existence of official politics and informal, i.e. ‘shadowy politics.’ In this situation, the shadowy political zone acquires a tendency to dominate and determine the running of intra-party and inter-party relations and to a certain extent the relationships between government and opposition. The phenomenon of hidden shadowy politics is present in virtually all the aforementioned characteristics of the clientelist party, such as the impact of non-transparent business as well as parasitic, corruption and surveillance functions. The bifurcation takes on various forms, beginning with multiple loyalties of members of parliament and ending with the duality of formal and real party leaders. (2) A modification of the parliamentary form of government takes place in a direction towards the formation of ‘clientelist parliamentarism’ (Subchapter 4.11). Members of parliament herein demonstrate multiple, thus divided loyalties, which therefore relate not only to their own party but also to a hidden clientelist environment of non-transparent business. Such schismatic loyalty hampers party cohesion and leads to unpredictable behaviour of parliamentary majorities or coalition governments. Clientelist parliamentarism thus reproduces – more or less independently of the size of the parliamentary majorities – unstable and ineffective governments. It thereby takes on certain

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  113 fundamental characteristics that are typical of another dysfunctional variant of the parliamentary form of government, which Sartori referred to as ‘assemblearism.’ (3) A ‘clientelist democracy’ or ‘clientelist regime’ is a product of defective partocracy (Subchapter 4.12), the core of which is formed by clientelist parties. Such a party-political settlement can therefore be defined as a government of the captured parties operating in symbiosis with non-transparent business and systematically acting as parasites on public resources, thus transforming the state and its basic elements into a service agency for affiliated informal corrupt business groups in terms of the completion of ‘clientelist state capture’ (Subchapter 1.7 and Figure 1.2). This arrangement is distinguished by the following tendencies: (a) an impairing of the mechanism of checks and balances of the political system; (b) a tendency to form inter-party and cross-party clientelist cartels in the form of non-standard cartel-like coalitions on national, regional and municipal levels; (c) a weakening of the rule of law in terms of insufficient enforceability of the law; (d) a distortion of fair competition in both politics and the economy. (4) Clientelist democracy develops ‘authoritarian potential.’ The increased demand for the rule of a strong leader with authoritarian tendencies has a chance of asserting itself especially under the following circumstances: (a) a chronic crisis of the clientelist established parties; (b) persisting economic recession; (c) a charismatic leader directly elected to the post of president; (d) the increasing influence of a foreign authoritarian regime, for example Russia or China, exporting clientelist ties, corruption and intelligence activities, including fake news. To summarise, the aforementioned contextual contingencies document the negative effect of the mutated clientelist parties on the modification of the political system on a macro-level. At the centre of interest in particular is the reproduction of a substantial scope of informal politics. At the same time, there is a focus on the transformation of the system in a direction towards clientelist parliamentarism, clientelist state capture, clientelist democracy or a clientelist regime. Ultimately, authoritarian potential is identified within the framework of post-communist clientelism.

4.15  Concluding remarks How are we to classify the clientelist version of party organisation within the framework of party development? From the perspective of party typology, it is important not to conceive the clientelist party as a qualitatively new type which would pertain to a new historical era and thus would replace another party type.

114  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime On the contrary, it represents one of several new forms of party within a broad process of a current crisis of the traditional mass parties (Figure 4.2) that is taking place in contemporary democracies (Ignazi 2014). The essence of this resides in the fact that in the era of transition from industrial to post-industrial society, the position or the fundamental bonds of political parties are structurally shifting within the area between society and the state. As illustrated by Figures 4.3 and 4.4, political parties are progressively weakening their anchoring in society and are more or less retreating from it, which they are compensating for by attaching themselves more firmly to the state. This is manifested in two ways. Firstly, instead of relying upon internal resources (party membership, party supporters, membership fees), parties are now drawing resources ever increasingly from the state (state contributions, benefits of party patronage). Secondly, instead of traditional functions – such as the aggregation and articulation of social interests and the socialisation of society – political parties rather fulfil an exclusively electoral function (Scarrow et al. 2002). They are thus gradually becoming electoral vehicles targeting voters by representing particular issues, as well as utilitarian instruments for the selection of electoral candidate lists and the subsequent occupation of public functions. In other words, parties are becoming merely a means of access to power and the benefits that come with it. The process of systematic weakening of the relationships between society and political parties has long been the subject of interest of political scientists, which is attested to by a range of indicators such as the increasing erosion of traditional and dominant cleavages, diminishing identification with parties, gradual weakening of psychological bonds of voters to parties (party dealignment), decline in party membership, increasing electoral volatility and loosening of the links between parties and ideologically affiliated societal organisations (Inglehart 1997, Mair and van Biezen 2001, Dalton 2002, Scarrow 2002, van Biezen et al. 2012). *** When Ruud Koole critically assessed the concept of cartel parties, he drew attention to the fact that the formation of parties and party systems depends on the conditions of the specific country or given European region. The relationship between the parties and the state is influenced by several variables. These include the historical development of the country, the evolution of the party system, the electoral system and the impact of the mass media (Koole 1996). Parties may take on specific features, for example, in countries that have endured a period of dictatorship (Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal). According to such an approach, it is similarly possible to identify common and specific conditions that have formed the party systems in the countries of the post-communist region. Undoubtedly within this region it is also possible to separate off, for example, the areas of Central Europe or the post-Soviet Baltic states (Subchapter 1.2). Each individual country also has its own specifics. It is precisely this viewpoint that produces the hypothesis that all post-communist states are distinguished by features of a high degree of clientelism covering structural

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  115 corruption, in which the Czech Republic, as a consequence of its further peculiarities, represents a certain pure example. In the transition from industrial to post-industrial society, the natural process of weakening of the relationships between parties and citizens can take on different forms and features depending on the various contexts. Specifically, it is possible to distinguish between three negative alternatives of party development: (1) within the context of the democracies of Western and Northern Europe, a transformation of the political parties can acquire a tendency towards a cartel party described by Katz and Mair (1995) and illustrated in Figure 4.3; (2) within the environment of the transition from communist totalitarianism to democracy, the parties in the area of Central and partially Eastern Europe acquire a tendency to transform into clientelist organisations documented in Figure 4.4 (Klíma 2013b); (3) within the area of post-communist Eastern Europe, the parties can acquire a tendency to transform into the form of oligarchical groupings (Klíma 2013b).

Civil society

********************* * * Parties * * * * *********************

State

Figure 4.2  Mass parties between civil society and the state Source: Taken and modified from text by Katz and Mair (1995: 11).

Civil society

************* * * Parties * * * * ****** *******

State

Figure 4.3  Cartel parties between civil society and the state Source: Taken and modified from text by Katz and Mair (1995: 13). Non-transp. business from above Civil society

***************** * * * * Parties * * *****************

State

from below Non-transp. business

Figure 4.4  Clientelist parties between civil society, non-transparent business and the state Source: Author of this text.

116  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime Regarding clientelist parties, this term refers to the kind of party organisations which, during the post-communist transformation, were ‘sandwiched’ from both sides by non-transparent business from ‘below’ and ‘above,’ and were thus subsequently prepared to attach themselves to the state in a parasitic mode. In other words, at the beginning there was a process of party capture based on the firm-party-firm pattern, and this parasitic relationship could then culminate in clientelist state capture (Subchapters 1.7 and 1.8, Chapters 2 and 3). As a result of their systemic parasitic behaviour, structural corruption and weakening of the rule of law, the crisis of legitimacy of such established parties deepens, accompanied by overall government instability. The parties retreat from society to such an extent that they trigger a process of mutual alienation and hostility. Finally, it is possible to express very tentatively the hypothesis that a further potentiality in the development of the party system – in particularly negative conditions – is represented by the oligarchical party, whose home is Ukraine or also Bulgaria. This variant is formed in countries whose history is marked by a complete absence of democratic traditions or where democracy has existed only for a very short period. In such a non-standard environment, democratic parties may give the impression that they have been implanted. Under such conditions the new entrepreneurs-oligarchs become the main political actors, directly establishing their own parties or controlling them at a certain time. As a result, it is no surprise that parties within the environment of Eastern Europe have mutated into the form of oligarchical groupings. This means that (a) all-powerful parties have been established or subsequently controlled by the largest oligarchs in the country, together with their families and interestbased clans; (b) the interconnection of the parties and state has taken place to such an extent that it is possible to speak of their coalescence in the sense that the oligarchical parties parcelled up the country. If we take into consideration the situation in Ukraine, at least until 2014, politics was a continuation of the parcelling up of the country’s wealth. Political parties became a direct instrument of entrepreneurial clans. As a consequence of the primordial political culture, founded on blood or familial relationships, a few families of oligarchs controlled the country. Together with their political parties they seized control of parliament and government. In addition, they divided up spheres of influence in the economic and media arena. At the same time, they ensured their immunity from prosecution and their access to intelligence sources (Máša 2007, Procházková 2007, Klíma 2007). According to a report by the UN high commissioner for human rights in 2004, the main problems in Ukraine were corruption, the absence of independent courts and insufficiently free elections. As regards structural corruption, this represents a problem which encroaches upon all spheres of society, generates social inequality and weakens trust in state institutions and the legal system. In the corruption indexes, Ukraine is regularly ranked in one of the worst positions in Europe (ČTK 2014).

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  117 Overall, a political system based on oligarchical parties produces structural corruption and organised crime and deforms the principle of the rule of law and the system of checks and balances. The result is diminished functionality of the state, in which corrosive tendencies may predominate in the form of limited functioning of the state bureaucracy, police and army. Similarly, concerning Bulgaria, the causes of the explosion of social unrest in the form of violent nationwide demonstrations in February 2013 (Table 6.1) can be explained as a consequence of a ‘perverse partocracy’ that functions in lucrative symbiosis with the oligarchs. It follows that: This pact was protected by an omerta respected by the media, which was understandably owned by the aforementioned oligarchs [. . .]. The fracture leads horizontally throughout the entire society – fatally separating a detached political ‘elite’ from ‘ordinary people,’ who have lost their money, justice and prospects. (Hristov 2013: A10) *** Whether the cartel, clientelist or oligarchical phase of party development is the focus of analysis, this always concerns alternatives which have been produced by different social conditions, thus by a specific negative environment. Naturally, the individual environments and actors in the given territorial regions differ fundamentally in the degree of occurrence of negative factors. This means that the lower the quality of the environment in which the parties have been shaped, the lower the quality of democracy. It follows that, for example, in Germany and Scandinavian countries, it has been relatively easier to withstand the tendency towards party cartelisation than in other countries faced with party clientilisation or oligarchisation. In other words, party cartelisation represents the lowest level of danger for democracy, whereas socially more entrenched clientelisation is a fundamentally greater threat, and oligarchisation represents the greatest threat of all. Transformations and partial mutations within the development of the party system originate and expire depending on environment and time. It is apparent that the outlined forms of parties represent polar, purely theoretical categories. As a result, such clearly defined variants appear only exceptionally within the complex conditions of any particular society. It is common that specific parties may simultaneously manifest features that are peculiar to a number of developmental potentialities of the given party forms. In reality, it is possible to encounter their predominantly transitional states, thus hybrids. New elite parties and movements have begun to emerge as a reaction against the crisis of the established parties. The electoral earthquakes in many countries of Central and partially Eastern Europe have produced a new generation of protest parties, including, for example, anti-establishment reform parties and entrepreneurial parties. These new phenomena shall be explored in the next chapter.

118  Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime

Notes 1 It was not until 1 January 2012 that gambling lost its tax exempt status, when the new Gambling Act came into force. Lottery companies then paid the regular 19% tax, as well as a 20% special lottery tax – part of this sum goes to towns and municipalities (Valášková and Blažek 2012). 2 The Civil Service Act became effective as of 1 January 2015 (with the exception of a number of provisions which came into force on the day of announcement, i.e. 6 November 2014). 3 During the period of 2010–2013, two representatives of the ODS held the post of Minister of Environment. The first was Pavel Drobil, who resigned due to reasonable suspicion of corruption. He was replaced by Tomáš Chalupa. As regards the promotion of the ministry, twenty-five employees worked here in the department of the cabinet of the minister as well as in the press office and marketing division (NKÚ 2014). 4 Ondráčka stated that “the NKÚ has become a fiefdom of politicians, because its advisory board is composed of former members of parliament, and these are appointed to it until they retire.” In comparison, even constitutional judges are appointed only for a definite period (Wolfová 2011: 56). 5 In the Czech Republic corrupt environments appear also in other areas of society. For example, in healthcare there are references to pharma-corruption; in sport, corruption has tainted among others the most popular football clubs; within the framework of the university sector a system of fraudulent awarding of graduate diplomas has been uncovered in so-called ‘fast track’ study (Dvořáková 2012). 6 CPI means the corruption perception index as measured by the non-governmental organisation Transparency International. This index is universally recognised and measures the state of corruption in countries on a scale of 0–10, in which the country with the lowest level of corruption has the mark of 10, whereas a mark of 0 indicates the most corrupt environment. 7 The authors stated that “with a corruption perception index on the level of Germany (CPI = 7.9), according to this analysis the Czech Republic could have higher growth by 1.6% per annum, and with a CPI on the level of Denmark (CPI = 9.2) by as much as 2.3% per annum” (Novotný et al. 2011: 42). 8 The economist Kohout stated that in the Czech Republic “approximately 17.5% of GDP passes through public tenders (in 2010 approx. 640 billion Czech crowns). Of this approximately 7% of GDP pertains to the central government, with 7.3% of GDP to the municipalities and regions. Sectoral submitters of tenders such as local monopolies (gas works, water and sewerage mains, transport companies) then redistribute approx. 3.2% of GDP.” He added: “If we take the somewhat optimistic estimate of a mere ten percent spent ineffectively within the framework of these tenders, we reach the amount of 64 billion” (Kohout 2011: 16). 9 Within the framework of the zIndex project, the ministries were evaluated according to the recommended regulations for placing public tenders as described in the anticorruption manuals issued by the OECD, the Ministry for Regional Development or Transparency International. 10 The largest hospital holding in the Czech Republic, incorporating five regional hospitals, was managed by five regional representatives from the position of members of the Board of Directors of the Krajské zdravotní (Regional Healthcare) company. The members of the Board of Directors were two regional representatives of the KSČM, two representatives of the ČSSD and one for the movement Severočeši.cz. Thus, within this firm, the political and professional levels of management were not separated. There was an evident conflict of interests (Horák 2014). 11 A well-known example of nepotism or cronyism is that of the local organisation of the ODS in Zadní Třebaň, which in 2009 was reminiscent of a family clan. The mere five members included the member of parliament Schwippel as the vice-chairman of the

Clientelist party, parliamentarism and regime  119 local organisation and his mother Kateřina as the chairman. Further members were the “alleged brother of Mrs. Schwippelová and her employee. The fifth is some kind of weekend cottager from Prague” (Havel 2013). As regards the ČSSD, for example in the city of Příbram the local organisations recorded approximately 70 members. Before the mayor of Příbram Josef Říhák became regional chairman of the Central Bohemian region in 2012, his sister Kaiserová held the post not only of chairman of one local organisation in Příbram but was also a member of the city council; his son Josef Říhák Jr. was a member of the regional supervisory organisation (Hodrment 2013). 12 In May 2012, the party LIDEM (an abbreviation of LIberal DEMocrats) was founded, headed by the vice-premier Karolína Peake. Source: www.psp.cz.

5 “Old parties in new party systems?” “Old parties in new party systems?”

“Old parties in new party systems?”

Following on from the analysis of the complex process of party capture and clientelist state capture, this chapter deals with the phenomenon of new party evolution. The new set of political parties is primarily observed as a response to the crisis of the established parties in the post-communist space, which has created a vacuum on the political market. The new party subsystem is explored within a theoretical framework encompassing both demand and supply-side dimensions (Piattoni 2001, Bolleyer 2013). The ‘demand-side’ comprises the formative contextual conditions in which the new parties are born. Conversely, the ‘supply-side’ signifies the strategic choices of the party elites in terms of the party structures, programmes and policies corresponding to the changing social environment. In the new circumstances, a new generation of parties, i.e. ad hoc non-rooted entrepreneurial parties, is identified outside of the concept of the traditional party family. Such a party entity becomes a political vehicle of individual personalities. It is argued, firstly, that new kinds of parties in post-communist circumstances emerged not only as the culmination of a natural process of post-industrial unfreezing of the classic cleavage structure. Such post-industrial development, which is typical also of Western democracies, assumes a decline of group attachments and a growing individualisation of electorates. Secondly, the window of opportunity for the new parties was profoundly more open in the transition countries of Central Europe due to the chronic crisis of clientelist party politics. Therefore, it was in particular new protest parties with strong anti-corruption and anti-establishment appeal that emerged. Thirdly, the turbulent domestic and international environment constituted a fertile ground for other party alternatives such as the Pirates, new anti-immigrant and anti-European parties. The simultaneous occurrence of all three factors led to a situation in which the new subsystem of political parties was frequently linked with electoral earthquakes. The set of new parties in the case of the Czech Republic is analysed using the approach of continuity or discontinuity with the clientelist past. On this basis they are identified as parties with so-called positive potential to undermine non-transparent informal networks and informal politics, on the one hand, and with negative potential in terms of the ability to exacerbate the conditions of the clientelist regime on the other. Within this framework, the chapter examines the extraordinary ‘oligarchical’ entrepreneurial project of the Movement

“Old parties in new party systems?”  121 ANO 2011, established by Andrej Babiš, the second biggest businessman in the country. From the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a single man, embracing political, economic, media and security power, there ensues a serious challenge to the balance of power, to the system of checks and balances and to the independence of the basic state institutions. Hence, Babiš’s politicaleconomic ‘oligarchic empire’ may take to extremes the notion that politics is merely a continuation of business. This chapter shows that such a project can potentially establish a higher stage of clientelism in the sense of the oligarchisation of the entire political system, i.e. state capture in its pure version. However, this time the process of state capture is potentially associated with an authoritarian tendency.

