Representative versus Responsible Government and May’s Law: The Case of the Czech Christian Democratic Party

• Authors: Lukáš Linek , Pat Lyons
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The representative vs responsible government thesis of Peter Mair argues that one of the main causes of the weakening of democracy is the increasing tension between the representative and governance functions performed by parties. The consequences of this widening gap in roles are increasingly evident, however, little is known about the intra-party foundations of this trend. This study using May’s law and a theoretically informed case study of the Czech Christian Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL) demonstrates that (1) the opinion structure with a governance rather than representation oriented party is largely homogeneous revealing the origins of the representation deficit; and (2) the observed opinion differences among members of a party frequently in government have their origins in society rather than within the party showing that internal party life is failing in its representation function. These two results demonstrate that fundamental changes in party system have intra-party foundations.

Keywords

EN

REPRESENTATIVE VERSUS RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT; PARTY MEMBERS; MAY’S LAW; POLICY POSITIONS; CZECH CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 1149-1191

Contributors

author

Lukáš Linek

author

Pat Lyons

• Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic