In 1998-2002, the Czech Republic was governed by a so-called Opposition Treaty or rather "treaty for creating stable political conditions in the Czech Republic", featuring a minority government by the Social Democrats (CSSD) and Vaclav Klaus from the Civic Democrats (ODS) as speaker of the parliament and other deals that made the four years kind of a Grand Coalition in all but name.
The only thing that the syndicate of the two big parties didn't manage was to push through an electoral reform: Whereas proportional representation as such wasn't at stake, constituencies and the like would have been sized in such a way that small parties would've had a distinct disadvantage so that CSSD and ODS would get 93 per cent to seats after getting 60 per cent of the votes, hoping to get rid of any pesky coalition partners. If proportional representation hadn't been part of the Czech constitution, they would've switched to pure FPTP, I think, hence the title.
President Havel vetoed the bill, this was overvoted by both big parties, then Havel called the Constitutional Court in Brno and they struck the bill down.
The years after all that, especially after 2009 were interesting. TOP 09 caught many votes formerly gone to the ODS and after the scandals leading to the downfall of the Necas government, the ODS became a single-digit-per-cent party and ANO filled another void in the spectrum left open by established parties.
All of this could only go as smooth as it did because Brno defended what had otherwise been lost: effective proportional representation.
So WI the syndicate of CSSD and ODS would've got away with its reform? How would Czech politics look like today?
The only thing that the syndicate of the two big parties didn't manage was to push through an electoral reform: Whereas proportional representation as such wasn't at stake, constituencies and the like would have been sized in such a way that small parties would've had a distinct disadvantage so that CSSD and ODS would get 93 per cent to seats after getting 60 per cent of the votes, hoping to get rid of any pesky coalition partners. If proportional representation hadn't been part of the Czech constitution, they would've switched to pure FPTP, I think, hence the title.
President Havel vetoed the bill, this was overvoted by both big parties, then Havel called the Constitutional Court in Brno and they struck the bill down.
The years after all that, especially after 2009 were interesting. TOP 09 caught many votes formerly gone to the ODS and after the scandals leading to the downfall of the Necas government, the ODS became a single-digit-per-cent party and ANO filled another void in the spectrum left open by established parties.
All of this could only go as smooth as it did because Brno defended what had otherwise been lost: effective proportional representation.
So WI the syndicate of CSSD and ODS would've got away with its reform? How would Czech politics look like today?