Eastern Europe: Parties and the mirage of technocracy

Image: kerryj.com CC-BY-NC

Many commentators saw the governments of non-party technocrats formed in Greece and Italy in 2011 as an ill omen for development of party-based democracy in Europe. Established parties, it is suggested, are turning to technocratic caretaker administrations as a device to manage economic and political crisis, which allows them both to duck (or least share) responsibility for painful austerity measures. Such non-partisan governments of experts, it is argued, can only widen the yawning the legitimacy gap between governors and governed.

 Technocratically-imposed austerity backed by big established parties can further undermine party democracy by provoking anti-elite electoral backlashes:  the rise of new populist parties or breakthroughs by previously marginal radical groups. This in turn, makes coalition formation difficult and further rounds of caretaker government or awkward left-right co-operation more likely. The success of the Five Star Movement in Italy and its difficult political aftermath, which has finally resulted in an implausible Grand Coalition, seems to illustrate this scenario perfectly. Sometimes, caretaker technocrats themselves even add to the uncertainty, revolting against their erstwhile masters and founding their own new parties.

 How has the drift towards technocratic crisis management impacted Central and Eastern Europe?  The region is sometimes grouped with debt- and crisis-afflicted Southern Europe states as an economically weak periphery of flawed and potentially unstable democracies, where technocratic crisis governments are the order of the day.

Václav Klaus live and unplugged

Photo : Daniel Srb ben Abraham  CC

A few years ago I honestly told myself that I would spend less time academically on Czech right-wing politics and more time on other things. The world really did, after all, need some decent research about Central European interest groups and under-the-radar new parties threatening to break through into Czech politics. Inevitably, things didn’t work out like that.

As the Czech media have noticed rather than sit at home and write his memoirs the former Czech president is embarking on the political equivalent of a European and world tour and – as with 1980s electro pop or – when you’re got all the albums, but didn’t manage to catch the acts live, it’s hard to stay away.

And so it was that I found myself in Pembroke College (Cambridge) listening to Klaus giving the Adam Smith Lecture (transcript including asides faithfully posted by the Václav Klaus Institute here).

In recent years figures on the left, not least fellow Scot Gordon Brown, have tried to reclaim Smith from his totemic status as an icon of the free market right, but – following in the footsteps of previous lecturers Charles Moore and Nigel Lawson – this will be a strictly orthodox interpretation.

 Accordingly, Klaus tells us about the Smithsonian influence over his career, explaining to semi-approved of status of classical pre-Marxian economists in communist Czechoslovakia and his position as a junior researcher attracted to liberal market economics in the 1960s, critical of the market socialist plans of the Prague Spring.

 Adam Smith, the Adam Smith Institute and the politics of Thatcher and Thatcherism were also an inspiration after the fall of communism when he is – he says – promoting the idea of a fully fledged capitalist market economy against residual ideas of a Third Way on the liberal left. Anglo Saxon liberal ideas helped see off the threat of a French – or German inspired social market economy in the Czech Republic.

 This is the classic Klaus back story.

Will Václav Klaus unite Europe’s eurosceptics?

Photo: David Sedlecký via WikiCommons Media

Yesterday the Czech media was all aquiver with front page news in the left-wing daily Právo – and its associated news server Novinky.cz – that former Czech president Václav Klaus was ‘seriously considering’ running for the European Parliament. And that he was planning to do for the Civic Democrats (ODS) – the party he founded in 1991 and led for many years before stepping down as leader in 2002 then leaving altogether in 2008 in protest at his successor’s embrace of the Lisbon Treaty.

 What’s more, the story runs, as MEP Klaus, given his stature, would more or less automatically lead the European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) group which brings together the British Tories, ODS, Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) in what is intended to be a mainstream conservative anti-federalist bloc.

