Elite research in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The collapse of the communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia has not only profoundly changed lives of people but also the working conditions for social scientists and, in particular, for students of social stratification and mobility with respect to analysing the process of social structure formation under the new political and economic settings. One of the most appealing questions for social and political scientists has certainly been the pace and the character of the change at the top of society, i.e. among members of political, economic and cultural elites.

According to an agreement with the editors only two research projects dealing with elites are reported extensively in this paper. There were three major reasons for such a decision. First, in the Czech Republic, there is a very limited number of publications dealing with the problem. Second, though the author of the report sent a formal request to the most important research and educational institutions that could have been involved in such a research, only one research team has provided the requested information. Third, the obtained information covered the results of the research of local elections held in 1990 and elected representatives at the local level. The brief information on this project is provided at the end of the report. To the author’s knowledge, only two research projects — “Circulation of Elites” and “Elites 1994” — reported here dealt with economic, political and cultural elites at the national level.