Institute of Governmental Studies

In this paper we study the voting behavior of the Czech Parliament members. First, we show that low-dimensionality characterizes conflict in the Czech Parliament. The first, and dominant dimension is the classical left-right dimension, whereas the second dimension, when significant, expresses attitude toward European integration. Second, we document the party development in the Czech Parliament and show evidence of convergence to a Western European type parliamentary democracy. We show that this is mainly a result of political parties' use of reward and punishment strategies to discipline their members. Highly disciplined members were awarded with better ranking in the party list for the subsequent elections. We also find that the electors are, though indirectly, interested in roll call voting behavior of their representatives.