 The newspaper quotes a ‘credible source’ while Klaus himself has said nothing publicly. But the ex-president is a cautious politician who likes to drop hints, fly kites and generally test the waters. So it’s plausible that someone in his entourage or Klaus himself did indeed  tip the wink. Indeed, he has already hinted directly in an interview in December that he was thinking about running for the EP for his old party, when I was sceptical)

 Could it happen? And could Klaus become a kind of EU-wide Leader of the Eurosceptic Opposition.

Václav Klaus: A political phenomenon without political power

Photo: DerHuti Wikimedia Commons

In many ways a medium-sized Central European country like the Czech Republic could hardly have wished for a better president: an experienced, energetic and erudite politician of international standing able to engage both with the big European issues and handle the domestic problems thrown up by fractious politicians and crumbling coalition governments.

 A president tough-minded enough to periodically remind its citizens that they were living not in an impoverished mafia state, but in a tolerably well-administered, reasonably prosperous, if inevitably flawed, European democracy.

 As president during the last ten years Václav Klaus has been all of these things.

 But he has also been a blisteringly controversial head of state, whose views have often been sharply at odds with most of his fellow politicians or fellow citizens. Provocative and unignorable, Klaus has been loved and (more often) loathed both at home and abroad. He leaves office facing an indictment for treason brought by opponents  for alleged constitutional violations. He is, as Czech political scientist Lubomír Kopeček rightly terms him in a recent biography, a political phenomenon.

 But what lasting impacts does Klaus’s ten year period in office really leave?

Czech Republic: Four things you didn’t know about Miloš Zeman

Photo: Miloslav Hamřík via Wikimedia Commons

 Ever since Miloš Zeman won the Czech presidential elections on 26 January, analysts have been scrambling to say just what his political views actually are – especially his views on foreign policy and the EU.

 Never quite as prolific a speechifier or writer as Václav Klaus, on stepping down as Prime Minister in 2002, Zeman was semi-retired for the best part of a decade, resurfacing for occasional public appearances.

 His campaign programme and campaign performances offered little in the way of clear and concrete views. Indeed, they tended to highlight that he was inconsistent and liked to make policy on the hoof – saying, for example, he wanted to abolish the Czech Senate one moment, then that he wanted transform it into a Bundesrat-style chamber of the regions.

 Most analysts, including me, therefore settled for the default conclusion that Zeman was basically a kind of a social democrat with a pragmatic pro-European outlook, who was cautious but not hostile towards the EU. Big change – or no change – depending on your point of view.

 But delve a little more deeply and we can find plenty of Zeman views on record: two books of memoirs and various collections of interviews, including most recently Miloš Zeman – Zpověď informovaného optimisty which came out last year as a lead-in to the Zeman presidential campaign.

 In conversation with right-wing journalist Petr Žantovský, who clumsily (and unsuccessfully) tries to lure Zeman into agreeing with various Václav Klaus-like opinions, Zeman sets out his actual views.

 And very interesting views they are too – revealing a number of things that you probably didn’t know about the President elect.

Kicking out at Kicking Off

It’s not a good idea to read the books you got for Christmas 2011 some time after Christmas 2012. But it does at least allow you to read zeitgeist-y political books with some perspective.

 This is very much the case with Paul Mason’s Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions which rode the wave of the Newsnight economics correspondent’s single brilliant blog post, arguing that the Arab Spring was just the most powerful manifestation of new and epoch-making wave of global protest.

 The (recently re-issued) book doesn’t in truth add a great deal to the ideas sketched in the blog post:  there is some decent reportage from hot spots of protests round the world Athens, New York, London – with Mason’s writing about the slums of Cairo and Manila particularly insightful – but in the end this is just high quality padding.

As in the original blog, the reasons Why It’s Kicking Off are essentially straightforward and threefold:  the strains imposed by global economic contraction; the new possibilities for decentralised, horizontal organisation opened up in by the internet and social media; and the role of ‘graduates without a future’ who feel the full brunt of the new insecurity but are also digital natives who ‘tweet in their dreams’.

