Abstract
The chapter focuses on the development of political communication and campaigning in the Czech Republic. It starts with a brief overview of the basic characteristics of the political and party system. Then, it introduces the main laws and rules the campaigners must comply with. After that, the author describes the evolution of communication tactics and techniques used by parties and candidates to persuade voters to vote for them over the last three decades. At the end of the chapter, the author discusses the most recent campaigning trends in the Czech Republic and summarises the chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
The slogan referred to the general unpopularity of political parties among citizens because of four decades of one-party rule via the Communist Party.
- 2.
For example, at his meetings, Václav Klaus (the future prime minister and president of the Czech Republic) was accompanied by a car with a loudspeaker proclaiming, ‘If you vote for Klaus, you vote for Havel as well.’ Klaus became the surprise of the elections when he gained—thanks to an intensive personal campaign with over one hundred voter meetings, sometimes with up to a hundred thousand people in attendance—the most preference votes.
- 3.
KDU-ČSL and US-DEU, which arose from a merger of the Union of Freedom and the Democratic Union.
- 4.
Among other things, they prompted the main colour of the party to change from yellow to orange.
- 5.
During this period, political advisor from the US Arthur J. Finkelstein cooperated with ODS.
- 6.
Elections to the regional councils were held in October 2008, so the parties had started campaigning several months before.
- 7.
An affair connected to the lithium mining memorandum. A so-called alternative media outlet Aeronet framed it as a way of bringing profit to ČSSD. Several political parties (ANO, KSČM, and SPD, a new extreme right-wing populist party founded by Tomio Okamura) incorporated the issue into their campaigns and called it ‘daylight robbery’. Lithium dominated not only the political parties’ communication but also their media discourse.
References
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Gregor, M. (2019). Czech Republic. In: Eibl, O., Gregor, M. (eds) Thirty Years of Political Campaigning in Central and Eastern Europe. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27693-5_8
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