ABSTRACT
The 1996 election marked an end to centre-right majority government in the Czech Republic, beginning a pattern of political stalemate characterized by a succession of minority or weak majority governments sustained by unstable left-right co-operation, which lasted until 2006. Many accounts of Czech politics attribute the decline of the Czech right in the late 1990s to exogenous factors such as the unravelling of its economic policies or the belated consolidation of the centre-left. However, as discussed in Chapter 5, the difficulties of Czech transformation strategy were apparent at an early stage. Moreover, in both electoral and parliamentary terms support for centre-right parties remained relatively stable throughout across the 1990s, falling sharply only in 2002, six years and two parliamentary elections after the Social Democrats had first established themselves as a major party.