But there is a slightly deeper underlying argument running through the book. Mason’s original post, as he is happy to relate, sent to have come from a conversation in the pub with activists at the Really Free School (then) at squatted premises in Bloomsbury. He was, as he appears less happy to confirm, a former member of the Trotskyist Workers Power group at some point. He certainly clearly comfortable and knowledgeable with the politics of the far left – both historically and now – in a way that few mainstream journalists are unless they have been on the inside of such movements. (The BBC’s Andrew Marr -  once a member of  the Workers’ Liberty groupuscule – is another example).

Czech democracy in the mirror: What the presidential elections tell us

Photo: Juandev via Wikimedia Commons

The first direct elections of the Czech president offered a refreshing contrast to the back room manoeuvring and political horse-trading that accompanied the election in parliament of presidents Havel and (especially) Klaus. Despite the nastiness of the Zeman campaign and vacuousness of the political marketing around Karel Schwarzenberg, voters were offered a clear choice between personalities and priorities and turned out in large numbers to make it.

 Television pictures of voters ranging from ski-suited holiday-makers to prisoners choosing the new head of state send quiet but clear message of a country that takes its democracy seriously and knows how to use it.

 But the elections also hold up a more subtle mirror to Czech democracy, showing a political system still defined by patterns laid down in 1990s, which may nevertheless be on the cusp of change.

Czech presidential elections: Schwarzenberg comeback sets up close run-off

Image: http://www.volimakarla.cz

Few observers, even a matter of weeks beforehand, would have predicted the success of the two candidates who will be contesting the second round run-off to choose the Czech Republic’s first directly elected president, which takes place on 25-26 January.

 Miloš Zeman, who topped the poll in the first round on 11-12 January with 24.2 per cent, is a former Prime Minister who led the Czech Social Democratic Party between 1993 and 2001. However, he acrimoniously split with the party he once led and his return from political retirement in 2009 to lead his own Citizens’ Right Party (SPOZ) was regarded by many as a vanity project. SPOZ failed to enter parliament in the May 2010 parliamentary elections and Zeman’s presidential bid, announced in June last year, seemed set to be similarly unsuccessful.

 Karel Schwarzenberg, the aristocratic Czech foreign minister, who ran Zeman a close second with 23.4 per cent of the vote, was perhaps always a more plausible contender. A scion of the Austro-Hungarian nobility, diplomat and former chief of staff to Václav Havel, Schwarzenberg was one of the Czech Republic’s most popular politicians.  The electoral success in 2010 of TOP09, the newly formed party he led, owed much to Schwarzenberg’s appeal as retro anti-politician. However, although one of the first to announce his candidacy, Schwarzenberg‘s campaign soon flagged badly, damaged by TOP09’s role in the governing centre-right coalition and unwavering commitment to austerity. At 75, Schwarzenberg was the oldest candidate and had not always appeared in robust good health. By December 2012 polls still put his support at under 10 per cent and – while I’d always fancied Zeman (politically I mean) most commentators including me had written Schwarzenberg’s challenge off. Indeed, I thought those who even mentioned him as outsider possibility were well off the mark.

 The front runner falters

Jan Fischer Photo: David Sedlecký via Wikimedia Commons

 The clear front-runner for much of the campaign was the independent candidate Jan Fischer. Fischer, a career statistician and Vice President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, had been the highly popular prime minister of a technocratic caretaker government in 2009-10. His well organised campaign, backed by a number of business interests, stressed his credentials as a non-ideological reformer with no ties to the political establishment. He also benefitted from the inability of the two largest Czech parties, the centre-right Civic Democrats (ODS) and Social Democrats (ČSSD), to put forward credible heavyweight candidates. Many Czech voters were also clearly jaded by the two parties’ longer-term failure to shake off the influence of corrupt business lobbies, resulting in repeated scandals.

 Despite the vagueness of his rhetoric, it quickly became apparent that Fischer appealed largely to voters on the centre-right. The resulting vacuum on the left was filled by Miloš Zeman. Zeman’s small party of veteran ex-Social Democrats proved surprisingly adept at organising and fundraising and – helped by the decision of the Communist Party not to run its own candidate – his campaign gradually gained momentum. By mid-December, polls indicated that Zeman had moved ahead of Fischer, whose lacklustre media performances and increasingly directionless campaign offered little serious competition. Fischer was, however, an uncomfortable standard-bearer for the right and soon faced growing criticism for having joined the Communist Party during the 1980s to smooth his career path, which his detractors felt showed a lack of integrity.

 I though Fischer would hang to second place – indeed given a professional interest in technocrat politicians, dull though he was, I rather hoped we would. A last minute drive by the Schwarzenberg campaign (and civic groups linked to it) mixing anti-communism with the viral marketing of Schwarzenberg as a ‘personality’ and political celebrity, seems finally to have tipped the balance in of their man. The final sets of polls released early in the New Year showed a surge of support for his candidacy as he emerged as a rallying point for  liberal and centre-right voters  – a trend clearly carried over into first-round voting.

 Jan Fischer, by contrast, received markedly less than the 20-25 per cent of the vote forecast in the polls. With 16.5 per cent of votes he came only fractionally ahead of the relatively inexperienced and unknown Social Democrat candidate Jiří Dienstbier Jr – the son of the late Czech dissident of the same name – whose energetic campaign impressed many. The election was, however, an unmitigated disaster for other main Czech party, the Civic Democrats (ODS), whose candidate polled a mere 2.5 per cent and finished eighth in a field of nine. The composer and academic Vladimír Franz, whose blue tattooed face and inventive shoestring campaign drew considerable international media attention, polled 6.8 per cent.

First round results by district winner – blue KS, red MZ Image: Fext via WikiMedia Commons

 A sharp social split

 The second round is likely to be a close contest. Miloš Zeman will seek to make it a run-off between left and right, stressing Schwarzenberg’s role in government and right-wing views on economic issues. This may be an effective strategy. First round voting patterns suggest a sharp social split between prosperous urban centres, which heavily backed Schwarzenberg – who polled as much as 43 per cent in Prague – and poorer regions and smaller towns where voters put Zeman ahead. Schwarzenberg, by contrast, will try to broaden his appeal to the political centre, projecting himself as a non-partisan independent who has worked in many parties in his long career. Schwarzenberg’s team will also aim to once again sell their candidate as a personality, making use of social and new media strategies, which were a hallmark of their successful last minute mobilisation in the first-round.

 Whoever wins, some political consequences are already clear. The Czech President has weak constitutional powers, but plays an important role in foreign policy and government formation. Outgoing president Václav Klaus was a stanch Eurosceptic, who obstructed the Lisbon Treaty and believed European integration should be thrown into reverse. Schwarzenberg and Zeman are both Europhile: Schwarzenberg is strongly committed to Czech participation in a more integrated core EU, while Zeman is a cautious Euro-federalist. Moreover, Presidents Václav Havel and Václav Klaus refused to contemplate any government dependent on the support of the hardline Communist Party. Both second round candidates would be willing to do so, opening the way for likely Communist-Social Democrat co-operation in government after the next parliamentary elections in 2014.

This post was originally posted on the LSE EUROPP blog and is reproduced under the terms of a Creative Commons Licence

Why Miloš Zeman is the Czech comeback kid

Photo: http://www.prezydent.pl via WikiMedia

 The political return of former Social Democrat leader and leading presidential hopeful Miloš Zeman has been one of the more surprising emerging-from-under-the -radar phenomena in Czech politics over the past couple of years.

