The Rise of Entrepreneurial Parties in European Politics PDF

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY
The Rise of
Entrepreneurial Parties
in European Politics
Vít Hloušek · Lubomír Kopeček · Petra Vodová

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
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School of International Studies
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Vít Hloušek • Lubomír Kopeček
Petra Vodová
The Rise of
Entrepreneurial
Parties in European
Politics
Vít Hloušek Lubomír Kopeček
Department of International Relations Department of Political Science
and European Studies Masaryk University
Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic
Brno, Czech Republic
Petra Vodová
Department of Political Science
University of Hradec Králové
Hradec Králové, Czech Republic
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

ISBN 978-3-030-41915-8 ISBN 978-3-030-41916-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been written without the Czech Science
Foundation’s grant project ‘Political Entrepreneurs: The Czech Republic
in a Comparative Perspective’ (code GA17-02226S). This project created
several partial studies, of which two, published in the Czech Journal of
Political Science (No. 2/2017), were partially used in this book. We thank
Grigorij Mesežnikov of Bratislava’s Institute for Public Affairs and Vlastimil
Havlík from our own Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno,
for their suggestions that helped us to improve the chapters.
The stable environment of the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk
University, Brno, inspired our discussions with colleagues and students
about entrepreneurial parties and other contemporary political phenom-
ena in Europe. We particularly thank Roman Chytilek and Peter Spáč,
who were involved in the partial studies in the above-mentioned grant-
funded project, and Andrew Roberts. We also thank the administrative
staff at the faculty, Lucie Mořkovská, Lenka Plachá, Tereza Stašáková, Jan
Kleiner and Eva Dopplerová, who alleviated much of the non-academic
burden linked with the grant project. We are also grateful to Beata
Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł from the Jagiellonian University Kraków and Piotr Sula
and Joanna Kozierska from the University of Wrocław for their consulta-
tions and commentaries on the Polish parties.
A big thank-you goes to Tim Haughton of the University of Birmingham
for his careful reading and review of the whole manuscript, which helped
us to improve it substantially. Of course, all errors, mistakes and inaccura-
cies are wholly ours. We are grateful to Štěpán Kaň a for his brilliant trans-
lation of the manuscript into English.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are glad Palgrave Macmillan is open to supporting projects such as

ours. In particular, we are grateful to Ambra Finotello and Anne Birchley-
Brun, our editors, for their advice and assistance.
Authors, Brno, December 2019

CONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 Political Entrepreneurs and Their Parties: Conceptual and

Typological Issues 9
Types of Parties in the Context of Historical and Social Trends 11
Conceptual Differences, Definition and Concept of
Entrepreneurial Parties 14
A Typology of Entrepreneurial Parties 19
The Institutionalisation of Entrepreneurial Parties 23
Research Sources and Instruments 26
3 The Party as a Spin-off from a Business Empire 29

The (In)Famous Pioneer: Berlusconi’s Forza Italia 31
‘Down with the Dinosaurs!’ or Too Private Public Affairs in
Czechia 39
Manage Everything as a Firm: Andrej Babiš’s ANO in Czechia 48
On the Wrong Side of Lithuanian Law: Viktor Uspaskich and His
Labour Party 63
Palikot’s Movement: A One-off Sensation Involving a Polish
Political Provocateur 71
Similarities and Differences 82
vii
viii CONTENTS
4 Two Tycoons and Their One-Man Shows 93

Austria’s Team Stronach: Politics as a Failed Financial
Investment 94
The Slovak Performer Igor Matovic ̌ and His Ordinary People 101
5 Entrepreneurial Parties Without Firms and Without

Members 119
How to Build a Successful Project: Geert Wilders’s Party for
Freedom 120
A Closed Party Failed Project: Tomio Okamura’s Dawn of Direct
Democracy 126
6 How to Build a Party Organisation Without Financial

Capital 139
The Norwegian Progress Party: From a Free-Wheeling, Indignant
Dog-Kennel Owner to a Centralist Leader 141
Paweł Kukiz: A Polish Punk-Rock Star’s Campaign Against
Political Parties 149
Tomio Okamura’s Struggle on Behalf of the Czech Nation
Against Immigrant ‘Parasites’ 157
7 Collapse or Survival: The Organisational Resilience of

Entrepreneurial Parties 173
Risks Posed by Political Entrepreneurship to Democratic Politics 181
References 187
Index 211
ABBREVIATIONS
ABL Agentura bílého lva; White Lion Agency (Czechia)

AfD Alternative für Deutschland; Alternative for Germany
ALDE Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
ANO Akce nespokojených obc ̌anů; Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (Czechia)
BZÖ Bündnis Zukunft Österreich; The Alliance for the Future of Austria
DP Darbo partija; Lithuania’s Labour Party
EU European Union
FI Forza Italia
FPÖ Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs; Freedom Party of Austria
FrP Fremskrittspartiet; Progress Party (Norway)
MP Member of Parliament
ODS Obc ǎ nská demokratická strana; Civic Democratic Party (Czechia)
OĽANO Obyc ǎ jní l´udia a nezávislé osobnosti; Ordinary People and
Independent Personalities (Slovakia)
ÖRF Österreichischer Rundfunk; Austrian Broadcasting Corporation
ÖVP Österreichische Volkspartei; Austrian People’s Party
PiS Prawo i Sprawiedliwośc ;́ Law and Justice (Poland)
PO Platforma Obywatelska; Civic Platform (Poland)
PSB Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates (US political consulting firm)
PVV Partij voor de Vrijheid; Party for Freedom (the Netherlands)
RAI Radiotelevisione italiana (public-service broadcaster)
RP Ruch Palikota; Palikot’s Movement (Poland)
SaS Sloboda a Solidarita; Freedom and Solidarity (Slovakia)
SLD Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej; Union of the Democratic Left
(Poland)
SPD Svoboda a pr ̌ímá demokracie; Freedom and Direct Democracy
(Czechia)
ix
x ABBREVIATIONS
SPÖ Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs; Social Democratic Party

of Austria
TR Twój Ruch; Your Movement (Poland)
VV Ve ̌ci verě jné; Public Affairs Party (Czechia)
VVD Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie; People’s Party for Freedom
and Democracy (the Netherlands)
LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1 Concept of entrepreneurial party 18

Table 2.2 Typology of entrepreneurial parties 23
Table 2.3 Phases of institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties 25
Table 3.1 Results of Forza Italia/The People of Freedom in
parliamentary elections 36
Table 3.2 Election results of Public Affairs and ANO 42
Table 3.3 Results of the Labour Party in elections to the Lithuanian
parliament (Sejmas) and the European Parliament 66
Table 3.4 The evolution of institutionalisation in Forza Italia, Public
Affairs, ANO, the Labour Party and Palikot’s Movement 88
Table 4.1 OĽANO’s results in national and European parliamentary
elections 108
Table 4.2 The evolution of institutionalisation in Team Stronach and
OĽANO 116
Table 5.1 Results for the Party for Freedom in national and European
Table 5.2 The evolution of institutionalisation in the Party for Freedom
and Dawn 136
Table 6.1 Election results of FrP, or Anders Lange’s Party, in
Table 6.2 The evolution of institutionalisation in the Progress Party,
Kukiz’15 and Freedom and Direct Democracy 170
Table 7.1 A summary of entrepreneurial parties, their resilience and
survival 179
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
In liberal democracies, the relationship between politics and business,

between the political and economic powers, has been and remains excep-
tionally close. The state is understood as an agent of economic develop-
ment, as a regulator, as an owner of strategic commodities and enterprises,
and as an instrument for redistributing the profits of economic processes
(Majone 1994). All of these roles of the state, evident to a limited degree
during the nineteenth century, were strengthened in the twentieth, due to
the wartime management of the economy during both world wars and
especially the welfare state expansion after World War II (Pierson 2001).
Yet we can also see the relationship between politics and the economy
from another point of view, through the lens of the role economic factors
play in political party activities. This is not so much about the fact that,
due to the liberalisation and democratisation of European politics in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mechanisms of party control over the
legislative and executive powers gradually became established (Daalder
2011: 15ff; Rokkan 2009), as about the interlocking of political activities
and business interests. Elite parties (Duverger 1954) from the distant past
ultimately cleaved according to the different economic priorities of the
typically rural conservatives and the typically urban liberals. During the era
of mass parties of social integration, party systems were largely—though
not exclusively—formed according to the distinctions between left-wing
and right-wing policies, which themselves were grounded in the economic
© The Author(s) 2020 1

V. Hloušek et al., The Rise of Entrepreneurial Parties in European
Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_1
2 V. HLOUŠEK ET AL.
preferences of the various segments of European societies. The era of

catch-all parties (Kirchheimer 1966) that followed was a period when the
socio-economic cleavage dominated in most countries of Western Europe,
and thus parties continued to represent the specific economic interests of
their members.
From the closing decades of the twentieth century, cartel parties (Katz
and Mair 1995) started to abandon the logic just outlined to the benefit
of new trends, of which two need emphasising. First, the inflow of state
subsidies for parties became crucial for them. Second, they sometimes
compensated for the loss of an electoral core defined strictly in socio-
economic terms by embracing a strategy of defending a colourful spec-
trum of various interests, including those of big business. The links
between Silvio Berlusconi’s financial and media empire and the Italian
Socialist Party led in the 1980s by Bettino Craxi provide a perfect example
(Anderson 2011: 321). But even in this case, we can still speak of the
spheres of business and politics as closely cooperating but still separate in
organisational terms.1
This book is focused on what could be termed a revolutionary trend:
the rise of political entrepreneurs and their parties. Entrepreneurial parties
represent a new form of the relationship between business and politics in
two major ways. First, tycoons often build their own political party much
as if they were merely establishing a branch of their business empire.
Second, they present the hierarchical, quasi-commercial-firm organisation
of their political party as more efficient, or even more progressive, than
traditional forms of political party reliant on internal democracy. We will
see that the latter relationship is actually more important for some entre-
preneurial parties than the former. Not all political entrepreneurs are busi-
ness tycoons who can simply create a party as a special subsidiary of their
business empire. But all of them are entrepreneurial in the way that they
view voters as consumers in an electoral market who can be targeted by
professional campaigning. This also implies that ideology is not so much
important for entrepreneurial parties. They simply analyse the market and
implement a strategy that is attractive enough for enough voters to break
through among the incumbents.2
Thus, a new form of party, characterised by its hierarchical and central-
ised organisation, at whose central point and peak is a political entrepre-
neur commanding other politicians who carry out executive duties, is
becoming increasingly common. To put it radically: entrepreneurial par-
ties’ economic logic and forms of organisation and activity penetrate, or in
1 INTRODUCTION 3
some cases even try to colonise, the sphere of democratic politics. It needs
adding that many political entrepreneurs command truly exceptional
financial, media and managerial resources, which they can use to launch
their political enterprises quickly and efficiently, thus winning a compara-
tive advantage over their political competitors.
The definition of an entrepreneurial party we offer is thus the follow-
ing: an entrepreneurial party is a project of a political entrepreneur who
connects his economic and political interests, who commands and organ-
ises the party in a hierarchical and centralised way using business logic and
approaches both in organisation and in political campaigning.
The entrepreneurial party concept therefore comes at least potentially
into serious conflict with the liberal-democratic notion of the party as a
collective entity, democratic on the inside, which serves the important
function of mediating collective interests. In a seemingly unusual but, as
this book shows, widespread model, an entrepreneurial party is formed
around one man,3 defending and promoting his economic interests in
particular, and fishing for voters not on the basis of a coherent ideology
and programme, but by using marketing strategies adopted from the
business world. That is certainly a very good reason to study entrepre-
neurial parties in detail. But it is also a topical issue, as the organisational
model of the entrepreneurial party is booming in today’s Western
Europe, and even more so in East-Central Europe. Since the 1990s,
when parties of this type first emerged in numbers, the trend of their
incidence is evidently growing. In our book, we will analyse the follow-
ing examples of entrepreneurial parties from both Western and East-
Central Europe: ANO (Andrej Babiš, Czechia), Dawn of Direct
Democracy (Tomio Okamura, Czechia), Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi,
Freedom and Direct Democracy (Tomio Okamura, Czechia), Kukiz’15
(Pawel Kukiz, Poland), Labour Party (Viktor Uspaskich, Lithuania),
OLʼANO (Igor Matovič, Slovakia), Palikot’s Movement (Janusz Palikot,
Poland), Party for Freedom (Geert Wilders, the Netherlands), Progress
Party (Carl I. Hagen, Norway), Public Affairs (Vít Bárta, Czechia), and
Team Stronach (Frank Stronach, Austria).
We set off in the steps of Jonathan Hopkin and Caterina Paolucci,
whose 1999 work is the classic text on business-firm parties, of which
Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia during the 1990s provides a prototype. Yet
our scope is much wider, and encompasses the differences between politi-
cal entrepreneurs and their parties. Despite a growing number of cases and
a rich conceptual discussion, which we present in Chap. 2, systematic
analysis is still lacking of the processes of emergence and development, the

organisational strategies and the modi operandi of entrepreneurial parties
across Europe. Berlusconi found a number of followers, especially in East-
Central Europe, where the quick rise of economic empires after 1989 was
accompanied over time by the growing political aspirations of some
tycoons. Yet in other East-Central European cases as well as in the
Netherlands, Austria and Scandinavia, remarkable differences can be iden-
tified and distinct traditions of political entrepreneurship have sometimes
emerged. These differences are strongly influenced by the opportunity
structure and constraints that various political entrepreneurs face in their
own countries, and also by their unequal financial and other resources.
The ambition of this book, therefore, is to describe and analyse this politi-
cal phenomenon, to compare its various manifestations and to provide a
typology. Further, we offer an explanation of why entrepreneurial parties
emerge, why they function in the way they do and why some of them face
the challenge of party institutionalisation better than others.
The book deliberately spans the old divide between the West and the
East, which has substantially informed the historical differences of political
partisanship in Europe. We consider entrepreneurial parties to be the most
recent political party model, which in some respects continues the trend
linked with cartel parties, while also providing a proof of convergence of
the ‘old’ and ‘new’ democracies. The post-communist democratic transi-
tion that occurred east of the Elbe River does not prevent a comparison of
these parties across Europe. On the contrary, the three decades that fol-
lowed the end of the communist regimes in East-Central Europe and the
fifteen years that have passed since many of these countries entered the EU
add up to a period long enough for the specificities of the post-communist
context to fade and the common features caused by Europeanisation to
have their effect. One of the main contributions that this book makes is to
bring into focus many empirically important or interesting entrepreneurial
parties of East-Central Europe—in Czechia, Poland, Lithuania and
Slovakia—that have hitherto been given little attention, and assess them in
a broader European context. In order also to analyse the lesser known
examples, we take a detailed look at the various parties.
For each party, the starting point is the political entrepreneur, that is,
its founding father and leader. In the context of his resources, financial or
otherwise, and the strategy he chose when founding his party and during
its subsequent evolution, we observe the ways in which the party courted
the electorate and built its organisation. Our ambition is not to cover
1 INTRODUCTION 5
every entrepreneurial party in Europe. Bearing in mind how many there

are, the selection criteria were to include examples of all four defined
types, and for each type to include parties from both Western and East-
Central Europe listed above. Four chapters of the book (Chaps. 3, 4, 5,
and 6) correspond to these types.
Before these, in Chap. 2 we introduce a typology of entrepreneurial
parties, based on two characteristics that are derived from the literature
and our own conception. The first characteristic is whether the founder-
leader has a commercial firm or not—that is, entrepreneurs ‘with a firm’ or
‘without a firm’—and hence also major business assets that allow him to
invest in his party-political project. We investigate how certain political
entrepreneurs conceived their party as a for-profit business. Whether they
have commercial firms standing behind them or not, the leaders primarily
view their parties through a commercial lens and are concerned with their
particular economic interests. The other characteristic differentiating
entrepreneurial parties is whether the leader creates around himself only a
small, closed coterie of politicians, exhibiting a managerial style, or whether
a more robust organisation emerges with more members and local
branches.
One of the reasons these characteristics were chosen is that they are
very important for the institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties; that
is, they allow us to identify why, after their initial electoral success, some
parties collapse while others manage to survive. The founder-leaders,
again, play an important role in this. One of the book’s aims, therefore, is
to compare across the various entrepreneurial party types the leader’s abil-
ity (or inability) to create an enduring and durable political party.
There are four types of entrepreneurial party. First, there is the combi-
nation of a political entrepreneur with a firm and a party with members
and territorial structures. In Chap. 3, we discuss Forza Italia, the Public
Affairs party, ANO, the Lithuanian Labour Party and Palikot’s Movement.
The second type, analysed in Chap. 4 using as examples the Austrian Team
Stronach and Slovak OLʼANO, is the combination of a political entrepre-
neur with a firm and a party without members and structures. Chapter 5
covers the third type, the combination of a political entrepreneur without
a firm and a party without members and structures, such as the Dutch
Party for Freedom and the Czech Dawn of Direct Democracy. The last
type, the combination of an entrepreneur without a firm and a party with
members and structures, is analysed in Chap. 6 using as examples the
Norwegian Progress Party, the Polish Kukiz’ 15 and the Czech Freedom
and Direct Democracy. The successes and failures of the institutionalisa-

tion of the different types of entrepreneurial party, and the factors influ-
encing electoral support for the parties, are discussed in Chap. 7. Here we
summarise our main findings.
The book shows that the combination of the solid financial backing of
an entrepreneur with a firm and at least some party structure with local
branches and some, though limited and carefully vetted, membership is a
sure path towards advanced party institutionalisation. The leader’s finan-
cial, media and personnel resources allow a party to be independent of
state funding, and these commercial resources continue to provide impor-
tant support, even if the party gains some autonomy from the leader’s
commercial firm as time goes by. Members and a network of local branches,
meanwhile, help anchor the party outside the professionalised campaigns
for national elections. This may occasionally cause problems if some senior
party figures ‘emancipate’ themselves and cease to obey the leader. Yet his
crucial decision-making position, supported by centralisation and strong
powers wielded over the party cadres, as well as his commercial-firm
resources usually provide sufficient instruments to pacify dissent and
reconsolidate the party after the voluntary or forced departure of the rebels.
An entrepreneurial party with a firm but without structures and mem-
bers provides the leader with even greater freedom to choose a political
strategy and conceive his political project. It also decreases the risk of
rebellion against the leader. However, such a party is much more vulner-
able to swings of popular opinion. Any deterioration of the leader’s cred-
ibility with his supporters is particularly dangerous, because such a party
has no stable basis beyond the figure of the leader and the marketing
deployment of his resources. It lacks support in the form of an organisa-
tional background, able to sustain the party in case of sudden crisis, typi-
cally an electoral slump or loss of the leader’s credibility. Such parties are
unlikely to institutionalise.
Similarly, there are differences between the two types of entrepreneurial
party without a firm, where the leader does not invest money in the party,
either relying on his abilities alone or supplementing them with a more or
less robust party organisation. In the former, the leader’s role is the ‘alpha
and omega’ of the party, and of greater importance than in other types of
entrepreneurial party. This might push the political entrepreneur to adopt
extreme protest positions, because in the struggle for voters he fights not
just establishment mainstream incumbents but also other radical and
extreme competitors. Under such a constellation, the political
1 INTRODUCTION 7
entrepreneur must rely on his personal social capital and on the sharpness,
ruthlessness, intelligibility and attractiveness of his rhetoric. Thus, he often
adopts extremism as the strategy, or he may construct a party, which pur-
posely focuses on issues that are neglected by the political mainstream.
The choice of a far-right or far-left profile for the party makes sense,
because such an entrepreneur cannot afford expensive marketers or other
experts, but must seek to win supporters by increasing the radicalism of his
political aims and appeals. But if such parties are to become at least par-
tially or temporarily institutionalised, it is important that the entrepreneur
is able to work with the sparse political personnel of his party—especially
its parliamentary group—and maintain at least basic cohesion.
Even a political entrepreneur without a firm might decide that it is a
good idea to open the party to some extent and build an organisation with
members and local branches. Such an entrepreneurial party is relatively
well equipped for institutionalisation and stands a chance of surviving the
departure of the leader. First, a strong organisation—that is, relatively
numerous membership and grassroots structures, including local leaders
and professional facilities—provides an anchorage that may help the party
to overcome the critical moment of the leader’s departure, especially if it
is a party that has carved out an attractive and permanent niche, typically
one of radical protest. Second, such a party is independent of the leader’s
resources; indeed, he may sometimes tend to draw on the party’s resources
by outsourcing various services. Thus, despite the risks involved in trans-
ferring power in the party from one leader to another, the leader’s depar-
ture might help to consolidate it in organisational and financial terms.
The greater chances of the long-term survival of such a party without a
firm, but with a strong organisation, are thrown into an even sharper relief
by comparison with the other three types. Political parties without a firm
or with a firm, but consisting de facto only of a small group of professional
politicians, simply stand and fall with their leaders. Those established by
leaders with a firm and having an organisational structure and member-
ship, meanwhile, face the substantial issue of losing resources of various
types at the point when the founding father departs. Although territorial
structures and members might allow such a party to endure for some time,
the loss of the key figure robs it of any unifying motive, organisational or
financial. Given that, as we shall see, such parties are very pragmatic mar-
keting players in election campaigning, they tend to have no clear ideol-
ogy, lasting or strong theme or shared social milieu that might help them
stick together once the leader departs.
Nevertheless, regardless of the presence or absence of a commercial

firm and of a membership and territorial structure, there are characteristics
that all entrepreneurial parties have in common and that distinguish them
from other parties. What is crucial is the leader—his private initiative in
launching the party, his central political position and his treatment of the
party as a vehicle for his personal career, combined with a managerial style
of party organisation and conduct. The combination of these features dis-
tinguishes entrepreneurial parties from others, but it does not cover all the
typical features of entrepreneurial parties, as we will see in Chap. 2.
In the pages that follow, we shall expand upon these general consider-
ations with many concrete examples, analyses and comparisons. In the
concluding Chap. 7, we shall then return to the normative considerations
of the dangers that the proliferation of entrepreneurial parties poses, at
least potentially, for the quality of democracy.
NOTES
1. This overview is, of course, somewhat simplified. Cases of parties sponsored
by or otherwise linked with rich businesspeople can be found in earlier
European history too. Yet it was not a general trend that determined party
politics.
2. We are thankful to Seán Hanley and Tim Haughton for mentioning that the
word ‘entrepreneurial’ can be thought of like this.
3. The leader does not have to be a man, of course, but examples of entrepre-
neurial parties led by women are scarce, though they do exist—for example,
the contemporary Progress Party in Norway and the Alliance of Alenka
Bratušek in Slovenia (Krašovec 2017).
CHAPTER 2
Political Entrepreneurs and Their Parties:

Conceptual and Typological Issues
As Paul Lucardie (2000: 175) pertinently noted, ‘newcomers are rarely

given a warm welcome’. In current European politics, there are many
incumbent parties that do not welcome new parties warmly. This observa-
tion is certainly true of new entrepreneurial parties, which have been pop-
ping up since the late twentieth century to challenge long-term voting
patterns and traditional arrangements of party competition. The emer-
gence of such parties is a consequence of social trends embedded in politi-
cal partisanship, observable over recent decades in Europe and beyond.
Similar to other organisations, political parties emerge and are transformed
in response to their environment and its dynamics.
It is true that some classic works, such as Joseph A. Schumpeter (2010),
examined democratic politics from the point of view of the market and
free-market-oriented actors. But today the worlds of business and politics
interact in novel ways much more often than they did before, and in many
democratic countries. The victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 US presi-
dential election brought to the White House a man whose business back-
ground was similar to, for instance, that of the former president of Ukraine,
Petro Poroshenko, who has been called the ‘chocolate king’ in reference
to his past business activities. In many countries of Central Europe, we
have witnessed over the past decade the meteoric rise of a number of
political entrepreneurs; experts on Latin America, too, are familiar with
the topic (Barndt 2014, 2016); and the list goes on.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_2
The concepts of political entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial parties,

analysed in this book, must be specified and differentiated from historical
terms such as ‘robber barons’ (DiLorenzo 2004). That name, used to
characterise businessmen’s influence over politics in the nineteenth cen-
tury, differs from ours in that it refers to influence being exerted over
power at a distance—not the open and direct entry of the political entre-
preneur into party politics.
Nor in this book will we discuss ‘political entrepreneurs’ in the sense of
makers, inspirers or promoters of specific policies—for example, senior
public servants in government agencies or dynamic politicians such as US
presidents Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson. In that understanding,
a political entrepreneur very broadly conceived is someone who seeks to
‘change the direction and flow of politics’ (Schneider and Teske 1992:
737). In many cases, this approach is informed by the scholarly back-
ground of the authors in public policy studies, who commonly understand
a political entrepreneur as someone who brings people together, creating
a political and social network that acts in support of the entrepreneur’s
own purposes. The emphasis there is on the personality traits and prereq-
uisites of the political entrepreneur, including their intellectual abilities,
knowledge of the corresponding field, reputation, extensive contacts, stra-
tegic vision and tenacity (Christopoulos 2006).
We could go on with this excursus on the variety of ways in which
political entrepreneurs are understood. But it is more important briefly to
outline how the concept is presented in this book. What is crucial for us is
the relationship between the political entrepreneur and the party, which is
the instrument that allows the entrepreneur to make it in politics.
Entrepreneurs determine their parties’ existence via their role as founder,
as well as in terms of organisation and policy issues. They actually control
their parties and can even be said in a certain sense to own them (Vercesi
2015). In this understanding, it is not necessary for the political entrepre-
neur to come from a business background. Founding fathers (founding
mothers are rare birds indeed) with experience in business are common,
but there are also cases of entrepreneurs emerging from other walks of life.
This book focuses on Western and East-Central Europe. Both areas
offer a range of interesting examples of entrepreneurial parties. What is
more, a comparative perspective allows us to show that—despite geo-
graphical distance, cultural and political differences and the influence of
the past, such as the legacy of past communist regimes—there are today
2 POLITICAL ENTREPRENEURS AND THEIR PARTIES: CONCEPTUAL… 11
remarkable similarities between entrepreneurial parties in the ‘old’ and

‘new’ European democracies.
In order to summarise the conceptual background, we organise the
chapter as follows. First, we place the phenomenon of entrepreneurial par-
ties in the wider historical perspective of types of political parties that have
emerged in Europe, as we consider such an approach necessary to under-
stand their rise. Subsequently we focus on key definitions and conceptuali-
sations, relying on selected cases where necessary. We offer a definition of
entrepreneurial political party and explain why it is suitable for analysing
the empirical cases. Then we introduce a typology of entrepreneurial par-
ties, based on the criteria of the business background of their entrepre-
neurs and the roles of party members and territorial structure. Finally, we
consider the institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties, more specifi-
cally the role played in this process by the entrepreneurs themselves and by
the parties’ internal functions. (The subsequent empirical chapters of the
book then focus on phenomena related to this.) In the conclusion of the
chapter, we provide a brief summary of how empirical research, used to
study selected entrepreneurial parties, was conducted and its results were
analysed.1
TYPES OF PARTIES IN THE CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL

AND SOCIAL TRENDS
When Maurice Duverger (1954) described the origins of modern political

partisanship in the nineteenth century, he connected the phenomenon
with cadre parties, dominated by local notables whose sole visible organ-
isational expression was found in parliament. Under the conditions of lim-
ited suffrage, these notables needed to obtain the backing of only a small
number of supporters at the local level, which was possible through their
personal contacts. This oldest type of party is today usually described as
elite-based (Katz and Mair 1995; Gunther and Diamond 2001).
At the time when Duverger published his classic work, in the 1950s, the
main trend was towards mass parties deeply rooted in society, and this had
been the case since the late nineteenth century. Mass parties enjoyed a
large membership, which was intimately linked to their day-to-day func-
tions: members funded the parties, canvassed on their behalf, provided the
party bureaucrats responsible for their operations, and gave them a clear
ideological orientation. This type of party originally emerged to represent
social groups with limited or no rights, and was usually initiated by pro-
moter organisations, such as trade unions or churches. A broader organ-
isational basis tended to reinforce the loyalty of the subculture surrounding
the mass party. Thus, mass parties were a part as well as a product of a
wider social movement. Duverger’s understanding of mass parties finds
close equivalents with other authors: Sigmund Neumann (1956) wrote
about ‘parties of social integration’ and Angelo Panebianco (1988) about
‘mass bureaucratic parties’.
To this day, mass parties are understood as the classic form, yet their
golden era was the first half of the twentieth century, after which they
receded, in line with changes to Western Europe’s social structure. The
unfreezing of historical cleavages (Lipset and Rokkan 1967), largely due
to the decline of industrial society, the rise of the welfare state and social
mobility, resulted in a transformation of Western European societies, trig-
gering shifts in citizens’ values (Inglehart 1971, 1990). Consequently,
there was a dealignment process, an erosion of the links between parties
and society, which was accompanied by trends such as a decline in personal
identification with a party and decreasing party membership (e.g. Dalton
2000; Van Biezen et al. 2012).
Another important driver of change was the increasing use of mass
media, initially mainly television. This radically changed the mode of com-
munication between politicians and voters. Some analyses shift the ‘golden
era’ of mass partisanship to the first decades after World War II, pointing
out the huge differences between European countries in terms of mass
parties’ declining membership (Scarrow 2000, 2015). However, these
findings do not question the fundamental impact from social transforma-
tion on parties and the way they work.
In the 1960s, Otto Kirchheimer (1966) highlighted the adaptation of
parties to the changing conditions, using the term catch-all party. This
new type of party originated from mass parties; it weakened the role of
ideological appeals not only by aiming to attract core supporters but by
recruiting voters among the population at large, mainly from the broad
middle class. In the same way, the hitherto exclusive link between a mass
party and its promoter organisation was replaced by access to a variety of
interest groups. Thanks to changes in the modes of political communica-
tion—among other things—the importance of the leader’s role in a catch-
all party increased dramatically (cf. Mair 1990).
Particularly important for a new type of party is professionalisation,
motivated by the desire for electoral success, which significantly affects the
functioning of the party organisation. This aspect is well captured by the

notion of an electoral-professional party, as proposed by Angelo Panebianco
(1988). At the core of Panebianco’s concept is recognition of the key role
of professionals—consultants, PR experts and opinion pollsters—upon
whose help and services the politicians relied, especially for election cam-
paigns. By contrast, the importance of members and a traditional bureau-
cratic party apparatus declined, as they were increasingly losing their voice
as the organisations professionalised. This trend was reinforced by techno-
logical change linked with the rise of the internet in the late twentieth
century, which further increased the importance of campaign specialists
and agencies, and of creating the right image for the leader (Farell 2006).
The catch-all party with an electoral-professional orientation constituted a
new party model (cf. Wolinetz 2002; Krouwel 2006).
Election campaigns were not just becoming more professional and
technologically advanced; they were also becoming more expensive. The
importance of interest groups’ contributions to party funding increased
and state subsidies were introduced. These increased a party’s dependence
on the state, which affects not just party funding, but also the recruitment
of representatives, often from among civil servants. The ‘ever-closer’ links
with the state can, however, increase the interdependence of the state and
political parties, which can even result in party colonisation of the state
(Van Biezen and Kopecký 2007). In such an environment, the number
and importance of ordinary party members are marginalised. The cartel
party thesis, as developed by Richard Katz and Peter Mair (1995), is the
best-known scholarly response to these phenomena. Although the Katz
and Mair thesis has been criticised as difficult to verify empirically (Koole
1996; Kitchelt 2000; Detterbeck 2005), the distancing of many tradi-
tional parties from society, and their attachment to the state, as well as the
loss of their ability to integrate socially, and to satisfy individual voters’
needs, are evident.
Another important change has been the growing number of new politi-
cal parties established in protest against existing party elites—criticising
them for having merged with the state—and exploiting their often declin-
ing legitimacy. ‘Old’ parties are labelled inefficient or unscrupulous (Ignazi
2014). Many of these newcomers can be considered entrepreneurial par-
ties, which are sometimes described as another type of party (Krouwel
2006, 2012).
Why do we have to apply a new category of entrepreneurial party? First,
many new parties do not function according to the existing model. Second,
many of these parties share the same set of characteristics, differentiating

them from others. Of course, not all new parties are entrepreneurial but
all entrepreneurial parties are relatively new. They increasingly treat voters
like consumers of politics. They use new political marketing techniques
and have ceased even to pretend that they represent the interests of any
coherent social group. They are the product of a private initiative of their
founders. They typically compensate for their lack of state funding by
extensive use of the private resources of their founders. The focal point of
the party is a political entrepreneur. The internal organisation does not
resemble a ‘normal’ political party but instead a private company. We need
the concept of an entrepreneurial party to grasp these particular ingredi-
ents. In addition, we need to differentiate subdivisions within this concept
in order to understand how these parties emerge, how they work inter-
nally and what opportunities and threats they face on their way to
institutionalisation.
CONCEPTUAL DIFFERENCES, DEFINITION AND CONCEPT

OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTIES
Of course, not all newly emerging political parties in Western and East-
Central European politics can be called entrepreneurial parties. New polit-
ical parties in general are varied. Scholarly approaches to their study are
likewise diverse (e.g. Tavits 2006; Zons 2013; Bardi et al. 2014) and often
sophisticated. For instance, they may examine the degree of ‘newness’,
that is, the extent to which parties that declare themselves to be new actu-
ally bear traces—in terms of personnel, ideology, policies or electorate—of
older parties (Barnea and Rahat 2011). There are also approaches which—
unlike this book—focus not so much on the role of the leader as on the
intentions, directions or goals of the parties themselves (e.g. Sikk 2005;
Hanley 2012). These studies are inspiring, in that they shed light on sev-
eral aspects that contribute to the specific mixture of features of entrepre-
neurial parties. However, we must integrate these elements and go beyond
them in the analysis that follows. In our understanding, the leaders, their
private initiatives and their central role in the party are the most impor-
tant. In order to understand the difference between entrepreneurial and
other parties, it is important to view them through the lens of the chang-
ing types of political party described above.
Here we need to reject an argument that has been proposed for some
countries of Central and Eastern Europe in connection with political
entrepreneurship. Abby Innes (2016) has argued that the character of the
competition between political parties in Czechia, Romania and Bulgaria
since 1989 has primarily been determined by private economic interests.
Innes writes about businesses run by political elites, who created a corrupt
environment and a corporate brokerage party system. In the same vein,
Michal Klíma (2020) discusses East-Central European politics as a system
of clientelist networks and parties captured by business interests. In this
interpretation, all political leaders are understood to be political entrepre-
neurs, more or less. However, this approach erases any difference between
parties. We do not deny, of course, that people in business have exerted
influence on ‘old’ parties too, and often continue to do so, being their
prominent members. We do believe, however, that there is a substantial
qualitative difference between the traditional ways in which economic
interests influence politics directly or indirectly (by lobbying) and the
intermeshing of the business and political worlds as seen in entrepreneurial
parties.
Before we introduce our definition of an entrepreneurial party, we will
discuss the existing literature dealing with the particular features and char-
acteristics to be incorporated into our concept.
Works by authors that focus on political entrepreneurs and their parties
often tend to define them divergently. André Krouwel (2006: 251) writes
about a ‘business firm party cluster’, and Jonathan Hopkin and Caterina
Paolucci’s (1999) concept of a business-firm party is also important here.
This concept is perhaps the most fully developed, and Krouwel has made
further refinements to its definition. A business-firm party shares some
traits with earlier types of party, but differs from them in other respects.
Unlike a cartel party, it draws on private-sector resources; unlike a mass
party, it lacks a clear ideology; and neither grassroots members nor party
bureaucrats wield serious influence in a business-firm party. On the one
hand, these characteristics permit such parties great flexibility in choosing
which political issues to highlight and which strategies to pursue; on the
other it makes them inherently fragile, as they are subject to fluctuating
popularity among voters (Carty 2004: 20–21).
Essential for the success of a business-firm party is its use of electoral
and other experts, often contracted out; market research; sociological sur-
veys; focus groups; and suchlike—the sort of electoral-professional orien-
tation identified by Panebianco. Hopkin and Paolucci (1999: 322)
emphasise that the leadership of a business-firm party is linked to ‘personal

popularity, organisational advantages and, crucially, access to unlimited
professional expertise in mass communication’. The party originates from
the private initiative of a political entrepreneur, whose resources—whether
his own or controlled by him—are crucial in establishing the party.
Krouwel (2006: 261) pertinently notes that the leader tends to be ‘the
best wrapping for popular policies’. On the contrary, ideology is not
important at all for such a party. Other key characteristics of business-firm
parties are their attempts to secure easy access to the media, or even to
control media channels directly. It is true that in terms of ties and funding,
business-firm parties might receive some support from external interest
groups, but these are not their main sources of income, electoral support
or channels of communication. In terms of organisation, a business-firm
party has a centralised structure dominated by the leader, weak or absent
intraparty democracy, little importance placed on members and local
structures in general, and great importance given to professionals, typi-
cally electoral experts and consultants.
The best-known example of a business-firm party is Silvio Berlusconi’s
Forza Italia, which emerged in the early 1990s. However, the ‘model’ cre-
ated by Berlusconi poses some issues that fundamentally affect the con-
struction of the concept, as the applicability of it to other cases is sometimes
problematic and debatable. This can be illustrated by studies of entrepre-
neurial parties in Scandinavia, which reveal local political entrepreneurs
who command far fewer resources and means than Berlusconi. The
electoral-professional strategy, as conceived by Angelo Panebianco, has
therefore not been deployed by them as extensively as by Forza Italia.
Furthermore, the political conditions in Scandinavia also differ, and entre-
preneurial parties have not become such major players there as Forza Italia
has in the south of the continent. Finally, the fact that for a relatively long
time entrepreneurial parties in Scandinavia focused on a stable set of
issues—and hence one could hardly speak of their ideology as substantially
flexible—is also an important factor. Nevertheless, we need to go beyond
the concept of a business-firm party since its characteristics are too depen-
dent on the specific context of the early years of Forza Italia. Another
reason to look for a broader concept is the fact that not all entrepreneurial
parties are so directly connected with a ‘business firm’.
The first serious and very important attempt to employ a concept simi-
lar to our ‘entrepreneurial party’ was presented by Robert Harmel and
Lars Svåsand (1993). They described the Norwegian and Danish Progress
Parties, both established in the early 1970s—two decades before Forza

Italia—as ‘entrepreneurial issue parties’. The authors linked their entre-
preneurial origin with the fact that they were founded by people who held
no government office and that these people determined their organisation
and the policy issues they pursued. Nor were the Progress Parties products
of a classic social movement, whether environmental, feminist, pacifist or
any other. Other authors have subsequently referenced Harmel and
Svåsand’s simple definition, including in discussions of entrepreneurial
parties outside Scandinavia (e.g. De Lange and Art 2011). Nicole Bolleyer
and Evelyn Bytzek (2013) are close to this understanding of entrepreneur-
ial parties, linking them with their lack of social roots, which distinguishes
them from other new parties that do have links with some organised social
group. All this is very important for our understanding of entrepreneurial
parties too, yet the specific link between political and business logic is not
essential in Harmel and Svåsand’s approach.
David Arter has proposed—again, for Scandinavia—a terminological
modification and speaks about ‘resilient entrepreneurial parties’. In order
for such a party to establish itself, Arter argues, it needs a charismatic
leader, who is crucial for creating an organisation, sustainable in the long
term, which follows the model of traditional mass party organisation with
geographical structures. Arter emphasises the adaptability and durability
of resilient entrepreneurial parties (Arter 2016; Arter and Kestilä-
Kekkonen 2014). There are also instances of parties whose leader is not
just the central element but also the only member. Oscar Mazzoleni and
Gerrit Voerman (2017) have called these ‘memberless parties’ and
described their functioning using the examples of the Dutch Party for
Freedom and the Swiss Ticino League.
These examples show the visible differences between entrepreneurial
parties that are due to factors such as the leaders’ strategies, their resources
and external influences. Our intention here is to offer a conceptual frame-
work that is applicable to the situation in Western as well as in East-Central
Europe. A good way to do this is to consider the concept of a business-
firm party, as outlined by Hopkin and Paolucci (1999) and Krouwel
(2006, 2012), as a ‘maximal’ definition of an entrepreneurial party, which
only a part of empirical cases match.
We define an entrepreneurial party as a project of a political entrepre-
neur who connects his economic and political interests, who commands
and organises the party in a hierarchical and centralised way using business
logic and approaches both in organisation and in political campaigning.
It is also important to offer a basic concept that covers all entrepreneur-

ial parties, and only then to outline a typology that captures the differ-
ences between them. Drawing inspiration from the authors cited and the
empirical cases noted above, our concept of an entrepreneurial party is
presented in Table 2.1.
This concept will constitute the point of departure for our endeavour
to analyse Western and East-Central European entrepreneurial parties,
their emergence, development and institutionalisation into existing party
systems. The crucial thing is the private initiative of a leader in launching
the party, his central role and position, the treatment of the party as a per-
sonal vehicle and the managerial style of the organisation and direction of
the party. Other features are important but not exclusive to entrepreneur-
ial parties. For example, an attractive media package is now essential for
any politician and any party. There are new non-entrepreneurial parties
without clear and distinguishable social roots or parliamentary experience,
such as the Pirate parties. But it is the combination of the features above
that makes entrepreneurial parties a unique species in contemporary party
politics.
Table 2.1 Concept of entrepreneurial party

Feature Detailed characteristics
Origin Founded as leader’s private initiative.