5.1  The new parties – a theoretical framework The new party evolution is determined by an interplay between the structural dispositions of party formation and the strategic choices of the party elites. Therefore, the advent of the new parties is studied within a theoretical framework encompassing both dimensions, the demand and supply-sides (Piattoni 2001, Bolleyer 2013). The ‘demand-side’ includes the external structural conditions in which parties are formed. It incorporates the following contextual factors: • • • • • • •

historical context (unique transformation as post-communist baggage) institutional context (electoral, parliamentary and governmental arenas, e.g. electoral threshold, party funding, free broadcasting) ideological context (programmatic profile, new values and issues) political culture (formal rules versus informal personal relationships) communication technologies (traditional and new media) contemporary domestic turbulence of political sphere (alienation and political distrust among citizens, reaction of mainstream parties to the emerging newcomers) international context (migration crisis, instability of the West, rise of authoritarian China and the military capacity of Russia)

The ‘supply-side’ constitutes party properties within a modified societal environment, meaning strategic elite choices of newly created formations concerning their structures, programmes and policies. Decisions of the party elite concerning new strategies in programmatic and organisational dimensions appear to be of key significance. Within the framework of the intra-organisational dimension, a core tension is addressed, requiring the ability to balance the self-interests of the party founders on the one hand and the relatively autonomous party infrastructure on the other (Panebianco 1988, Bolleyer 2013). In other words, the ‘supply-side’ in the twenty-first century refers to the response of the party elites to the rapidly changing environment. It is logical that qualitative changes on the demand-side cause qualitative changes on the supply-side and vice versa. This presupposes that the political

122  “Old parties in new party systems?” parties are under the pressure of environmental constraints to adapt their strategies, structures and programmes, and at the same time the operation of party elites in return influences and forms the social context. A  question arises as to what side of this theoretical framework influencing the new party evolution, either the demand-side or supply-side, shall prevail. At present there are structural dispositions in the form of very unstable domestic and international environments, which are opening the window of opportunity unprecedentedly wide for the eruption of new parties. This applies mostly to Central European countries. In the individual party dispositions, the programmatic and organisational choices of the new elite are primarily determined by the party’s origin. According to the type of party formation, two distinct categories of the ‘newly born party’ can be distinguished: (1) rooted parties formed with group support or by social organisations that predated their actual establishment; (2) free standing entrepreneurial parties, founded on a top-down model by individuals, which are not affiliated to already organised social groups or organisations (Harmel and Svåsand 1993, Bolleyer 2013). Regarding the change in the party system up to the end of the twentieth century, parliamentary breakthroughs of new competitors brought fewer implications for the mainstream parties (Mair 1999). In advanced democracies, the majority of the newly formed parties since 1968 were classified under party families of ‘Green parties’ and also ‘far right’ or ‘new right,’ covering the populist anti-European and anti-immigrant parties (Mudde 2007, Art 2011, Bolleyer 2013). This reflected a time during which the process of de-alignment of ‘frozen party systems’ was commencing in the West (Lipset and Rokkan 1967). Nevertheless, a question arises as to whether, in the new formative conditions of the unfreezing of the classic cleavage structure at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is plausible in the case of the new sector of political parties to apply the notion of ‘party family’ in the original meaning. In general, such a challenge relates mostly to ad hoc new entrepreneurial parties and more to the unstable post-communist region. Within this context, Sikk pointed out that up to now the study of new party phenomenon as a cornerstone has started out from the classic cleavage-based model of party system development (Sikk 2011). However, in the era of the transition to post-industrial society, an ever greater role is played by the general trend of natural increasing electoral volatility, arising from a decline of group attachments and growing individualisation of the electorates. Such a decline impacts not only upon political parties but also on churches and trade unions (Biezen et al. 2011, Bolleyer 2013). This assumes that voters are more willing than ever before to switch their allegiance from one party to another. Therefore, the main reason for the electoral turn away from the traditional parties need not be the mere fact of citizen’s alienation and their political distrust, but the fact of a more open political market, offering a broader choice of old and new alternatives. Thus, in such a flexible environment a new party might simply repackage an old message and still be able to lure voters away without presenting anything genuinely ‘new’ in terms of policy

“Old parties in new party systems?”  123 content [. . .]. New parties might not be linked to ideologies at all but solely be vehicles of individual personalities. (Bolleyer 2013: 29) In these circumstances, it can be expected that the groups of new Green and ‘far right’ parties are not only the youngest, but also possibly, at least for a certain period, the last party families established in advanced democracies. This connects to the fact that Green parties for instance rank among the predominantly old rooted parties in society, in which elites are ideologically driven (Harmel and Svåsand 1993, Bolleyer 2013). Attempts to squeeze all the new parties into the original templates of party families, or conversely to make a new family out of them, appear to be controversial. This is the case because in this unprecedentedly turbulent environment  – not only in post-communist Central Europe – ad hoc ‘non-rooted’ entrepreneurial parties are being established from the top down by individuals so-called ‘entrepreneurs’. The contemporary study of the new parties allows us to disentangle electoral success and persistence not only (i) from their coherent programmatic affiliation or ideological dimension, but also (ii) from their organisational institutionalisation in the sense of fewer incentives in membership recruitment and building of the organisational structure (Bolleyer 2013, Mazzoleni and Voerman 2017). For the new parties of entrepreneurial kind there is no organisational imperative to build a fully-fledged extra-parliamentary membership organisation with a fullyfledged ideology. Furthermore, a turbulent and more flexible environment generates a kind of ‘voluntarism’ on the part of party leaders (Rose and Mackie 1988). Panebianco, writing in 1988, still considered the classic mass party model with its extra-parliamentary organisation to be the ideal type of institutionalised party. Nevertheless, at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this view was challenged as a result of a general decline of party membership and also the advent of the new entrepreneurial parties. Especially after the new party formations first entered parliament and possibly also the government, the party elites found themselves confronted by a leadership-structure dilemma, i.e. whether to build a sophisticated party infrastructure or to limit it to a minimum. There is an inherent tension here resulting from the building of local and regional subunits and vertical linkages between central and lower layers. The establishment of such intra-party power centres alters the internal distribution of power, which has a clear potential to threaten the leadership of the party founders. Therefore, such entrepreneurs have no interest in creating a complex party infrastructure. Bolleyer states: The set-up of a membership organization is in principle not a necessary condition for a successful institutionalization process. A skilful leader can initiate both routinization and value infusion without building an elaborate extra-parliamentary infrastructure; he or she functions as the creator of internal rules and as the main carrier of core values, which members of the

124  “Old parties in new party systems?” central elite are attached to, as far as they were preselected by the leader accordingly. (2013: 59–60) In other words, the entrepreneurial parties can be only partially institutionalised as a side-effect of party building in the name of the self-interest of their founding fathers. This enables the party leaders as entrepreneurs to remain in control over their enterprise (Panebianco 1988). New formations can be built primarily in the form of a party in public office, and they therefore concentrate on political arenas such as parliament and government. This assumes that the leader’s central party elite overlaps with the parliamentary group and government representatives. Therefore, the entrepreneurial formations produce power concentration in terms of a “leadership-dominated hierarchy” (Bolleyer 2013). In the extreme version, a non-ideological memberless party of a single man or several persons can be established, functioning only as a party in public office, i.e. with no party on the ground and no party in central office. Mazzoleni and Voerman (2017) identified no-member parties in the cases of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands and the Lega dei Ticinesi in Switzerland. Such a party development corresponds with an alternative definition of political parties presented by Epstein in the sense of a very minimal structure with no members except one: any group, however loosely organized, seeking to elect governmental officeholders under a given label. Having a label (which may or may not be on the ballot) rather than an organization is the crucial element. [. . .] Conceivably, even one man seeking office could similarly adopt a label and also qualify as a party. (Epstein 1967: 9) This kind of new party does not fit into a classical categorisation according to its basic programmatic profile, in line with the party family concept. Therefore, within this context, the contemporary classification of the new emerging parties offers three basic categories: (a) a continuation of mainstream party families, (b) genuinely new party families, (c) a new party generation of ad hoc non-rooted top-down ‘entrepreneurial’ parties. The first category embraces new left, new liberal, new conservative and new religious parties; under the second category it is possible to include Green parties and the ‘far right.’ The third group of newly emerging parties resists the traditional classification, since ad hoc non-rooted top-down ‘entrepreneurial’ parties are founded by individuals as a mere instrument for the purpose of pursuing their interests, and thus primarily focus on the immediate operation of the party in public office, i.e. most notably in government. The time frames of these party founders often do not transcend their own careers. Hence, “founding elites are powerful leaders of strongly hierarchical organizations who created their party

“Old parties in new party systems?”  125 top-down and do not want to see their power diminished” (Bolleyer 2013: 212). Because the original leaders are principally unwilling to accept organisational and programmatic constraints, their party formations as a rule are not ideologically based or fully institutionalised.

5.2  Central Europe: “old parties in new party systems?” In the post-communist circumstances of Central Europe, a number of currents of dissatisfaction have come together to form a unique extensive reservoir of voters prepared to elect new parties, mostly ad hoc non-rooted top-down ‘entrepreneurial’ parties. Within this broader kind of new party generation it is possible to distinguish several party clusters, which nevertheless in practice overlap with each other: (1) The first current is fed by citizen’s disenchantment with long-term systemic clientelism and structural corruption produced by the established parties in the unique context of the transformation from totalitarianism to democracy. This means that in opposition to the so-called negatively-oriented parties, e.g. ‘exploitative party’ (Grzymala-Busse 2008), ‘broker party’ (Innes 2013), ‘captor party’ or ‘clientelist party,’ a cluster of so-called positive clean ‘antiparties’ or protest parties was formed and mobilised, such as ‘anti-corruption parties’ (Deegan-Krause 2010, Bågenholm 2013) and ‘anti-establishment reform parties’ (Hanley and Sikk 2016). Further sources of voter flexibility are present not only in the circumstances of post-communism, but also in advanced European democracies: (2) This includes the ‘internet generation’ with its transparent and participatory form of politics, e.g. the use of e-democracy, as a natural product of the ‘digital revolution’ of post-industrial development. A typical product is the ‘Pirate parties’ (Bolleyer 2013: 220). (3) Another current of disaffected voters consists of those social groups which perceive threats emanating from the external environment, e.g. mass migration in Europe especially after 2015, and/or a loss of national sovereignty within the supranational European Union. This includes the new ‘anti-immigrant’ and ‘anti-European parties.’ (4) If we take into consideration the organisational rather than the programmatic aspect, then within the broad category of non-rooted entrepreneurial parties a cluster of new kinds of parties can be distinguished, mostly characterised by their private and/or business origin and by leadership domination, i.e. ‘business-firm parties’ (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999, Krouwel 2006, 2012), ‘owner parties’ (Vercesi 2015: 399), ‘personal parties’ (Krašovec 2017, Gherghina and Soare 2017) and ‘private parties.’ Although in contemporary Central Europe of 2019, all the aforementioned sources of dissatisfaction blend together temporally, in reality the wave of new

126  “Old parties in new party systems?” anti-corruption and anti-establishment parties first arrived after 2000 (Subchapter 6.1.1). This was subsequently added to by further waves of dissatisfaction, which in the case of the mass migration to Europe since 2015 have created a tsunami effect in the political sphere of Central European countries, irrespective of whether or not this theme was adopted by the established or new parties (Subchapter 6.1.2). In other words, in the case of the dramatic breakthrough of distinct clusters of new party entries in Central Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century, several factors are significant: not only general alienation and distrust regarding the clientelised mainstream parties but also a turbulent domestic and international environment contributing to mass dissatisfaction and fear. It is precisely this atmosphere of cumulative dissatisfaction and the subsequent elections that swept aside a part of the most compromised political elite while at the same time clearing the way for the breakthrough of a new kind of political party: the non-rooted entrepreneurial parties, particularly in the form of anti-establishment reform parties (Hanley and Sikk 2016). Within the context of the elections to the lower houses of parliament in Central and Eastern Europe, the results were evaluated in seismic terms as ‘earthquakes’ or even ‘hurricanes’ (Haughton and Deegan-Krause 2015). It is no exception that approximately 20% of the electorate voted for the new parties. Specifically, this concerned the elections in Lithuania (2000), Bulgaria (2001), Poland (2001, 2015), Slovakia (2016), Hungary (2010), the Czech Republic (2010, 2013, 2017) and Slovenia (2011, 2014). The greater degree of electoral volatility and willingness to switch from ‘old’ to new parties within the post-communist conditions ensues from the closer parasitic attachment of the relevant parties to non-transparent business and subsequently to the state. It arises out of a deeper corrosion of the party-society relationship (Subchapters 1.7, 1.8 and 4.15). This refers also to the fact that the post-1989 context of Central Europe was not able to produce such historically rooted parties as in Western Europe. On the contrary, the new pluralistic party system was constituted by excessively flexible parties, characterised by their ideological lack of commitment and by their short-term personal self-interest (Innes 2013). In practice, the post-communist parties were not strongly embedded in the social environment and, in theory, were not strongly entrenched in the cleavage structure. An important role was played by factors such as lower party membership and weaker voter attachment. It follows that such socially and ideologically loosely anchored parties became easy prey in the sense of party capture from the side of non-transparent business (Chapters 2 and 3) and subsequently optimal predecessors for the later formation of a new generation of completely non-rooted entrepreneurial parties. It is therefore unsurprising that within the environment of the post-communist ‘jungle,’ it was new businessmen, including oligarchs, namely those best equipped to create their ‘own’ entrepreneurial parties as a continuation of their business, who have made the greatest advances. And it can be no surprise that in the late phase of post-communism, the party systems became more diverse in terms of greater fragmentation. One of the biggest fragmentations occurred for example in the Czech Republic in connection with the 2017 elections to the lower house of parliament, in which as many as nine party subjects won representation after crossing the 5% national electoral threshold (Table 5.1).

“Old parties in new party systems?”  127 Table 5.1  Elections to Chamber of Deputies in the Czech Republic (1996–2017) Political parties/movements 1996

1998

2002

2006

2010

2013

2017

ČSSD ODS KDU-ČSL KSČM ODA SPR-RSČc) Unie Svobody Coalition KDU-ČSL and US Strana Zelených TOP 09 Věci veřejné ANO Úsvit přímé demokracie Tomia Okamury Svoboda a přímá demokracie – Tomio Okamura (SPD)b) Česká pirátská strana Starostové a nezávislí

26.44 29.62   8.08 10.33   6.36   8.01 -

32.31 27.74   9.00 11.03   8.60 -

30.20 24.47 Coalitiona) 18.51 Coalitiona) 14.27

32.32 35.58   7.22 12.81 -

22.08 20.22 11.27 -

20.45   7.72   6.78 14.91 -

  7,27 11,32   5,80   7,76 -

-

-

-

  6.29 -

16.70 10.88 -

11.99 18.65   6.88

  5,31 29,64 10,64

-

-

-

-

-

-

10,79   5,18

Source: www.volby.cz Notes: a) In 2002, the KDU-ČSL formed an electoral coalition with the Unie Svobody (US) in combination with the Demokratická unie (DEU – Democratic Union). b) Okamura’s second party. c) SPR-RSČ: Sdružení pro republiku-Republikánská strana Československa (Association for the Republic-Republican Party of Czechoslovakia).

Paradoxically, with Bolleyer (2013) having entitled her seminal work New Parties in Old Party Systems, the radical change that has occurred in the postcommunist region now suggests that we may reverse the title to Old Parties in New Party Systems. This relates especially to the Czech Republic, where in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2017 the new parties gained more than 50% of the vote, i.e. approximately 56% (Table 5.2). From this it ensues firstly that the question of which of the new parties succeeds in the short, medium or longer term is of lesser importance than the very establishment, existence and potential dominance of the new party sector itself. Secondly, at the moment when the influence of the new parties predominates and the logic of their operation begins to take effect, it is the order of the day to examine also the adaptation processes applied on the part of the of so-called old parties. The parallel existence of old and new party subsystems suggests a process of mutual influencing, which may lead to several divergent developmental trajectories: (a) the traditional party families will confirm their superiority; (b) the long-term co-existence of both party sectors will become ‘the norm’;

128  “Old parties in new party systems?” (c) the new party sector will prevail; (d) both party concepts will converge. In the case that the first scenario does not materialise, the concept of the newly born party will incorporate not only an examination of the life cycles of individual new parties from their foundation to their death, but especially the causes of the emergence and long-term persistence of the new party sector itself. In any case, it is possible to predict a process of mutual influencing of both party sectors. This ensues inter alia from the fact that the established parties are already in transformation due to their operation in increasingly individualised societies. Up to now, the predominant view has been that young, ad hoc entrepreneurial parties are more vulnerable, and therefore ephemeral, whilst the enduring, conventional parties are stabilised over the long term (Bolleyer 2013: 210). Nonetheless, in the turbulent environment of the twenty-first century, the opposite may now apply: the so-called old parties may appear cumbersome and therefore more vulnerable, while the new parties based on a flexible entrepreneurial principle are better equipped to adapt. The new parties then resemble elite or cadre parties in the sense of an effective electoral machine from the early years of modern democracies.

5.3  Central Europe: a new party subsystem Within the post-communist context, this book endeavours to identify not new types, but new kinds of parties within the framework of the given types. First of all, the democratic and market reforms of the early 1990s prepared fertile ground for a unique party mutation. However, within the framework of the formation of the clientelist parties or party capture, this chapter examines the subsequent reaction primarily in the form of new protest parties or the ‘anti-establishment reform parties,’ incorporating the new ‘business-firm parties.’ Specifically, this means that a new protest phenomenon was activated at the beginning of the third millennium as a response to the failure of the established parties, which led to the formation of a new group of parties. Haughton and Deegan-Krause (2015: 70) stated that in addition to the established parties, there emerged a distinct full-scale newparty subsystem. This phenomenon did not concern a mere short-term imbalance, but a medium-term trend of restructuring the party systems within the region. Allan Sikk (2011) explained the emergence of the genuinely new parties in the three Baltic States through their emphasis on the project of newness. The appeal of newness is based on the key message of introducing a new style of politics or change for the better. This presupposes an emphasis on a mixture of antiestablishment and anti-corruption stances together with programmatic flexibility and a charismatic leader. The approach of newness was subsequently elaborated on by Hanley and Sikk (2016), who during the period of 1997–2012 detected the electoral breakthroughs of anti-establishment reform parties on a scale sufficient to restructure the party systems in nine countries of Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, they

“Old parties in new party systems?”  129 determined that a key causal role in the origin of such protest-oriented parties was played by the factor of increasing perceived corruption. Bågenholm (2013) defined this new group of parties more narrowly as anti-corruption parties. Deegan-Krause (2010) also interpreted the rise of anti-establishment parties in connection with perceived corruption and the politicisation of corruption. The new anti-establishment reform parties in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe manifested qualitatively different characteristics than the conventional populist radical parties on the left or right in Western Europe such as the National Front in France, True Finns or Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. They differed especially in their demands for transparency and political reform within the framework of moderate social and economic policies and at the same time were open to compromise in the formation of coalitions. It is no coincidence that a substantial section of the anti-establishment reform parties was founded by entrepreneurs as their new business-firm parties. However, such a development within the region does not exclude the existence of traditional radical populist parties, e.g. the Hungarian Jobbik party and People’s Party Our Slovakia. A similar development relates also to Western Europe, at a moment when for various reasons a decline of the established parties is taking place. A classic example is that of Italy since 1994 and the electoral breakthrough of Berlusconi’s new party Forza Italia. The most recent example of this phenomenon is the ‘hurricane’ effect of Emmanuel Macron’s party En Marche! during the presidential and parliamentary elections in France 2017. Nevertheless, the contemporary forces for change may differ from country to country and from region to region. *** Throughout the entire post-communist region, there has been a recent mushrooming of new parties built on a top-down model, i.e. on the basis of the private initiative of political entrepreneurs. Although attention is focused primarily on the countries of Central Europe and the Czech Republic in particular, it is possible to include new parties which emerged also in the Baltic States as well as in Romania (Gherghina and Soare 2017). Therefore, in the field of comparative politics, there is a consensus that the party systems in Central and partially Eastern Europe are structurally unstable, thus they are characterised by a large number of party entries and exits (Haughton and Deegan-Krause 2015, Gherghina and Soare 2017). Such party turbulences have occurred even in states which were held up as examples of stability, such as the party systems in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and partially Poland. The emergence of new parties can be documented in the example of Poland. After the period of 2001–2011, characterised by a stable party system with four dominant parties operating as a kind of party cartel, new formations entered into politics. In the 2011 elections, the new subject Palikot Movement (Ruch Palikota) was elected to parliament. Subsequently, following the 2015 elections – after the Palikot Movement had lost its parliamentary representation – two further groupings emerged, namely the Association for the New Constitution Kukiz’s 15 (Kukiz’ 15) and Ryszard Petru’s Modern Party (Nowoczesna Ryszarda Petru). All of these

130  “Old parties in new party systems?” new parties were established only a few months before the elections as private initiatives of their charismatic founding fathers mostly from outside of politics (Kosowska-Gastol and Sobolewska-Myslik 2017). It is therefore no surprise that all three of these new Polish parties bore the names of their founders. At the same time, with the exception of Nowoczesna, the two others avoided the label of ‘political party,’ due to the lack of trust in political parties within Polish society. Nevertheless, all the new subjects operated as political parties. And because of the prevalent strong anti-establishment criticism in society, the new subjects demanded deep political reforms, including the introduction of national referenda in a radical obligatory version without any threshold. They also agreed upon a demand for the elimination of corruption and nepotism. In most cases they did not form a fully-fledged extra-parliamentary infrastructure. However, what differentiated these parties from each other was the specific profile of their founders or political entrepreneurs. Palikot was a flamboyant politician and businessman, one of the wealthiest men in Poland. Kukiz was a wellknown rock musician who had studied law and political science. Petru first of all became a politician, then worked for the World Bank and Polish banks, to return to politics a decade later (Kosowska-Gastol and Sobolewska-Myslik 2017). There is a clear phenomenon of the growing relevance of party leaders, often referred to as a presidentialisation of parties and politics (Poguntke and Webb 2005, Passarelli 2016). According to Kosowska-Gastol and Sobolewska-Myslik (2017: 139), these new three political projects do not fall within the category of business-firm parties because “they were not created on the basis of pre-existing commercial companies whose structures could be used for a political project.” As a result, these new parties are categorised within the entrepreneurial issue party model (Harmel and Svåsand 1993). The emergence of a new party subsystem similarly occurred in the cradle of the most stable party system in the post-communist region, the Czech Republic. As a result of the three successive earthquake elections of 2010, 2013 and 2017, the country witnessed the success of an array of new political subjects: Public Affairs (Věci veřejné), ANO, Dawn of Direct Democracy (Úsvit přímé demokracie), Pirate Party (Česká pirátská strana- Piráti), Mayors and Independents (Starostové a nezávislí-STAN)1 and Freedom and Direct Democracy (Svoboda a přímá demokracie-SPD). While in the 2010 elections the new parties obtained a total of 11%,2 by 2017 this had risen to approximately 56% of the vote (Table 5.2). By contrast, in the period of 2006–2017, the combined share of the two largest established parties, the ODS and Social Democrats, fell from 68% to 18.5%. With the exception of the Pirates and STAN, all the other new parties more or less manifested characteristics of business-firm parties. These subjects  – especially the most successful ANO – shall be dealt with in the next section of this chapter. It is striking that a virtually identical scenario, with the establishment of a new party subsystem, took place in Slovenia. Similarly to in Poland and the Czech Republic, the Slovenian party system ranked among the most stable. And here

“Old parties in new party systems?”  131 Table 5.2 Electoral support for a set of new parties in elections to Chamber of Deputies in the Czech Republic, 2010, 2013 and 2017 (above the 5% threshold) New subjects

2010

2013

2017

Věci veřejné ANO Úsvit SPD Česká pirátská strana STAN Total

10.88 – – – – – 10.88

– 18.65   6.88 – – – 25.53

– 29.64 – 10.64 10.79   5.18 56.25

Source: www.volby.cz; Public Affairs: Věci veřejné; Pirates: Pirátská strana (Pirate Party); Dawn: Úsvit přímé demokracie Tomia Okamury (Dawn of Direct Democracy of Tomio Okamura); SPD: Svoboda a přímá demokracie-Tomio Okamura (Freedom and Direct Democracy-Tomio Okamura); STAN: Starostové a nezávislí (Mayors and Independents).

also there was an at least partial party cartelisation. Subsequently, in the 2011 and 2014 elections, four new successful parties entered parliament and two of them even into government, one as a junior partner, the second as the leading government party, holding the post of Prime Minister. And again a scenario occurred in which all the new subjects were founded only a few months prior to the elections. All were also established under the name of their founding fathers and thus operated as personality-based parties. Once again, the reasons for radical political change in the country were repeated: structural corruption, the problem of ‘criminal state capture’ and economic crises linked with austerity measures (Krašovec 2017). In the case of Slovakia, all the parliamentary elections between 2002 and 2016, with the single exception of 2006, resulted in the arrival of party newcomers. The de-consolidation process of the party system reached its peak in the 2016 elections, when a record-breaking number of four new parties achieved parliamentary representation. Electoral support for parties founded by businessmen, former or acting, increased from 12% in 2010 to 30% of the vote in 2016 (Marušiak 2017: 181). Of all the new parties since 2002, four of them can be defined as the product of the political ambitions of businessmen. Such parties were founded on the basis of a private initiative of their founders, who were the main source of party financing. In all four parties, their founders were active or former medium-sized businessmen. Rusko was the owner of a daily newspaper and a commercial radio station as well as the TV channel with the largest audience. Sulík was the former owner of the company Fax & Copy. Matovič was the former owner of a company publishing thirty-six regional weekly newspapers. Kollár was the owner of a private radio station. From the beginning all these leaders made use of protest rhetoric such as anti-establishment and anti-corruption criticism, and since 2015 some of these have added anti-immigration and Eurosceptic appeals (Marušiak 2017). Only two of these parties managed to remain in parliament for more than one tenure: Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) led by the businessman Sulík was elected

132  “Old parties in new party systems?” to parliament in three successive elections – in 2010, 2012 and 2016; Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) managed by the businessman Matovič achieved parliamentary representation in 2012 and 2016. At the same time, these parties were not interested in building a developed party apparatus or local and regional party branches (Marušiak 2017).

5.4  ‘Flash’ and ‘start-up’ parties The majority of the new political projects have consciously avoided the label of ‘political party,’ and in their name have instrumentally used the term ‘movement.’ This is linked with the lack of trust in the official parties within post-communist societies. In any case, these movements have operated as political parties in elections, parliament and government. As a result, in this text they are treated as political parties. Such new parties or movements have begun to break down the established order in both theory and practice. A surprisingly rapid unfreezing of old historical cleavages has taken place (Inglehart 1971). The original ‘sacred’ division of the party spectrum according to the left versus right programmatic profile still retains its legitimacy, but under the new conditions it is rather of secondary significance. The majority of the new parties have arrived on the political scene brandishing a general protest rhetoric, and at the same time they transgress the boundaries of left-right politics in the spirit of the old Chinese proverb: It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white. As long as it catches mice it is a good cat. It is now feasible to designate two phenomena in connection with the appearance of new non-rooted entrepreneurial parties in the post-communist environment. The new parties in Central and partially in Eastern Europe after 2000 – parachuted in mostly from outside of politics – can be referred to as (1) flash parties and/or sometimes (2) start-up parties. In the first case, the key characteristic is the rapid emergence of new parties and their early electoral success, often linked to their entry into parliament or even government. It is noticeable that this cluster of parties constitutes an entirely new alternative to the traditional parties. In general, the transition from mass to modern elite parties is accompanied by a new phenomenon, which is a significant reduction of the time period between the establishment of a new political subject and its electoral success. Just as in nature we encounter the phenomenon of flash floods, in politics we may observe flash parties, flash politicians or flash politics. These so-called flash parties with flash politicians require only one or two years, sometimes even a few months, before they occupy first place in public opinion polls or directly attain representation in parliament and government. A textbook example of the meteoric rise of a new political subject in Slovenia is the Party of Miro Cerar. However, this party was not formed by a populist, godfather or magnate, but a professor of constitutional law from Ljubljana University, Miroslav Cerar, from whom the party took its name. Cerar decided to enter politics in protest against the corruption and incompetence of domestic politicians in mid-May 2014. “On 2 June he founded his own party, after one week he was

“Old parties in new party systems?”  133 leading in public opinion polls and another week later 41% of voters wanted him to become Prime Minister” (Vodička 2014). In July the spectacular rise of the new party was crowned with its victory in early elections, obtaining 35% of votes, and the subsequent appointment of Miro Cerar as Prime Minister of a coalition government. In summary, a mere six weeks had passed between the establishment of the party and its electoral triumph. Several other post-communist countries also became a hotbed for emergence of so-called flash politicians. For example, Slovakia was not merely a laboratory for the advent of a new party subsystem but also the arena that witnessed the success of a flash politicians, namely Andrej Kiska, previously an unknown entrepreneur and philanthropist who became the surprise winner in the direct presidential elections of 2014. A similar situation was repeated in the following elections in 2019, when the previously unknown lawyer and civil activist Zuzana Čaputová was elected as Slovakia’s first female president. In addition, the start-up parties are political projects established specifically as an instrumental financial investment. These are parties founded by a political businessman, investing and attempting to find a gap in the political market. Sometimes the investment brings a return, at other times not. Such start-up projects can be established on a local or national level, with the aim of promoting the entrepreneur’s self-interests on different territorial levels of the given country. Moreover, if the establishment of local or other small parties proves to be successful, then a businessman may implement a strategy of taking over this local subject and subsequently develop it into a nationwide entity. For instance, in Slovakia the entrepreneur Kollár first of all took over a small regional party and renamed it We Are Family-Boris Kollár, after which it attained parliamentary representation in the 2016 elections (Marušiak 2017). Similarly, in the Czech Republic the businessman Bárta took control of a local Prague party named Public Affairs and subsequently succeeded in the 2010 elections, immediately becoming a junior partner in a coalition government. These phenomena are the product of several domestic and external factors. They include not only the crisis of the established parties and the later immigration crisis, but also potentially economic recession as well as the rapid spread of information via new electronic media and thus also rapidly accumulated civil dissatisfaction. Furthermore, there is a willingness on the part of charismatic personalities and businessmen to enter politics to represent new parties and movements.

5.5  From mass to modern elite parties The variability of new party species within historical and territorial contexts increases with how progressively the de-alignment process continues, meaning an erosion of the ties between parties and society, associated with a decline in party identification as well as party membership (Inglehart 1997, Mair and van Biezen 2001, Dalton 2002, Scarrow 2002). In addition, the post-communist region has for a long time witnessed a limited party organisational capacity and higher electoral volatility than in Western Europe (Gallagher 2012). A role in the establishment of

134  “Old parties in new party systems?” the new parties has also been played by socio-economic changes as well as by the new ‘digital age’ (Farrell and Webb 2002). Sooner or later an unstructured economic, social and political environment is created, into which it is easier to parachute entirely new parties which have no pre-existing rootedness. This broader category of the non-rooted party covers a wide range of forms. From the perspective of party typology, it is of fundamental importance not to conceive the individual kinds of new party as a completely new evolutionary type (Kosowska-Gastol and Sobolewska-Myslik 2017). These new parties fit within a whole range of attempts to conceptualise new party models since WWII: the catch-all party (Kirchheimer 1966), the electoral-professional party (Panebianco 1988), the entrepreneurial issue party (Harmel and Svåsand 1993), the cartel party (Katz and Mair 1995), parties as franchise organisations (Carty 2004), business-firm parties (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999), the personal vehicle party (Lucardie 2000), entrepreneurial parties (Krouwel 2006, 2012), antiestablishment reform parties (Hanley and Sikk 2016) or the clientelist parties analysed in this book. In terms of party development, only a few of these party species represent a linear evolution in the sense that one type has replaced another in a process in which each pertained to a different historical era. On the contrary, many of these party models are specific and exist in parallel alongside one another or emerge and expire. Nevertheless, the following evolutionary triad of basic party types can be considered fundamental milestones of party development: elite or cadre parties (Duverger 1954, Katz and Mair 2002) – mass parties (Duverger 1954, Katz and Mair 2002) – modern elite parties. Within this context, in the contemporary era of 1950–2020 a broad transition has been taking place from mass to modern elite parties. If the original elite parties reflected the transition from feudal to industrial society in the nineteenth century, and the mass parties belonged to the industrial Europe of the end of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, then the modern elite parties are the product of the transition to post-industrial society taking place approximately since 1950 up to the present day. In other words, the majority of the aforementioned party species represent ‘merely’ a spectrum of individual kinds within a more general process of transition from mass to modern elite parties. It applies that each individual party kind reflects certain specifics of individual groups of countries within given territories and at a given time since 1950. The modern elite party as a broad concept is based primarily on elitist and marketing characteristics and strategies. In general, quality takes precedence over quantity. The elitist character of the party is the main feature, meaning that the founding elites built their parties from the top down as strongly hierarchical organisations. Hence, under the leader’s personal strategy, the party in public office dominates, notably its representatives in government. On the other hand, the party membership, local and regional structures are either marginalised or even missing. Mazzoleni and Voerman refer to such an organisational arrangement as a renewal of the old elite party or a party as an association. Whilst on the one hand it includes a minimal number of real grass-roots members, on the other hand it

“Old parties in new party systems?”  135 also includes a new ‘informal membership’ such as “(candidate) representatives, volunteers, paid staff and sponsors” (2017: 784–785). At the same time, such parties pursue an increasingly media-seeking and vote-seeking strategy. They are highly professionalised and capital-intensive driven. In this sense, it is possible to refer to this model as the ‘modern elite party.’ Certainly, there are significant differences between the ‘old’ elite or cadre parties and the modern elite entity. For instance, new business-firm parties as one form of non-rooted entrepreneurial party do not derive their origin from individual groupings of parliamentary representatives as in the case of an original elitecadre party (or from significant social groups as in the case of mass parties). The business-firm parties are established and administered like private firms and thus according to the leader’s personal strategy. This relates to the internal organisation and decision-making process and to the party’s programmatic stance (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999, Krouwel 2006, 2012). In any case, at the centre of the new generation of political parties is the leader, who behaves “in the manner of a dominus (an owner) without significant counterweight, and he or she benefits from almost entirely undisputed support from followers” (Vercesi 2015: 399). Vercesi referred to these projects as owner parties, Gherghina and Soare (2017) as personal parties and Krašovec (2017) as new personality-based parties. In their extreme version, private firm parties have only a few members: for example, in Slovakia, the movement Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) had only four fully fledged members and obtained 11% of the vote in 2016; the movement We Are Family-Boris Kollár had seven members and in the 2016 elections received almost 7% of votes. In neither of these so-called owner parties in Slovakia was the leadership accountable to the party members, because permanent local and regional structures were entirely lacking. It is no surprise that in both cases, the headquarters of the political movements were located in the buildings of the leader’s companies. In the latter case, the party owner Kollár was authorised to appoint his deputies and also district and regional co-ordinators. Moreover, the party presidium under his personal influence decided upon the admission and expulsion of members (Marušiak 2017). Within this context, a sophisticated private-firm party with its clear hierarchy can be very effective. This applies mainly in times of an electoral campaign and crisis management. They are also better equipped for operating within the conditions of ever higher electoral volatility and accelerating technological development. Such a new type of party can be referred to as a modern elite party in the sense of a ‘non-rooted’ entrepreneurial party (Subchapters 5.1 and 5.2). Consequently, in contemporary democracies it is possible to distinguish between two organisational poles – the new party and the old traditional party: the new one in the form of the modern elite party represents an opposition to the old one in the form of the programme-based mass party. It is evident that a mixture of characteristics of both party types prevails today during the transition to post-industrial society. Within the context of the crisis of the established parties, not only in post-communist

136  “Old parties in new party systems?” Central and Eastern Europe, there is a growing tendency towards the adoption of entrepreneurial strategies and further features of modern elite parties. *** To sum up, the electoral breakthrough of the subsystem of new parties may in reality herald the advent of a new era of elite parties, which in the post-communist environment is directly linked with the clientelist failure of the established parties and at the same time with the new parameters of post-industrial development. The party transformation in the direction of ‘new newness’ is thus a symptom of the decline of the traditional ideological mass parties, reflecting the original cleavage structure (Lipset and Rokkan 1967). The new elite parties with entrepreneurial features based on programmatic flexibility, minimal membership, a loose organisational structure and a dominant leader may become an alternative to the traditional mass parties, whether they coexist in parallel with them, in approximately equal strength or come to predominate over them. They may thus confirm the argument of Sikk (2011: 480) and van Biezen (2005: 169), namely that the new experiences of young democracies with the emergence of new parties should be seriously incorporated in theory building. Paradoxically, it may finally occur that the long-standing democracies of the West are considered a ‘special case’ due to the persistence of the abnormal influence of traditional cleavages on the stability of the party system.

5.6  Dis/continuity with the clientelist past Up to now, the new parties have primarily been observed from the perspective of the concept of a party family, suggesting a division between traditional rooted parties and new ad hoc non-rooted entrepreneurial parties. This view primarily emphasises their potentially distinct organisational and programmatic aspects. Such an approach works well in the ‘normal’ circumstances of Western democracies, but is limited in its application to the post-communist region. Therefore, in the countries of Central and partially Eastern Europe it is necessary to ask several principal questions: does the emergence of the new parties contribute to continuity or discontinuity with the clientelist environment? Does the existence of the new parties not in fact lead to a continuation or even deepening of processes of party capture as well as state capture? And what role is played in this respect by the individual subjects within the framework of the subsystem of new parties? These questions are legitimate, since it would be naïve to think that the new protest entities will genuinely become the magic wand that makes the whole postcommunist clientelist arrangement disappear. On the contrary, it is possible to view these new subjects as using anti-corruption and anti-establishment appeals as a mere façade in order to conceal their actual self-interest. It is clear that new parties can manifest both potentials, thus a positive ability to weaken nontransparent informal networks and informal politics but at the same time a negative power to exacerbate the conditions of the clientelist regime. Such an approach of continuity or discontinuity with the clientelist past thus precisely proceeds from

“Old parties in new party systems?”  137 the previously mentioned theoretical framework of the demand and supply-side related to the post-communist context. In this sense, three broad categories of new parties can be distinguished in relation to the current clientelist regime: (1) Regarding the continuity-side of this approach, new subjects may emerge with so-called negative potential; (a) some of them can join already existing opaque informal structures; (b) others can build a completely new ‘clientelist empire.’ (2) Concerning the discontinuity-side of this approach, new entities can be discerned which disrupt the clientelist status quo, and thus make efforts to return to the standard conditions of fair competition on political and economic markets. (3) An ‘in-between’ category exists, i.e. a kind of new party which embraces both potentials – positive and negative – either at the same time or over the course of time. Such an evolutionary entity reflects that real political life is not black and white and, moreover, it is about a constantly ongoing process which presupposes variability over time. In the case of the Czech Republic, new entities can be identified in all three broad party categories within the continuity or discontinuity approach. An entity that can be regarded up to now as a positive example of an anti-clientelist party is the Pirate party. At the other end of the scale, examples of new subjects with negative potential are the Public Affairs party and Freedom and Direct Democracy (previously known as Dawn of Direct Democracy). Nevertheless, within the context of the entire book, the most important is to examine the party trajectory of the most successful party, namely the controversial Movement ANO 2011. This party belongs to the ‘in-between’ category. However, because it represents an extraordinary ‘oligarchical’ entrepreneurial project, reminiscent of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, it poses a potentially substantial threat to the quality of democracy. This relates to the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a single party owner embracing political, economic, media and security power. Within this context, the investigative journalist Josef Klíma (2018a) distinguished three phases of the post-1989 history of the Czech Republic in connection with crime: 1. period: ‘Wild East’ (the 1990s; organised crime); 2. period: ‘Clientelist-corrupt’ (crime as a component of politics); 3. period: ‘Oligarchic’ (since 2013 – a new ‘oligarchic’ party in politics). The first period represents the dominant influence of organised crime, headed by typical gangsters, which involved murders. By contrast, the second period is typified by a shift of structural corruption into the political sphere in terms of systemic exploitation of state resources. The analysis of this theme is the main focus of the book. Finally, the third period begins with the entry of the second biggest

138  “Old parties in new party systems?” businessman in the country, Andrej Babiš, into politics by means of his businessfirm party ANO, examined in the following text. At the same time, the author of this book would characterise the contemporary period alternatively as: oligarchic tendency and authentic protest. With regard to Babiš’s ANO, this political actor is now in its sixth year in the government and at present, in 2019, it is the senior partner in a two-member minority coalition, with Babiš himself holding the post of Prime Minister. It is by far the most successful new formation in the political landscape, maintaining a long-term leading position in public opinion polls with approximately 30% of the vote, whilst the second party in the order of preferences has about 15%. For all these reasons, this party entity will be the object of further detailed scrutiny. 5.6.1  The business-firm party: ANO Why is it crucial to analyse the Movement ANO 2011 (ANO3)? The reason is that it can follow on from the post-communist clientelist path of the last three decades in the Czech Republic and thus potentially install a more direct and thoroughgoing phase of state capture. Andrej Babiš, as the second wealthiest entrepreneur in the country and the founder and owner of ANO, has the opportunity to take to extremes the idea that politics is a mere continuation of business. More specifically, he does not need to engage in a complicated and costly process of influencing politicians, civil servants and journalists. He does not need to organise party privatisation and colonisation ‘from below’ and ‘from above’ (Chapters 2 and 3). As a result, it is easier and cheaper for him when he directly owns everything, or directly influences it from his position as Prime Minister. In this case, there is no clear ‘client-client’ relationship between informal political and business-friendly circles. There is ‘only’ one single man with his private party – and with his private giant business conglomerate and private media – prepared to expand into parliament and government. Nevertheless, it does not mean that the scheme of the client-client pattern can be discarded, but it can be profoundly modified. The realisation of a potential negative alternative in the form of clientelist continuation or even an authoritarian tendency through such an ‘oligarchic empire’ depends on several internal and external variables such as • • • • • •

party size and electoral strength; the scale of his economic power (firm size, ties to the state and local communities); the scope of his media ownership; the capability of his security section; the balance of power within the party system; in/dependent pillars, e.g. public media, judiciary, etc.

Regarding Babiš’s unprecedented concentration of power, this does not constitute merely a partial conflict of interests but a potential threat to the overall control of the entire political system, should suitable conditions arise. It is clear that the clientelist or exploitative regime formed in the Czech Republic up to 2013 has given

“Old parties in new party systems?”  139 birth to a new political predator, in comparison with whom the former regional bosses and godfathers are rather less effective ‘old dinosaurs.’ As a result, it is all the more important to maintain a system of checks and balances as well as the independence of the basic state institutions. *** With regard to the party model, ANO does not constitute a unique phenomenon worldwide, but is most definitely a case of ‘déjà vu’ (Klíma 2015, Kopeček 2016, Just and Charvát 2016, Charvát and Just 2016, Hloušek and Kopeček 2017, Cirhan and Kopecký 2017). It is created in the image of Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia, which embodies the prototype of the ‘private’ business-firm party. As the magnate Berlusconi formed his party Forza Italia within the space of just a few months on the basis of his commercial empire Fininvest, which incorporated virtual monopoly ownership of private television channels, the magnate Babiš formed ANO ‘on the shoulders’ of his Agrofert holding. This conglomerate incorporates approximately 250 subjects from the chemical industry, foodstuffs, forestry and timber, technology and transport, renewable resources and media. It operates primarily in the Czech Republic, but also has further operations in eighteen countries on four continents. In total it has about 34,000 employees (Agrofert 2017). Both parties represent de facto political divisions of economic giants. For this reason, such similar political groupings are termed private business-firm parties. Their main defining feature and therefore genetic origin is the fact that it is primarily a businessman who owns and controls the political subject, either because he founded it or subsequently took it over. This means that the existence of the founding firm precedes the origin or takeover of the given party or movement. An essential element is that such a party makes use of the resources of the private sector, thus of the given political entrepreneur (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999: 320). Babiš founded ANO as his private political firm or political division on the basis of already existing business firms, from which he draws personnel, financial and material resources. ANO was established on a top-down approach. Specifically, in autumn 2011, the founding group originated from the Prague headquarters of Babiš’s Agrofert company. Additionally, the main co-ordinators, who in the period of 2012–2013 were assigned the task of building the regional and districtlevel structure, were selected with the help of Agrofert’s human resources methods and as a result had to undergo psychological tests (Kopeček 2016). Moreover, immediately after its first elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2013, ANO had the most expensive campaign. Officially it spent 111 million Czech crowns, which came primarily from its founder and owner Babiš (Králiková 2014). The following statements from Babiš as the owner and leader of ANO were hardly surprising: “I pay, therefore I decide.” “The party is connected to my person. The party is me.”

(Mlejnek 2014) (Foy 2016)

140  “Old parties in new party systems?” This was documented by the course of the ANO party congress in 2015, at which Babiš was elected chairman with a vote of 186:0, with one invalid vote. There was an absence of any kind of debate. It was evident from the course of the congress that only ‘authorised persons’ were to be elected to the leadership of ANO. The essence of the congress was captured by the former vice-chairman of ANO, Jan Hammer, in the following words: “It wasn’t a party congress but a general meeting of a company that has a single shareholder” (Menschik 2015). At its party congress in February 2017, ANO further reinforced the concentration of power in the hands of its leader. The congress approved changes to the party statutes enabling the party chairman to intervene in the selection of party lists of candidates for all forms of elections, which has no parallel in democratic parties. Thus Babiš acquired the power to refuse to authorise candidate lists or amend them arbitrarily, meaning that he will be able to remove any candidate, alter the order of candidates and add new ones. Previously this power was exclusive to an ANO party commission composed of members of the presidium and chairmen of the regional organisations (Statutes 2017). It is evident that the entrepreneur-founder built his organisation as a political firm, i.e. with the aim of securing his leadership role and thus the loyalty of the party membership, especially that of the party in public office and the party in central office. For this reason, he consistently applied a personnel policy focused on (a) controlling the recruitment of key people within the party from his Agrofert group and (b) controlling nominations of candidates for all forms of elections. Both factors contributed to a considerable degree to the homogeneity of the party elite, which is an important condition for reducing vulnerability to internal conflicts or ensuring the longer-term party organisational success of a young and immature political subject. Concerning data relating to the recruitment of ANO’s party elite, party cohesiveness was contributed to by the fact that 67% of all the party elite were from a managerial occupational background. The managerial category incorporated company directors, individuals in executive positions and entrepreneurs (Cirhan and Kopecký 2017). Moreover, a fifth of ANO’s leadership held or still holds managerial positions within the Agrofert conglomerate. And even more importantly, managers from Babiš’s firms occupy crucial party posts. For example, Faltýnek as the first deputy chairman and the leader of ANO’s parliamentary club was a member of Agrofert’s Board of Directors (Kopeček 2016, Cirhan and Kopecký 2017). It is clear that ANO is no longer a party in the classic sense, but operates “as a political firm mainly because of the personnel ‘corporate-party’ intersection in its leadership.” Cirhan and Kopecký (2017: 127) further stated: The common professional Agrofert-based past of the ANO elites who occupy crucial party posts alters the relationships between the party elites and party leader, and creates loyal relationships forged by former professional links. ANO’s internal relations resemble a firm-like hierarchy and dependencies that result in party cohesion, and this mitigates internal conflicts.

“Old parties in new party systems?”  141 Such extreme centralisation and the style of management of ANO is also linked to a number of specific factors: (i) that Babiš established his Agrofert business firm himself, which contrasts with the model of collective management that predominated among Czechoslovak financial groups (Kaiser 2015: 10); (ii) that Babiš was motivated to extreme party centralisation by his negative experience with the independently elected vice-chairmen of ANO at the party congress in March 2013, as well as (iii) the political destinies of Bárta and Okamura, whose own business-firm parties – Public Affairs and Dawn of Direct Democracy – spun out of their control. The phenomenon of extreme intra-party centralisation connects also to the minimal membership of ANO. Business-firm parties do not require a broad grassroots membership or dense territorial network. From the perspective of effective management, these represent inappropriate intermediary elements which can interfere with the managerial style of running the party. For the business-firm kind of party, the optimal model is the ‘truly slim party organisation’ – a kind of skeleton – suitable for effective operation on the political market. Everything else may be useful only insofar as it functions as a certain masquerade reminiscent of traditional fully fledged party membership (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999: 328–329). The strategy of maintaining an exclusive tiny membership was described by the former vice-chairwoman of ANO as follows: Quantity is not our priority, we are interested in people who have experience and a strong professional sense. (Válková 2013) The experiences of the four business-firm parties in the Czech Republic – similarly to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party – confirm the lack of interest on the part of their owners and leaders in a fully-fledged membership that could contribute to the formation of a programme and decision-making. In the Czech Republic, their party membership was very small: Bárta’s Public Affairs party had approximately 2000 members (Hloušek 2012: 333); Okamura’s first party Dawn had only 9 members and his second SPD party approximately 5800 members. At the time of the 2013 elections, ANO had almost 1000 members, which had risen to 3271 by Table 5.3  Change in ANO Membership (2013–2019) Year

Number of members

January 2013 June 2013 April 2014 January 2015 January 2016 July 2019

  545   793 1532 2560 2725 3271

Source: Czech Television (2015), Czech News Agency (2016c), Brodníčková and Danda (2018), Brodníčková (2019).

142  “Old parties in new party systems?” July 2019 (Brodníčková 2019).4 As documented in Table 5.3, ANO’s membership has gradually increased. In summary, ANO as a private business-firm party embodies a kind of modernentrepreneurial elite party, which represents a ‘counter-model’ to the traditional mass party and is distinguished by the following fundamental characteristics: (a) it is built upon an external private business source, i.e. a pre-existing firm; and (b) the organisational structure functions as a kind of a political division built according to the model of a private company. This gives rise to excessive personalisation and centralisation, a personnel ‘corporate-party’ intersection in its leadership, the leader’s control over nominations for elections at all levels and political marketing and professionalisation. 5.6.2  ANO’s positive and negative potentials With regard to ANO, there is a wide spectrum of opinions about its role in politics. The ideal pole contains the optimistic vision that places ANO at the forefront of endeavours of civil society to stand up to systemic corruption and clientelism, with the aim of bringing about an overall revitalisation of democracy. The second, negative pole defines itself in opposition to ANO, viewing the private businessfirm party as a further phase of the privatisation and colonisation of political parties and of politics in general. In such a view, ANO constitutes a danger of the oligarchisation of democracy and the advent of authoritarian tendencies. Within an analysis on the level of the party and political systems, both the positives and negatives in connection with the functioning of ANO will be investigated. Specifically, the following will be considered: (1) the positive potential of ANO from the perspective of its possible effect directed towards weakening or breaking the clientelist structures hitherto functioning mainly within the established parties and within the wider political system; (2) the negative potential of ANO, or the threat potential ensuing from the unprecedentedly high concentration of economic, political, media and security power in the hands of the country’s second wealthiest entrepreneur Babiš and thus in the hands of ANO. It is symptomatic that before entering politics with ANO, Babiš made two strategic decisions: first of all, in 2011, he established a security agency of his Agrofert holding concurrently with his business-firm party ANO in the same year. Later in 2013 – four months before his first elections to the Chamber of Deputies – he purchased one of the largest media groups in the Czech Republic. This means that before entering politics, Babiš, in addition to his already existing economic base, acquired the security and media components of his power. Thus ANO has a significant inbuilt threat potential, which endangers the stability of the party system and political order. From the macro-level perspective, the main threat follows from the excessive concentration of economic, political, media and security power in the hands of a single leader and his narrow party circle, impairing the mechanism of checks and balances. This is linked to the promotion of the self-interests of a political entrepreneur and the ensuing potential

“Old parties in new party systems?”  143 tendencies towards abuse of power and arrogance on the part of ANO politicians and companies within the Agrofert holding. It is relevant to mention an event which was recorded by the documentary film Matrix AB (Klusák 2015). Employees from Babiš’s company Stroj Agro Ješovice, which belongs to the Agrofert holding, in a competitive battle with the farmer Rada, destroyed his wheat and corn harvest using herbicide. The damage was enumerated at 4 million Czech crowns. Rada stated: It had never previously occurred in the history of agriculture in the Czech Republic that wheat for the food industry, which is virtually ready for bread making, was sprayed with a herbicide or poison. This is predatory behaviour – as in nature, even the last fish must be driven out of the fish pond. (Klusák 2015) The aforementioned threat potentials on a macro-level give rise to several dangers, namely the potential for misuse of the security agency of Agrofert as well as the Financial Analytical Unit at the Ministry of Finance. These concerns are prefigured by the unprecedented experience with the operation of Bárta’s Public Affairs party, which was built on the interests of the country’s largest private security agency. This involved systematic surveillance and the compilation of compromising materials against Bárta’s political competitors and even his own fellow party members (Subchapter 4.6). Babiš’s private security agency of the Agrofert holding can be misused as a security division working for ANO. It comprises an extensive network of former employees from the ranks of the police, secret services and army, as mapped by the server Neovlivni.cz operated by the investigative journalist Sabina Slonková (2015). This security division was distinguished by its unusual size. Kaiser (2015) noted: According to unofficial data it employs around 60 people, which is several times the numbers usual in other corporations. Another approximately 30 specialists work for the division on a contractual basis. The director came here from the anti-corruption police, where he was a deputy chief, and now beneath him are former members of elite police units, namely the Organised Crime Investigation Unit, the anti-corruption police or the Special Activities Unit – the division that ensures wiretaps and so-called ‘surveillance’ for the police. (Kaiser 2015: 11) As concerns the Financial Analytical Unit, which falls within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, there is a concern with regard to its misuse on the basis of the battle against tax evasion, primarily against Babiš’s competitors. For this reason, it is desirable to separate this unit from the jurisdiction of the given ministry controlled by ANO since 2014 and to place it under the administration of the cabinet as a whole. Moreover, in the period of 2014–2017, Babiš further

144  “Old parties in new party systems?” strengthened his potential in the area of security by extending the competence of the Customs Administration, which was transferred into the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance controlled by ANO, in investigating criminal activities. Within the context of concentrated power, Babiš’s media group would pose a threat even for an advanced democracy, let alone for the fragile post-communist Czech Republic. This is despite the fact that there is a relatively open media market and free public media. Babiš owns an extensive media group which includes the largest daily newspapers as well as the most popular radio station, internet portal and music television channel. Furthermore, in the media sphere Babiš has attempted to extend his influence also to public television. Via his parliamentary club in the Chamber of Deputies, Babiš wished to influence the selection of the director of Czech Television in April 2017. At the same time, he launched an unscrupulous campaign against Czech Television at the moment when it took a critical approach to the scandals he was involved in. He maligned its editors as ‘manipulated trash,’ filing a complaint against them and demanding their punishment. His aim was not only to intimidate the editors but also to undermine public trust in Czech Television as a politically neutral institution just a few months before the parliamentary elections (Honzejk 2017, Bartoníček and Frouzová 2017). The business-firm parties, and ANO primarily, are also linked with threat potential  – in particular a tendency towards authoritarianism. This tendency follows from the very nature of the concentration of power above all from the extreme centralisation of decision-making. At present the party is characterised by a monolithic homogeneity of opinion and an absence of intra-party checks and balances. In the Czech Republic, the order of the day is legal regulation for the purpose of preventing a political entrepreneur with a gigantic conglomerate behind him from transforming himself into a predator of the political system. The emergence of such an acute threat could be averted by the adoption of complex legislative measures, in particular a tightening of the law concerning conflict of interests, as well as laws on public tenders and party financing. In order to comply with the law on conflict of interests which was passed in 2017, Babiš transferred his firms into two trust funds, placing his reliable colleagues from Agrofert in the positions of administrators and entrusting supervision to his spouse. This measure enabled Babiš to maintain an indirect influence over his transferred assets and to become the fully fledged owner of his original firms once again in the future (Pergler 2017). *** Regarding the positive potential of ANO, it is possible to put forth the hypothesis that the model of the private business-firm party can be considered more effective than the traditional mass party model and function as a credible proliberal democratic political entity. Such a situation could occur within the postcommunist environment, in which local, regional and national clientelist cliques significantly limit the functionality of the established parties.

