The crystallisation of political attitudes and the political spectrum in the Czech Republic

The basic structural cleavages of post-communist society should, according to Kitschelt [1992], be aligned along two separate axes: the left-right axi s and that of libertarianism-authoritarianism. The party systems in central and eastern Europe were expected to structure themselves along axes rangin g from authoritarians and opponents of the market at one end and liberals;r nd supporters of the market at the other. The distribution of parties along these axes would be dependent on the level of industrialisation. Where eco nomic development was already advanced, as in the Czech Republic, many poli tical parties would be concentrated at the market-liberal end of the scale. As far as the political space defined by political parties is concerned, a nalyses show that in the case of the Czech Republic these assumptions do in fact apply. This paper raises a question of whether the political space de fined by political orientations, values and attitudes of potential voters i s also arranged along the two main axes: left-right and libertarianism-auth oritarianism. The results show that in the Czech Republic both axes do exis t and organise the political behaviour of voters. It turns out, however, th at the left-right axis, which has been gradually taking its traditional soc io-economic content, is clearly dominant and thus represents the main struc tural cleavage of the Czech political spectrum. The libertarianism-authorit arianism axis, though its existence cannot be questioned, is much weaker th an the left-right one. The paper also deals with the difference between dec lared and values-based left-right political orientations. Analyses show tha t there is a significant difference between the two distributions: while in terms of declared political orientations the Czech voters are more towards the right-wing end of the political spectrum, in their deeper feelings and beliefs about politically important socio-economic issues they are more to wards the left.