The Czech Republic: from Socialist Past to Socialized Future

Abstract

This chapter deals with the socialization of the Czech Republic into the West European normative order after the democratic revolution of 1989. We use the ‘complex socialization’ framework (Flockhart, this volume) to address this process. We focus therefore on the domestic structure as a key variable of complex socialization, distinguishing between the government and society or the state/elite and nation/people level within that structure. In this respect, the Czech Republic represents a country whose governmental ideology has consistently been based on Western democratic principles and whose society has been West-oriented. These features make it a representative member of out-group 1 within our framework (Flockhart, this volume) whose socialization should be smoother than in other groups and in which a high degree of self-socialization is to be expected.