Representative versus Responsible Government and May’s Law: The Case of the Czech Christian Democratic Party

The representative vs responsible government thesis of Peter Mair argues that one of the main causes of the weakening of democracy is the increasing tension between the representative and governance functions performed by parties. The consequences of this widening gap in roles are increasingly evident, however, little is known about the intra-party foundations of this trend. This study using May’s law and a theoretically informed case study of the Czech Christian Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL) demonstrates that (1) the opinion structure with a governance rather than representation oriented party is largely homogeneous revealing the origins of the representation deficit; and (2) the observed opinion differences among members of a party frequently in government have their origins in society rather than within the party showing that internal party life is failing in its representation function. These two results demonstrate that fundamental changes in party system have intra-party foundations.