Abstract
During the last decade we have seen the growth of populism throughout Central European countries and more generally within the European Union, but the Czech Republic seems to stay out of this general trend. In our paper we intend to relativize this assertion by focusing not only on few populist parties and movements (Public affairs, Dawn of direct democracy and its split), but also by analysing other parties functioning in the frame of the Czech Parliament, especially the established ones.
We will not only compare the discourse (especially when the parties are facing the migration crisis even without migrants in the Czech case) but also the general context of this paradoxical phenomenon of populist mood in this EU member state, from the appeal to the people to the rejection of the parliamentary democracy. The parties we will here mainly focus on will be the Communist party (KSČM), the Conservative-liberal party (ODS), the Social-democratic party (ČSSD), the Christian-democratic party (KDU-ČSL) and the Movement of unsatisfied citizens (ANO 2011), but also on the main populist party leaded by T.
Okamura (the Dawn of Direct Democracy and then the Freedom and Direct Democracy). We also give a look at the yet no longer existing Republicans and Public Affairs.
This general "populist mood" is quite general, shared by all the parties, some fearing the stagnation of electoral support, some looking for new ideas and topics able to help them to face the concurrence of new anti-establishment parties; even if they stay more or less on their classical/historical ideological basis, they tend to develop a more or less evident populist rhetoric. Causes of such evolution are both systemic and conjectural.