ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the first broad actor: the formation of local and regional party-firm machines with their bosses and godfathers at the top, i.e. the process of informal party privatisation ‘from below.’ It describes the informal mechanisms and structures that permeated formal party politics at local and regional levels and ultimately triggered the mutation of the governing parties into an obedient tool for the exploitation of state resources. In the case of the Czech Republic, the chapter explores the incremental process of party privatisation by non-transparent small and medium-sized companies. In the Czech Republic, as a consequence of fraudulent recruitment on a local, district and regional level, in which thousands of people were involved, degenerative processes took place, especially in the two biggest mainstream parties, the centre-right Civic Democratic Party and the Social Democrats. The chapter shows how covert networks of the political and economic elite merged into different informal political structures, more or less co-operating or competing.