“Old parties in new party systems?”  145 During the period of 2013–2019, this hypothesis has so far surprisingly been confirmed, though only on the national level of politics. This relates to the period in which ANO first entered parliament and became a coalition partner, or more precisely speaking proved its positive coalition potential. It is attested to so far by the relative stability of the two coalition governments of which ANO has been a member, in contrast with the turbulences of the previous cabinets, which were convulsed by government crises and corruption scandals. It is also documented by the fact that during this period, Babiš and his ANO have consistently topped public opinion polls. *** In summary, within the framework of the dimension of the political system, the following fundamental characteristics of ANO have been defined: (1) The advent of the private business-firm parties within the post-communist environment heralds a new phase of the privatisation of political parties and of politics. (2) The unprecedented concentration of political, economic, media and security power of Babiš’s ANO produces an unprecedented conflict of interests which jeopardises the checks and balances of the political system. (3) The threat to liberal democracy, i.e. a tendency towards oligarchisation and authoritarianism, would become potentially acute in circumstances wherein ANO would be able to win a parliamentary majority in the lower house of parliament and thus be in a position to form a one-party government (reminiscent of the situation in Hungary and Poland). (4) ANO may play a positive role in forcing the established clientelist parties into a period of reflection and transformation on the basis of political competition. (5) In the context of a chronic crisis of the conventional parties, the model of the private business-firm party proved to be more effective than the traditional party model, though only on the national level (positive coalition potential during the period of 2013–2019). 5.6.3  Quo vadis ANO? The findings on the level of the individual party as well as of the party system in connection with the positive and negative potentials of ANO are controversial. Concerning the overall output of ANO’s functioning within the party and political systems, both potentials were detected. On the basis of its brief experience within two coalition governments in the period of 2014–2019, it is possible to note that so far the positive potential has prevailed. Such constructive potential is displayed in three forms: (1) It can be concluded that under certain crisis conditions of the conventional parties, the model of the private-business firm can be considered to be more effective than the traditional party model, at least in the short-term, which relates only to the national level and mainly to the party in public office. After

146  “Old parties in new party systems?” almost six years of its operation in government, according to election results, public support for the party has increased from 19% in 2013 to 30% in 2017, and according to contemporary opinion polls in 2019 remains at approximately 30% over the long term. (2) At the same time, ANO, through its active presence within the party system, specifically with its fierce anti-establishment rhetoric and demands for political change, creates a demanding competitive environment which contributes to the rejuvenation of the conventional parties in the sense of ridding themselves of their layers of clientelism and corruption. (3) Finally, even if a democratic deficit exists within ANO in terms of intraparty mechanisms, in the context of the constitutional system it has so far operated as a democratic subject with regard to both domestic and foreign policies. ANO confirms its coalition potential, which has contributed to the anchoring of the Czech Republic within the Euro-Atlantic space. Up to now, ANO remains committed to a mainstream model of liberal democracy and the market economy, together with fierce anti-establishment rhetoric and demands for political change. Thus, this work confirms that today’s ANO (till April 2019) corresponds to the broader concept of anti-establishment reform parties of Hanley and Sikk (2016). As regards the negative potential of ANO, there is a question as to whether or not ANO poses a threat to liberal democracy in the Czech Republic. In general, in political science the theoretical conclusion applies that undemocratic behaviour within the party may generate undemocratic tendencies in the party’s ‘external’ engagements in government. Although ANO formally adheres to intra-party democracy, this is not a traditional democratic party. Due to its nature of decisionmaking as a private firm it cannot be such. ANO, in its essence, represents an anti-party in the sense of its contrast with the mass party model. Within the context of the parliamentary elections held in October  2017, in which ANO clearly triumphed with almost 30% of the vote, and also within the context of the re-election of president Zeman with the support of ANO in January 2018, the following questions remain over the future direction of this party: (a) Uncertainty has been generated in the process of forming a government at the turn of 2017/18 by Babiš’s manoeuvring between the pro-Russian president as well as the pro-Russian parties such as the communists and the radical populist Okamura’s SPD. As a consequence, ANO formed an unstable and short-lived one-party minority cabinet with Babiš as Prime Minister. (b) There is a threat of a deconstruction of representative democracy linked with the demand for the introduction of national referenda, including a referendum on Czexit (Chapter 6.2). Such a complex threat is linked with radical proposals from the ANO congress of 2017, which include abolition of the Senate and a reduction of the number of members of the Chamber of Deputies by one half. Furthermore, ANO initiated a debate concerning the redundancy

“Old parties in new party systems?”  147 of representative bodies on a regional and local level. In addition, ANO discussed the potential reduction of the number of ministries and direct elections of municipal and city mayors (Babiš 2017a). With regard to its position on national referenda, ANO is rather sceptical and entirely negative in the case of decision-making concerning the country’s foreign policy orientation. (c) This unpredictability is heightened by the fact that after the 2017 elections, Babiš was stripped of his immunity for the second time by the Chamber of Deputies, for the purpose of enabling his criminal prosecution in the matter of the scandal named after his farm – the ‘Stork’s Nest’ (Čapí hnízdo). This is a case in which Babiš is being investigated by the police over whether he misused European subsidies designated for small and medium enterprises. It is worth noting that the threat to domestic stability and the quality of democracy among the post-communist states in Central and Eastern Europe are further amplified by external factors such as the worsening parameters of the international environment. As a result, it is possible to include (i) the turbulence within the European Union, especially in connection with Brexit; (ii) the immigration crisis and Islamic terrorism in Europe; (iii) the rise of authoritarian China and an aggressive phase in the foreign policy of Russia as an undemocratic power; (iv) the administration of the capricious US president Donald Trump and uncertainty regarding the potential isolationism of the USA and the marginalisation of NATO. However, both the positive and negative potentials of ANO are far from static, and it is impossible to foresee the future. As such, the question remains as to whether private business-firm parties will prove themselves to be a beneficial form of a modern elite party or whether negative phenomena will predominate. Quo vadis ANO? This is certainly of interest to the citizens of the Czech Republic and, importantly, to a host of political scientists and policy makers internationally.

5.7  Concluding remarks The elite-dominated parties, including the private business-firm parties which have formed in the post-communist Czech Republic and in many other countries of Central and partially Eastern Europe since 2000, are primarily a product of a chronic crisis of party politics ensuing from processes of party capture and state capture as well as from the insufficient institutionalisation of parties. It was the infiltration of systemic clientelism, structural corruption and organised crime into the established parties and their overall ideological and personnel deficit that created a political vacuum and accelerated a partial transition to non-rooted entrepreneurial parties. Therefore, the formation of business-firm parties and ANO in particular cannot be separated or examined without analysing the circumstances behind their origin.

148  “Old parties in new party systems?” To conclude the relatively short-term experience of the functioning of more or less private-firm parties – as one face of the modern elite parties in the postcommunist region – the following theoretical conclusions can be drawn: (1) In the 1990s, in the aftermath of the privatisation of state assets on an unprecedented scale, the new leaders of medium-sized as well as big business preferred to co-operate or even penetrate into the existing mainstream parties. The consequence of such a symbiosis during the period of economic transformation was more or less a process of privatisation of the established parties ‘from below’ as well as colonisation ‘from above’ by non-transparent local or big business. The established post-communist parties thus mutated into the form of clientelist organisations with structural corruption potential, and subsequently to a substantial degree lost the trust of citizens (Chapters 2–4). (2) Within this context, approximately after the year 2000 a new phase began, in which a part of medium-sized and big business became independent and entered the political market directly by means of forming a new generation of political parties in general, referred to as modern elite parties or nonrooted entrepreneurial parties, and thus covering their individual forms such as anti-establishment reform parties, business-firm parties or owner parties (Chapter 5). (3) As a consequence of the formation of the new party subsystem, not only traditional parties but also newcomers lost electoral support to even newer parties. “The result is a self-reinforcing subsystem of ever new parties that endures until parties succeed in adopting stabilizing mechanisms” (Haughton and Deegan-Krause 2015: 62). (4) It is evident that the moment of greatest risk for their survival is the alternation of power within the party, namely the replacement of its founding father. At the same time, the development of the organisation is critical for the survival of the new parties (Krašovec 2017). (5) Such new kinds of parties, which can be included as several forms within the broader concept of the modern elite party or non-rooted entrepreneurial parties, have increased their role profoundly in the party systems and in politics generally. A contagion effect has taken place, meaning that the established parties have adopted certain features of the new parties, for example marketing methods and the personalisation or presidentialisation of party leadership. (6) In general, the structurally unstable party systems in several Central and partially Eastern European countries have settled on a certain fragile balance of standard and non-standard parties, functioning in parallel and exercising a mutual influence on each other (Haughton and Deegan-Krause 2015, Klíma 2015, Marušiak 2017).

“Old parties in new party systems?”  149 (7) The outcome of the mutual competition between both party models – the ideological programme-based mass parties and the modern elite parties – is difficult to forecast in the coming decades. Nevertheless, it appears that the latter type is better equipped for the post-industrial era, in the sense of having adopted a more rational-efficient way of conducting politics.

Notes 1 STAN first stood as an independent electoral subject in the 2017 elections to the Chamber of Deputies. Until that time it had co-operated on the parliamentary level with TOP 09. 2 TOP 09 was established as a split from the traditional Christian party KDU-ČSL, and for this reason is not included within the category of a genuinely new political subject. 3 The name of the ANO movement is an acronym for Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (Akce nespokojených občanů). In Czech the word ANO also means “YES”. 4 At the same time, in 2013, ANO had a total of 7200 sympathisers (Smlsal 2013). In 2015, it attempted to ensure the entry into the party of 350 persons on waiting lists (Válková 2015). In order to prevent strategic recruitments from other parties or an infiltration of hired party members from the area of non-transparent business, ANO in its statutes has strictly defined conditions for the acceptance of new members. Specifically, an applicant for membership is obliged to submit a declaration of no criminal record or debt, and must also be recommended by two guarantors, with an additional waiting period of six months. At the same time, the applicant must state in the application any previous membership of political parties. The party leadership can shorten the waiting period (Klíma 2015).

6 Conclusion

Conclusion

Conclusion

At the time when a tendency towards greater interconnection of political parties with the state was manifesting itself in Western democracies, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were experiencing a transition from a totalitarianism to democracy. After 1989, in the context of the post-communist legacy and the privatisation of state assets on an unprecedented scale, the newly forming party organisations – with a relatively low membership – were transformed more or less into predatory and parasitic structures within a process of a two-way party capture (Subchapter 1.8, Chapters 2–4). These parties, tainted by non-transparent business and partially also by organised crime, completed a process termed clientelist state capture (Subchapters 1.7, 4.12–4.14). As a response to the chronic crisis of political parties and politics, a new subsystem of party newcomers emerged after 2000. This political development in many countries of the post-communist region was frequently associated with electoral earthquakes and mass demonstrations. This advent of a self-reinforcing subsystem of ever new parties or movements was founded on an elite basis (Chapter 5). From the perspective of political science, the central cause of the crisis of democracy, not only in the Czech Republic, was the fact that the parties attached themselves primarily to the sphere of non-transparent business and thus jointly established ‘client-client’ based relationships. The clientelisation of the parties took place in two ways: (1) ‘privatisation from below’ – by the method of fraudulent mass recruitment of hired party members, with the aim of a hostile takeover of their territorial organisational units on a local and subsequently also a district and regional level, in which the main actors within the conditions of decentralisation of the state were the regional bosses or godfathers (Chapter 2); (2) ‘colonisation from above’ – implemented by subjects from the sphere of the highest level of business with a non-transparent background, in which the main actors were national bosses or oligarchs (Chapter 3). This implies that the progressively clientelised parties failed to fulfil their basic functions and began to perform a new role: from their original position as a mediator of interests between society and the state, they recast themselves into the

Conclusion  151 role of a connecting element linking non-transparent business with the state with the purpose of the joint exploitation of public resources. The understanding of a negative party mutation enables us to explain the process of how (a) the relevant parties were first of all captured to a substantial degree by non-transparent business, and how subsequently (b) such ‘captured’ parties seized the state. State capture was therefore preceded by the clientelisation of the governing parties. Consequently, the three consecutive electoral revolts of 2010, 2013 and 2017 in the Czech Republic represent a non-violent reaction on the part of citizens to the chronic political crisis of the political parties. Within the framework of this conclusion, it is possible to identify three critical political junctures that determined the aforementioned processes leading to the reconfiguration of political parties, the party system and the entire democratic settlement over the course of the three decades since 1989. Consequently, as a response to the crisis of the established parties and politics, attention is focused on controversial demands for the introduction of direct democracy, together with proposals to deconstruct representative democracy. Moreover, within the broad context of mass dissatisfaction, a note of warning will be sounded with regard to a moralising approach or moral crusade leading to the unjustifiable criminalisation of politicians. Finally, Dahrendorf’s idea about the principal role of authentic civil society in providing a firm foundation of democracy is highlighted.

6.1  Three critical political junctures In Central and partly in Eastern Europe, it is more or less possible to record three critical political junctures which produced the principal waves of political mobilisation leading to a reconfiguration of the party system and a change of the regime dynamic. The first and largest rupture occurred in 1989. At that time, the communist totalitarian system collapsed in the countries of the Soviet bloc, and a transition towards democracy was initiated. In this first developmental stage, the foundations of democracy were laid, with their basic political components such as pluralistic party systems and free elections. In this situation, at least in Central Europe, a social consensus predominated that democracy was superior to totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and that there was no alternative to anchoring within Euro-Atlantic structures – the European Union and NATO. However, during the course of the party-directed mass privatisation, in which unprecedented transfers of state assets took place, the political parties progressively degenerated. Within the established parties, structures began to predominate in connection with clientelism, corruption and organised crime, represented by regional and national bosses or godfathers. This infection spread through the relevant parties into all the important bodies of the political system. Significant deformations thus occurred in the functioning of the legislative and executive bodies as well as the state administration, judiciary, public prosecution service, police and army (Chapter  4). On the basis of clientelist or oligarchical parties there formed clientelist or oligarchical versions of democracy.

152  Conclusion Such deep and detrimental processes of the first post-1989 decade eventually produced the second developmental stage of democracy, dating approximately from the year 2000. During that time, the post-communist state in many respects became dysfunctional. The resulting mass dissatisfaction and distrust on the part of citizens culminated in a second political juncture in the form of electoral revolts, which in some cases were accompanied by mass demonstrations and riots against corruption and organised crime (Table 6.1). Where the crisis of democracy was deeper as a consequence of an oligarchical version of democracy, such as in Ukraine, there were a number of successive attempts to bring about a new democratic revolution by means of mass demonstrations involving violent elements (2004, 2013/2014). As regards Russia, democracy there collapsed completely. The dysfunctional and unstable oligarchisation of the country and mafia-style networks were superseded by Putin’s authoritarian regime. Therefore, what disrupted the political sphere in Central and partially Eastern Europe after 2000 and upset the already loosened concept of the frozen cleavages theory (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) was the occurrence of a systemic and therefore excessive level of corruption, clientelism and organised crime. Subsequently, the third political juncture is connected with the development that has taken place since 2015. The variable of clientelism and corruption was overlapped by another sharply conflictual issue: mass immigration from Islamic societies, specifically the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In contrast with the ‘clientelist’ cleavage (Subchapter 4.9) covering structural corruption, the migration crisis that followed represents only a limited breakthrough in the sense of the emergence of a further group of ‘newer’ parties. Nevertheless, the new anti-immigration groundswell substantially modified the current party systems and politics in Central Europe. The climate of fear was largely absorbed by the old mainstream parties as well as by ‘far right’ subjects and even by the first wave of ‘new’ parties. Therefore, the emergence of a further group of new parties was limited. For example, in the context of the Czech Republic, the project of Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy was successful. Moreover, the anti-immigration issue was the crucial factor in the direct presidential elections in 2018, in which Miloš Zeman triumphed. In any case, the overall impact of the immigration issue on politics requires more detailed examination in Subchapter 6.1.2. The ‘migrant’ cleavage is significant, because it poses an unprecedented security threat. By its explosive nature it generated an atmosphere of mass alarm and thereby hurled into the political arena an emotional wave of patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia. Correspondingly, it ushered a segment of the electorate into the embrace of authoritarian and messianic figures. At the same time, it cast doubt upon the ability of the European Union to protect its external borders and thus the borders of its member states. This logically led to an increase in support for calls to close the borders and withdraw from the European Union. Paradoxically, the migration crisis related not only to countries that were directly affected, such as Hungary (Ágh 2016). This referred also to states that were only potentially threatened but which were in reality bypassed by the mass migration and which refused the mandatory allocation

Conclusion  153 quotas within the framework of the European Union. Specifically, this concerned the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. It follows from both political junctures  – after 2000 and 2015  – that the socalled old cleavage structure in Central Europe was superseded by new ones. The post-communist environment was indeed far more turbulent than that of Western Europe. It was therefore more permeable and vulnerable to the emergence of new, sharp lines of conflicts ensuing from the specifics of the post-transformation development as well as from the global environment. In summary, the conflictual issue of the migrant crisis with terrorist potential, grafted onto the preceding longterm dissatisfaction with systemic clientelism and mass corruption, resulted in the fragility of the entire democracy. It is apparent that the unique post-communist development of the party system and democracy after 1989 represents a unique laboratory for an examination of trends in party system change and regime dynamics. A similar pattern can be observed to a certain degree in Western Europe, especially in states such as Italy or Greece, where the level of clientelism and corruption has always been higher. Meanwhile, no less interesting processes have taken place in all the emerging democracies, in Latin America, Asia and Africa. 6.1.1  The second political juncture – since 2000 If key terms such as clientelist party, clientelist parliamentarism and clientelist democracy are employed, the focus of this book necessarily becomes the phenomenon of post-communist clientelism. This is undoubtedly a new feature, since up to now the attention of political scientists has been focused primarily on political corruption as the Achilles heel of the transition from a totalitarianism to democracy (Warren 2004, Holmes 2006, Lambsdorff 2007, Kostadinova 2012). From a systemic point of view, structural corruption represents rather an accompanying element, linked to the far more fundamental and wide-ranging phenomenon of clientelism (Sajó 2002). Nevertheless, because political corruption embodies an important and the most visible component of clientelism, attention is focused also on this kind of illegal activity and its influence on politics (Subchapters 1.6 and 4.5). In the early post-1989 period, ordinary citizens gradually realised that the transition to market democracies, i.e. democratic institution building and the economic transformation to a market economy, had opened up a Pandora’s box for an extraordinary degree of corruption. As a result, some came to the depressing conclusion that the post-communist development had been compromised. Indeed, the level of corruption in Central Europe was comparable with sub-Saharan Africa, whereas the Soviet successor countries, or the Commonwealth of Independent States, represented the most corrupt region in the world. In this sense, it is stated that “corruption has replaced communism as the scourge of Eastern Europe” (Holmes 2013). Structural corruption constituted an urgent social problem, with degrading effects on the quality of democracy. Angry citizens punished such predatory behaviour by means of electoral revolts against the established parties and also through participation in anti-corruption and anti-mafia demonstrations and riots. Table 6.1

Bratislava and large cities, tens of thousands of people (largest demonstrations since 1989)

Bucharest and large cities, tens of thousands of people

Romaniad) November 2017 Slovakiae) February 2012

Bucharest and large cities, tens of thousands of people

Bucharest, up to 300 thousand people, hundreds of thousands of people in large cities (largest demonstrations since 1989)

against authoritarian president; against corruption, clientelism, mafia; resignation of president; early elections; against poor social situation abolition of government decree on the decriminalisation of certain corrupt criminal acts of politicians and officials; anti-corruption measures; resignation of government; early elections against reform of judicial system, against restricting the anti-corruption office; against tax reform rule of law; resignation of ministers and leadership of parliament; change to party financing and electoral law; abolition of immunity; direct democracy; removal of persons from supervisory boards and boards of directors of state-owned companies; investigation of corruption (the Penta group in the Gorilla case)

In more than 50 cities

Hungaryi) April 2015 Romaniab) January 2012

Romaniac) February – March 2017

against oligarchical tendencies; against poverty and high prices of energy; resignation of government; change of electoral rules; early elections; anti-corruption and antimafia legislation against government corruption

Sofia 40 thousand, Varna 30 thousand, tens of thousands in 40 cities (largest demonstrations since 1989)

Bulgariaa) February – September 2013

Demands

Location – numbers

Country – period

Table 6.1  Mass anti-corruption demonstrations – Central and partially Eastern Europe after 2010

Bratislava, 50 thousand and dozens of cities in Slovakia and even abroad (largest demonstrations since 1989)

Ljubljana and large cities, tens of thousands of people

Slovakiag) March 2018

Sloveniah) November 2012 – February 2013

Sources: a) Czech News Agency, iDNES.cz 2013, Jedlička 2013, b) Robert 2012, c) News, Czech News Agency 2017, d) News, Czech News Agency 2017, e) Berger 2012, f) News, Czech News Agency 2017, g) Bartkovský 2018, h) Czech Television 2012, Czech News Agency 2012, i) Ágh 2017.

Bratislava, up to ten thousand people, organised by a group of high school students (largest demonstration in capital since 1989)

Slovakiaf) April – September 2017

resignation of minister of the interior due to scandals; abolition of instrumental amnesties of former Prime Minister Mečiar from the 1990s; completion of investigation of cases from the period of Mečiar’s government independent investigation of the murder of an investigative journalist and his fiancée; resignation of government and early elections; protest against corruption and interconnection of politics and organised crime against unemployment and austerity measures; investigation of corruption of politicians including premier; resignation of government

156  Conclusion presents a list of the best known examples of mobilisation of citizens against corruption and organised crime. For instance, one of the largest civic mobilisations of recent years took place in Slovakia in March 2018. The largest post-1989 demonstrations have been targeted against systemic corruption and the interconnection of politics and organised crime in the aftermath of the murder of an investigative journalist and his fiancée. This unprecedented murder brought about a regeneration of civic society, which could be referred to as a kind of ‘Slovak spring.’ The waves of mobilisation of citizens in the form of mass demonstrations illustrate only one facet of chronic social dissatisfaction. The main political aspect of such a civic upheaval represents a set of electoral revolts. It was after 2000 that a number of electoral earthquakes took place in the countries of Central and partially Eastern Europe and gave rise to a new generation of political parties. It is no exception that approximately 20% of the electorate voted for the new parties. Therefore, the extent of the electoral volatility that erupted in this region is analysed separately (Subchapter 5.3). According to Hanley and Sikk (2016) as well as other political scientists, this related to the following countries: Bulgaria (2001, 2009), the Czech Republic (2010, 2013, 2017), Lithuania (2000, 2004, 2008), Latvia (2011), Slovakia (2002) and Slovenia (2011). The standard analytical factors, incorporating such variables as the duration of democracy, economic performance, institutional changes, ethnic and other political fragmentation, were not adequate to explain such a high degree of electoral volatility. In recent years, analysts have focused their attention on a new potential determinant of the electoral success of genuinely new parties, namely corruption (Deegan-Krause 2010, Bågenholm 2013, Engler 2015). Corruption thus emerged as a key source of citizens’ frustration, which could trigger mobilisation against the existing political elite and at the same time create a significant pool of voters who may perceive newcomers as credible challengers. New anti-corruption parties set themselves up against the established parties, with their self-image of honesty, integrity and competence (Bågenholm 2013). Corruption is present in every society, nevertheless within the post-communist region it is generally far higher in comparison with Western Europe (Holmes 1993, 1997, Kostadinova 2012). This has its structural causes, following from the uniqueness of the complex social transformation. The Central and Eastern European transformation was a process broader in scope than previous democratic transitions in Southern Europe or Latin America. What opportunities for the plundering of public assets on an unprecedented scale offered themselves after 1989? First of all, the covert privatisation of originally state assets began in ‘Klondike’ style. Subsequently, with a view to joining the European Union, at the end of the 1990s an entirely new source of enrichment opened up in the form of European funds. In addition, large state tenders were permanently available. It is evident that following the termination of the economic transition, the opportunities for making mammoth profits were significantly reduced. On the other hand, the existing corruptive and clientelist structures were settled and conserved to such an extent that more and more available targets were constantly sought.

Conclusion  157 A new source of unfair enrichment became involvement in lucrative business with authoritarian and oligarchical regimes, in particular with Russia, as well as with certain post-Soviet Central Asian and Caucasian states and later also with China. Access to these markets is not entirely open, and so as a rule takes place under the auspices of governing groups which operate behind closed doors with ‘friendly’ business and politicians. In Bulgaria in the 1990s, the giant conglomerate Multigrup, which exercised substantial political influence and had acquired its standing through smuggling, money laundering and trafficking, conducted business in natural gas with the Russian giant Gazprom (Ganev 2007). A  new feature, promising a revival of parasitic and clientelist informal structures in the Czech Republic after 2013, was represented by the one-way business diplomacy of president Zeman (Klíma 2017). To summarise, in post-communist Central Europe a greater plurality gradually emerged concerning a rent-seeking strategy with the use of non-transparent means. In the case of the Czech Republic, it is possible to distinguish especially the following sources of public assets parasitically exploited within certain periods: (1) phase 1 (1990s) – insider nomenklatura and privatisation within the process of economic transformation; (2) phase 2 (at least from 1997) – European funds within the context of enlargement of the European Union; (3) phase 3 (since 2013) – one-way business diplomacy of president Zeman  – covert business on the markets of authoritarian states; (4) in general – large tenders. Nevertheless, within the framework of Central and Eastern Europe, there were and still are fundamental differences in the incidence of corruption. An explanation of such cross-national variation of corruption is provided by a seminal work, Post-Communist Party Systems, by Kitschelt et al. (1999). The differences in the extent of the levels of corruption in these countries are determined also by their historical legacies. This can be traced even to the pre-communist interwar era. For example, formerly predominantly agrarian societies with a weak urban middle class took on the patrimonial type of communism and thus after 1989 produced a higher level of corruption and clientelism. This related in particular to Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Macedonia and Albania. On the other hand, there were also partially and more industrialised countries, which took on bureaucraticauthoritarian or national-accommodative types of communism, like the Czech Republic or Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. In these countries the corruption levels were lower after the fall of the communist regimes. Engler (2015), on the basis of the Worldwide Governance Indicators of the World Bank, confirmed the validity of Kitschelt’s typology of three versions of communist rule with respect to their influence on the current level of corruption and clientelism. Subsequently, in her statistical analysis of all democratic parliamentary elections between 1996 and 2011, on the basis of the indicator of

158  Conclusion perceived corruption, she proved the existence of a relationship between corruption and voting for new parties. Concretely, she noted the following: [. . .] an increase of the perceived corruption above the country-specific level of corruption leads to a loss of trust in the political elite and therefore raises the electoral success of new competitors. (Engler 2015: 26) 6.1.2  The third political juncture – since 2015 Before 2015, the conflictual issue of immigration from the region of the Middle East, Asia and Africa to Europe was familiar only to the countries of Western Europe but not to the states of Central Europe affiliated within the framework of the Visegrad group. Such ethnic and religious communities had virtually never settled within the territory of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. As a result, this generated all the more resistance following the wave of immigration of 2015. If the second political juncture, linked to the excessive degree of clientelism and corruption, was predominantly of domestic provenance and sprung out of the objective dynamics of the post-communist transformation, the later immigration crisis had its roots within the international environment. In the case of the unprecedented wave of immigration – linked with the threat of terrorist attacks and cultural influences difficult to reconcile with European values – this sparked considerable social and political tension, to a certain degree exported into Central Europe by Germany and the European Union. Merkel’s government committed a fatal mistake in 2015 when it left the borders open to all refugees entering not only Germany itself but also at the same time to the area of the majority of member states of the European Union. This ensued from the fact of the existence of the Schengen zone of free movement of persons and also from the decision of the European Union concerning mandatory quotas for the redistribution of migrants. A wave of populism and nationalism subsequently followed in the countries of Central Europe and was also abused by domestic clientelist structures for the purpose of restoring their power. In general, the issue of the ‘fight against immigration’ led to a mobilisation against domestic moderate political competitors but also against an external enemy, which for the first time since 1989 became the European Union itself as well as the very idea of European unification and the principle of free movement of persons. The political mobilisation particularly in the four countries of the Visegrad group was further empowered by the pressure of Germany and the European Commission in asserting mandatory quotas for the redistribution of immigrants. In the case of Hungary and Poland, the immigration card was utilised, in the name of reinforcing authoritarian tendencies, for removing the system of checks and balances within the framework of the domestic political system (Ágh 2016). In the Czech Republic, the theme was used especially for the profit of political

Conclusion  159 circles defending pro-Russian interests and an authoritarian style of governance. Specifically this related to the castle group centred around president Zeman as well as the new party Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy, which in its first contested elections in 2017 obtained 10.6% of the vote. It is not by chance that this resembles the political capital made by the similar party in Germany, Alternative für Deutschland, which received 12.6% in the same year. It is obvious that this theme potentially brings a segment of those opponents to immigration into the orbit of the authoritarian and expansive regime in Russia. At minimum, in the Czech Republic close ethnic Slavophile ties between the Czech and Russian people have been rekindled, together with a myth of Russia as the defender against the Muslim hordes. The clear pro-Russian mood is alarming due to the simple fact that almost thirty years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, an influential ‘fifth column’ of Russia has remained, with revanchist aspirations. It recruits in particular from the ranks of former agents of the domestic communist intelligence services, which were de facto controlled by the Soviet KGB. It can be generally stated that the erroneous policy that enabled excessive immigration from different cultures into Europe has destabilised the democratic regimes in the countries of Central and Western Europe and has jeopardised the European Union. The migration crisis indeed constitutes one of the most serious security threats to Europe since the Second World War. Therefore, within the framework of both the European Union and the domestic context of the member states, it manifests significant destabilising potential. Since 1989, the European Union has acted as a magnet, attracting the countries of Central Europe into its democratic space. Above all, its geographical proximity and extensive contacts represented an important external source which contributed to relatively successful democratisation (Kostadinova 2012). It was the proximity of the European Union and its policy of accepting new members that contained a positive ‘linkage and leverage,’ enabling an explanation of regime dynamics (Levitsky and Way 2010, Petrovic 2013). However, two crises within the European Union – the debt crisis of the Eurozone since the end of 2009 and the mishandled solution to the migration crisis after 2015 – were watershed events which disturbed this constitutive parameter. The positive potential influence of the European Union, namely its anchoring effect with regard to Central Europe, is thus gradually evaporating. Subsequently anti-European feeling became a serious factor in the public opinion and domestic politics of Central European states (Ágh 2016). Furthermore, it sparks anti-German reminiscences, such as the declaration by Jarosław Kaczyński, the grey eminence of Polish politics, concerning the right to reparations from Germany for the damages caused in the Second World War. The consequence of such a development is the fact that even though Central Europe remains a part of the European Union and NATO, it is nevertheless mentally shifting into a certain power vacuum between Germany and authoritarian Russia. In this sense, Central Europe finds itself in a space where so-called Western linkage and leverage are competing and battling against their Russian and Chinese counterparts.

160  Conclusion In summary, the conflictual issue of the migrant crisis with terrorist potential, grafted onto the preceding long-term dissatisfaction with systemic clientelism and mass corruption, has thus further escalated the political tension. The immigration issue indeed covers a cultural identity conflict, or a fundamental security dimension, incorporating a highly emotional component in the form of fear. It is fear of terrorism and the inadaptability of a large mass of people entering from a different sphere of civilisation that leads to the demonisation of enemies and their designation as ‘dark forces’ within the context of the film Star Wars. Such an intensity of fear has no parallel within a European context since the Second World War. However, for democracy it constitutes a long-term destabilising factor with unforeseeable consequences. *** It is a paradox that in the case of mass migration, this does not represent an unknown threat. It was not only the highest representatives of Western European countries but also the distinguished political scientist Giovanni Sartori who warned in advance against dysfunctional multiculturalism. And it is above all paradoxical that one of the first to express a critical attitude towards this theme was the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the autumn of 2010, when she declared in a speech to young Christian Democrats that multiculturalism had “absolutely failed” (Kaiser 2010b: 10). Moreover, in February 2011, the British Prime Minister David Cameron stated at a conference in Munich that tolerance towards minorities had failed. Instead of creating unworkable multiculturalist models, the British should actively defend Western values, namely the rule of law, national identity and the equality of men and women (Sládek 2011: 6). In the same month the French president Nicolas Sarkozy stated in a television interview for TF1 that the concept of multiculturalism had failed to prove itself. In a reference to the unsuccessful integration of Muslims into the majority society, he stated that “in all democracies we focus too much on the identity of the new arrivals, and we do not pay sufficient attention to the identity of the country accepting them” (DPA 2011: 4). Even further in advance, the political scientist Sartori had warned against the threat of Muslim immigrants in his book Pluralism, Multiculturalism and Foreigners (2002). He warned that in the case that we permit a culture to keep its members ‘in closed communities,’ we reach the end of open and plural society. He considered the greatest danger to be a situation in which “a certain community from the Third World reaches a critical mass and begins to demand [. . .] rights based on its own cultural-religious identity, and eventually attacks its imagined oppressors (the native population)” (Sartori 2005: 71). Therefore, a critical mass of immigration from Islamic countries poses a threat. On this theme Sartori (2005: 35) presented the following argument: Asian culture is also extremely remote from Western culture, which is a ‘lay’ culture in the sense that it is not distinguished by any religious fanaticism or general religious militancy, whereas Muslim culture is characterised by

Conclusion  161 these features. And even if fanaticism is lacking, it nevertheless still applies that the Islamic vision of the world is theocratic and does not permit the separation of the state from the church, thus the separation of politics from faith. By contrast, today’s Western civilisation rests upon this separation as its constitutive element. The Koran generally does not know human (personal) rights in the form of universal, inalienable, individual rights; note that this is another foundation of liberal society. Now we are truly at the heart of the problem. A person from the West does not consider a Muslim an ‘infidel.’ But for a Muslim a Western person is an ‘infidel.’ Excusez de peu, is that not enough for you? From the perspective of the concept of cleavages, Sartori drew attention to the fact that pluralism is built on intersecting social and cultural dividing lines, which mutually neutralise and minimise one another. By contrast, multiculturalism applied in Western Europe reinforces these cleavages. Multiculturalism thus forms reinforced identities in the sense that “within them such elements as language, religion, ethnicity and ideology merge and overlap” (Sartori 2005: 77). In other words, multiculturalism within the European context creates closed communities based on an intolerant cultural-religious identity. It ensues from the previous that it is necessary to limit immigration policy exclusively to culturally and religiously unproblematic regions.

6.2  The myth of referenda: the deconstruction of representative democracy The unique post-communist transition gave birth to systemic clientelism and structural corruption. A direct consequence was a damaging effect on the legitimacy of the newly established institutions, political elite and the entire project of representative democracy. Such a development led to substantial disengagement from official politics followed by mass voting for new protest parties. This negative social atmosphere caused (1) a demand for the introduction of direct democracy on the one hand, and (2) for the deconstruction of representative democracy on the other. Attention will first of all be focused on demands for the introduction of direct democracy. This clearly concerns a reaction to the crisis of the established parties and the attendant deformation of representative democracy. However, it primarily represents a dangerous myth which, should it be realised, may destabilise even more an already fragile democracy and drive voters further into the embrace of populists and authoritarians. Similar demands appeared in Slovakia during the anti-corruption demonstrations in 2012, in Poland as a result of the new anti-establishment parties’ success in the 2015 elections (Kosowska-Gastol and Sobolewska-Myslik 2017) and in the Czech Republic after the elections in 2017. These elections witnessed the success of a movement which bears the given demand in its name, i.e. Okamura’s movement Freedom and Direct Democracy.

162  Conclusion The problem consists not in the idea of direct democracy itself, at least on the precondition that it is applied as a supplement to representative democracy. A problem emerges if direct democracy is placed in opposition to representative democracy, or if direct democracy poses as the highest form of democracy. National referenda are then offered as a panacea for the political malaise. Whoever dares to disagree is forced onto the defensive with the enunciation: ‘What kind of democrat are you? We’re not afraid of the people!’ As if this was not enough, in parallel with the introduction of methods of participatory decision-making, proposals are appearing for a deconstruction of representative democracy at all levels. Specifically, in the Czech Republic, the winner of the 2017 elections – the business-firm party ANO – in its pre-election campaign recommended a radical shrinkage of parliament: a reduction of the number of members of the Chamber of Deputies by half and the abolition of the Senate entirely. Moreover, ANO initiated a debate about the superfluous nature of representative bodies on a regional level and additionally contemplated the dissolution of local assemblies, leaving only directly elected mayors. This view was expressed at least by the party leader of ANO Andrej Babiš, in his book What I Dream About When I Have the Chance to Sleep (2017). As regards the demand for national referenda, almost nine out of ten Czechs are ‘in favour.’ At the same time, the majority of the parliamentary parties manifest tendencies to support a general referendum bill. They are guided by different reasons: ideological ones supported by left-wing and protest parties (the Social Democrats, Communists and Pirates); populist and pragmatic demands for effective governance as presented by ANO; and populist as well as pro-Russian interests as promoted by Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy. *** It is not by chance that Germany, following its experiences with the abuse of referenda by the Nazi regime, has not held any national referendum since the Second World War. In other words it has adhered to an exclusively representative form of government. British democracy is also typified by its emphasis on strictly representative democracy. An exception was the vote on the issue of remaining within the European Economic Community in 1975 and subsequently the referendum that led to Brexit in 2016. Brexit in particular was a warning memento of how it is possible to manoeuvre a Prime Minister, at the time David Cameron, into a situation where he succumbed under domestic political pressure to the demand for a referendum, thus triggering the controversial and irreversible process of withdrawal from the European Union. As regards the references made to federal Switzerland as a country which frequently and successfully holds referenda, this is a misleading argument. Switzerland embodies a unique state unit, comprising twenty-six cantons and semi-cantons which exercise a high degree of autonomy. The culture of referenda which exists here, based on historical experiences dating back for more than 700 years, cannot be transposed into the environment of the post-communist countries of Central Europe. ***

Conclusion  163 Individual forms of direct democracy are without doubt not harmful in themselves and may indeed contribute to a better quality of governance. Local or regional referenda may lead to a greater participation of citizens in everyday politics and the formation of appropriate mechanisms of checks and balances. However, the meaning of national referenda depends on the specific domestic and foreign context. And it is precisely this context which at present is more than unfavourable. Of key importance is the fact that today’s political atmosphere in Europe is highly unstable. This connects to the migration crisis and to the advent of radical parties and populist leaders. In addition, authoritarian Russia is not only occupying Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, but is also exerting pressure on the post-Soviet Baltic region and Central Europe, in this process employing armies of trolls who are capable of unleashing an information war. Furthermore, the domestic political situation in the countries of Central Europe is undergoing unprecedented turbulence. There has been a dramatic weakening of the social consensus that reigned in the 1990s, when a negative view of the communist past predominated, with a conversely positive relationship towards liberal democracy and an anchoring in Euro-Atlantic structures (Kysela 2016). With regard to the Czech Republic, society is now polarised and the Chamber of Deputies excessively fragmented as a consequence of the representation of nine different parties. Up to 2027, the country faces a constant mobilisation of voters in connection with annually held elections. A further stirring of emotions and passions in the form of national referenda would be equivalent to pouring petrol on a fire. In this situation, referenda, resting on the principle of ‘either/or,’ do not contribute to a search for compromise but on the contrary split society in two. As a result, the current situation in which only parliament can approve an ad hoc national referendum by means of constitutional law, with the consent of a three-fifths majority of both parliamentary chambers, is considered sufficient. By contrast, if a version of a referendum was introduced, based on a people’s initiative of a certain quota of citizens, enabling voting on any issue with a few exceptions, this would represent a Copernican revolution in the case of the Czech Republic. The constitutional lawyer Antoš noted that in the case of the approval of an initiative referendum, the country would shift in a ‘leap of power’ from one of the most restrictive approaches to direct democracy to the opposite end of the spectrum within the framework of the European Union. He warned against such a leap in the following words: Instead of a potential supplementing or extension of the existing representative democracy, this would therefore in its essence concern a tool directed against representative democracy, designated primarily for actors who wish to act upon politics from outside. Following the introduction of direct election of the President, this could then lead to a further step which weakens the parliamentary form of government and reduces the capability of the government to act. This measure in its consequences could lead not to a greater

164  Conclusion involvement of citizens in politics, but rather contribute to an engagement of citizens against politics. (Antoš 2016: 50) In the case of the Czech Republic, under the cloak of political reforms – in the form of holding more frequent national referenda – what is actually at stake is a change of foreign policy orientation. It is symptomatic that the theme of referenda is strategically proposed in particular by domestic political circles close to the Putin regime in an effort to undermine the cohesion of the European Union. This means a regime which in its own country does not permit a free press, let alone free elections or referenda. It imprisons its opponents (Khodorkovsky, Navalny) or has them murdered (Nemtsov). And if a referendum is held, this takes place in a state of war, under the conditions of the occupation of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Populists, Machiavellians and preachers of political correctness may hold up referenda as the highest democratic mechanism in order to express the will of the people. However, within the conditions of a polarised atmosphere, it may constitute a detonator within the framework of representative democracy.

