Abstrakt
Many political scientists are watching with concern how new and traditional European democracies cope with current policy challenges. One of the common denominators of analyses of Czech politics in the new millennium is disaffection.
At the same time, a radical change of the party system, the increasing distrust of voters to traditional parties and the victory of the "anti-establishment" policy are characteristic for Czech politics. If we use the theory of principal and agent to describe the relationship between voters and their representatives, we can say that the voters as principals conclude a contract with their agents, who, however, understand the content of the contract differently than the contracting authority.
The chain of the delegation is problematic at the very beginning. It is assumed that voters, as principals, have the same value system as their elected agents.
However, the results show that there are differences between the attitudes of citizens and their representatives. The good news is that voters are actually selecting parties whose representatives are closest to their democratic attitudes; on the other hand, the bad news for Czech democracy is a significant mismatch between citizens and elites on the issue of policy responsiveness.