Formation Leader’s influence over the party’s character, including its issues/
programme and organisation, is crucial.
Maintenance and The leader maintains a central role in the party even after the
development foundation period and uses the party as a personal vehicle.a
Managerial style Inner workings tend to follow managerial principles; intraparty
democracy is minimised; it has de facto (though not necessarily
according to statutes) centralised and hierarchical management.
Media The leader is very important for attracting media attention and
electoral support.
Social connection The party is not a product of a social movement and lacks social roots.
Relationship to The party did not originate from parliament—e.g. from a group of
parliament MPs seceding from another party. Some politicians, including the
leader, may have political experience, including a knowledge of
parliamentary practice.b
Source: Authors
a
This term is defined in detail by Paul Lucardie (2000)
b
Some of the political entrepreneurs analysed in this book (e.g. Viktor Uspaskich, Geert Wilders and
Janusz Palikot) were members of parliament of other parties before launching their own
A TYPOLOGY OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTIES

The definition of the entrepreneurial party allows for interesting variations
in the specific way that leaders create their political projects. The ways in
which they combine the spheres of politics and the economy can be quite
novel. For instance, in the case of the political entrepreneur Vít Bárta in
Czechia, Bárta’s company can be said to have performed a hostile takeover
of an existing party. Alternatively, the founder can offer a loan to his party,
as Frank Stronach did in Austria. Efforts made to ensure the attractiveness
of the party to the media may vary from direct media ownership to the
excessively eccentric personal performance of a leader. Silvio Berlusconi
bought the media first and launched the party later; Andrej Babiš in
Czechia followed in principle the opposite logic, while Viktor Uspaskich in
Lithuania was ‘merely’ attractive enough to occupy substantial space in the
media without investing his own money to buy the media. A hyper-
centralised and managerial party organisation neither demands nor
excludes the creation of some territorial branches or the recruitment of
some grassroots members. Not every founder of an entrepreneurial party
is as exclusive as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, who is the only indi-
vidual member of his party. The definition says what is to happen but not
how it is achieved. Given the fact that the number of entrepreneurial parties
is increasing, and that there is increasing empirical variety within this con-
cept, we need to consider differentiating among the types of entrepreneur-
ial party. Therefore, we offer a typology of entrepreneurial parties here.
The definition places substantial emphasis on the figure of the political
entrepreneur: what entrepreneurial parties share is the key role of their
leader and their centralised structure. For this reason, it makes no sense to
attempt to ‘measure’ or categorise the degree of this centralisation. Nor
can ideology or political appeals be considered a lasting source of differ-
ence, given the great flexibility exhibited by some parties in this respect.
However, empirical reality shows that the founding fathers differ greatly in
the size and role of their businesses and their approach to party organisa-
tion. Our typology of entrepreneurial parties, which will be used for their
empirical analysis in the subsequent chapters, proceeds from these obser-
vations and considerations. It is based on two characteristics: the external
and internal organisation of these parties.
The first (external) characteristic is concerned with the business facilities
or backing of political entrepreneurs, that is, their ability and willingness to
invest their own financial capital, media, personnel or other resources into
the start-up and operation of their parties. Simply put, there are political
entrepreneurs ‘with a firm’ and ‘without a firm’, and this is a very impor-
tant initial piece of information with respect to the resources that political
entrepreneurs command. Of course, the differing magnitudes of resources
influence the strategies of entrepreneurial parties, as they substantially
influence their ability to establish themselves in a plural political system.2
Without sufficient resources, they simply cannot pay electoral, marketing
and other professionals. It is precisely an extensive professional back-
ground that is an important element in a strong party organisation and
especially for successful campaigning.
The advantages provided by very substantial business facilities can be
shown in the example of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. The financial, personnel
and other resources of Berlusconi’s business empire, Fininvest, were cru-
cial to its success. In explaining the party’s achievements, Gianfranco
Pasquino (2014: 557) noted unreservedly that no one else ‘had the same
quality or quantity of resources as Berlusconi’. In its first ten years, Forza
Italia was largely funded from Berlusconi’s private resources (Kefford and
McDonnell 2018: 7). Certainly, the novelty of its campaigns, based on
political marketing, played a role; but without the financial resources avail-
able for starting up and operating the party, without the managerial back-
ground of Fininvest, and its personnel facilities generally, and without
Berlusconi’s own television channels, the party would have found it diffi-
cult to keep up, especially in those years when it was in opposition.
The Austrian political entrepreneur, Frank Stronach, is another inter-
esting case. He saw the founding of his party and its funding from his
private resources essentially as a business investment. Similarly, Andrej
Babiš and Viktor Uspaskich substantially benefited both at the inception
and at the later stages of their party-political projects from their major
business facilities that allowed them to invest more in campaigning than
their established political competitors could afford to do.
The size of the business facilities must be seen in the context of the
country in question. When Igor Matovič founded his party in Slovakia, for
instance, he had at his disposal financial and media resources that were
many times smaller than those commanded by Berlusconi and Babiš.
However, in this small country, he was a rich man with substantial family
capital, which was entirely sufficient for his expansion into national poli-
tics. To the group of political entrepreneurs with a firm, we also add those
businessmen who sold their commercial assets before establishing their
parties, but then subsequently invested their money into the new political
‘enterprise’. They are represented in this book by Janusz Palikot (Poland),

who used not just his money, but also his business marketing experience,
for his political breakthrough.
By contrast, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Anders Lange and Carl
I. Hagen in Norway, Pawel Kukiz in Poland, and Tomio Okamura in
Czechia represented a style of political entrepreneurship based on personal
talent and abilities, which, of course, varied. Unlike Babiš, Berlusconi,
Stronach or Uspaskich, they did not have substantial business, financial or
media backing. Much more important was their ability to present them-
selves in public, in media not under their control, and on social networks.
The second (internal) characteristic is concerned with there being any
party membership and territorial structure at all, that is, an interest shown
by political entrepreneurs in building a party on the ground. Standing on
the one side are parties with minimal membership and no territorial struc-
ture, represented in an extreme form by ‘memberless parties’ such as Geert
Wilders’s Party for Freedom (Mazzoleni and Voerman 2017). Other, less
extreme empirical cases that we study are Team Stronach, Igor Matovič’s
OĽANO and Tomio Okamura’s Dawn.
Standing on the other side is Forza Italia, which—after an initial experi-
ment with a local structure based on football clubs, which was to feign a
large membership spread throughout Italy—found that it could not do
without local party structures and members. Similarly, the Norwegian
Progress Party moved from an initial fluidity to a dense territorial network
covering the whole country. As the case of the Czech Public Affairs party
of Vít Bárta will show, such an approach can even create a semblance of
substantial intraparty democracy—for a time.
This does not mean that democracy necessarily rules in entrepreneurial
parties with members and more developed territorial structures. In reality,
what they aim to do is to build a more robust organisation with the objec-
tive of establishing themselves at various levels of politics. Papers on the
importance of members and local branches in contemporary parties (Tavits
2012, 2013; Scarrow 2015; Deegan-Krause and Haughton 2018) allow
us a better grasp on the meaning of such a decision. Despite all the social
and political changes that have occurred over recent decades, some mem-
bership and the associated wider network of local branches can serve, for
instance, as a recruitment pool for cadres or help to mobilise voters, espe-
cially at the grassroots level. If the political entrepreneur lacks money,
members can also be useful as donors in election campaigning.
Of course, electoral and political success is not just about a ‘simple’

geographical organisation and grassroots membership, but also about
seats in national parliaments, in some cases the European Parliament, and
in regional and local bodies. Moreover, as Margit Tavits (2012: 86) rightly
states concerning scandals or other adverse economic or macro-political
conditions at the national level: ‘local presence and involvement in local
politics can help the party stay afloat and recuperate.’ This grounding at
the local level is narrowly linked with the institutionalisation of entrepre-
neurial parties outlined below.
Tavits’s other insight, concerned with the strength of the party organ-
isation and verified by examining parties in post-communist Europe since
1989, is also worthy of note. An organisation’s strength, Tavits (2013: 67)
argues, is the greater ‘the more sizeable its membership, extensive its local
presence, and professional its staff’, that is, in the case of entrepreneurial
parties, its electoral and other experts. The stronger the party organisa-
tion, the more successful the party is electorally. We shall see whether this
holds true for the various entrepreneurial parties analysed in this book.
There is another aspect of this matter that needs our attention.
Members and more robust structures, naturally, increase the risk of rifts in
the party, nuclei of conflicting interests or even a diversity of ideas. In par-
ties with minimal memberships and political representatives, the risk of a
destructive rift is smaller. But even there, understandably, are risks, stem-
ming from the leader’s faulty organisation strategy, especially their inabil-
ity, inexperience or unwillingness to invest time and energy in building
party cohesion. It depends on the leader whether they are able to rid their
party of tensions, or the party becomes fragmented and potentially
marginalised.
Entrepreneurial parties that do build a territorial structure do not spe-
cifically limit the number of their members, but neither do they seek to
attract new members and often thoroughly vet applicants for membership.
This was the case in two Czech parties, Public Affairs and ANO. Still,
there is an appreciable difference here from entrepreneurial parties that
would rather have no members at all, ‘just to be sure’.
Table 2.2 summarises our proposed typology, indicating the parties
that fall into the various types, which will be covered in subsequent chap-
ters. It needs emphasising that, in this typology, the parties are assigned
according to their overall similarity with one of the four ideal types.
Empirically, the parties sometimes only approximate to a type. For
instance, the billionaire Frank Stronach did not create a party comprising
Table 2.2 Typology of entrepreneurial parties

Political entrepreneur Political entrepreneur ‘without a
‘with a firm’ firm’
Party with members Forza Italia (Silvio Progress Party (Anders Lange,
and territorial structure Berlusconi, Italy) Carl I. Hagen, Norway)
Public Affairs (Vít Bárta, Kukiz’15 (Pawel Kukiz, Poland)
Czechia) Freedom and Direct Democracy
ANO (Andrej Babiš, (Tomio Okamura, Czechia)
Czechia)
Labour Party (Viktor
Uspaskich, Lithuania)
Palikot Movement
(Janusz Palikot, Poland)
Party without members Team Stronach (Frank Party for Freedom (Geert
and territorial structure Stronach, Austria) Wilders, the Netherlands)
OĽNO (Igor Matovič, Dawn of Direct Democracy
Slovakia) (Tomio Okamura, Czechia)
Source: Authors
a single member. Yet the number of Team Stronach members was very
small, and in this political project, the leader did assign the membership
and the territorial structure roles that were insignificant, and hence it is an
example of the type combining ‘a firm’ and ‘no structures’ options.
THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTIES

The last conceptual topic we need briefly to outline in connection with
entrepreneurial parties is the difference in their durability. Many entrepre-
neurial parties collapsed soon after their first electoral success, but some
proved durable in the long term. Party institutionalisation provides a suit-
able tool for examining their durability. Scholars have defined party insti-
tutionalisation as ‘the process by which organisations and procedures
acquire value and stability’ (Huntington 1968: 13) or as ‘a process by
which followers develop an interest in the survival of a party independent
of its current leadership’ (Panebianco 1988: 53).
Given the key importance of the leader in entrepreneurial parties, their
leadership abilities are essential to transform the party into an efficient
electoral machine. The leader must show strong external and internal
leadership. The former is important to make the new party attractive to
voters, and rhetorical skills are essential for this. The latter is of essence for
creating a functional party organisation and for its consolidation, requir-
ing talent and abilities of another kind (De Lange and Art 2011; Arter and
Kestilä-Kekkonen 2014). In terms of making the new party attractive to
voters, the features of external leadership are evidently crucial. However,
for a party to survive in the long term, its leader must be able to consoli-
date it internally and gradually institutionalise it within the party system.
The development of an entrepreneurial party can be characterised using
Robert Harmel and Lars Svåsand’s (1993) three-phase model, which we
briefly introduce at this point. The first phase, identification, begins at the
moment the creation of the new party is announced; it consists of develop-
ing the party’s identity and communicating its message. The entrepreneur
must be a ‘master preacher and propagandist’, someone who combines
creative, communicative and charismatic qualities. Typically, their message
is combined with protest against the establishment, with the aim of attract-
ing attention to ideas proposed by the party. However, the party might
also appeal simply because it is new (Sikk 2005, 2012). Harmel and
Svåsand assume that, given the need for a leader who interests voters in
this phase to improve the likelihood of achieving success in its first elec-
tions, the nurturing of members and its supporters’ identification with the
party are more important than building an electoral apparatus across mul-
tiple constituencies.
A critical moment in the development of an entrepreneurial party is
when it obtains parliamentary and/or local office holders. Whereas previ-
ously public attention was concentrated on the leader, now it is diffused,
to encompass newly visible party representatives and, in particular, to
examine their proclamations and opinions, which may contradict the
wishes and positions of the leader. Thus the second phase, organisation, is
connected with establishing routine procedures and mechanisms for con-
trol and coordination, something that was almost unnecessary in the first
phase, characterised by one-person representation. This phase involves the
delegation of the leader’s authority and responsibility, increasing member-
ship and building local branches, stabilising a permanent electoral organ-
isation and dealing with the issue of factionalism. The leader must not just
show organisational qualities but must seek to secure further development
of the party.
The third stabilisation phase of party development occurs when the
party gains importance in terms of its acceptability. Harmel and Svåsand
do not say that it needs to enter government; it is enough for the other
parties to change their views and be willing to cooperate with the entrepre-
neurial party. Thus, there is a shift in the primary focus in this phase, away
from internal organisation per se towards solidifying the party’s reputation
as a credible actor. The leader’s abilities to moderate and stabilise are now
essential. If the party is eventually drawn into the executive, this entails the
risk of voter disappointment, and so the leader is tested by their ability to
cope in this new situation. In other words, the third phase requires stabili-
sation on two fronts: within the party and in relation to other parties. In
this phase, the leader plays a double game, within and outside the party,
placing considerable demands on their political skills (Harmel and Svåsand
1993; cf. Arter 2016; Randall and Svåsand 2002). The essential elements
of all three phases are summarised in Table 2.3. In the chapters that follow,
we always apply the model in the concluding summary.
Viewing the institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties through the
lens of the types set out above, we can discuss to what extent the types
facilitate or impede institutionalisation. We have discussed the advantages
Table 2.3 Phases of institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties

Phase Objectives Leadership requirements
1. Identification Develop message CREATOR and PREACHER

Communicate message Originality and creativity, communication
Draw attention to party skills, charisma, authoritativeness
Adopt (non)
organisational style
2. Organisation Develop and routinise ORGANISER
procedures Organisational orientation and skills,
Delegate and coordinate consensus building skills, strategic skills
Build and maintain
consensus among
competing factors
3. Stabilisation Develop reputations for STABILISER
credibility and Personal reputation for credibility and
dependability dependability, administrative skills (for
Fine-tune and implement organisational maintenance and fine-
message and procedures tuning), complex human relations skills
Develop relations with (to lead complex party organisation while
other parties (perhaps dealing with other parties)
eventually within coalition
government)
Source: Adapted from Harmel and Svåsand (1993: 75)

and disadvantages of having and not having members. From the viewpoint
of institutionalisation, the following preliminary arguments can be pro-
posed. Reducing the membership, or having none, may help the leader to
control the party better. However, that does not imply he would actually
be able to create a functional and, more importantly, strong party organ-
isation, and move the process of institutionalisation forward. By contrast,
efforts at building a territorial structure and creating a relatively large
membership potentially create a greater variety of opinions, ambitions and
interests in the party, and thus also opportunities for conflict with the
founding political entrepreneur. Nonetheless, such a more robust and
locally grounded structure stands a better chance of surviving a crisis, or
even the loss of the leader. This should be particularly true for parties that
are not dependent on the leader’s resources, that is, entrepreneurial par-
ties without a firm. Lacking these external (leader-owned) resources, the
party organisation can only rely on itself.
Arguably, there is a direct correlation between the amount of ‘capital’
invested and the leader’s ability to pass from the identification phase to the
organisation phase, or from the organisation phase to the stabilisation phase.
The leader’s ability to fund the party from his own resources may pay off, as
the examples of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Andrej Babiš’s ANO show.
This is particularly true in situations where—due to its newness—the party
is not yet able to draw on state subsidies or in situations where established
parties are weakened financially and where non-state financial and other
(media etc.) resources come in handy when waging a dynamic election cam-
paign. We can thus expect, with some caution, that parties of political entre-
preneurs with a firm will be able to pass into the organisation and stabilisation
phases more easily and advantageously than those of entrepreneurs without
a firm. For the latter, politics may even be an important source of personal
income, and the option of immediately drawing on benefits may be a more
important motor in their political strategy than the desire to institutionalise
their political projects. They are also an easier target for other parties (estab-
lished or otherwise), which fact may impede their institutionalisation in the
sense of acceptance by other players in the political system.
RESEARCH SOURCES AND INSTRUMENTS