6.3  The danger of anti-corruption crusades Even if systemic clientelism and corruption in Central and Eastern Europe have become a reality and caused a serious erosion of democratic legitimacy, exaggeration and excesses have nevertheless occurred within the strategy of combating corruption, albeit peripherally. This was contributed to by the atmosphere of civil dissatisfaction or the demand for an anti-corruption crusade. Such an atmosphere creates an environment in which the bodies active in criminal proceedings may proceed over-zealously, where “the media fuel the debate for purely commercial reasons and elites take advantage of this in the context of political competition” (Kostadinova 2012: 241). The danger of oversimplification springing from the traditional Western perceptions in the evaluation of corruption and clientelism in the post-communist countries was highlighted by Sajó (2002). This oversimplification triggered inappropriate moral crusades and fostered a delegitimation of the new democracies. Sajó in particular railed against the failure to understand the phenomenon of clientelism within the new conditions and the role of corruption therein. He argued that clientelism is a form of social organization and that “corruption has become a foundation stone of the region’s emerging clientelist social structure. I will call this phenomenon ‘clientelist corruption’.” He continued: “Clientelist corruption is a form of structural corruption, which should be distinguished from discrete individual acts of corruption” (Sajó 2002: 1, 3). In this sense, he warned against a moralising approach or moral panic with the potential to destabilise social systems (Sajó 2007). On one hand, the quality of democracy is threatened by the existence of structural corruption, which the police do not investigate and the judiciary do not

Conclusion  165 judge. On the other hand, the other extreme, in which politicians are illegitimately criminalised, is also dangerous. This links to a misleading division of society into hostile camps – into ‘us’ and ‘them,’ in which ‘we’ are the morally pure citizens and ‘they’ are the corrupt politicians. Such an approach may ultimately result in injustice and instability. Democracy relies upon constitutional actors and several thousand people who are active on a municipal level. For this reason, it is important to set clear boundaries regarding what constitutes a political decision and what constitutes a criminal act. Correspondingly, it is necessary to determine which decisions politicians are responsible for to voters and which they must answer for to judges. Without any clarification of the rules, a legal jungle follows. Criminal complaints are then abused for the purpose of unfair competitive practices. Accusing political opponents of lawbreaking may become a component of everyday politics and election campaigns. For example, in the Czech Republic the respected politician Gazdík (2016) drew attention to a serious phenomenon, whereupon not only individual politicians but entire local, municipal and district councils faced false accusations: Our society is going from extreme to extreme. We have lived in an extreme situation in which there was manifest thieving, there was a clear presence of godfathers, who in many cases were in contact with suspect politicians at all levels. Then, under the influence of positive advances in the police battle against corruption we swung to the other extreme, to a primitive denunciation in the style of: whoever we point at is guilty, to be burned at the stake and destroyed. [. . .] I’d like to say to the public prosecutors and police officers that we’re prepared to negotiate with them, to help locate that boundary beyond which a criminal offence takes place. But this is born out of discussion, not by the method of trial and error and wrecking human lives. The fact that such excesses occurred in the Czech Republic is attested to by data from the Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers from the period of 2010–2015. This data documents that out of the total number of criminally charged representatives of local, municipal and district councils, in 76% of cases this was unlawful. Specifically, the ruling related to 24 representatives within the framework of 19 criminal trials, whereas the criminal proceedings were halted or the lawsuit was thrown out in the cases of 76 representatives in 24 criminal trials. This is an alarming situation which requires a clarification of the rules, in particular a regularisation of the legal interpretation (Surmanová 2016). If the activity of politicians is criminalised not only on a local level, this necessarily leads to increased stress upon representatives and councillors. These figures are then afraid to take decisions and are unwilling to stand for re-election. The environment of injustice deters local elites – teachers, doctors or entrepreneurs – from entering politics. And this is fuel to the fire of district and regional bosses and godfathers, who stand to profit from this unclear state of affairs.

166  Conclusion For this reason, anti-corruption associations and organisations should monitor cases of unlawfully charged politicians, and seminars and conferences should be held on these cases. Otherwise civil activists are in danger of becoming embroiled in a holy war against the evil of corruption, whilst ceasing to take into account all the circumstances and losing their grip on reality, thereby losing their credibility. It is evident that the quality of democracy is negatively influenced to a significant degree primarily by unresolved political affairs in connection with systemic clientelism, corruption and organised crime, but at the same time also by anticorruption fundamentalism – serving as a substitute for ideology.

6.4  Dahrendorf: an authentic civil society We should not overlook an assertion made by the sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, which is widely quoted by political scientists writing about the post-communist region, although sometimes in a sense that the author did not intend. Dahrendorf mapped out the transition to freedom and democracy across time as follows: The formal process of constitutional reform takes at least six months; a general sense that things are looking up as a result of economic reform is unlikely to spread before six years have passed; the third condition of the road to freedom is to provide the social foundations which transform the constitution and the economy from fair-weather into all-weather institutions capable of withstanding the storms generated within and without, and sixty years are barely enough to lay these foundations. (Dahrendorf 1991: 99–100) Without doubt it is impossible to disagree that the transition to democracy is among the most complex manoeuvres a society can engage in. Nevertheless, in today’s climate it is somewhat hazardous to refer to a period of 60 years. Such an interpretation is in many respects demotivating and disarming, since it introduces a pacifying concept of linear, positive development, implying that it suffices simply to wait until the next generation takes over, until ‘the cleaner replace the dirtier,’ and democracy will triumph. However, reality here defies these oversimplifying assessments. And it is precisely within the reality of the post-communist region that an erosion of democracy has taken place due to a concurrence of internal and external circumstances. Approximately since the year 2000 this situation has been written about by political scientists, historians and sociologists. It is not possible to wait 60  years for democracy. Its maintenance and improvement is dependent upon the constant endeavour of every individual and of vital civil society (Rupnik and Zielonka 2013, Ágh 2016). In fact, this is Dahrendorf’s chief concept. When he wrote of the need to stand democracy on firm foundations, he had in mind the progressive building of an authentic civil society. Only civil society can fill the gap between the state and the people. Only in this manner can freedom exist in the long term. And as a result, it

Conclusion  167 is not possible to take out of context the reference to ‘60 years’ without mentioning the key concept, namely that of civil society. As regards his basic idea concerning the need to create a vibrant civil society, Dahrendorf followed on from the theoretical approaches of Edmund Burke, James Madison and Timothy Garton-Ash. If in the United States of America civil society developed earlier than the state institutions, in the case of the postcommunist region it is necessary to cultivate a civil society subsequently. Dahrendorf described the essence of civil society as follows: Civil society is about substantial sources of power outside the state, and more often than not, against the state. It means the creation of a tight network of autonomous institutions and organizations which has not one but a thousand centers, and can therefore not easily be destroyed by a monopolist in the guise of a government or a party. Civil society in a certain sense sustains itself. (Dahrendorf 1991: 102–103) *** From Dahrendorf’s approach to the meaning of civil society within the context of the transitions to democracy, and in the view of the author of this publication, it is evident that the concept of post-communism within the environment of Central and Eastern Europe is not ready to be dispensed with. On the contrary – after thirty years of democratisation – a debate is once again opening up concerning whether or not the legacy of totalitarianism is returning, primarily with regard to the mentality of that period. Much attests to the fact that specific features in connection with the postcommunist development are rising to the surface of everyday politics more than ever. Above all, this is apparent in the clientelist nature of democracy as well as in the authoritarian tendencies inherent within the region. In the examples of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, there is also a visibly increasing influence of the authoritarian superpower Russia on the running of politics.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. ad hoc non-rooted entrepreneurial parties 136; see also Hungary Africa 2 Agrofert 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144 Alseda Data Company 82n4 Alternative für Deutschland 159 Amun-Re project 71 ANO movement xviii, 149n3 anti-corruption crusades, danger of 164–166 anti-corruption parties 102, 129, 156 anti-establishment parties 128–129, 134 anti-immigrant parties 18, 120, 122, 125 Appian group 72–73 Armenia 81 Asia 2 assemblearism 107 authentic civil society 151, 166, 167 authentic party politicians 53–54 authoritarianism 4, 7, 27; ‘fifth column’ 28 Babiš, Andrej 64, 121, 138, 140, 162; see also Movement ANO 2011 (ANO) Balík, Stanislav 96, 101, 105 Baltic States: clientelism 7; emergence of new parties in 128–129 Bárta, Vít 54–55, 96 Benda, Petr 51, 56–57, 76 Beneš, Daniel 67, 68 Berlusconi, Silvio 78, 137; Forza Italia 129, 139 ‘bifurcation of politics’ 112 big business: promiscuity strategy of 81; see also cartels; conglomerate business groups; corporate state capture; monopolies black souls 33

Bobošíková, Jana 55, 76 bons 62n11 bosses 1, 13, 31; Alexandr Novák 57; authentic party politicians 53–54; characteristics of 56; David Rath 61n8; decline of 59–60, 61; godfathers 51–52; Ivo Rittig 57; Jurecko, Roman 57; Kens 55–56; national 54–55; new black marketeering 58–59; Patrik Oulický 57–58; Pavel Dlouhý 57; Petr Benda 56–57; regional 49–50, 77–78; Roman Houska 57; Roman Janoušek 57, 60; Tomáš Hrdlicka 57; traders 52–53; see also godfathers; national bosses; regional bosses Brexit 5 broad definition of clientelist parties 109–112 brokerage parties 23–24, 83, 125 bugged democracy 97, 98 Bulgaria 23, 81; CEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72; ‘client-client’ relationships 14–15; informal nomenklatura 13; oligarchical parties 116, 117 bureaucracy 3, 64; clientelism 18; nomenklatura 11 Burke, Edmund 167 business-firm parties 125, 134, 135, 147; Movement ANO 2011 (ANO) 138–141, 142; tendency toward authoritarianism 144 buying of votes 19 cadre politics 11, 12, 55, 128, 134, 135; godfathers 13; middle cadres 13 captor firms 21–22, 63–64

Index  193 captor parties 23–24, 64 Čaputová, Zuzana 133 career politicians 53 cartel parties 114 cartels 65–66; political-economic 79–80 catch-all parties 134 Central Bank 21 Central Europe 1, 2, 4, 16, 25, 109; anti-corruption crusades, danger of 164–166; anti-corruption parties 129; anti-establishment parties 128–129; clientelism 7; democratisation 6–7; developmental stages of democracy in 151–153, 156–158, 158–161; dictatorship in 7; disaffected voters 125–126; entrepreneurial parties 126, 129; immigration crisis 158; informal networks 7; migration crisis of 2015 158–161; new nomenklatura 13; new parties in 125–126, 127–128, 132; party membership 35, 36; post-communist alternatives in 27–29; and the Russian sphere 6–8 ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 64, 65, 74–76, 77, 79, 82n1, 82n4; connections with regional and national bosses 71–72; joint projects with J&T group 74–76; lobbying activities of 68–71; Martin Roman 67; police investigation of 71; sale of I&C Energo 73–74; share option programme 72; see also Roman, Martin checks and balances 2 China 4, 5, 28 Christian Democratic Union-People’s Party (KDU-ČSL) 65, 66, 68, 101 chronic cabinet crises 104 Citizens’ Rights Party-Zemanites (SPOZ) 36, 76 Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) 36 Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 31, 39, 51, 52, 53, 54, 64, 66, 68, 77, 92, 99, 101; Alexandr Novák 57; Kens 56; letter from organisations in the Prague-West district 41–46; meeting at the Žluté lázně 50; membership 37, 38; national bosses 54–55; opposition agreement 92–93, 103; Patrik Oulický 57–58; Pavel Dlouhý 57; regional bosses 37, 48–49, 50; Roman Janoušek 57; Roman Jurečko 57; Tomáš Hrdlička 57; withdrawal of licences in 2013 39–40, 46–47; withdrawal of licences in 2014 47–48

civil service 85–87 civil society 2; authentic 151, 166, 167; weakening relationship with political parties 114, 115, 126 cleavages 101–104, 122, 161; ‘migrant’ 152 client-client relationships 13–15, 19, 84–85; and the civil service 85–87 clientelism 1, 4, 5, 6–7, 7, 8, 11, 29, 30, 31, 47, 64, 83, 120, 121, 164; in the Baltic States 7; in Central Europe 7; CEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–71, 72–74, 74–76; client-client relationships 14–15, 19; comparison of party privatisation and colonisation 76–78; contagion of 91–93; corruption 18, 21; culturalist approach 16; decline of the bosses 59–60, 61; demand-side 15–21; developmentalist approach 16; economistic approach 16, 17; emergence of 3; exchanges of favours 20; informal nomenklatura 10–13; judiciary 88; late communist-period structural factors 2–3; loyalty 12; mass patronage 12; measuring 20–21; parasitical groups 19; parties-business-civil service triad 85–87; party state capture 25–26; patronage 16; patron-client relationship 16, 17; personal deals 12; post-1989 15–21; post-communist 24, 27; promiscuous hypothesis 81; state capture 21–25; structural corruption 18, 93–96; systemic 26, 59; ‘toadying’ 79–80; trading 12; two-way party capture 25–26; see also party colonisation ‘from above’; party privatisation ‘from below’ clientelist networks, concentric circles of 87, 88–91 clientelist parliamentarism 84, 106–108; theoretical conclusions 112–113 clientelist parties 83, 109–112, 116; theoretical conclusions 112–113 clientelist political-economic circles 10 clientelist regimes 25, 64, 78, 83, 108–109; parasitic business functions 100–101 clientelist state capture 150 collapse of the Nečas cabinet xviii colonisation 63; see also party colonisation ‘from above’ communist nomenklatura 11; see also informal nomenklatura comparative politics 8

194 Index comparison, of party privatisation and colonisation 76–78 complex party capture 31 complex state capture 24 complex state-centred clientelism 1 concentric circles of clientelist networks 87, 88–91 confederations 104–106 conglomerate business groups 1, 12, 13, 63; Agrofert 140; captor firms 21–23; ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72; oligopolies and monopolies 64–66; political-economic cartels 79–80; ‘toadying’ 79–80 contracts 13; ‘toadying’ 79–80 ‘control of corruption’ Governance Indicator 23 corporate conglomerates 13, 63; ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72; political-economic cartels 79–80 corporate state capture 23, 25, 64, 80; oligopolies and monopolies 64–66; promiscuous hypothesis 81; ‘toadying’ 79–80 corrupt lobbying 52 ‘Corrupt Tour’ 96 corruption 1, 4, 18, 21, 29, 47; and bad political systems 91–92; in the Czech Republic, investigating 88, 89, 90; dead souls 33; exchanges of favours 20; Government Strategy in the Battle against Corruption 25; new black marketeering 58–59; non-transparent public tenders 53; Rath, David 61n7; regional bosses 48–49; sophisticated methods of 94–95; state capture 21–25; structural 18, 93–96 Corruption and Financial Crime Detection Unit 89 corruption perception index (CPI) 118n6, 118n7 corruption potential 19 Croatia 64, 71 cronyism 20, 106, 118–119n11 culturalist approach to clientelism 16 culture, rule-based 3 Czech Coal group 76 Czech Republic 23, 31, 64, 80, 81, 109, 150, 167; ad hoc national referend um 163–164; ‘ČEZko’ 67; Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 31, 37; clientelism 7–8, 16; clientelist regimes 108–109; clientelist state capture 25; coalition government

106; corporate state capture 23; ‘Corrupt Tour’ 96; Corruption and Financial Crime Detection Unit 89; corruption in 118n5; corruption in, investigating 88–90; Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD) 35; decline of the bosses 59–60, 61; demands for direct democracy 161–162; drainage of finances from European subsidies 94; fake party members, recruitment of 37, 38, 39; gambling firms 84–85; godfathers 51; Government Strategy in the Battle against Corruption 25; informal politics 8–9; and Italy 96; Military Intelligence, systemic abuse of 90–91; Movement ANO 2011 (ANO) 120–121; national bosses 54–55; new black marketeering 58–59; new parties in 127, 130; nomenklatura 12; ‘Opposition Agreement’; opposition agreement 92–93, 103; party membership 35; party privatisation ‘from below’ 32; passivity of party members 35; phases of post-1989 history 137; Pirate party 136; police 88–89; pro-business politics in 64–66; public prosecution service 88; recruitment of fake or paid party members 32–35, 36–37, 38–39; reduction of the significance of elections 98–99; regionalisation of politics 48–49; secret services 89, 90; security and surveillance potential 96–98; Security Information Service (BIS) 55, 88, 96; Strakonická Veřejnost (‘Strakonice Public’) 30n1; structural corruption 93–96; traders 52; trafika 13 Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD) 31, 35, 52, 53, 64, 65, 66, 68, 99, 101; dead souls 39; Kens 56; national bosses 54–55; opposition agreement 92–93, 103; Petr Benda 51, 56–57; recruitment of party members 38–39; Roman Houska 57; the ‘steamroller’ 32 Dahrendorf, Ralf 151, 166, 167 danger of anti-corruption crusades 164–166 data collection, methodology 21 Dawn 140–141 de Candole, James 79 dead souls 33, 36, 39, 61n2 decision-making, populist 19 decline of the bosses 59–60, 61

Index  195 deconstruction of representative democracy 161–164 de-democratisation 4 demand-side: of the new party subsystem 120, 121; of political clientelism 15, 29 democracy 4, 5, 7, 166; and authentic civil society 166–167; bugged 97, 98; clientelist 78, 84, 108–109; developmental stages of in Central and Eastern Europe 151–153, 156–158, 158–161; direct 161; hybrid regimes 5; limited 79; pluralistic 19; in postSoviet Hungary 7; in post-Soviet Poland 7; representative 161–164; semiconsolidated 28; ‘twilight zone’ of 4–5; Western conception of 8 democratic backsliding 27 democratic consolidation 4 democratisation 13 deployment of cadres 12–13 de-politicisation 3 developmental stages of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe 151–153, 156–158, 158–161 developmentalist approach to clientelism 16 dictatorship 5; in post-Soviet states 7; ‘twilight zone’ of 4–5 Dienstbier, Jirí 99 direct democracy, demands for 161–162 disaffected voters 125 divided loyalties 15 division of power 2 Dlouhý, Pavel 37, 39, 50, 52, 57 Dvořáková, Vladimíra 104, 105 Eastern Europe 1, 2; anti-corruption crusades, danger of 164–166; anti-establishment parties 129; developmental stages of democracy in 151–153, 156–158, 158–161; new parties in 132; oligarchical parties 116; party membership 35, 36 economics 2 Economist Intelligence Unit 21 economistic approach to clientelism 16, 17 elections 6–7; dead souls 33; disaffected voters 125–126; payments to hired party members 34; and personnel earthquakes 86; reduction of the significance of 98–99 electoral revolts 153, 156–158 electoralism 19

electoral-professional parties 134 elite parties 128, 133, 134; see also modern elite parties elite state capture 23 En Marche! 129 entrepreneurial issue parties 134 entrepreneurial parties 122, 123–124, 126, 128, 129, 135–136; in Central Europe 125; in Poland 130; in Slovakia 131 entrepreneurs, Andrej Babiš Eurobarometer 21 European Union 5, 28, 159; Brexit 5 Eurozone debt crisis 159 evolution of new parties: ‘demand-side’ dimension 121, 122; ‘supply-side’ dimension 121–122 exchanges of favours 10, 20 exploitation of state resources 31, 137– 138, 151 exploitative parties 23–24, 29, 83, 125 fake party members 31; dead souls 36–37; letter from Civic Democratic Party (ODS) organisations in Prague-West 41–46; recruitment of 36–37, 38–39 ‘far right’ parties 122, 123 Fiala, Petr 47 Fidesz party 5, 28 ‘fifth column’ 28 firm-party-firm relationships 25, 63 firms: captor 21–22; gambling 84–85; political-economic cartels 79–80; state capture 21–23; see also party capture; state capture Fischer, Jan 67 flash parties 132; Party of Miro Cerar 132–133 flash politicians 133 formal politics 8, 8–9 Forza Italia 129, 137, 139 fraud 49 Freedom and Direct Democracy 159 Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party 131–132 Freedom House 21 Freedom Union-Democratic Union (US-DEU) 36 Fukuyama, Francis 2, 4 gambling firms 84–85 game theory 91 Garton-Ash, Timothy 167 Gazdík, Jan 165

