Demythologising the Czech opposition agreement

Andrew Roberts

Europe-Asia Studies, 2003, vol. 55, issue 8, 1273-1303

Abstract: For many observers of the Czech political scene, 8 July 1998 was confirmation of their worst fears. It was then, two weeks after parliamentary elections, that the largest party in parliament, the Czech Social Democratic Party (CˇSSD), announced that it had signed what came to be known as the ‘opposition agreement’ with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the second largest party in parliament. The agreement stated that ODS would allow CˇSSD to govern alone as a minority government. In return, ODS would receive a number of parliamentary posts and the two parties would together adopt several constitutional amendments. The reaction of Czech political scientists and commentators was almost unanimously negative. President Va´clav Havel called the alliance ‘unholy’. The head of the Christian Democratic Union (KDU-CˇSL), Josef Lux, believed the agreement to be unconstitutional and vowed to contest it in court. Commentators even likened it to the communist-era national front governments. More specific criticisms focused on its negative consequences for stability, democracy and the fate of important social and economic reforms. Even at the end of its four-year run, political observers remained almost as negatively disposed to the agreement as they were at the start.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0966813032000141114 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ceasxx:v:55:y:2003:i:8:p:1273-1303

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ceas20

DOI: 10.1080/0966813032000141114

Access Statistics for this article

Europe-Asia Studies is currently edited by Terry Cox

More articles in Europe-Asia Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().