Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 27th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG1: Local Government Author(s) Lucie Nemcova Charles University Prague Czech Republic Title Conflict, Crisis, Collapse: Wavering Urban Governments in the Czech Republic File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Lucie Nemcova Abstract Roughly every fifth city in the Czech Republic experienced a collapse of the governing local coalition during the communal election period 2014-2018. Coalitions in Czech regions also caught the sickness and both Central and South Bohemian regions suffered a governing coalition collapse shortly after the 2016 regional elections. At the state level, the coalition established after 2013 parliamentary elections lasted only 24 months before it faced its fall. Judging by the election results, these numerous coalition crises at all levels were caused primarily by the weakening of established parties, which appeared unready to fight the appeal of new political groups. At first glance, the destructive variable of political group ANO 2011, officially founded only in 2012, is interlinking most of these coalition collapses. Comparing the number of documented coalition collapses and their impact, urban governments of statutory cities seem to be the ideal sample for thorough analysis. The Czech Republic is an example of strong, financially independent and autonomous urban governments, governed by collective political leadership. Most legislation is implemented directly at the local level so the collapse of governing coalitions often means paralysis for city governments, which operate with yearly budgets of billions of euros. The paralysis is noticeable particularly when it comes to strategic decisions in public services and projects. Ostrava lost a funding opportunity of 4.8 million euros to be used on intelligent transport systems. In Brno, the coalition broke down while deciding about merging nine city companies with an annual turnover of almost 353 million euros. During such a paralysis in Prague for example, more than 1.7 billion euros in current expenditures and more than 667 million euros in investment expenditures for the year 2016 were divided in the absence of councilors for key areas of territorial development, education, city property and sport. In this environment combined with an already very limited four year election period, coalition collapses become a concern not only of politicians but also of the civil society, which can feel the paralysis of city development in daily life. The purpose of this paper is to present a unique comparative analysis of all fourteen Czech statutory cities that experienced a governing coalition collapse. The fact that ANO 2011 party links all these collapses is pointing towards a general assumption that coalition behavior of young inexperienced political parties has the power to “make or break” governments and considerably affect the development of a city, region or country. The frequent and previously unexplored coalition collapses in the Czech Republic show that the length and quality of previous coalition-making and coalition-maintaining practices is irrelevant when chaos is introduced by such an intervening variable. On the other hand, ANO 2011 entered Czech politics as an ideologically ambivalent party declaring openness and communication with all political partners. Using official city documents and media research, this paper will search for the critical intervening variable using “three Cs” of comparison: 1) cohesion, 2) collision, 3) collapse. The presented comparative overview will make sense of the reasons, development and possible impacts of the overwhelming and previously unseen number of coalition collapses in the Czech Republic.