196 Index Germany, migration crisis of 2015 158–161 giant politicised companies 83 godfathers 7, 13, 31, 40, 51–52; decline of the bosses 59–60, 61; new black marketeering 58–59; regional bosses 48–49 “government effectiveness” Governance Indicator 24 Green parties 122, 123 grey eminences 50; Jaroslaw Kaczynski 159 Gross, Stanislav 67 Grzymala-Busse, Anna 23, 24, 83 Hale, Henry 4, 7–9, 31, 63, 83; Patronal Politics. Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective Hanley, Seán 128 Head Up (Hlavu vzhuru) party 55 Hellman, Joe 21, 22, 63 henchmen 50 hired party members: Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 38; dead souls 33; expenditures 34; payments to 34; see also paid party members; recruitment of fake or paid party members Holmes, Leslie 2 Houska, Roman 57 Hrdlicka, Tomáš 47, 52, 54–55, 57, 98 Hungary 5, 6, 28, 167; ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72; democracy in 7; migration crisis of 2015 158–161; party membership 35; political system 28–29 Huntington, Samuel 2 hybrid regimes 5, 27 I&C Energo 73–74 ideal world 8 identity 2 ideology, of the Social Democratic party 19 immigration crisis 158 in-between category of new parties 137 informal business networks 1 informal networks 1, 4, 8–10; in Central Europe 7; ‘client-client’ relationships 13–15; new black marketeering 59; in the Soviet Union’s successor states 7 informal nomenklatura 10–13; actors in 13; cadre politics 12; godfathers 13; mass patronage 12; middle cadres 13; sources 11; trading 12

informal party colonisation ‘from above’ see party colonisation ‘from above’ informal party privatisation ‘from below’ see party privatisation ‘from below’ informal politics 2, 8, 8–10, 10; ‘clientclient’ relationships 14–15 Innes, A. 23, 24 interest groups 85; see also lobbyists intimidation 53 intra-party power 123 Islam, migration crisis of 2015 158–161 Italy, and the Czech Republic 96; see also Berlusconi, Silvio J&T group 78; joint projects with ČEZ 74–76 Janoušek, Roman 47, 52, 54–55, 57, 60, 71, 89, 98 Jansta, Miroslav 68 Jirout, M. 44 jobs: and structural patronage 12–13; trafika 13, 68, 80, 82n3 judiciary, in clientelist structures 88 Jurečko, Roman 37, 57 Kaczynski, Jaroslaw 159 Kaufmann, Daniel 21, 22, 63 Kens 55–56 KGB 10 kickbacks 20 Kiska, Andrej 133 Kitschelt, Herbert 17–18 Klaus, Václav 55, 58 Klíma, Josef 137 Klímová, Jana 71 Kmenta, Jaroslav 48 Komsomol 10 Koole, Ruud 114 Kosowska-Gastol, Beata 130 Kostadinova, Tatiana 13, 14–15 Kremlinology 10 Kríž, Karel 65 Kubátová, Zuzana 70 Kyrgyzstan 81 Langer, Ivan 53, 54 Latin America 2; clientelism 18 Latvia 23 leadership duality 106 Ledeneva, Alena 3 limited democracy 79 Lipset, Seymour Martin 102 lobbyists 13, 79; CEZ (Ceské energetické závody) group 68–70; improper

Index  197 influencing of politics 71; in political parties 93; traders 52 local bosses 37 local political machines 83 loyalty, divided 15 Macron, Emmanuel 129 Madison, James 167 mafia, the 4, 7, 29, 30n2; godfathers 51–52; new black marketeering 58–59 Magyar, Bálint 28; Post-communist Mafia State 5 Mair, Peter 102 Makovský, Petr 44, 45 marketisation 13 mass clientelism 19–20 mass dissatisfaction xix, 126, 151–152 mass immigration from Islamic societies 5, 158–161 mass parties 134, 135–136 mass patronage 12 Mazzoleni, Oscar 124, 133, 134 McMenamin, Iain 81 measuring clientelism 20–21 media 21; client-client relationships 19 memberless parties 124 membership: Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 37, 38; of Movement ANO 2011 (ANO) 140 mercenaries 36 Merkel, Angela 158, 160 middle cadres 13 middle class 2 ‘migrant’ cleavage 152 migration crisis 152–153, 158–161 military-industrial complex 10 minimal definition of clientelist parties 109 Mlejnek, Josef 49, 51, 77 modern elite parties 134, 134–135, 135, 148; catch-all parties 134; electoralprofessional parties 134 modernisation 18 Moldova, de-democratisation 4 Mongolia 64 monopolies 64–66; CEZ group 65; political-economic cartels 79–80; ‘toadying’ 79–80 moral crusade Mostecká uhelná 64 Movement ANO 2011 (ANO) 120–121, 130, 137, 138–141, 142, 149n3, 162; fundamental characteristics 145; membership 140; negative potential of

142–144, 146–147; positive potential of 145–146; positive potential of 144–145; tendency toward authoritarianism 144 ‘movements’ 132 Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina 3 mutual service 12; see also structural patronage Nagyová, Jana 68 national bosses 17, 37, 54–55; decline of 59–60, 61; untouchability of 55; see also bosses; godfathers; regional bosses nationalism 152 Nečas, Petr 39, 50, 67, 68 negative potential 120; of Movement ANO 2011 (ANO) 142–144, 146–147 nepotism 106, 118–119n11 networks: of actual personal acquaintance 9–10; brokerage 23; clientelist 87, 88–91; informal 10, 13–15; patronal 9–10 new black marketeering 58–59; freestanding entrepreneurial parties 122 new nomenklatura 12, 59; actors in 13; cadre politics 12; godfathers 13; mass patronage 12; middle cadres 13; trading 12; see also informal nomenklatura new parties 132, 136, 150; anti-corruption 129; in the Baltic States 128–129; categories of 124–125; in-between category 137; in Central Europe 125–126, 127–128, 132; continuity with the clientelist past 136–138; in the Czech Republic 127, 130; demand-side 120; disaffected voters 125; in Eastern Europe 132; entrepreneurial 123–124, 128; memberless 124; in Poland 129–130; protest parties 128; rooted parties 122; in Slovakia 131; in Slovenia 130, 131; supply-side 120; theoretical framework 121–125; see also flash parties; modern elite parties; start-up parties new political class 86 nomenklatura 10–13, 86; see also informal nomenklatura nomenklatura status 12 non-rooted entrepreneurial protest parties xviii non-transparent businesses 77–78, 82n4, 151; captor firms 21–23; divided loyalties 15 North Bohemia, godfathers 51 Novák, Alexandr 57 Nowoczesna 130

198 Index Offe, Claus 2 ‘officialdom’ 4 oligarchical parties 116, 117 oligarchs 1, 7, 17, 50 oligopolies 64–66; political-economic cartels 79–80; ‘toadying’ 79–80; see also CEZ (Ceské energetické závody) group Ondráčka, David 64 one-off recruitments 34 ‘Opposition Agreement’ 103 Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) 132 organised crime 1, 4, 5, 29, 30n2, 47, 88; decline of the bosses 59–60, 61; new black marketeering 58–59; regional bosses 48–49; see also bosses; mafia, the Oulický, Patrik 37, 57 owner parties 125, 135 paid party members 31; dead souls 33; recruitment of 32–35; see also hired party members; recruitment of fake or paid party members Panebianco, Angelo 123 parallel structures of informal politics xiv, 9 parasitical groups 3, 19, 27, 49, 83, 87; new political class 86; and structural corruption 94; see also bosses; state capture Paroubek, Jiří 67, 76 particularism 3 party capture 13, 25–26, 31, 83, 136, 150; firm-party-firm relationships 63; informal party privatisation ‘from below’ 32; recruitment of fake or paid party members 31; see also Civic Democratic Party (ODS); Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD); fake party members; hired party members; paid party members; party colonisation ‘from above’; party privatisation ‘from below’; recruitment of fake or paid party members party cartel 64, 79 party colonisation ‘from above’ 25, 63–64, 78, 79, 150; ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72; comparison with party privatisation ‘from below’ 76–78; co-operation between ČEZ and J&T group 74–76; monopolies 64–66; oligopolies 64–66; Škoda Holding

72–74; see also ČEZ (České energetické závody) group; party privatisation ‘from below’ party elites 84 Party of Miro Cerar 132–133 party privatisation ‘from below’ 13, 25, 31, 48, 78, 150; authentic party politicians 53–54; comparison with party colonisation ‘from above’ 76–78; decline of the bosses 59–60, 61; godfathers 51–52; I&C Energo 73–74; Kens 55–56; letter from Civic Democratic Party (ODS) organisations in Prague-West 41–46; list of selected bosses 56–58; national bosses 54–55; new black marketeering 58–59; recruitment of fake or paid party members 32–35, 36–37, 38–39; regional bosses 48–50; traders 52; withdrawal of licences in the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in 2013 and 2014 39–41, 46–48; see also bosses; Civic Democratic Party (ODS); Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD); fake party members; hired party members; paid party members; recruitment of fake or paid party members; regional bosses party state capture 23, 24, 25 party-clientelist system 91–92 passivity of party members 35, 106 patrimonial power structures 4 patriotism 152 patronage 1, 4, 12, 16, 19, 29, 30, 47; clientelist 79; parties-business-civil service triad 85–87; potential 19; structural 18; trafika 13, 68, 80, 82n3 patronalism 9 patron-client relationship 16; outdated relevance of 17 pawns 13 payments to hired party members 34 Pečinka, Bohumil 37, 49, 51, 67, 77, 86, 97 Pehe, Jiří 105 Penta 64 personal networks 2, 4 personal parties 125, 135 personal vehicle parties 134 pimps 50 Pirate party 125, 136 pluralistic party system Poland 6, 81, 167; ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72; demands for

Index  199 direct democracy 161–162; democracy in 7; migration crisis of 2015 158–161; new parties in 129–130 police 21, 51, 68; anti-corruption 88–89; Corruption and Financial Crime Detection Unit 55, 89; investigation of ČEZ 71; surveillance 96–98 policies, populist 19 political elites 24–25 political parties 11–12, 51-52; ad hoc nonrooted entrepreneurial 120; authentic party politicians 53–54; business and parasitic functions 100–101; captor parties 23–24; Citizens’ Rights PartyZemanites (SPOZ) 36; Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) 36; Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 31; cleavages 122; clientelist 109–112, 116; confederations 104–106; contagion of clientelism 91–93; Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD) 31, 51–52; dead souls 33; divided loyalties 15; elite state capture 23; Freedom Union-Democratic Union (US-DEU) 36; intelligence experts 98; KDU-ČSL (Christian Democratic Union-People’s Party) 65; Kens 55–56; leadership duality 106; lobbyists 93; national bosses 54–55; no-member 124; oligarchical 116, 117; party state capture 24; passivity of party members 35; Public Affairs 36, 55; Social Democratic 19; steamrolling 32–33; TOP 09 36; weakening relationship with society 114, 115, 126; see also bosses; Civic Democratic Party (ODS); Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD); modern elite parties; new parties; regional bosses political parties-business-civil service triad 85–87 political puppet masters 50 political science 101 political-business networks 1 political-economic cartels 79–80 politicians: flash 132, 133; Kens 55–56; principle goals of 17 politics 2; patronal 9 populist policies 19 positive potential 120; of Movement ANO 2011 (ANO) 144–145, 145–146 post-1989 clientelism 15–21; corruption potential 19; critical political junctures 151–153; parasitical groups 19;

patronage potential 19; since 2000 153, 156–158; since 2015 158–161 post-communism 5, 31, 63; ideal concepts 8 post-communist alternatives in Central Europe 27–29 post-communist clientelism 15–21, 24, 30; party capture 25–26; state capture 21–25 post-communist transformation 1, 3, 4, 7; abuses of power 5; clientelism 17–18; de-democratisation 4; informal politics 8–9; state capture 21–25, 63 post-industrial development 120 power 17; intra-party 123; patrimonial 4 PPF 64; joint projects with ČEZ 75–76 Prague, Žluté lázně 50, 99 Prague-West: letter from Civic Democratic Party (ODS) organisations in 41–46; withdrawal of licences in the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) from 40–41 predatory groups 3, 4, 13 Prisoner’s Dilemma 91 private-firm parties 148; theoretical conclusions 148 privatisation 3, 28; and informal nomenklatura 11; party 13; see also party privatisation ‘from below’ pro-business politics 64–66 progressive cartelisation 66 promiscuous hypothesis 81 protest parties 125, 128; in Central Europe 128–129 Pšenička, Jirí 65, 73, 79 Public Affairs 36, 55, 96, 140–141 Putin, Vladimir 10, 28 Rajlich, Václav 91 Rath, David 53, 54, 61n7, 61n8 ‘real socialism’ 59 recruitment of fake or paid party members 31, 32–35, 36–37, 38–39, 41–46; business plans 33–35; Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 37, 38; Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD) 38–39; dead souls 33; one-off recruitments 34; see also elections; hired party members; paid party members reduction of the significance of elections 98–99 referenda 162, 163; in the Czech Republic 163–164 reform parties 128–129 regime dynamics 2

200 Index regional bosses 17, 25, 37, 48–49, 50, 77–78, 104; authentic party politicians 53–54; in the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 50; decline of 59–60, 61; godfathers 51–52; intimidation 53; Rath, David 53–54; traders 52; see also bosses; godfathers; national bosses regional godfathers 50 regionalisation of politics 48–49 relationship-based culture 3–4 rent-seeking 3 representative democracy 161–164; deconstruction of 161–164 Richter, Milan 56 Rittig, Ivo 54–55, 57, 82n4, 98; joint enterprise with Martin Roman 71–72 Roman, Martin 55, 67; contact with regional and national bosses 71; joint enterprise with Ivo Rittig 71–72; lobbying activities of 69–70; Škoda Holding 72–73 Romania 23; ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72 rooted parties 122, 136 rule-based culture 3 Russia 4, 5, 7, 28, 81, 167; and the migration crisis of 2015 158–159 Sajó, András 18, 93, 164 Sarkozy, Nicolas 160 scandals: surveillance-related 97–98; see also corruption; structural corruption Schmalz, Vladimír 40, 67 Schwarzenberg, Karel 52 second generation of post-revolutionary politicians 55 second phase of post-communist development 28, 29 security 96–98 Security Information Service 55; reports 21 Security Information Service (BIS) 88, 96 Šedivý, Jiří 91 Shabu, Martin 40, 40–41 Sikk, Allan 122, 128, 136 Škoda Holding 64, 72, 72–73, 74 Šlachta, Robert 89 Slovakia 23, 167; ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72; demands for direct democracy 161–162; new party subsystem 131; Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO)

135; party membership 35; We Are Family-Boris Kollár 133, 135 Slovenia: new party subsystem 130, 131; Party of Miro Cerar 132–133 Sobolewska-Myslik, Katarzyna 130 social cleavages 101–104 Social Democratic party 19 society: particularist 3; in post-communist transition 4; universalist 3; weakening relationship with political parties 114, 115, 126 sophisticated methods of corruption 94–95 Southern Europe 2 Soviet bloc 28 Soviet Union 2, 7; Kremlinology 10 Špidla, Vladimír 67 start-up parties 132, 133 state capture 21–25, 30, 31, 63, 64, 83, 136, 151; captor firms 21–22; clientelist 24–25, 25, 150; complex 24; corporate 23, 25; economistic approach 22; elite 23; party 23, 24, 25; party-corporate 27; “various branches of” 83; see also party capture steamrolling 32–33, 39 Strakonická Veřejnost (‘Strakonice Public’) 30n1 structural corruption 1, 18, 93–96; anticorruption crusades, danger of 164–165; in Ukraine 116–117 structural patronage 1, 12–13 supply-side: of the new party subsystem 120; of political clientelism 15, 29 surveillance 96–98 surveys 21 Switzerland, referenda 162, 163 systemic clientelism 7, 22, 26, 55, 59, 98, 125, 147, 153, 160, 161, 164, 166; new black marketeering 59 systemic corruption 5 tax havens 7 third wave of democratisation 2 ‘toadying’ 79–80 TOP 09 36, 149n2 Topolánek, Mirek 49, 67, 77, 78 totalitarianism 4, 7; nomenklatura 11 traders 52 trading 12 trafika 13, 68, 80, 82n3 Transparency International 21, 64, 72 “triple transitions” 2 tunnelling 49

Index  201 Turkey, ČEZ (České energetické závody) group 66–72 Turkmenistan, dictatorship in 7 Tuzex crowns 62n11 two-way party capture 25–26, 30 Ukraine 5, 81; corporate state capture 23; de-democratisation 4; oligarchical parties 116; structural corruption 116–117 United Kingdom, Brexit 5, 147, 162 United States 5, 28 universalism 3 Ústí nad Labem 37, 38, 51, 57; godfathers 51; recruitment of hired party members in 34 Uzbekistan, dictatorship in 7 Vávra, Jiří 98 Vercesi 135 Visegrad group xiv, 158; see also Czech Republic; Poland; Slovakia Vodrážka, David 56 Voerman, Gerrit 124, 133, 134 voters, disaffected 125 We Are Family-Boris Kollár 133 Weber, Max 3

Western Europe: decline of established parties in 129; migration crisis of 2015 158–161 Westernization: of Central Europe 6–8 whalers 50 wiretaps 96 withdrawal of licences in the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in 2013 and 2014 40–41, 47–48; letter from Civic Democratic Party (ODS) organisations in Prague-West 41–46; Prague 4 41; Prague 10 47; Prague 11 47–48; Prague 12 40; Prague-West 40–41 World Bank 21, 22, 25; “government effectiveness” Governance Indicator 24; state capture 25 xenophobia 152; and the migration crisis 152–153, 158–161 Yakovlev, Andrei 7 Yellowraazd 73 Zlámalová, Lenka 86 Žluté lázně 50, 99 Zrinšcak, Siniša 24

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