Decentralization in the Czech Republic: The European Union, Political Parties, and the Creation of Regional Assemblies

Abstract

This study begins with an exploration of the external (European Union) and internal (Czech political parties) forces that shaped the creation of regional assemblies in the Czech Republic. The institutional and administrative requirements of EU regional policy served as a catalyst for the creation of Czech regional governments. Domestic struggles over decentralization, particularly among Czech political parties, are reflected in the number and boundaries of the regions as well as in the slow transfer of policy competences from the national government to regional governments. This study also examines the November 2000 regional elections and places the results in the context of the 2002 parliamentary elections. Party support clustered by region, but the position that parties took on the creation of regional assemblies did not impact electoral success in the regional elections, nor did party success or failure in the regional elections forecast electoral fortunes in the parliamentary elections. The regional and national elections reflected low voter turnout, relatively strong support for the Communist party, and a dramatic rise and fall of party coalitions. JVLany Central and Eastern European countries created regional governments in preparation for accession to the European Union (EU). Countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia are rebuilding their regional levels of public administration. In building a new system of regional governance after 1992, the Czech Republic did not have much of a tradition of political decentralization to draw upon. Emerging from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the First World War, the newly independent Czechoslovakia organized itself territorially into four administrative regions, or "lands," based on historic ethnic and cultural divisions: Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia, and Ruthenia. 1 This territorial system was abolished under the abbreviated

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