ABSTRACT
The current democratic regime in the Czech Republic did not develop in the classic “bottom-up” way in which the pre-war democracy of the Czechoslovak Republic emerged. The latter was a product of anti-feudal protest and it institutionalized democratic impulses from within an already existing civil society. Although the current democratic regime resulted from a revolt against communist rule, its institutional “skeleton” was established from above. The institutions were structured and established a priori instead of expressing and codifying democratization a posteriori.
