Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung

Europäische Länderberichte

Tschechien nach den zweiten Regionalwahlen: Regionalisierung der Politik und Politisierung der Regionen

Stephanie Weiss

S. 475-488

In the Czech republic, fourteen political regions were founded after controversial debate among the political parties in the years 2000/2001. Thus regional elections in the Czech republic in November 2004 marked the end of the new regional governments' first term of office. In the beginning, low financial provisions and unclarified competences called into question whether the new political level would at all be capable of acting. But as some examples show, decentralization has in fact led to regional policy-making and reform: In the areas of education and health service regions have already implemented competitive models of problem solution. But whereas regions have become more influential and active there is broad public indifference towards the new level of government which is also reflected in extremely low election turnount. The article argues that public lack of interest in regionalization is closely connected with disapproval of the way the regional level is politicized by political parties, mainly the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats (SSD). This will be illustrated by an analysis of the election campaign.
Regional elections in 2004 were essentially a vote against the governing Social democrats in Prague and brought an overwhelming victory of the oppositional ODS which now heads all but one regional goverments. With the strong majority of the Civic Democrats and with parliamentary elections ahead in 2006 it is likely that in spite of some pragmatic cooperation of the two parties harsh rhetorical confrontation and politicization of the regions will increase.

Zitiervorschlag für diesen Artikel:
Weiss, Stephanie 2005: Tschechien nach den zweiten Regionalwahlen: Regionalisierung der Politik und Politisierung der Regionen, in: Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2005. Föderalismus, Subsidiarität und Regionen in Europa, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, S. 475-488.