 For most observers of Czech politics Zeman was something of a historical figure, linked with the early years of transiton and the political battles of 1990s. Having shifted the Czech Social Democrats from a minor party to one of the big players in early-mid 1990s by making them a robust party of opposition, Zeman won a notable election victory in 1998, did a deal with his erstwhile nemesis Vaclav Klaus to form a minority government and served one term as Prime Minister (1998-2002) and then retired to his cottage in the Vysočina highlands.

Retirement seems not to have suited him and still nursing political ambitions – and much to the horror of many former colleagues – he won a ‘primary’ among Social Democrat supporters to be the party’s presidential candidate in the 2003. Alas as the Czech head of state was still indirectly elected by MPs and senators at the time, enough Social Democrat parliamentarians failed to vote for him that he was humiliatingly eliminated from this contest early on (Vaclav Klaus was finally elected and then re-elected for a second term in 2008).

Zeman then finally parted company with his former party, wrote some splenetic, best-selling memoirs attacking ex-colleagues – memorably described by one academic reviewer as a ‘foul fart of a book’ – and it seemed that that was the last we would hear of him. The cigarette-smoking, beer- and becherovka drinking Zeman, known for his ponderous quotes, not very funny bonmoty and bruisingly effective political personality was set to become just another memory of 1990s.

But come 2013, if the latest and last polls are to be believed, Zeman is the front runner in the Czech Republic’s first direct presidential elections, edging ahead of one-time favourite Jan Fischer, the former prime minister in the 2009-10 technocratic caretaker government. As Klaus steps down, Zeman steps up. We seem set for Fischer-Zeman second round run-off on 25-26 January. And even if Zeman unites a huge swathe of right-wing voters behind Fischer, given the left-leaning inclination of the Czech electorate he must surely be in with a shouting chance of taking over at Prague Castle on 7 March.

How has this happened when so many other would-be comebacks and political vanity projects fail? Just think of the stillborn LEV21 party of Zeman’s one time rival and fellow semi-detached ex-Social Democrat Jiří Paroubek.

Several factors seem to have combined in Zeman’s favour:

1. He is well known

For many voters. as well as being a known quantity. Zeman’s big political personality and experience as Prime Minister makes him a reasonably credible figure for high office. His flaws – the embarrassing off the cuff remarks, off jokes and occasional lack of political energy – are also well known and may therefore be discounted in advance by voters.

Notwithstanding the Opposition Agreement deal with Klaus, from a left-wing point of the point of view Zeman’s time in front-line politics can be seen reasonably  successful. Zeman also left office at a time of his own choosing, rather than because of crisis, scandal or electoral defeat. Almost the only Czech prime minister to do so (caretakers excepted).

2.He is a reasonably plausible outsider

At the same time, having been out of national politics for the best part of a decade and broken his links with the Social Democrats, Zeman can credibly position himself as something of anti-establishment outsider.

His presidential run comes at a time when Czechs are generally disillusioned with established parties and when the Social Democrats could no find no experienced, high profile politician to stand for head of state (or at least none who were acceptable across the party and willing to run – former EU Commissioner Vladimír Špidla might have been an option). (Indeed, the Social Democrats seem rather short of big charismatic leaders generally just now. The current party leader Bohumil Sobotka is articulate and intelligent, but as someone acidly commented at a recent conference I went to comes across more as a spokesman than a leader.)

Lukewarm semi-endorsement by old rival Václav Klaus might even pull in a few voters from the right – although like Klaus such ‘naughty right-wingers’ will probably be expressing their dislike for the various centre-right and centrists candidates more than wanting to propel Zeman to office.

3. His support is well organised and well financed

Although there are questions over where Zeman’s political money comes from, with widely reported links to the Russian oil company Lukoil (denied by Zeman) and other Russian donors (not denied). Whatever the truth, the Zeman campaign has sufficient resources and organisation to be effective – and it started organising early. The Citizen’s Rights Party – Zemanites (of which Zeman is oddly only the honorary leader) was formed in October 2009 and contested the May 2010 parliamentary elections, pulling in a not negligible 4.33% – seemingly all at the expense of the Social Democrats – which was almost enough to cross the 5% threshold to enter parliament.  SPOZ’s origins, in fact, go back some years earlier to the curiously named, Friends of Miloš Zeman association, run by Zeman’s former right-hand man and the ex-communist apparatchik Miroslav Šlouf.