Here we briefly define our methodological approach and the sources of the
data we use in our analysis. This book is a comparative study focused on
cases and not on a generalisation of the phenomenon of entrepreneurial
parties (Morlino 2018). One of our goals is to increase our knowledge

about the workings of political parties in the political systems of selected
European countries, and to supplement our existing knowledge of their
inner life and functioning, their institutionalisation and, above all, the role
of the leader in these processes. Another purpose of the comparison is to
work with the typology presented above, specifically, to provide an empiri-
cally founded explanation of this typology and so ascertain the relation-
ships between the various types of entrepreneurial party. The aim is to
prove empirically how the various categories of founder-leaders manage
the process of, or fail to achieve, party institutionalisation. Thus, we shall
empirically examine whether the assumptions about the influence of the
two dimensions of our typology on party institutionalisation, formulated
above, are valid or not.
Basically, the analysis of the evolving institutionalisation of the entre-
preneurial parties observed can be likened to the ‘process tracing’ method,
specifically that of its variants which focuses on the case and explains the
institutionalisation or the reasons for its failure (Beach and Pedersen 2013:
18–22; George and Bennett 2005). However, we would like to emphasise
that we take inspiration from, rather than slavishly apply, the process trac-
ing method. Our ambition is not to find complete causal explanations as
to why some entrepreneurial parties institutionalised themselves, whereas
others failed to do so. Indeed, we believe that in the complex political real-
ity this would be impossible. We shall, nevertheless, proceed in agreement
with the concept of a process tracing study, which emphasises a careful
analysis of the reality of a given case—a concrete entrepreneurial party—
and of the dynamics over time of the phenomenon involved. In doing so,
we shall endeavour to show both the external and the internal factors of
this development. In other words, we will analyse the conjunctural, con-
textual and intraparty circumstances and constraints that influenced party
institutionalisation and success. Thus, we will reconstruct the ‘stories’, or
political lives, of the various parties studied. In the chapters focused on
specific types this will allow us to conduct a partial, and in the last chapter
a comprehensive, comparison of the empirical examples of all four types
and to consider broadly the strengths of the various factors involved, with
respect to explaining party institutionalisation or the failure to achieve it.
In particular, this comparison will allow us to consider the role of the
political entrepreneurs themselves.
The means to achieve these objectives of our study is a careful analysis of
the evolution of the individual cases—the entrepreneurial parties—which
will rely on a comprehensive parsing of the secondary sources available

about them, as well as frequent use of primary sources such as manifestos,
political proclamations and statutes. Indeed, statutes and other organisa-
tion documents provide an important primary tool for uncovering the for-
mal structures that operate within a party. Understandably, there is more to
a party’s internal life than what can be gleaned from its formal procedures
and roles; and where the scope of our study allows us to do so, we also
examine interviews with representatives of selected entrepreneurial parties,
items of journalism and so on. This analysis of the individual cases is not
just an end in itself—a description of the circumstances of the emergence
and life of selected entrepreneurial parties—but also serves for comparison,
as detailed above.
Our choice of cases was not informed by a desire to include all entre-
preneurial parties in every European country. We have limited ourselves to
Western and East-Central Europe, and then further, in accordance with
our case-oriented research, we selected examples of the various types of
entrepreneurial parties. The individual types are represented by two to five
parties each. Parties from Czechia play perhaps a more significant role in
our study than those from other countries; this is due not just to our spe-
cific knowledge of the Czech situation, but also to the fact that in that
country entrepreneurial parties have been numerous and their rise has
been swift—there have been four such parties (Public Affairs, ANO and
Tomio Okamura’s two parties), which represent various types. It bears
emphasising, however, that this monograph is consistently comparative
and does not focus on a particular country.
NOTES
1. Some parts of this chapter are based on our journal article: Hloušek and
Kopeček (2017a).
2. This, of course, is not the only factor. The political opportunities structure
is also crucial for entrepreneurial party success. Typically, an entrepreneurial
party succeeds in a situation of major political or economic crisis, which
causes an earthquake in the party system, allowing the entrepreneurial party
to pick up the dissatisfied voters of the established parties. This dimension
of entrepreneurial parties’ success, however, must be considered contextu-
ally on a case-by-case basis, and as such it cannot be used as one of the
dimensions in an entrepreneurial party typology.
CHAPTER 3
The Party as a Spin-off

from a Business Empire
It is a difficult task to break through with a new political party. The entre-
preneurial parties that are the subject of this chapter profited at their
inception from the substantial, sometimes even enormous, business back-
ing of their founding fathers. The resources linked with this backing and
the leaders’ readiness to invest them in their political projects is the first
crucial characteristic distinguishing this type of political entrepreneur from
those who lack major resources. The second crucial characteristic is their
decision to expand their organisation not just nationally but also at the
other levels of politics. Unlike political entrepreneurs whose circles encom-
passed only a handful of collaborators, such an expansion necessitated the
substantial recruitment of party cadres and the acceptance of a broader
party elite, even beyond the national level. Such a decision brings oppor-
tunities. Thanks to the resources and the broad coverage of the nation,
such an entrepreneurial party can be exceptionally successful with the
electorate.
We deal with five rich businessmen who invested massively in their
political projects and attempted to create solid organisational bases:
Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Vít Bárta and Andrej Babiš (both Czechia),
Viktor Uspaskich (Lithuania) and Janusz Palikot (Poland). In our analy-
ses, we highlight the resources—including money, personnel, media
access and others—used by these entrepreneurs in building their parties.
The cases studied here show similarities, but also interesting differences,
which were largely due to the sociopolitical environment in the country

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_3
where the party was established, or the previous business interests and
activities of the leader. We also track the course and the causes of the
usually magnanimous organisational expansion at various levels of poli-
tics as well as the ways in which the founding father secured the central
position for himself.
We shall show how Silvio Berlusconi linked his love of football, busi-
ness and politics in an original way. In evaluating his actions, we would
be justified in questioning his ability to transform Italian politics and the
economy. Yet it must be admitted that Berlusconi’s Forza Italia has sig-
nificantly influenced the understanding of political partisanship in Italy
and beyond. The Czech Public Affairs party, led by Vít Bárta, mean-
while, provides an example of a rapid rise, and an equally quick party
collapse. Bárta’s project reveals the massive risks involved when an
attempt is made to conceal the linkages with the actual (as opposed to
the apparent) leader and his business background; this was compounded
by a failed experiment in direct democracy and a half-baked party on the
ground. The lessons of Public Affairs were very important for another
Czech political project, Andrej Babiš’s ANO, which conceived of a much
more transparent role for the leader. Babiš was able to employ a sustain-
able political and organisational strategy; hence his ANO is a perfect
example of an entrepreneurial political project and one that has success-
fully managed the risks involved in establishing an entrepreneurial party.
Because, at the time of writing, ANO is probably the most successful
party run by a political entrepreneur in Europe, it will be given more
space here than the other cases.1 Viktor Uspaskich’s Labour Party in
Lithuania has shown significant ability in accommodating an entrepre-
neurial political project to local conditions, and also in resolving a situa-
tion where the leader was sentenced for a criminal offence and had to
formally withdraw from party leadership. The chapter is completed with
a discussion of Palikot’s Movement in Poland, a one-off success story of
a rich businessman-provocateur who circumvented the restrictive rules
that regulate the funding of new political parties and adroitly exploited
the anti-clerical mood of many Poles. In addition, the leader of this for-
mation, Janusz Palikot, is interesting for his decidedly individualist style,
which also implies an inability to build a united party, one that is rooted
in society.
3 THE PARTY AS A SPIN-OFF FROM A BUSINESS EMPIRE 31
THE (IN)FAMOUS PIONEER: BERLUSCONI’S FORZA ITALIA

Of the political entrepreneurs who have created their own party as an
instrument of political expansion, the best known is certainly Silvio
Berlusconi and his Forza Italia (FI). The name means ‘Come on, Italy!’
and is the chant that Italian tifosi use when rooting for their national foot-
ball team—as we shall see, this connection is closely related to the emer-
gence of the party and the source of Berlusconi’s inspiration.
An instrument of Berlusconi’s political success, FI appeared at a propi-
tious time, when Italian politics was undergoing a massive crisis during the
1990s and the First Italian Republic had de facto collapsed. A campaign
by judges and public prosecutors, called Clean Hands (Mani pulite),
against corruption and links between politicians and the mafia, discredited
the political leadership at the time. The investigation, which began in
February 1992 and resulted in custodian sentences for prominent politi-
cians, shattered catastrophically the public trust in the political class. The
biggest political formation in the country, the Christian Democrats, in
power continuously from the 1940s, essentially collapsed, and another
long-standing government force, the Italian Socialist Party, met with a
similar fate (e.g. Cotta and Verzichelli 2007: 35–52; Ignazi 2010: 56–60).
Before the elections scheduled for late March 1994, success for the
Italian Communist Party was looming. The party had been in permanent
opposition—though their political isolation began to lift in the second half
of the 1970s—and the scandals affected them too, to a certain degree.
The Communists were undergoing a political transformation, adopting a
much more moderate orientation. Yet the possibility of their seizing politi-
cal power still created concern among many middle-class and anti-
communist voters (Raniolo 2006; Porro and Russo 2000). This concern
created an opportunity for Forza Italia, founded only three months before
the 1994 elections, which it went on to win in a political blitzkrieg, taking
21 per cent of the vote. In the 630-strong lower chamber, elected by a
mixed system, FI won 134 seats. A major new actor had entered the politi-
cal arena, and the Second Italian Republic had begun, strongly connected
with Berlusconi and his party.
Silvio Berlusconi started his business in the 1960s in construction, but
gradually expanded into other spheres, including insurance, tourism,
retailing and cinemas. From the mid-1980s, his business empire, Fininvest,
was the second largest private Italian group. The media, specifically televi-
sion channels, became a particularly important part of his empire.
What was curious about the alleged newness of Berlusconi’s political

project was that he himself became rich in no small part thanks to his links
with politicians. Berlusconi’s efforts to protect the empire he had created
under changing conditions were an important—perhaps the most impor-
tant—motivation for establishing FI. His long-standing friendship with
Bettino Craxi, the socialist prime minister in 1983–1987, played an impor-
tant role in Berlusconi’s expansion into the media. The politician was even
godfather to Berlusconi’s first child (Anderson 2011: 321). Craxi facili-
tated the adoption of a media law that suited Berlusconi’s television net-
work, and it helped Berlusconi’s media group, Mediaset, to virtually
monopolise Italian commercial television channels and the television
advertising market. The symbiosis of the two men was apparent in that
Craxi’s socialists received ample space on Berlusconi’s television channels.
While Craxi faced prosecution in the last days of the First Italian
Republic and in 1994 took refuge in Tunisia, Berlusconi managed a daring
feat: he successfully pretended not to be connected with the past political
regime—indeed, that he was a new type of politician, able to lead the
country out of crisis. Berlusconi started to distance himself from Craxi in
1991, in connection with a referendum about electoral system change.
Craxi sharply opposed the referendum; Berlusconi, by contrast, smelled a
chance: by supporting it, he could declare clearly that he supported funda-
mental political change (Giovagnoli 2016: 206–208). Remarkably, how-
ever, as late as April 1993 Craxi and Berlusconi discussed the need for a
radical separation from the political past, and the establishment of an
entirely new party that would symbolise this break (Anderson 2011:
321–322).
Berlusconi’s appeal was not unique in Italian politics. Discussions about
a crisis of society and of the regime had been ongoing in Italy since its
unification in the nineteenth century. The stagnation, after nearly five
decades of governments largely led by the Christian Democrats, at the
turn of the 1980s and 1990s inspired other leaders to promote radical
change in political institutions and culture. But none of them had such
massive backing—in terms of finance, personnel and media—as Berlusconi
did (Orsina 2014: 7–60).
In justifying his entry into politics in January 1994, Berlusconi spoke
not just of a new politics but also about a new economy—more liberal and
less regulated and promising a new Italian miracle. He linked this vague
neoliberal appeal with slogans about fighting corruption and the ineffi-
ciency of party-political governance hitherto. Forza also emphasised its
nationwide scope and its family values, which were linked with Catholicism,
and positioned itself as the prime natural opposite to communism. The
party’s manifesto for the 1994 elections, which it won, was something of
a neutrally composed ‘shopping list of solutions to practical problems’,
not a political statement informed by an ideological vision (Hopkin and
Paolucci 1999: 326). This programmatic vagueness would become a fea-
ture of FI in the future, and the party elastically adjusted its orientation
according to the changing moods and preferences of the electorate, as
established by the party’s marketing institute, Diakron.
Another conspicuous aspect of the newness that Berlusconi presented
was his proclamations about the need to replace the old political elite with
people ‘with direct experience of life and its hardship rather than of the
machinations of backroom politics’, as Berlusconi put it in one of his first
speeches as prime minister in the Italian Senate in May 1994 (Orsina
2014: 70). By formulating a contrast between the incompetent, self-
absorbed political establishment and new people ‘with practical experi-
ence’, he defined a key mantra of many political entrepreneurs in
contemporary Europe. Even after the founding phase of FI was com-
pleted, Berlusconi routinely questioned party-based politics as unable to
resolve the ‘real issues’ of the country, and argued that the country should
be managed rationally, ‘as a firm’ (Ignazi 2010: 67). Such anti-party and
technocratic orientation is frequently encountered among entrepreneurial
parties of this type.
The technocratic orientation was in no way altered by the fact that FI
became involved in supranational political party structures. Originally, in
1994–1995, FI aspired to be the axis of a new party grouping in the
European Parliament, Forza Europa, which combined mild Euroscepticism
with cultural conservatism. This faction, however, proved unable to go
beyond the horizons of Italian politics, and for that reason it merged in
1995 with the European Democratic Alliance group (that included
France’s Rally for the Republic and Ireland’s Fianna Fáil), creating the
third-strongest group in the European Parliament. Nonetheless, after the
1999 elections Berlusconi pragmatically went with the strongest parlia-
mentary party group—the European People’s Party—where all the suc-
cessors to the original FI have remained.
The Business and Media Empire Serving as Forza Italia’s Base

In terms of organisation, Forza Italia grew out of Fininvest, whose manag-
ers and marketing and advertising experts played a crucial role in the
establishment of the party and its 1994 election campaign. At that time,
FI’s preparation for the elections was revolutionary: it used the then new
techniques of political marketing, created by specialists in economic image
creation and public relations from Pubitalia, one of Berlusconi’s compa-
nies (Ginsborg 2003: 290). Even the party candidates for the 1994 elec-
tions were chosen by Pubitalia’s advertising experts. They were recruited
from the ranks of local entrepreneurs and, very often, from among
Fininvest employees (Clark 2008: 510). What the current desires and
preferences of the electorate were was established by Diakron, the party
market research institute, which had been founded by two former Fininvest
managers and was staffed by Fininvest employees (Hopkin and Paolucci
1999: 323–324). Throughout the 1990s, Diakron was an important ele-
ment in the party’s organisation; later, it was replaced by a contracted
external firm. Outside election campaigns, Diakron monitored the politi-
cal market and tracked social trends using telephone surveys and focus
groups (Seisselberg 1996: 731). This reflects both the importance of the
business support for FI and the party’s focus on selling a political product
to voters, who were seen as consumers.
Particularly important in terms of appeal to the electorate was the char-
acter of Mediaset television productions. With its undemanding, enter-
taining content, the station offered a distinctive model of consumerism
that appealed to many Italians. Canale 5 in particular—from 1980 the first
privately owned television channel with nationwide reach—set the pace for
simple entertainment and infotainment—that is, a combination of infor-
mation and entertainment that aims to arouse emotion, rather than pro-
vide serious news reporting—in opposition to the pallid fare offered by the
public-service broadcaster, RAI. Berlusconi’s channels had massive audi-
ences, and Canale 5, Retequattro and Italia 1 provided ideal instruments
for Forza Italia’s political communications, continuing to do so even today.
These channels offered an outstanding and unlimited opportunity for
Berlusconi’s personal presentation, which skilfully used lightweight termi-
nology—often from the world of sports—combined with a prophetic,
messianic tone (Porro and Russo 2000: 359–360). In the pre-internet era,
such ownership of a media platform provided an efficient instrument of
communication and a tremendous political bonus for the party.
From the outset, Forza was managed from the top down, and the for-
mally established structure initially had little importance. The first statutes
of FI were very brief—only 19 articles—and their effect was suspended
shortly after the party’s foundation. In practice, the leader had a central and
practically unlimited position in the party; the organisational model was
hierarchical and centralist. The boss appointed members to a kind of
nationwide committee, which was only a board of his advisors, according to
the name. It consisted largely of Fininvest lawyers and managers, and a few
notable people from the outside, who had been largely co-opted to weaken
the perception that this was essentially Berlusconi’s ‘clan’. In practice, this
nationwide committee of FI hardly ever met; the real decisions were taken
and political strategy was created in an informal close circle of the leader’s
colleagues and friends (Seisselberg 1996; Hopkin and Paolucci 1999).
The creation of the party’s geographical structure was entrusted to
regional coordinators, again appointed by Berlusconi. The top-down
appointment model, where the regional coordinators then created provin-
cial coordinators, permeated the party’s entire structure. Locally, organ-
isations in the classic sense were not created; there were only Forza activists
(again, appointed), whose task was to agitate among the citizens.
Some quasi-local organisations nonetheless did emerge, in the very spe-
cific form of clubs. It was Berlusconi’s interest in football, an extremely
popular sport in Italy, that gave rise to this club-like structure, and he
seized a business opportunity that fit perfectly into the Mediaset entertain-
ment portfolio. In 1986, Berlusconi purchased the iconic AC Milan. This
proved an important moment in capturing the consumer loyalty of foot-
ball fans, and it was followed by the creation of hundreds of fan clubs, with
hundreds of thousands of members. When Forza Italia was founded, these
fans were offered membership of the party’s clubs, creating a widespread
backing for Forza Italia and giving it the appearance of a mass movement.
However, the clubs had no influence over the workings of the party and
operated almost entirely separate from it. The main link between the two
was a Fininvest top manager, who worked as a coordinator of the club
network (Hopkin and Paolucci 1999; Porro and Russo 2000).
Change in the Organisation While Maintaining Its Essence

The original organisational model of Forza Italia evolved over time, under
the impact of crises and political failures. The first setback came shortly
after the 1994 elections, which raised Forza Italia to power in
government. The Berlusconi-led centre-right government coalition that

included the regionalist Lega Nord and the post-fascist National
Alliance—a continuation of their collaboration in the elections—fell apart
towards the end of the year. Berlusconi lost the prime ministerial seat and
ended up in opposition, where he would stay for five long years.
Another shock followed in the 1995 regional and local elections, in
which the party failed because it lacked robust structures at these political
levels. The fan clubs were entirely inappropriate for the tasks involved
in local elections. Though they were able to operate as instruments of polit-
ical mobilisation, as organisations for creating a local party elite they failed
entirely. Jonathan Hopkin and Caterina Paolucci (1999: 330) aptly noted
in this context that the weak presence on the ground was an obvious disad-
vantage of FI, showing the limits of its ‘televisual leader-oriented strategy’.
The third major disappointment was the non-success of FI in the par-
liamentary elections a year later, when the party polled ‘only’ 20.4 per cent
of the vote. At first glance, the loss compared to earlier parliamentary elec-
tions was moderate. However, in the context of the victory of the compet-
ing centre-left Olive Tree (L’Ulivo), whose core was made up of
ex-communists and which was substantially ahead of FI in that part of
parliament in particular which was elected by a majority system, this was
clearly a defeat for FI (Table 3.1).
Berlusconi responded by instituting an organisational change, with the
aim of creating a more stable and solid structure that would allow FI to
return to government, something that he achieved in 2001. The party
started to use statutes that firmly grounded its methods and functions, and
organisational structures were created similar to those of other parties,
including a supreme body, the party congress, which was first convoked in
spring 1998. The quasi-football-club local structures were replaced with a
classic regional organisation based on the membership principle. Compared
to FI’s main competitor, the ex-communists, who had more than half a
million members in the first decade of the Second Republic (Cotta and
Table 3.1 Results of Forza Italia/The People of Freedom in parliamentary

elections
Year 1994 1996 2001 2006 2008 2013 2018
Result (in per cent of votes) 21.0 20.4 29.4 23.7 37.4 21.6 14.0
Source: Italy (2019)

Note: Up to 2001, results in the proportionally elected part of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies are given
Verzichelli 2007: 45), the numbers in FI were small. What is more, the
trend was downwards: while in 2000 FI had about 300,000 members, six
years later it could count on fewer than 200,000 (Blondel and Conti
2012: 80).
The close symbiosis between the party and Berlusconi’s business empire
was likewise loosened, although it did not disappear completely. This was
in part related to Fininvest’s worsening economic condition—the con-
glomerate was facing legal actions launched by competing firms.
Symptomatically, in 2017 Fininvest sold its share in Berlusconi’s favourite
club, AC Milan.
This organisational adaptation of FI did not imply a major departure
from the principle of subjugating the party to the leader, who remained its
focal point. Berlusconi maintained the right to appoint people to all
important party bodies, including the regional secretaries, as well as the
power to decide upon everything that mattered, and this preserved the
‘unusual concentration and verticalisation of power’ in the party (Ignazi
2010: 63). Similarly, democracy was limited in the compiling of candidate
lists and the choice of delegates for the party congress. About half of the
delegates attended the congress ex officio, that is, because they exercised
some other role in the party (Blondel and Conti 2012: 81). From 1997,
congress formally selected the leader. This was supposed to improve FI’s
public image, but in practice there was no real organisation change, and
Berlusconi’s position remained dominant (Sandri et al. 2014: 98). His
money long remained crucial for the success of Forza Italia: the party only
began to be funded largely from public sources in 2012–2013. As late as
2012, Berlusconi was liable for €179 million of FI’s debts to banks
(Kefford and McDonnell 2018: 7).
The replacement of the Forza Italia marque with a new name, The
People of Freedom (Il Popolo della Libertà), in 2009 proved only a tem-
porary episode in the history of Berlusconi’s party. In essence, this change
consisted of FI swallowing up its government and election ally of many
years, the National Alliance. In practice, the subjugation of members con-
tinued in the united party, even though the statutes formally allowed for
direct democracy (Kefford and McDonnell 2018: 8–9). The fusion proved
fragile, because the former chair of the National Alliance, Gianfranco Fini,
vied for popularity and political power with Berlusconi within The People
of Freedom. After Fini and his allies left the party in 2010–2011, Berlusconi
once again took full control and brought back the original party marque,
Forza Italia (Orsina 2014: 128–133).
This ‘new’ FI, operating since 2013, follows upon the tradition of its
predecessor, and its management continues to be hierarchical and central-
ist. Berlusconi is still the chair of the party, albeit his ability to act in Italian
politics was somewhat curtailed by his autumn 2013 sentence, barring
him from exercising public office for two years. In subsequent trials, the
ban was extended until 2019. However, Berlusconi’s actual exercise of
power within the party was essentially unchanged. It is true that in day-to-
day management, the role of the party apparatus has increased. It is headed
by the deputy chair, Antonio Tajani—something of a public face of the
party—and Giovanni Toti, a former Mediaset journalist, who became
Berlusconi’s eyes and ears in the party. This situation is redolent of that in
The People of Freedom in 2011–2013, when Angelino Alfano was
appointed party secretary, while Berlusconi had to gird himself for trial,
rather than focus on party politics.
Internally, the original FI, The People of Freedom and the recon-
structed FI have not managed to avoid controversy, and the internal cohe-
sion of the latter two has been weaker than that of the original FI, with
cases of new parties founded by renegades becoming more frequent. In
2010–2011, Fini’s Future and Freedom for Italy split off; in 2012, it was
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy; in 2013 Alfano’s New Centre-Right; and in
2015 two new parties emerged, Fitto’s Conservatives-Reformists and
Verdini’s Liberal Popular Alliance. None of these parties could attract a
substantial portion of Berlusconi’s party membership or electorate.
Berlusconi still acts as something of a magnet, ensuring the necessary
cohesion of the party and its symbolism, towards the electorate. Thus,
membership in FI has remained conditional upon loyalty to the leader. At
the same time, it is difficult to imagine that, despite the relatively high
measure of cohesion, the party could survive Berlusconi’s leaving the lead-
er’s position (Harmel et al. 2018: 152–153). The temporary episode of
The People of Freedom is interesting not just for historians of the Italian
right; it tellingly illustrates a common trait of entrepreneurial parties: the
need for a single strong leader and the impossibility of pluralism within the
leadership. Yet this trait is also the Achilles heel of such parties, not least
because the leader’s problems automatically become a great encumbrance
to the party.
Berlusconi’s corruption, tax and sex scandals have long damaged the
credibility of Forza Italia. The key figure and the face of the party is, at the
same time, its main source of weakness and, to use the language of politi-
cal marketing, impairment of the image of the product on offer. This was
further compounded by its inability to resolve Italy’s economic problems,

as became very clear in the early 2010s in particular, when another (third)
Berlusconi-led government collapsed. The second decade of this century,
therefore, has been marked by a gradual decline in Berlusconi’s party elec-
toral performance. In 2018, when Berlusconi, now more than 80, could
not stand for election because he was judicially barred from exercising
public office, FI polled only 14 per cent of the vote and, for the first time
since 1994, was overshadowed by another party in the right-wing segment
of the political spectrum: Matteo Salvini’s Lega.
‘DOWN WITH THE DINOSAURS!’ OR TOO PRIVATE PUBLIC

AFFAIRS IN CZECHIA
Like that of Forza Italia, the story of the Czech Public Affairs party (Věci
veřejné, VV) illustrates an entrepreneurial project for which the leader’s
corporation and resources provided the crucial support. But compared
with Berlusconi’s party, there are some interesting differences. Anti-
establishment appeals were important in the political offerings of both VV
and FI, but the former did not include technocratic notions but rather a
vision of direct democracy. Even more remarkably, the VV project used a
formally existing, though marginal, political party at launch; the actual
decision-making mechanisms in the party were kept opaque; and, most
importantly, the leader’s position was not transparent. This was a conse-
quence of the efforts made to conceal the business origin and background
of the political project.
The key figure of VV, Vít Bárta, was a co-owner of the security firm
White Lion Agency (Agentura bílého lva, ABL). Unlike the billionaire
Silvio Berlusconi, Bárta was not one of his country’s richest entrepreneurs.
ABL was the third biggest security company in the country, with a turn-
over of about €35 million per year, and the company employed fewer than
2000 staff, mainly in the capital, Prague (ABL 2009). Thus, Bárta’s
resources—in terms of finance and personnel—were much more limited
than Berlusconi’s. The scope of his business was likewise much narrower,
and he controlled no media.2 All of this had consequences for Bárta’s
political aims and organisational strategy.
By entering politics, Bárta sought to enlarge the scope of his company’s
activities, in particular to improve his position to win public tenders. The
means for his political and economic expansion was to be VV, which was
originally founded in 2001 as a local Prague party with a handful of mem-

bers who had no national ambitions and no links to Bárta’s security firm.
An interesting trait of VV, which contrasts with other entrepreneurial par-
ties, was that Bárta did not found the party; rather, with the assistance of
people linked with ABL, he took control of it around the middle of the
2000s (Hloušek 2012).
The purpose of VV was to serve as a base for ABL’s expansion, as was
outlined in a document entitled ‘Strategy 2009–2014’, which Bárta pre-
sented to a small circle of his top agency managers in October 2008. The
strategy was ambitious, assuming that ABL would become the largest pri-
vate security agency in the country. This would be achieved by winning
new customers, including contracts in the public sector from state offices,
self-governing bodies, hospitals and so on. The document stated explicitly
that it was not possible ‘to separate economic and political power’
(Strategie 2008; cf. Kmenta 2011: 263–264; Bureš 2014).
The key (and also non-public) document outlining a strategy for
attracting voters was the so-called Ethical Code of Public Affairs, dated
January 2009. The fundamental message was that the party offered ‘sim-
ple solutions to complex issues’ and ‘a definite and immediate benefit for
the citizen’; it was ‘not to disparage the superficiality of the voter’, but to
be ‘vibrant’, ‘entertaining’ and ‘non-traditional’ (Kodex 2009). The pub-
lic face of this strategy was the popular journalist Radek John, who in
mid-2009 replaced one of Bárta’s colleagues, Jaroslav Škárka, as VV’s
chair. This proved to be a shrewd move. John communicated the party’s
election message convincingly and, ahead of the elections, was even named
the country’s most popular politician in opinion polls (CVVM 2010a).
Among the candidates of the parliamentary parties, John won the second-
highest number of preferential votes in the elections (Kneblová 2010).
The efforts made to render the project as attractive to the public as pos-
sible, and to conceal its controversial business backing, led to a strategy in
which the key figure remained in the shadows—unlike Berlusconi in Italy.
Bárta, publicly almost unknown, was initially presented by John as follows:
‘It’s very simple—Vít Bárta, the ABL owner, lives with Kateřina Klasnová,
the deputy chair of VV. He founded the Club of Engaged Entrepreneurs,
from which we obtained CZK 12 million (about €460,000), and decided
he wanted VV to win seats in parliament’ (Rovenský 2009). The Club of
Engaged Entrepreneurs included not only Bárta but also other future rep-
resentatives of VV, and was VV’s main donor prior to the 2010 elections
(Stauber 2015: 140). In these elections, Bárta acted as VV’s electoral
manager and secured an electable position on the Prague candidate list. At

the time, he was not formally even a member of the party.
In the process of creating the VV party’s image, its management deftly
harnessed the atmosphere of the time, which was marked by misgivings
about the beginnings of economic recession and, more importantly, grow-
ing dissatisfaction with governance and the political class (Deegan-Krause
and Haughton 2010a; Charvát and Just 2016). Added to this were con-
cerns about political instability and numerous scandals, many involving
accusations of corruption. To illustrate the scandals: the social democratic
Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies had to relinquish his seat after he had
handed a large sum of money to his assistant in a brown paper bag—alleg-
edly he was returning money, the origin of which was unclear. Towards the
end of the electoral term, two-thirds of voters were dissatisfied with the
political situation (CVVM 2010b). Thus, the atmosphere in Czechia was
similar to the situation in Italy before the rise of Forza Italia. The electoral
market was open to new participants, and this fact was exploited for a break-
through not just by VV but also by another new party, TOP 09, created by
the secession of a group of politicians from the Christian Democrats.
Public Affairs was assisted by the fact that an early election, which had
been called, was cancelled by the Constitutional Court before it could take
place (Balík 2010).3 The postponement of the national parliamentary elec-
tions until spring 2010 allowed the party time to adjust its political offer
to match the social environment. Its main election slogan was ‘Down with
the dinosaurs!’ Like Berlusconi’s Forza Italia in the mid-1990s, the party
played the card of political newness (Hanley 2012). According to John, a
dinosaur was ‘someone who has been in politics for more than ten years,
can’t do anything other than politics, understands it as his trade and starts
to make deals’ (Rovenský 2009). VV was particularly critical of the two
largest parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats
(Č SSD), whom it accused of corruption. Bárta described the politicians of
these parties as ‘robber barons’ and criticised their incompetence in gov-
erning the country (Buchert 2010).
Analyses show that political corruption was a key topic in the party’s
election campaign. The Public Affairs party dedicated more space in its
party manifesto to the topic of fighting corruption than any other party
receiving seats in the Chamber of Deputies (Eibl 2010; Havlík and Hloušek
2014). Strangely enough, John and Bárta joined those voices criticising
the interference of private economic interests in politics; at the time this
was plausible, as the public did not know that VV was connected with ABL.
The party’s election manifesto of 2010 was eclectic and could not be
placed on the left-to-right axis, something that VV presented as a virtue
and as evidence that the party was distinct from the ‘dinosaurs’ and ‘rob-
ber barons’. Radek John said: ‘We don’t want to move left or right, we
want to move forward’ (quoted in Havlík 2015a). The party proposed
direct democracy as the primary cure for political ailments. In its format,
the party manifesto corresponded fully to the spirit of VV’s Ethical Code
mentioned above. Its short format and informal design promised to the
average voter (represented by a cartoon character called Pavel) and his
family the resolution of all problems. A cartoon character resembling
Radek John was dressed in a superman-like costume to reinforce the
message.
In the elections in late May 2010, this message secured fourth place for
VV, with almost 11 per cent of votes and 24 places in the 200-seat
Chamber of Deputies (see Table 3.2). VV truly went beyond the tradi-
tional right-to-left separation of Czech politics and won many former vot-
ers from the two large parties, the centre-right ODS and the Social
Democrats. It was also successful among those who had not previously
voted and among young people voting for the first time (Chytilek
2018: 225).
After the 2010 election, the coalition potential of VV proved surpris-
ingly great, as the centre-right parties ODS and TOP 09 needed VV to
form a majority government. VV was close to the centre-right parties on
many economic issues, and although this was not much in evidence during
the electoral campaign, it was made apparent after the election by the VV
Table 3.2 Election results of Public Affairs and ANO

Party/elections Chamber of Local electionsa Regional European elections
deputies elections
2010 2013 2017 2010 2014 2018 2012 2016 2009 2014 2019
Public Affairs 10.9 2.9 0.3 2.4

(in per cent of
votes)
ANO (in per 18.7 29.6 14.6 14.9 21.1 16.1 21.2
cent of votes)
Source: Czech Statistical Office (2019)

All councils (total valid votes include city district councils), excluding coalition candidate lists
a
leadership: the kinship of policies was to serve as a kind of bridge into

government. This flexibility secured four ministries for VV in the new
government, led by Petr Nečas (ODS), including those of the interior for
John and transport for Bárta. In order to avoid discussion of his conflict of
interests, Bárta formally transferred his ownership share in ABL to his
brother, who owned the rest of the company, after the elections. In this he
proceeded differently from Berlusconi, who never cut off ties with his
business empire. Yet this failed to prevent a turbulent public debate a few
months later, with the ABL-VV linkage at its centre.
The unambiguous foregrounding of an office-seeking strategy contra-
dicted VV’s anti-establishment message. Indeed, such a message could
hardly be deployed in a situation when VV ministers sat in government
with a number of people whom they had previously described as political
dinosaurs. So the appeal had to be transformed, although the original
message was still used on occasion by party representatives (Havlík and
Hloušek 2014; Havlík 2015a). Furthermore, the credibility of VV, includ-
ing its figurehead, John, began to be undermined by the party’s obvious
unpreparedness for a role in government. His ratings and those of the
party plummeted, as was confirmed by the party’s debacle in the October
2010 local elections (Table 3.2).
The party sought to deal with the evident problem of losing its elector-
ate by offering a new message: to this end it used blackmail to oppose the
Nečas government from the inside, in particular by seeking to correct its
economic and social agenda (Hloušek 2012). This was made more colour-
ful by the party’s dramatic press conferences, threatening quite openly
from late 2010 onwards that the party would leave the government coali-
tion. Such a step would resonate with VV’s protest characteristics. The
message was accompanied by a ‘new’ face for the party: its de facto leader
and minister for transport Bárta, who was becoming more publicly visible.
The chances of the new party message succeeding, however, were over-
turned by a public discussion about the origin of VV and Bárta’s role in
the party in spring 2011. Very important was the defection of one of its
MPs, deputy chair of the party and former chair, Jaroslav Škárka, who
described VV to the media as a party run dictatorially by Bárta, alleging
that he was buying the loyalty of some MPs. Even more destructive was
the publication in an influential daily newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes of a
well-documented story identifying VV’s genesis as a business project, the
purpose of which was to obtain political power. Among other things, the
paper’s exposé contained explosive information about ABL’s surveillance
of politicians from competing parties. This brought the major weakness of

the VV strategy into the open: the concealment of this particular origin
and its actual leader. This scandal interfered with the party’s difficult task
of adapting to a government role—something at which even Forza Italia
initially failed.
The government coalition managed to survive the crisis: Bárta resigned
as a minister and VV also lost the politically sensitive ministry of the inte-
rior. However, this crisis fundamentally damaged the party’s credibility
and its internal cohesion. Three MPs, including Škárka, left the party. The
police opened an investigation to address the allegation that Bárta had
paid Škárka and some other MPs for their loyalty to the party. The party
leadership also sought to salvage its tattered image by continuing the strat-
egy of ‘internal opposition’ within the coalition, although this only accel-
erated the party’s disintegration. When in spring 2012 Bárta was brought
to trial for bribing MPs, VV sought to avoid the media storm that devas-
tated the party by creating another crisis in government and by announc-
ing that VV ministers might leave the government. Furthermore, VV
ministers were out of control, announcing that they would not resign after
all; the party leadership then abandoned the idea of resigning from gov-
ernment, losing the last remnants of their authority.
A final blow for VV came in April 2012, when Bárta received more than
one year-long suspended sentence for bribery.4 VV’s ministers left the
party, joined by some of the party’s MPs, allowing Nečas’s government to
maintain a fragile parliamentary majority. This political catastrophe was
the end of VV de facto. In early 2013, an attempt was made to revitalise
VV’s ethos by finally making Bárta the official leader of the party; yet by
that time, he was a compromised figure. The party did not stand in the
early elections in 2013 and concluded its activities two years later. Bárta
then unsuccessfully attempted to return to parliament in another entrepre-
neurial party (see Chap. 5, section on the Dawn of Direct Democracy).
Compared to Berlusconi’s project, the political breakthrough by the
Czech political entrepreneur was merely episodic.
Decision-Making Concealed Behind the Facade

of Direct Democracy
The most interesting organisational aspect of VV was its concealed inter-
nal mechanisms. Formal top-level bodies at first sight did not significantly
deviate from what was the norm among Czech parties; much more
important was an informal, yet crucial, body unmentioned in party stat-

utes: the so-called Conceptual Council. In its character, this body was
similar to the circle around Silvio Berlusconi when he built FI. Created in
2009 and described by the party’s secret Ethical Code as the ‘real govern-
ing body of the party’ (Kodex 2009), the Conceptual Council comprised
a circle of people that changed gradually over time. They usually also held
positions in official party bodies—for example, deputy chairs. Remarkably,
the main face of the party and its official chair, John, was not a member of
the Conceptual Council, apparently because he originated from outside
ABL and people close to Bárta. The head of the Council was Bárta, in
whose flat the body held its meetings. Testifying to the spirit of the Council
is the fact that Bárta called its members, who each supervised a field of the
party’s activities, ‘gurus’, and described himself as the ‘superguru’ (Kmenta
2011: 325). Such descriptions provide a telling illustration of the strange
spirit of the VV elite.
This clandestine management of VV was hidden behind an entirely dif-
ferent facade than was presented to the public. According to statutes, it
was the party members and the many times more numerous registered
supporters, the so-called véc ̌kar ̌i (the ‘Vs’), who voted for the party chair
and deputy chairs in a direct electronic election. Only subsequently, at the
national conference of the party—its supreme body—were these party
officials confirmed in their posts (Statutes VV 2009). The intraparty refer-
endums, the VV leadership claimed, were intended to determine virtually
all the important personnel and political decisions of the party, including
those concerned with its programme. However, the scope of the issues put
to the vote was not specified in the statutes, and neither was it clear
whether the votes were binding for the leadership.
It was easy to become a registered supporter of the party, and their
number reached almost 20,000 during the 2010 elections. The problem,
however, was that only a small section of these supporters participated in
intraparty referendums, and suspicions soon emerged that the VV leader-
ship had rigged the results. In spring 2011, defecting party representatives
confirmed these suspicions (Č T24 2011). For the party leadership, sup-
porters’ votes were useful in two respects: they served as a facade covering
the reality of decision-making in the party and were something of a litmus
test to establish the fickle opinions of its supporters (Hloušek 2012).
In order to uphold the image of a countrywide party with a visible
physical presence, VV created local members’ clubs, chiefly between
autumn 2009 and spring 2010. In many regions, only a handful of clubs
were created, because the membership was exclusive, small and strictly
controlled. The party was much less welcoming of potential members than
of registered supporters. When in late 2009 the number of applicants for
membership rose sharply due to the party’s improved rating in the opinion
polls, a waiting period of one year was introduced, evidently to keep the
membership under control. John presented this step to the media as a
measure against careerists (Č Ro 2009). Thus, while in early 2010 the
party had fewer than 1000 members but 1400 people on the waiting list,
by the end of 2010, the number of members had risen to about 1700.
This was still a relatively small number, compared to older Czech parties.
For example, the Civic Democrats at the time had about 27,000 members
and the Social Democrats slightly fewer (Janiš 2010; Válková 2011).
Furthermore, it was the broader official leadership of VV that decided the
admission and expulsion of each member (Statutes VV 2009). In the
demands it placed on prospective members and the centralisation of the
admission procedure, VV was unique among Czech parties.
Yet even these safeguards, intended to protect the party against poten-
tially unreliable members, failed to prevent internal dissent, which was
greatly intensified by the public discussion about Bárta’s intentions and his
hidden directorship of the party. For instance, in April 2011 the VV club
in Plzeň , one of the largest cities, called for Bárta to be expelled from VV
because he was damaging it. This clearly showed disloyalty of the grass-
roots structures towards a key figure in the party.
The party centre responded in summer 2011 by further tightening its
demands on members, which had already been comparatively severe. Now
prospective members had to produce a declaration that they were free
from debt, a statement from the state-maintained criminal records office
and a curriculum vitae (CV). Furthermore, the party’s Board (grémium),
the inner official leadership, was given the right to demand further docu-
ments that had been unspecified in the statutes (Statutes VV 2011). The
purpose of this tightening was to gain greater control over the member-
ship; yet it was only put into practice when the party faced a serious wave
of defections and was practically falling apart.
Beyond the local clubs, until 2011, VV lacked the regional- and district-
level organisation found in other Czech parties.5 This posed no serious
obstacles in the parliamentary election of 2010, because the party’s cam-
paign was centralised and professionalised. The non-existent regional
bodies were substituted with regional party forums, comprised of chairs of

local clubs and regional managers, the latter chosen and paid for by the
leadership in Prague, which thereby informally secured a strong say for
itself. Regional forums were given a key role in compiling candidate lists
for the 2010 parliamentary elections in the regions. The candidate selec-
tion process was seemingly very open, with regional election leaders cho-
sen in direct elections by the supporters and members in the region (as
were the chair and deputy chairs of the whole party nationally). In prac-
tice, however, candidates for regional party leader were preselected by
forums that consulted with the party centre about their choices. The
regional forums were also crucial in determining the order of candidates
who followed the regional election leaders on the lists (Spáč 2013a, b).
However, the quick disintegration of VV’s parliamentary party group after
the elections showed that even this highly controlled method of assem-
bling candidate lists could not secure their full loyalty towards the party
leadership.
One very specific instrument deployed by the leadership, namely con-
tracts concluded between the party and its candidates ahead of the 2010
elections, also proved insufficiently effective. If elected as an MP, these
contracts would bind the candidate to remain in the parliamentary party
and to vote in accordance with the party line, under penalty of an enor-
mous fine. These contracts made sense in Bárta’s logic. He considered the
money spent on building VV and its election campaign to be an invest-
ment from which he wanted a return (Strategie 2008; Kodex 2009). Thus,
the contracts were intended to protect his investment. However, they con-
travened the constitutional order, and their ability to dampen VV MPs’
dissatisfaction was short-lived; in contrast, they escalated the debate about
the party’s character and the strange way in which it was run.
The sparseness of the network of local branches and the small number
of members, as described above, affected VV’s poor result in local elec-
tions in late 2010. Not just in small municipalities, but even in some
medium-sized towns, the party was unable to put together candidate lists,
and its average across all local assemblies was fewer than 3 per cent of the
vote. In regional elections two years later, VV fared even worse (Table 3.2).
In VV, the building of the party on the ground stalled halfway, and at a
point of crisis these people did not provide loyal support. This contributed
to the swift collapse of the party.
MANAGE EVERYTHING AS A FIRM: ANDREJ BABIŠ’S ANO

IN CZECHIA
The breakthrough of a political entrepreneur, as well as the mistakes he

makes that cause his project to collapse, can have an interesting effect:
they may serve as inspiration and a lesson for someone else. This is pre-
cisely what happened with the billionaire Andrej Babiš, the founder of
another Czech entrepreneurial party called ANO (meaning ‘yes’ in Czech).
This effect was observable even before Babiš’s direct entry into politics.
Tellingly, he commented on the rise of Public Affairs in the 2010 elections
that ‘a successful party can be built up fairly rapidly in the Czech Republic’
(Pergler 2014: 131). After the deterrent example of VV, Babiš decided to
create a transparent party organisation centralised under him. In many
other respects, his ANO was similar to Forza Italia, whether in the types of
appeal made to voters or the fact that media ownership, and marketing
and electoral professionals were of exceptional importance to his project.
As for the last-mentioned, Babiš’s economic potency was much greater
than Bárta’s and he could afford a massive financial investment in politics.
The Agrofert holding company he owned was a huge empire, consisting
of more than 200 firms with almost 30,000 employees, mainly in the agri-
culture and chemicals industries. The holding company operated through-
out the country and also abroad, and its value was estimated at €1–2 billion
(cf. Agrofert 2011). This made Babiš the second richest man in the coun-
try, and the size of his business empire was similar to Berlusconi’s. He was
thus in a position to make a munificent investment in his political project.
Babiš’s path to riches, again, shows similarities with Berlusconi’s. As
Babiš built his business empire after 1989, he came into close contact with
the political world and maintained good relations with some politicians of
both big parties, the Social and the Civic Democrats; yet towards the end
of the 2000s, these relations cooled considerably. Babiš’s steps leading
towards the foundation of ANO were motivated much as Berlusconi’s
(and Bárta’s) had been. His businesses had much to gain and lose from
government policy; by directly entering into politics, he wished to secure
Agrofert and its growth (Roberts 2018).
However, another likely motivation for Babiš was his frustration with
politicians, on whose decisions he often depended. When entering poli-
tics, Babiš vented these frustrations openly, adding a strong mark of per-
sonal authenticity to his political message (Pergler 2014). During 2011,
the billionaire issued statements such as ‘Our politicians do everything to
prevent us from doing business’ (Tintl 2011). This sharp critique of the
political establishment and parties was later, in the 2013 elections, reincar-
nated as ANO’s effective slogan: ‘We are not like politicians, we
knuckle down!’
At the heart of Babiš’s message was his successful business story.
Preceding the establishment of ANO itself, in the founding appeal of his
initiative, entitled ‘Action of Dissatisfied Citizens’ (Akce nespokojených
občanů) and published in several large dailies in November 2011, he
wrote: ‘I employ thousands of people in my firms in Czechia, pay hun-
dreds of millions in taxes and am every bit as annoyed as you are. I am
annoyed because since the revolution [of 1989] not only have our politi-
cians proved unable to manage our country, but they watch as theft con-
tinues. I am infuriated that we live in a dysfunctional state’ (ANO 2011).
The founding appeal married a technocratic vision with a promise of
competent governance: the state was ‘to be managed like a prosperous
firm’. This promise to transfer private-sector efficiency into the public sec-
tor relied on Babiš’s personal abilities and experience in managing a large
corporation (Havlík 2015a). To sum up: the core of Babiš’s original mes-
sage was a combination of anti-establishment, anti-political, anti-corruption
(speaking about a ‘Czech Palermo’, for example) and technocratic-mana-
gerial appeals, without, however, promoting direct democracy as VV did.
The fact that the 2013 elections were called early was the reason the
party’s detailed manifesto was a last-minute affair. Thus, some of its sec-
tions were confusing and the US firm PSB, hired by ANO, found in its
research on ANO’s behalf that many of its points were controversial for
voters.6 This included Babiš’s already-mentioned notion of the state being
managed as a firm, which some ANO voters saw as a threat to democracy.
For that reason, this point (and some others as well) was subsequently
reformulated into a drive to transform the Czech Republic into an ‘inex-
pensive and lean state’ (ANO 2013). The technocratic idea of managing
the country as a firm was, however, important for Babiš and would be used
by ANO later.
When journalists questioned Babiš about the unusual step of amending
his already-published manifesto, he would answer: ‘Why can’t we change
the manifesto?’ In terms of Babiš’s thinking and his conception of ANO,
this was telling. The purpose of the manifesto changes, according to Babiš,
was to offer to the electorate what they wanted (Pokorný 2013). Like
Berlusconi and Bárta, Babiš saw the voter simply as a consumer.
To illustrate the way the party approached its potential voters and the
importance of hired experts and consultants for ANO, let us briefly note
the modification of the party name. In April 2013, it was amended from
the original ‘ANO 2011’ to ‘ANO’. The removal of the year 2011 from
the name was explained by the idea-maker, who argued that ANO 2011
was ‘too long’ and ‘made an odd impression’ when repeatedly used in
text. The modified name (ANO means ‘yes’) was more forceful and easier
to use in slogans and in the party’s logo (Jankajová 2013).7
The founder of ANO had to deal with frequent comparisons in the
media between him and the secret leader of VV, whose role was hotly
debated. Babiš strongly objected to such comparisons and claimed that he
did not intend to get involved ‘in the manner of Mr Bárta, whose “secret”
get-rich projects are now known by the whole Czech Republic’ (Pšenička
and Mařík 2011). Symptomatically, Babiš also sought to pre-empt specu-
lation about the lack of transparency in the funding of the new political
project, declaring openly that he was ‘the one who pays for it all’ (Dolejší
2012). Indeed, until the 2013 early elections, ANO obtained an over-
whelming share of its funding from Babiš and his companies (ANO 2012).
In financial terms, this was an unequal contest, because older parties,
unprepared for an early election, found themselves fighting a businessman
with practically unlimited resources. ANO spent around €4 million on the
campaign, according to official data. To compare, the second most expen-
sive electoral campaign at €3 million was waged by the Social Democrats,
and other parties invested significantly less (Králiková 2014: 79).
When ANO was just starting up, Babiš explained that he did not want
to be its leader because he was unsuited for the job—given the ongoing
public discussions about how he had become rich and other issues. He
himself openly stated: ‘I am one of those opportunists who during the
ancien régime crawled into the [communist] party in order to be able to
travel abroad. I am probably not a historical moral ideal’ (Kubátová 2011).
Other problematic facets of Babiš’s profile were that he had collaborated
with the secret police of the communist regime before 1989 (an allegation
he denied) and that, being of Slovak origin, he did not speak Czech well.
Unlike Berlusconi, the ANO founder evidently vacillated, unsure whether
his own controversies might undermine his political project.
Yet again, concern about the consequences of being compared with
Bárta had an impact on Babiš. At the founding congress of ANO in August
2012 Babiš had himself elected by delegates to the chair of the party, a
result he explained with: ‘there’s no point in searching for some sort of
trained puppet’ (Válková and Dolejší 2012). He could not have distanced
himself from the Bárta-John pairing more clearly. Nevertheless, Babiš
refused to stand for election to parliament and to serve as the leader, but
here too he would soon change his opinion. The reason for this was two-
fold: the ongoing concern about being labelled ‘Public Affairs Mark II’
and the experience he had gained building his party and his effort to keep
it fully under his control (see below).
Similar to Berlusconi in 1994 and Bárta in 2010, Babiš could profit
from the serious crisis affecting existing politics, which culminated in an
enormous scandal that swept away the centre-right government headed by
Petr Nečas in June 2013. The police raided the Office of the Government,
arresting Nečas’s chief of staff (who was also the PM’s lover), as well as
several former MPs of the ODS and heads of military intelligence. They
were charged with corruption and misuse of office. This weakened not
only the governmental parties ODS and TOP 09 but, due to intraparty
wrangling and disputes with President Miloš Zeman, the Social Democrats
as well (Brunclík and Kubát 2019: 82, 112). As a consequence of the
political crisis, popular trust in the political classes plummeted. In terms of
the public perception of professional prestige, ministers and MPs were on
the same level as cleaners (CVVM 2013b). ANO won the support of many
dissatisfied former voters of the centre-right parties, which were decimated
in the election, and Public Affairs, but it was also aided by the Social
Democrats’ loss of credibility (Median, Stem/Mark 2013; Charvát and
Just 2016).
The results of the 2013 elections provided ANO with a much better
political position than that obtained by VV in the 2010 elections. Not
only did ANO poll a greater share of the vote; more importantly, it was,
with more than 18 per cent of the vote, only narrowly behind the formal
winner of the elections, the Social Democrats, whose result was their worst
since the early 1990s. This situation led to a surprising solution: the new
government consisted of the Social Democrats and ANO, with the
Christian Democrats as a junior partner. ANO secured a third of the gov-
ernment portfolios, including, very importantly, the minister of finance
position for Babiš. Although Babiš’s was not the most important party of
government, as Forza Italia was, it was very close.
ANO managed the transition from opposition to government much
better than Bárta’s VV and Berlusconi’s FI in 1994. One major factor that
facilitated this was that, unlike VV in 2010, ANO received a significant
bonus at the point it joined the government. The economic recession
ended and a boom started. This improved the mood in the country and
positively affected the perception of ANO and its leader. During 2014,
Babiš became the most trusted politician (CVVM 2016), and ANO the
strongest party, according to opinion polls. This support was confirmed by
the party’s success in local elections in that year (it won in the capital and
in most large cities) and in the 2016 regional elections (Table 3.2).
These developments were supported by a partial change of the party’s
existing profile, a necessary consequence of its move from opposition to
government. It gradually transformed its anti-establishment, anti-political
and anti-party appeals, without abandoning them completely. Babiš
repeated that he still did not consider himself a politician—despite being a
minister—only admitting that actually he was a politician rather than a
manager after the 2017 parliamentary elections, when he became the
prime minister. In rhetorical terms, Babiš came up with catchy slogans,
attacking ‘traditional politicians’ and ‘traditional parties’. This plausibly
distinguished ANO from the Social Democrats, with which it was in coali-
tion, and from the opposition right, which was still encumbered by the
legacies of the preceding era. Babiš continued skilfully to exploit the pub-
lic’s negative perception of the political class, without thereby finding
himself in the same category.
ANO placed its bets on the strategy of maintaining the image of a tech-
nocratic and competent party, successfully managing the state finances and
acting to resolve people’s problems effectively. Opinion polls at the time
of the 2017 parliamentary elections showed that this was important for
ANO voters (Median 2017a; Havlík 2019). Babiš’s most iconic achieve-
ment was the system of electronic sales records launched in late 2016,
applicable to all retail point-of-sale systems. In essence, this mammoth IT
project allowed the tax authorities to check every business transaction in
the country. Babiš presented this, and other activity in fighting tax evasion,
as his personal success.
A telling indication of ANO’s technocratic and managerial profile was
its key slogan for the local elections in autumn 2014: ‘We’ll simply do it.’
Similarly, for the regional elections two years later—which brought an end
to the policies of the hitherto mostly Social Democratic regional gover-
nors, largely decried by ANO as incompetent—the party used this slogan:
‘To manage the region as a firm’. This was in fact only a slight modifica-
tion of an older slogan about the state itself that was to be managed as a
firm. In the introduction to its manifesto for the 2017 parliamentary elec-
tions, ANO described citizens as shareholders in the ‘great family firm,
which is called the Czech Republic’ (ANO 2017). Adding the word ‘fam-
ily’ while preserving Babiš’s original idea of a firm-like management was a
deft move, because it had positive connotations (a family holds together,
supports its weaker members etc.).
When ANO joined European liberal structures (ALDE) in 2014, it did
not significantly affect the party. This declaration of liberal allegiances did
not create the need for the party to anchor itself more firmly in liberal
ideology. As with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia’s membership of the European
People’s Party, this was a pragmatic decision that did not substantially
influence the party identity. ANO’s manifestos and statutes, it is true, fea-
tured an espousal of liberty as a key value; however, this was completely
overshadowed by the technocratic visions it promoted. Some of the sug-
gestions in the book What I Dream About When I Happen to Fall Asleep,
formally authored by Babiš (but in reality by a broader collective including
ANO marketing experts) and published in spring 2017, were even clearly
non-liberal in their essence. The book envisaged strongly centralising the
political system and removing the system of checks and balances on gov-
ernment—for instance, by proposing the abolition of the upper chamber
of parliament and regional governance, and keeping greater control over
local government by the state (Hanley and Vachudova 2018; Havlík 2019).
Such suggestions did not make it into the ANO manifesto for the 2017
parliamentary election—they were far too controversial for that. This
manifesto offered extensive social transfers and benefits and was mainly
distinguished by its substantial eclecticism. Its content was derived from a
massive data collection enterprise through the party’s website ‘We want a
better Czechia’, started more than a year before the election, in which
several tens of thousands of ANO supporters gave their opinions on
selected issues (Prchal 2017). As in 2013, the programme was pragmati-
cally adjusted in line with the consumer expectations of voters. This flexi-
bility and adaptability was perfectly expressed by an ANO representative,
a former director of one of the large companies that were part of Agrofert:
‘When the greatest demand is for butter, you don’t come to the market
offering lard’ (Pustějovský 2018). Babiš’s party won the parliamentary
election with a significant margin over the party that placed second, taking
almost 30 per cent of the vote.
Though ANO lost some right-wing voters, contrariwise it won many
former voters of the Social Democrats and the Communists, as well as
many who had not voted in previous elections (Median 2017b). These
electoral shifts were linked with the party losing some of its
anti-establishment appeal; many centre-right voters in particular came to

oppose ANO due to the bureaucratic impacts of Babiš’s technocratic proj-
ects, which complicated their lives. Also influencing the replacement of
ANO’s electorate were the disputes over Babiš’s conflict of interests (com-
bining the office of finance minister with his ownership of a business
empire) and his older financial ‘sins’. In their character and consequences,
Babiš’s travails were similar to those of Berlusconi. As far as the conflict of
interests was concerned, Babiš was forced formally to relinquish his own-
ership of Agrofert, which he transferred into trust funds in 2017—this was
due to an amendment to the Conflict of Interests Act. In pushing through
this amendment, ANO’s government partners joined forces with the
opposition. Nevertheless, the leader of ANO continued to control
Agrofert indirectly, and the public debate over his conflict of interests
continued.
Babiš’s financial ‘sins’ proved even more explosive. Back in early 2016,
an affair came to light concerning the potential misuse of a large subsidy
awarded to the recreational facilities at Stork Nest Farm, a Babiš interest.
This was followed a year later by a debate about alleged tax fraud by the
minister of finance. Babiš had bought bonds from Agrofert worth €62 mil-
lion in 2013 and 2014, apparently avoiding taxes. This affair caused a
government crisis and forced Babiš to resign as minister of finance several
months before the 2017 elections. In his own defence, Babiš styled him-
self ‘the only just person’, who was being pushed out of politics on
trumped-up charges. In the eyes of many ANO voters, this merely con-
firmed Babiš as a martyr, victim of attacks by the ‘old’ parties and ‘tradi-
tional politicians’.
Such an image was strengthened further before the 2017 elections by
the case of Stork Nest Farm, in which the police requested that Babiš’s
immunity be lifted by the Chamber of Deputies to allow him to be pros-
ecuted. The prosecution of the ANO leader became a crucial theme of
electoral campaigning (Gregor 2019). MPs of all other parties supported
the lifting of Babiš’s immunity. By contrast, ANO MPs were all against,
and ANO ministers as well as local and regional representatives supported
their leader. Nor was the loyalty of the party elite and the party on the
ground significantly disrupted by other controversies surrounding Babiš.
The process of forming a government after the 2017 elections was pro-
tracted and difficult, but it did not jeopardise ANO cadres’ loyalty to their
leader. Babiš, facing criminal charges, wanted to be the prime minister at
any cost; this substantially limited ANO’s coalition potential. The first
minority single-party ANO government in early 2018 failed to win the

parliament’s confidence. Only in summer 2018 did Babiš manage to put
together a minority coalition government with the Social Democrats and,
entirely pragmatically, negotiated a deal in parliament with the Communists,
who acquired positions and concessions in the government manifesto in
exchange. The unity and loyalty showed by ANO towards the leader con-
trasted sharply with the quick collapse of the Public Affairs party, which
had found itself in a more or less similar situation several years earlier. In
ANO’s case, the success was a result of a process of building the party
organisation over several years, with the leader as the focal point. This
effort, however, was not entirely smooth sailing; rather, it was accompa-
nied by mistakes and problems, sometimes stemming from too direct a
transfer of business approaches into politics, as we show below.
‘I’m Paying, So I Decide’: The Building of a Loyal and Efficient

Political Machine
From late 2011 onwards, the establishment of ANO was overseen by a
small group of people clustered around Babiš in the Prague headquarters
of Agrofert. The founding father stewarded his property carefully, and had
the main identification marks—the party name, logo and principal slogan
for the 2013 elections, ‘ANO, bude líp’ (‘YES, things will get better’)—
registered as trademarks with the Industrial Property Office (the patent
office) in his own name (Štický 2017). He also left the basic activities
necessary for the party’s day-to-day functioning in his holding company.
For instance, ANO’s accounts were managed by Agrofert’s financial direc-
tor (Stauber 2015). This was very similar to the direct and essentially
unconcealed backing and resources of the parent corporation as provided
by Berlusconi when he founded Forza Italia.
Babiš was able to deploy Agrofert’s resources sometimes in ways that
were only borderline legal. Thus, shortly before the elections 2013, Babiš,
as owner of Agrofert, appeared as a chicken seller in a TV advert, launched
on a massive scale, for one of the poultry firms owned by his holding com-
pany. In the Czech Republic, political advertising on private TV and radio
stations is forbidden; however, the media regulator accepted the argument
that Babiš was not a politician. In fact this procedure employed by Babiš
infringed the principle of equality in political competition, just as
Berlusconi did when he used his own TV channels for the benefit of
Forza Italia.
The business environment of Agrofert also affected the manner in

which the cadres were chosen, in particular who would create ANO’s local
and regional structures. These structures were created from the top down.
The method adopted was to prevent a show of disloyalty. In this ANO was
also influenced by the recent experience of the VV party. The most remark-
able aspects of this process were human resources–style checks, including
psychological testing, which the founders of these territorial structures,
the so-called coordinators, had to undertake at Agrofert headquarters.
The process of enrolment of ANO’s first cadres was thus very similar to
corporate employee recruitment. These coordinators were also the first
members of the party.
However, even this course of action failed to secure absolute loyalty.
The representatives of the regional organisations elected in early 2013
were often not connected with Agrofert and showed independent political
ambitions and sometimes had idealistic notions. The second congress of
ANO in March 2013 routinely confirmed Babiš in his role as the party’s
chair, although in electing other party representatives the delegates only
partially respected Babiš’s will, and, unexpectedly from his perspective,
most of the deputy chairs were taken by representatives from the regional
organisations. After the congress, a conflict flared up between Babiš and
most of his new deputy chairs, the essence of which was that the latter
sought to obtain actual influence over the decision-making processes at
ANO (Dostál 2014).
The conflict was soon over, as the dissatisfied deputy chairs resigned
their party offices and quit the party. The founding father used the strong
argument that it was he himself who fully funded the party: ‘I’m paying,
so I decide’ (Koděra 2013). Babiš had another significant advantage
thanks to the statutes of ANO, which concentrated most of the power in
his hands, allowing him to act independently in all matters (Statutes ANO
2013). Thus, at what was a critical moment, the leader’s domination was
reinforced by formal rules.
This experience of revolt in the party led to a changed approach in
recruiting new cadres. Particularly noteworthy was the extreme exclusivity
of ANO membership that played an important role in securing party cohe-
sion. Shortly before the 2013 elections, ANO had only about 800 mem-
bers but nearly 7000 membership candidates (Smlsal 2013). This reflected
the attractiveness of these elections’ emerging black horse, one that pro-
spective politicians were well advised to mount. However, most of those
interested were left standing outside the party gates and ANO had only
about 2700 members at the beginning of 2015 and slightly more, 3000
members, in late 2017. To compare, we note that other Czech parliamen-
tary parties had much larger memberships at this time, to wit, the Social
Democrats, ca. 19,000; the Civic Democrats, ca. 14,000; the Christian
Democrats, ca. 25,000; and the Communists, ca. 40,000 (Válková 2015;
Brodničková and Danda 2018). Nevertheless, this membership was suffi-
cient to create a core of local representation in districts and regional cities.
ANO gave up expanding into smaller municipalities, not considering them
important. Like Berlusconi from the mid-1990s, Babiš built the cadres of
his party that allowed it to perform at the various levels of Czech politics.
The origin of the exclusivity of ANO’s membership is found in the
party’s statutes. The admission process was even more demanding than
had been the case with Public Affairs. Prospective members had to agree
with the party’s statutes and its moral code, submit a CV and declare that
they were free of debts and had no criminal record. After the 2015 con-
gress, they also had to attach a statement from the state criminal records
office, thus giving the documents they submitted a seal of official approval.
A candidate’s application had to be approved by the local party presidium.
This triggered a six-month waiting period, after which the membership
was approved (or rejected) by the ANO presidium, that is, the inner lead-
ership, who therefore acted as a gatekeeper. This admission process made
ANO much less accessible than earlier political parties. The waiting period
to which membership candidates were subjected was understood ‘as a pro-
tection period from unknown people’, as it was put by an ANO politician
(Pustějovský 2018). In other words, this period was a certain safeguard or
protection mechanism. During the waiting period it was established
whether the candidate was willing to become involved in party activities.
The period could be shortened or waived for people in whom ANO had a
special interest, typically popular mayors or other notables.
ANO checked not only its prospective but also its actual members. This
was clearly stated by a requirement added to the statutes at the 2015 party
congress, requiring members to notify the party if they were subject to
‘any proceedings, especially criminal, offence or distrain proceedings’
(Statutes ANO 2015). Such a broadly conceived control mechanism had
no parallel in any other Czech party. In practice, the provision was applied
benevolently, because it was difficult to enforce. Its main purpose was to
limit damage to the party image; what mattered was that, should a senior
party figure commit some misdemeanour, they would be ready to answer
journalists’ questions and avoid being caught out (Malá 2018).
ANO also had a simple and effective mechanism for getting rid of an
undesirable member (or membership candidate). The decision to expel a
member was taken by the party presidium, with immediate effect. Although
the expellee could appeal to the party’s arbitration and conciliation com-
mission, this did not have a suspensory effect. Some of the reasons for
expulsion were vaguely formulated in the statutes, for example ‘acting at
variance with the interests’ of the party (Statutes ANO 2017). Thus,
Babiš’s party could easily and quickly expel problematic or undesirable
members. The greatest wave of expulsions in ANO followed the conflicts
at the local level, as described below.
The gradual improvement and routinising of control over membership
were among the typical traits of the building of the ANO organisation.
The evolution of other decision-making mechanism proceeded in a similar
vein, and the creation of party candidate lists is particularly noteworthy.
Key decisions ahead of the 2013 election were made in a narrow circle
around the leader—an analogue to the beginnings of Forza Italia or
Bárta’s informal Conceptual Council. The composition of this circle var-
ied, depending on the issue under discussion, although generally it com-
prised some members of the presidium and hired electoral experts
(Matušková 2015; Kopeček 2016). This circle was crucial for staffing the
top places on ANO’s candidate lists. It largely sought to nominate public
figures, most often successful businesspeople and managers, but also a
popular actor or a well-known political commentator, hoping that they
would provide a significant contribution to the party’s electoral success.
However, the regional organisations did manage to push through their
preferred candidates in some cases, not least because the personnel
resources of the centre were limited.
The people who came together under the party banner often had no
prior acquaintance with each other. For this reason, in creating candidate
lists for the 2013 parliamentary elections, ANO headquarters sought to
run basic checks on its candidates, concerned with such matters as their
debts and prior membership of other parties. However, due to lack of
time, the checks on candidates below the level of leader in any given region
were superficial. This meant that before and after the elections, ANO
found itself in embarrassing situations that attracted media attention.
With the 2014 local elections approaching, ANO responded to those
affairs that attracted undesired media attention with more thoroughgoing
checks on its candidates. The vetting was overseen by the party’s general
manager. Her team first established as much as they could about the
candidates’ past from publicly available sources—they focused on similar

matters as when parliamentary candidates had been checked before selec-
tion—and then interviewed them. This vetting by the party centre was
unprecedented among post-1989 Czech parties, as it affected several
thousand people. Based on their findings, ANO substantially revised the
order of candidates on some lists, rejected a number of candidates and
even completely scrapped several local candidate lists (Kudláčková 2014).
The results were not particularly satisfactory, because soon after the
local elections numerous conflicts arose among the newly elected ANO
office holders—some of these were differences of opinion, others of per-
sonalities. Some of the elected refused to obey instructions issued by the
party headquarters. In pacifying these conflicts, the ANO leadership
expelled rebellious members en masse and shut down local and even
district-level organisations, even in large cities. The price the party paid for
this was a damaged image, as well as the loss of many of the recently won
local public offices.
These experiences led the party leadership to enshrine in the ANO stat-
utes efficient instruments for altering candidate lists. This meant that, at a
party congress in early March 2015, the powers of the leadership were
strengthened; for example, the committee (broader leadership body) was
given the power to strike off and reorder candidates on lists for elections
to all public offices. The 2015 party congress also passed a motion that
clarified the process by means of which the party presidium approved
regional chairs once they were elected by regional congresses. This mea-
sure drastically limited the autonomy of ANO regional organisations
(although it had been previously present in the statutes, the wording had
been vague). As aptly expressed by one leading ANO politician: the party
leadership was given the power to prevent anyone ‘objectionable for media
or other reasons’ from becoming a regional chair (Pustějovský 2018). This
sent a clear signal to the regional organisations to the effect that the party
leadership had a powerful instrument to correct any ‘aberrant behaviour’
by regional leaders.
Equally remarkable was how the March 2015 congress was master-
minded. Lessons were learned from the uncontrolled course of the previ-
ous congress in 2013. In 2015, Babiš, the only candidate for party chair,
obtained the votes of almost all delegates in a secret ballot. The leader’s
opinion was decisive when deputy chairs were elected, and this situation
was repeated at later congresses. There was virtually no discussion at the
congress of 2015—a marked contrast to the two previous congresses in
2012 and 2013. Rather than a political event, the congress was redolent
of the annual general meeting of a company dominated by a single
shareholder.
The next congress in 2017 adopted another protection mechanism,
giving the power to strike off candidates and freely amend candidate
lists—previously a matter for the presidium—also to the party leader. This
mechanism had been previously in place informally, as confirmed by
Richard Brabec, a deputy chair, after the congress: ‘Mr Babiš, of course,
has always had that informal position, even within the presidium, of being
able to influence matters personally, because whether you put it into the
statutes is one thing, but whether your influence […] is such that you can
simply do it, is another’ (Č Ro Plus 2017).
In practice, the changes in the statutes granted an extremely strong
position to the party elite and its leader, and brought greater stability and
clarity to decision-making.8 Further, this evolution shows the shift from a
rather informal model of management to a system that was more substan-
tially determined by official party positions. Thus, ANO took a similar
path to Forza Italia, which once started de facto with no statutes, and over
time established formal and solid party mechanisms. Combined with the
strict control of the party on the ground, it proved a tremendously power-
ful instrument, preventing any insubordination within the ANO. The
effects were visible after the 2016 regional elections and the 2018 local
elections: there was much less conflict among ANO elected office holders
than there had been following the local elections in 2014, and the party
structures showed cohesion. Similarly, regional organisations were timid
when putting together candidate lists for the 2017 parliamentary elec-
tions, as they were acutely aware that the leadership could easily amend
these lists. In practice, the leadership felt compelled to make substantial
amendments to the lists in a few regions only.
The intraparty self-protection mechanisms, however, would have been
inefficient without a particular mentality pervading ANO, which displayed
a similar mindset and allowed values to permeate freely. Crucial for this
mentality was the common professional managerial and business back-
ground shared by about two-thirds of the party elite.9 In the Public Affairs
party, the party elite was much more varied (Cirhan and Kopecký 2017).
Also important was the approach of Babiš himself, who proved a good
human resources manager. He was not authoritarian when approaching
his parliamentary party and did not sternly push through his views on mat-
ters under discussion; he was careful to listen to his MPs. An even more
essential role was played by a good communicator, Jaroslav Faltýnek, a

member of the Agrofert inner leadership, who was the first vice-chair of
ANO and chair of the parliamentary party. Faltýnek acted as a mediator,
quelling disputes and always finding time to listen to rank-and-file MPs.
This helped to attenuate conflict and dissent. Paradoxically, the attacks on
Babiš over his business ‘sins’ further improved party cohesion, as the par-
liamentary party rallied behind him (Kolovratník 2018; Pilný 2018;
Pustějovský 2018). An important motivation for the loyalty of both the
elite and the party on the ground was the continued strong public support
for ANO, securing electoral successes and many attractive offices at all
levels of politics.
Seeing this strictly centralised organisation, as described, it is curious
that ANO has consistently defined itself as a ‘movement’ (hnutí), a term
that evokes something else altogether. The beginnings of this self-defining
go back to the time of ANO’s foundation, when it sought to avoid the
perception that it was ‘merely’ one among many new parties and created
a positive image for itself. Thanks to skilful political communication, the
expression ‘ANO movement’ became fixed in the public consciousness
and it is routinely used even by Babiš’s political opponents. Czech law
does not make a distinction between a political party and a movement de
facto, and it is no obstacle to standing for election.
Babiš proceeded in a way that was similar to Berlusconi when, during
the foundational period of Forza Italia, he could use the term ‘movement’
to refer mainly to the supporting network of football fan clubs. Babiš did
not make use of football, and his attitude to team sports is generally cold.
In place of that, ANO created ‘registered sympathisers’, who exerted no
influence in the party whatsoever. Yet he didn’t wish to repeat the experi-
ence of VV, where registered supporters, officially playing an important
role in decision-making and supposedly serving as one of the pillars of the
party, eventually proved more of a burden than an asset. ANO’s registered
sympathisers were unmentioned by the statutes and their role was limited
largely to voluntary help in election campaigns and providing a recruit-
ment pool for party cadres (Dvořák 2017; Cirhan and Stauber 2018).
Even more important for creating a positive image of the ‘movement’
was the large number of its online supporters, friends and followers on
social networks. Babiš’s Facebook profile attracted the greatest attention,
having one of the largest numbers of fans among Czech politicians (Eibl
and Gregor 2019: 107–108). This allowed ANO to establish a permanent
communication channel, strengthening the loyalty of party voters. The
smoothness and mass character of this communication were chiefly

ensured by the professionals in the party headquarters, who became essen-
tial for ANO’s political success.
‘We’re Babiš’s Team!’ Electoral-Professional, Financial

and Media Background
The group of people quickly assembled to run the 2013 election campaign
later developed into the established service facilities of ANO. Top elec-
toral, marketing and other experts, originally hired temporarily, became a
permanent fixture of these facilities. The establishment of a professional
service function was necessitated by the high frequency of elections in the
country—for the lower and upper chambers of the Czech parliament, the
European Parliament and regional and local assemblies. Even more impor-
tant was the decision to wage a permanent campaign in support of Babiš’s
and ANO’s government image (Matušková 2015; Bastlová 2016;
Prchal 2017).
Crucially, Andrej Babiš continued to control the contents of ANO
political communications. As one key marketing expert expressed it, ‘We
work for the Boss; others [i.e. ANO politicians] can have an opinion, but
he decides, he lives for it’ (Prchal 2017). These words confirm a widely
shared perception of Andrej Babiš within ANO.
The victorious wave which ANO rode after 2013 increased the certi-
tude and self-confidence of the people in charge of its political message,
and created a nearly boundless trust within ANO in their abilities. Thus,
experts could act with a substantial degree of autonomy and not pay too
much attention to the views of the broader ANO party elite. The electoral-
professional service facilities in ANO, with the leader as the focal point,
therefore maintained their privileged position within the party even after
the end of its foundation period.
It is worth noting in this context how this electoral-professional back-
ground, and indeed the party as such, were funded. After its electoral
breakthrough in 2013, ANO became eligible for substantial state subsi-
dies, thus relieving but not completely eliminating the party’s dependency
on funding from Babiš and Agrofert. Babiš remained a major source of
investment for ANO, in the form of regularly granted interest-free loans.
Thus, in late 2016, the party owed Babiš nearly €6 million. To grasp the
importance of this interest-free lending, we note that in the same year
ANO’s total income was about €9.7 million and its expenditure close to
€7 million (ANO Financial Report 2017; Šíp 2018). Financially, the party
remained closely tied to its leader. In 2017, however, a new law, adopted
in connection with public criticism of ANO’s financing,10 forbade lending
by natural persons to political parties (and the size of donations was strictly
limited).
For ANO political communications, it was not just the organisation’s
professional background that was important, but also the mass media,
even if these were formally outside the party structure. Unlike Berlusconi,
the ANO leader owned no media outlets until very shortly before his entry
into politics. He bought media assets gradually, his most important acqui-
sition being the Mafra media group in 2013, which gave him control of
Mladá fronta Dnes, the most-read non-tabloid daily newspaper, Lidové
noviny, influential among intellectuals, and two linked popular news web-
sites (Havlík 2015a; Cabada 2016). It was Mladá fronta Dnes, with its
strong investigative section that was important in uncovering Vít Bárta’s
plan to use the Public Affairs party as a vehicle for his expansion into
politics.
At Mladá fronta Dnes, as in the rest of the Mafra media group, there
was a substantial change in personnel, with some of the original journal-
istic staff leaving. The media empire secured an ‘accommodating neutral-
ity’ towards ANO by some journalists and sometimes the media outlets
were used to campaign for ANO politicians and to put a favourable spin
on the controversies surrounding Babiš (Vlasatá and Patočka 2017;
Němeček 2018).
In spring 2017, leaked recordings of Babiš’s conversation with a Mladá
fronta Dnes reporter demonstrated the extreme way in which journalists
were sometimes used. The conversation was about where and how ANO’s
political opponents could be compromised using illegally obtained infor-
mation from police files (Hanley and Vachudova 2018).
ON THE WRONG SIDE OF LITHUANIAN LAW: VIKTOR

USPASKICH AND HIS LABOUR PARTY
The Baltics have been a fertile area for entrepreneurial parties, perhaps
because of extreme voter volatility and the personalisation of politics,
which has been significant, even when compared to countries of Central
and Eastern Europe (Cabada et al. 2014: 125–133). Perhaps the best-
known entrepreneurial party in the region is Lithuania’s Labour Party
(Darbo partija, DP), founded in October 2003 by the businessman Viktor

Uspaskich. Uspaskich’s political breakthrough confirms what was already
established with Berlusconi and Babiš: controversial or suspect business
activities, or problems with the judiciary, are no hindrance to the long-
term establishment of a party-political project. This case also illustrates
how important the founding father’s personal drive, his communication
abilities and his ability to create a capable party organisation are for the
survival and success of an entrepreneurial party.
Of Russian extraction, the millionaire Uspaskich moved to Lithuania in
1987 and worked as a welder in the gas industry. During the 1990s, he
studied economics at university, allegedly in Moscow, and, later, actually in
Kaunas. In 1990, he founded the Efektas natural gas trading company,
which gradually grew. He established trade contacts with the Russian
state-owned firm, Gazprom, and during the 1990s became rich from
importing natural gas to Lithuania (Balmaceda 2008: 21). Uspaskich later
branched into foods and into feedstuff production. Before entering poli-
tics, he was estimated to be worth more than €50 million and employed
thousands of people. Though his financial and economic resources were
not a match for Berlusconi or Babiš, in Lithuanian terms he was a rich
businessman indeed.
Uspaskich began moving in Lithuanian political circles in the second
half of the 1990s. From 1997 to 2003, he headed the Union of Lithuanian
Employers, and stood successfully for election to parliament in 2000 as a
non-partisan on the ticket of the social-liberal New Union. Unlike the
previous political entrepreneurs discussed in this chapter, he therefore
gained direct political and parliamentary experience before founding his
own party.
The career of an MP and the chair of the parliament’s economics com-
mittee soon proved insufficient for Uspaskich, who started to think about
his own political project. The other motivation for his individual political
action was economic, and essentially similar to Berlusconi’s, Babiš’s and
Bárta’s. At the turn of the millennium, Uspaskich’s firm was gradually
being pushed out of the Gazprom trade (Balmaceda 2008: 21–23), some-
thing that he judged to be a consequence of the weakening political con-
nections of the New Union, and so he began to prepare his own party. It
is noteworthy that during these preparations he took inspiration from the
chair of the New Union, Artūras Paulauskas, whose charisma and personal
popularity were an important source of support for the party in the 2000
elections (Ramonaitė 2006: 73). Uspaskich’s departure from the New
Union did not spell a complete severance of ties; he continued to collabo-

rate with the party in parliament, and in 2011 the New Union merged
into his Labour Party, with Paulauskas becoming the deputy chair.
The success of Uspaskich’s DP in 2004, when it placed first in terms of
both the seats won and the share of the vote in the proportionally elected
segment of the Lithuanian parliament, was due to several circumstances.
First, the elections confirmed a trend already noticeable in 2000, that is, a
turning away from a bipolar structure of political party competition; dur-
ing the 1990s, most parties defined themselves in terms of the cleavage:
communism versus anti-communism. As the main topic of party competi-
tion, the focus on the past became exhausted, and had to cede ground to
the more current concerns of the electorate, especially social and eco-
nomic ones. The parties that had established themselves at the beginning
of the democratic transition were likewise exhausted (Duvold and Jurkynas
2004: 134–144). The 2000 elections were marked by the rise of new par-
ties and personalities, and this opening up of the Lithuanian party system
continued in the 2004 elections.
The historical context of Lithuanian politics is also important. It showed
similarities with the situation in Italy and Czechia at the time when politi-
cal entrepreneurs emerged there. Beyond voters tiring of traditional par-
ties, there were major political scandals, which opened up the space for the
wholesale criticism of all incumbents. Attracting most attention was a
scandal which erupted in 2003. The Lithuanian president, Rolandas
Paksas, was accused of collaborating with the Russian-speaking mafia on
the preferential and essentially illegal treatment of a suspect Russian busi-
nessman Yuri Borisov, who was given Lithuanian citizenship. The scandal
was all the more juicy because Borisov had been a close business partner of
Paksas since before his stint as president; he had mediated advantageous
trades in Russia for Paksas. In December 2003, when his attempts to dis-
credit leaders of government parties came to light (Bertrand 2004:
115–116), the Lithuanian parliament declared President Paksas a secu-
rity threat.
Uspaskich masterfully exploited a situation where pretty much any
party partaking of power was suspected of something or other. While he
was a problematic candidate in the 1990s due to his Russian origins, in the
new context voters saw him as a successful businessman, who, thanks to
his entrepreneurial experience, could bring economic prosperity to the
country. Uspaskich placed his bets on a combination of populist rhetoric,
conspiracy theories concerning establishment politicians and a distinctive
political style—the main ingredients of his winning campaign in 2004

