ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an empirical assessment of political inequality in the Czech Republic. It focuses in particular on gender and economic inequalities. In the first place, the country is a laggard in the representation of women in politics. Turning to class inequalities in politics, an original analysis of the financial disclosures of MPs indicates that they have a strong association with businesses and own significant assets. A surprising change that the chapter documents is the growing number of superrich entering politics both for selfish and altruist reasons. We then take advantage of a unique survey of Czech dollar millionaires to show that they are considerably more economically conservative than the public but also more internationalist. We then look for the means of influence by analyzing donations to parties and find that donations are concentrated on right-wing parties but also that they come more from individuals than corporations and not from the very richest Czechs. The chapter concludes by assessing whether these political inequalities have produced economic inequality. Overall, we find some indications that the very rich are playing a greater role in politics, though not a smoking gun for their greater influence.
