Hanley, Sean;
Kopeček, Lubomír;
(2026)
Death of the dinosaurs? Organisational resilience and the survival of older mainstream parties in Czechia.
Europe-Asia Studies
10.1080/09668136.2025.2455163.
(In press).
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Abstract
This article examines how organisational strength, leadership change and strategy enable traditional parties in postcommunist Central Europe to survive political and electoral crisis and new party challengers and unexpectedly re-emerge as nationally competitive actors. Case studies of two Czech parties, the Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana—ODS) and the People’s Party (Křesťanská a demokratická unie–Československá strana lidová—KDU-ČSL), suggest that partial recovery can be achieved by a ‘crisis leader’ who manages risks through strategies of limited reform, focused on mobilising core members and voters in local politics and other second-order venues. The final part discusses how the two parties’ participation in the anti-populist SPOLU alliance superseded their earlier anti-crisis strategies.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Death of the dinosaurs? Organisational resilience and the survival of older mainstream parties in Czechia |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09668136.2025.2455163 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2025.2455163 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10193303 |
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