Despite clearly having cash to splash, SPOZ – as its reasonably solid performance in the October 2012 regional elections showed – also has organisation on the ground.  The collection of 50,000 signature petition to nominate Zeman was also a notably quick and efficient operation. Šlouf and various other ex-Social Democrats in SPOZ are not political amateurs.

4. He has potentially broad appeal

While disliked and dismissed on the right, Zeman is acceptable to a range of left-wing voters, including Communist voters who might be put off by a candidate with closer links to the Social Democrats or with associations to Havel or the dissident movement.  The Social Democrats official candidate Jirí Dienstbier jr. – son of the late dissident of the same name – has fought a shrewd campaign positioning himself a moderate, modern politician and actively solicited the support of the Communist Party (KSČM – which for once is not running its own candidate). Despite, this Dienstbier is off the pace and you wonder how many Communist voters might hold his family background against him.

Zeman is less difficult for the party and   has rather cleverly tacked towards some KSČM positions, for example his critical sounding remarks about the EU – he is he says a Euro federalist but against an EU superstate (work that one out) – and demands for additional funding if he flies the EU flag at Prague Castle.

5. He has been underestimated

Finally, that most telling of political assets: Zeman has been underestimated by opponents. Despite the low key but obvious momentum he has had since 2010.  He has been viewed a something of a political has-been or a buffoon. Somehow despite everything, for many it is hard to believe that he could really actually win.

Despite a slow build up media scrutiny about funding and Lukoil connections – Zeman has faced little scrunitny or critical opposition in the campaign. Certainly few questions have been as to one what kind of a president he would be. Until the recent efforts of civic initiatives to boost the campaign of Foreign Minister and TOP09 leader Karel Schwarzenberg, the main political parties (ODS, CSSD, TOP09) seem have written off their chances of their candidates and to be saving their real time, energy and money for parliamentary elections.

What kind of President would Zeman be?

His website offers only a selection of bland, somewhat fence-sitting views. His statements suggest he is still broadly on the mainstream pro-European centre-left and would be considerably less toxic to many abroad than Klaus. He was even one of only three presidential candidates to accept an invitation to a debate organised by Prague Gay Pride (two refused). On the other hand his denouncing of Islam as an ‘anti-civilization’ could have come straight from Geert Wilders.

 Perhaps we will have to wait for 7 March to find out…

What will Klaus do next?

Photo: DerHuti via WikiMedia Commons

What will Václav Klaus do next? This has been a pertinent question in Czech politics pretty much any time over the last twenty years and, of course, no more so than now: VK steps down from his second and final term as President of the Czech Republic on 7 March with nowhere very obvious to go  politically. Klaus himself has been typically sphinx-like about his future plans, telling the Prague news magazine Euro shortly before Christmas that following the end of his presidential term he could

see no reason to signal any immediate political ambitions, but I don’t think it’s the end of the road (nemyslím, že je všem dnům konec) so we’ll se what happens. But I don’t think I’ll be announcing a return to Czech politics tomorrow. I don’t think that’s realistic. But I wouldn’t rule out some kind of attempt to go into European politics (pokus o politiku evropskou).

As the interview was ending he also lobbed in the (not very plausible sounding) revelation that in 2002 – in the wake of a bad defeat in national parliamentary elections which had seen his Civic Democrat party (ODS) finally stir into life and contemplate throwing him out – he had considered running for the European Parliament. They would, he explained, happily have given him the top spot on the party list to get him out of the way. And – if you believe the rest of this rather unlikely sounding story -  no doubt they would.