NATIONALISATION OF THE CZECH LOCAL PARTY SYSTEM: CASE STUDY OF THE 2010 LOCAL ELECTIONS IN MUNICIPALITIES WITH EXTENDED POWERS

The question of party system nationalisation has recently come to the fore of research activities, as it emphasizes the importance of spatial aspects of the overall institutionalization of the party systems. However, within this topic, one area remains almost completely ignored. Specifically, it is an analysis of the interdependence of local party systems with the country’s national party system. In this article, we seek to address this existing gap in scholarly inquiry by examining local party system nationalisation using data from the 2010 local elections in the Czech Republic. We analyse the degree of local party system nationalisation (employing Kjær and Elklit’s index of local party system nationalisation) and test hypotheses about the effects of population size and other independent variables on varying degree of local party system nationalisation in 205 municipalities with extended powers and the capital city of Prague. We conclude that the best way to express the degree of local party system nationalisation is in the effective terms. At the same time, we found two variables, which proved to have the greatest significant independent impact on the degree of local party system nationalisation – population size and competitiveness.