(Balockaite 2009: 19).
The victory in the 2004 parliamentary elections nonetheless was not as
convincing as the elections to the European Parliament, in which the
Labour Party won more than 30 per cent of the vote, had suggested
shortly before (see Table 3.3). Thus, Uspaskich had to negotiate a coali-
tion government with other parties. Here it quickly became apparent that
while a strong, controversial personality may bring advantages in cam-
paigning, it problematises communications with potential coalition part-
ners. Uspaskich therefore ultimately had to give up his claim on the prime
minister’s office. It was the ex-communist political veteran, Algirdas
Brazauskas, who became the prime minister in a left-leaning coalition gov-
ernment, which, in addition to DP and Brazauskas’s Social Democrats,
involved the Union of Peasants and New Democracy (Ramonaitė 2006:
74–75). Uspaskich had to make do with the economy portfolio.
He did not enjoy this ministerial post for long. In spring 2006, he was
forced to resign over suspicions of corruption, both in his business deal-
ings and in politics. There were unconfirmed speculations about
Uspaskich’s connections with the Russian secret services (Duvold and
Jurkynas 2013: 130). Uspaskich even temporarily took refuge in Russia
(he returned from the May 2006 funeral of his brother only at the end of
the following year), not least to avoid arrest, including for illegally funding
his party via questionable sources from Russia (Auers 2015: 227).
What ensued was a scenario similar to the cases of other political entre-
preneurs described in this chapter. Uspaskich had to focus his attention on
Table 3.3 Results of the Labour Party in elections to the Lithuanian parliament
(Sejmas) and the European Parliament
Year and type of EP2004 S2004 S2008 EP2009 S2012 EP2014 S2016 EP2019
election
Vote share (in per 30.2 28.4 9.0 8.6 19.8 12.8 4.7 8.5
cent of votes)
Number of seats 5 39 10 1 29 1 2 1
Source: Central Electoral Commission (2019)

Note: S denotes Lithuanian parliament and EP denotes European Parliament. The share of the vote
applies to the proportional representation-elected part of the Sejmas only. Lithuania has a unicameral
parliament and mixed electoral system voting: 71 MPs are elected by a run-off system in single-member
districts and 70 by a proportional system
beating off various accusations or explaining himself in the media. Of

course, he denied all allegations, and his rhetoric—in which he denounced
the accusations as trumped-up and politically motivated—was redolent
not just of Berlusconi’s in Italy but also of Babiš’s in Czechia (Simonaitytė
2014: 240).
The trial went on until 2013 and ended with a prison sentence of four
years. Yet neither the judicial process itself nor the sentence finished
Uspaskich’s political career. Indeed, as of 2019, Uspaskich has not yet
started to serve his sentence. In 2008–2009, he was protected by immu-
nity, as a member of Lithuania’s parliamentary opposition. In order to
maintain this immunity and avoid the threat of arrest, he successfully stood
on behalf of his party for the European Parliament in 2009, 2014 and
2019, and in 2012, for the Lithuanian parliament again (he had resigned
his previous parliamentary seats in 2009 and 2014).
In 2008–2012, the Labour Party was in opposition. After the 2012
parliamentary elections, it was again part of the government coalition as a
minority partner of the Social Democrats, even though Uspaskich faced
criminal prosecution. Though Lithuania’s president, Dalia Grybauskaitė,
attempted to convince other coalition partners not to negotiate with DP,
in the end she had to submit herself to the political will of the new coali-
tion (Auers 2015: 51). In the 2016 elections, DP suffered a dramatic drop
in electoral support, taking only two seats and returning to opposition.
This is not necessarily the final chapter in the party’s history, as in May
2018 Uspaskich officially returned to the post of full chair of the party,
having served in the previous five years ‘merely’ as its honorary chair. The
temporary move into the background in 2013 was for tactical reasons, but
he preserved his actual power within the party throughout.
How did the Labour Party appeal to voters, and how to describe its
ideological profile? In terms of its orientation to a particular group of vot-
ers, DP can be immediately identified as belonging to the Lithuanian left.
Indeed, in parliament and in government, it cooperated with other
Lithuanian left-wing and centre-left parties. That does not mean, how-
ever, that it would have presented an ideologically coherent socialist or
social democratic programme. Lithuanian experts mostly describe DP as ‘a
populist party without any ideological orientation’ (Ramonaitė 2006: 76)
or as a left-populist party (Aleknonis and Matkevičienė 2016: 36), but
only because of its coalition partners. Kai-Olaf Lang considered DP an
example of what he called indeterminate ‘grey populist’ parties that ‘lack a
clear political or programmatic emphasis’ and ‘simply paint a gloomy pic-

ture of the present-day political and social situation’ (Lang 2005: 11).
Corresponding to this amorphousness was not just the already-
mentioned populist note in the Labour Party’s political communications
but also the vagueness of its programmatic materials, which were flexibly
adjusted according to the changing demands of the public. In these mate-
rials, DP spoke rather generically about a centrist position as the point of
departure for party politics; made promises of economic prosperity and
effective governance; and declared the necessity of developing the welfare
of society as a whole and the middle class in particular. More important
than the programme was the rhetoric of protest against the establishment,
which attracted the losers of the economic transformation. For DP, as the
party of a political entrepreneur capitalising on protest against established
parties, the slogan of combating corruption was important in 2004
(Duvold and Jurkynas 2013: 139–140). After 2006, understandably, the
party dampened its anti-corruption rhetoric somewhat. Polls show that
what was generally important—perhaps most important—for the party’s
electorate was its perception of Uspaskich as a charismatic leader
(Kavaliauskaitė 2014). Personal charm and drive were at the core of his
links with voters.
Interestingly, the party consistently took a centrist position in its vari-
ous policies. The only specific issue that differentiated DP from most other
Lithuanian parties was its emphasis on decentralisation—increasing the
powers of local government and bringing in directly elected mayors. This
corresponded to the structure of the electorate: DP had traditionally
scored best in villages and small towns (Duvold and Jurkynas 2013: 130).
Unsurprisingly given his CV, Uspaskich tended to be more popular among
those voters who looked back on the Soviet era with some nostalgia
(Kavaliauskaitė 2014: 121).
The Labour Party’s contacts abroad were also characterised by flexibil-
ity and pragmatism: this is similar to Forza Italia and ANO. In 2004, DP
started to work in the European Parliament with the liberal parties, and
later developed this—disregarding its domestic coalition preferences—
into full membership of the ALDE group from May 2012. It could be
said, somewhat cynically perhaps, that ALDE was the only one of the three
mainstream European groupings that welcomed new Lithuanian parties,
and this was the main reason that Uspaskich joined the group. Certainly,
inspiration from the New Union was also significant; the party had been
an ALDE member from 2001 until its merger with DP in 2011.
The Sources of Uspaskich’s Power

Given the Labour Party’s political pragmatism and ideological fluidity, the
personality of Viktor Uspaskich and his activities provide the key to under-
standing how the party operated. Uspaskich built his party on a combina-
tion of managerial approaches and, for Lithuania, a very dense network of
local organisations and large membership. Soon after its inception in
2004, the party had nearly 13,000 members, and this number remained
stable for a long time (Ramonaitė 2006: 82; Duvold and Jurkynas
2013: 136).
Despite this, the admission procedure for members was very restrictive,
similar to that of Public Affairs and ANO. A candidate for membership
needed a recommendation from two existing members who had been with
the party for more than a year. This is not unique among Lithuanian par-
ties (Krupavičius and Simonaitytė 2016: 256–257). It is symptomatic that
in-depth interviews with party members, conducted in 2005, found that,
beyond the possibility of political self-realisation, influence from the appli-
cant’s employer—typically, firms in Uspaskich’s business empire—was the
main reason for joining the party.
At first glance, DP’s party bodies and regional structure were similar to
those of other Lithuanian parties. Yet its statutes contained provisions that
allowed the party presidium (the innermost leadership) to interfere funda-
mentally in the workings of the regional organisations and influence the
choice of the party’s representatives. The presidium could approve and
recall branch chairs and had the right to decide on coalitions in local
municipalities. Equally, the presidium could draft a list of selected candi-
dates for parliamentary, European and presidential elections and submit it
to the party council (the broader leadership) for further debate, even
though the branch councils exerted some influence over the make-up of
the candidate lists (Krupavičius and Simonaitytė 2016: 266–267). The
party chair had considerable power, proposing the candidates for the party
presidium and council to the party congress (Krupavičius and Simonaitytė
2016: 269).11
Due to his sentencing in 2013, Uspaskich did not formally exercise the
office of the party’s chair for several years. But his money, which compen-
sated for the withdrawal of state funding in the years when the party did
less well electorally, and his major political and organising influence
allowed him to dominate the party even when he was ‘merely’ an honor-
ary chair. The party did not avoid internal conflicts, including within the
parliamentary party, but these were always resolved by the more or less
voluntary departure of the leader’s opponents—they either left politics for
good or went to competing parties. There was no space for pluralism in
the party.
The party purposely did not establish an ideological profile, and it
largely stood or fell with Viktor Uspaskich’s popularity. Indeed, the sub-
stantial downswing in the party’s fortunes in the 2008 and 2016 elections
to the Lithuanian parliament and the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament
elections, as well as its relative rise in the 2012 national election, were con-
nected not just with the overall political situation but also with the chang-
ing dynamics of the investigation into Uspaskich’s misdemeanours.
It is important in this respect to examine Uspaskich’s political commu-
nications. The DP leader never owned a television channel or any other
important mass medium; but thanks to his appearance in parliamentary
and governmental roles, he was able to make good use of coverage by the
public-service broadcasters in particular. Previously, as a New Union MP,
he had been a regular guest on popular political talk shows; when he
founded his own party, his presence on the small screen became only more
conspicuous. During the election campaigns from 2004 to 2012,
Uspaskich was the DP’s most visible and most active spokesman, appeal-
ing to the voters through various media outlets.
He would present his opinions most often in the first person in order to
emphasise his competence and charisma. For example, in the campaign for
the 2012 elections, he initially sought to communicate the party mani-
festo; but as election day approached, his media appearances ceased to
focus on the party, seeking to create an emotional attachment between the
voters and his persona (Simonaitytė 2014: 235–242). During this cam-
paign, he made a plethora of evidently undeliverable promises, such as full
employment (Valiauskaitė 2011: 178). According to Lithuanian political
scientists, Uspaskich is ‘most similar to S. Berlusconi or even might be
called the Lithuanian Berlusconi, as usually he is presented as charismatic,
telegenic, religious, very wealthy man and is entangled in cause célebre’
(Simonaitytė 2014: 233).
The DP leader was not just an able political communicator; he also
exploited the numerous options afforded by contemporary political mar-
keting and professional consultants. The so-called envelope scandal of
2006 is a typical example of his way of communicating—and involving
external marketing experts. The scandal was concerned with clandestine
(and as such untaxed) income for selected employees of Uspaskich’s firms,
who were handed the cash in brown envelopes (Woolfson 2007: 557–559).
When an employee of one of the firms spoke out about the practice and
was dismissed, Uspaskich’s Krekenava agrofirma hired the best marketing
advisers available, who transformed the accusation into an advertising
campaign for Krekenava during a regular television phone-in, where call-
ers could win an envelope full of money. The campaign managed to push
the original substance of the affair—that these people were employed in a
grey economy—out of the media consciousness, and also diminished the
impact of Uspaskich’s other scandals, including bribery and the allegation
that his Moscow university degree was a forgery. None of these scandals
were able to destroy Uspaskich’s reputation with his voters (Aleknonis
2010: 46–47; Palidauskaite 2011: 17).
PALIKOT’S MOVEMENT: A ONE-OFF SENSATION INVOLVING

A POLISH POLITICAL PROVOCATEUR
The leader’s message is critical in attracting public attention to any entre-

preneurial party. Compared to the previous cases, the story of the Polish
Palikot’s Movement (Ruch Palikota, RP) is particular in the exceptionally
provocative style of its leader. At the same time, the targeting of this style
into his parliamentary party led to its early disintegration and, alongside
the leader’s other mistakes, led to the quick collapse of his project. This
illustrates a weakness common with entrepreneurial parties: an outstand-
ing leader-preacher is not necessarily a good organiser. Palikot’s Movement
is also useful for entrepreneurial party analysis in that the leader had sub-
stantial financial capital and experience of business and marketing at his
disposal, but divested his business assets before launching his political
enterprise. Much more than Berlusconi, Bárta, Babiš and Uspaskich, he
had to rely on his own abilities.
In October 2011, the Polish parliamentary elections produced a sensa-
tion: Palikot’s Movement, named after its leader, Janusz Palikot, came
third. RP was registered only a few months ahead of the elections, but its
founder and leader already had political experience at the time and knew
how to work the media well. Palikot was born in 1964; although he stud-
ied philosophy and aspired to an academic career, during the 1990s, at the
time of Poland’s political and economic transformation, he went into busi-
ness. Having achieved success by selling pallets and importing wine, in
2001 he bought the majority share in Polmos, the most important player
in the Polish vodka market. Although he faced accusations of various tax

irregularities, his business was very successful. By 2006, Palikot was worth
more than €80 million, making him the fiftieth richest person in the coun-
try (Kocur and Majczak 2013: 41–45; Rzeczpospolita 2008).
In the mid-2000s, Palikot set his sights upon a political career. Like
Uspaskich, he initially used an existing political vehicle, joining the liberal-
conservative Civil Platform (PO), a large Polish party. From the 2005 elec-
tions to 2010, he was an MP for PO and also led the party in the Lublin
region in the east of the country. His level of parliamentary activity—mea-
sured by the speeches he made and parliamentary questions he tabled—
was by no means staggering. However, he was able to build a particular
image for himself, and obtained renown as an enfant terrible thanks to his
press conferences and happenings, in which he used props that were attrac-
tive to the media. For instance, he brought a toy gun and a model of a
penis to one press conference to highlight a case where police officers in a
Polish city had raped women. In another much-discussed happening, he
brought a pig’s head to a television debate to draw attention to the Mafioso
practices of the Football Association. In yet another, Palikot drank a min-
iature bottle of vodka in the street, in reference to unusual purchases of
alcohol by the presidential office for the purposes of aircraft catering.
These provocations attracted media attention to current social and
political problems and steadily increased Palikot’s celebrity (Pankowski
2011: 2–3; Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł 2018: 137; Onet 2009). Thus, an image was
born of a scandalous and political performer, who did not seem part of
high politics and business, but stood outside the system. Paradoxically, the
great performer not only was the politician of a mainstream party but was
becoming notorious by drawing on his marketing and advertising experi-
ence in business.
Palikot had a major presence on his blog, which was particularly focused
on the politicians of the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), PO’s
main competitor. His main target was President Lech Kaczyński, elected
on behalf of PiS, whom Palikot often accused of being dependent on alco-
hol. Palikot’s activity, which went beyond the norm, caused criticism not
just from PiS politicians but, in time, from their counterparts in PO as well.
PO leaders had to issue public apologies for some of Palikot’s statements.
A critical moment in Palikot’s relationship with his ‘mother’ party came
in 2010, following the aircraft crash near Smolensk in Russia, in which the
president, his wife and nearly a hundred people of the Polish elite lost their
lives. Palikot’s words about the president’s ‘moral responsibility for the
tragedy’ and his claim that ‘he had the blood of people who perished in
the catastrophe on his hands’—in this he alluded to Kaczyński’s possible
drunkenness and the pressure he put on the pilot to make a landing in
poor weather—resulted in a definitive rupture with PO. Palikot left the
party, gave up his parliamentary seat and began to prepare his own politi-
cal project (Nizinkiewicz 2010; Kocur and Majczak 2013: 45–50;
Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł 2018: 137–138).
In October 2010, Palikot registered a civic association using his own
name: Movement in Support of Palikot, which, among other things,
played a specific financial role in an election campaign, as described below.
He also founded a party called Movement in Support, which, however,
was soon struck off the register, as Palikot failed to submit its financial
report on time. In May 2011, therefore, he registered a new political
party, called Palikot’s Movement, or RP. He chose as its main issue some-
thing very different from Berlusconi, Bárta, Babiš and Uspaskich: criticism
of the Catholic Church and its special position in Poland’s public life. This
was probably an expedient choice. Only a few years before, Palikot had
published a none-too-successful conservative-Catholic weekly. This did
not prevent him from exploiting the potential of the anti-Catholic seg-
ment of the Polish electorate.
The special position enjoyed by the Catholic Church is historical. From
the late eighteenth century to the end of World War I, Poland was divided
between Germany, Russia and Austria, and the Catholic Church was the
only national institution common to all three parts of the country. This
meant, similar to Ireland perhaps, that national and religious identities
became entwined. After World War II, the Church represented a bastion
of resistance against the communist regime, and this, together with great
respect for—even the cult of—Pope John Paul II, a Pole, helped to rein-
force the authority of the Church hierarchy.
Before the birth of Palikot’s project, the Polish left, dominated by the
ex-communist Union of the Democratic Left (SLD), demanded a diminu-
tion of the Church’s influence, but did not dare to embark on a radical
anticlerical campaign. Left-wing politicians thought overly distinctive anti-
clericalism too risky, even if their electorate was largely religiously luke-
warm. During the 2000s, SLD suffered a major drop in voter support,
leaving a large space available for a specific mobilising appeal in Palikot’s
style. Over time, PO tended to push its original liberal positions into the
background with the aim of enlarging its electorate, and this also helped
Palikot.
Palikot’s anticlerical appeal found its audience in part thanks to the

specific social atmosphere following the aircraft crash near Smolensk in
April 2010, and especially as a result of what was dubbed ‘the war for the
cross’. During the funeral rites, a wooden cross was erected in front of the
president’s palace, later due to be moved to one of Warsaw’s churches.
This plan was thwarted by radical religious groups, who occupied the
place in front of the presidential palace and successfully prevented the
moving of the cross. The Church hierarchy was passive in resolving the
problem, and some conservative bishops even openly supported the
‘defenders’ of the cross. The situation generated a spontaneous anticlerical
reaction and mass demonstrations of young people in particular, who pro-
tested the use of religion for political and anti-government action. (PiS
accused the government-leading PO of playing a role in the Smolensk
tragedy.) The events linked with the war for the cross showed how exten-
sively the Church intervened in the public sphere. RP skilfully exploited
the intensification of the anticlerical mood (Zuba 2017: 98).
In RP’s programme, Palikot called for the abolition of religious educa-
tion in schools, removal of religious symbols from public institutions, ter-
mination of state funding for churches and a ban on religious representatives’
participation in state ceremonies. (In these anticlerical efforts, Palikot led
by his example and even demonstratively left the Catholic Church shortly
after the elections.) The party’s anticlericalism was complemented by
social-liberal issues, such as promoting equality of the sexes, providing free
contraceptives and legalising same-sex partnerships, issues that likewise
attacked the classic conservative-Catholic postulates (Ruch Palikota 2011a).
Palikot also made appeals for institutional reform that would return
politics to the citizens. In this he used the classic anti-establishment narra-
tive: the same people have been in power for too long; they just alternate
in government, not allowing anyone new to enter it. In this context, RP
promised electoral system change, an end to funding for political parties
from the public budget (to be replaced by a voluntary tax deduction for
the benefit of a chosen party), the abolition of MPs’ immunity, a greater
role for referendums and the option of voting electronically, an idea par-
ticularly attractive to young voters. This targeting of the electorate was
complemented with other proposals, such as the legalisation of soft drugs.
The manifesto also contained a mixture of liberal and social promises con-
cerning the economy (Kocur and Majczak 2013; Ruch Palikota 2011a).
Palikot supported the RP manifesto with strong personal involvement
in campaigning. In addition to writing his blog, he continued with the
sort of happenings that attracted the attention of young voters and the
media, and successfully attacked not just PiS but also PO and SLD, whose
voters he evidently wanted to woo. Testifying to the strong connection
between the leader and his party was the fact that Palikot was clearly its
best-known representative, recognised by 96 per cent of RP voters
(Piontek 2012; Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017).
Palikot’s Movement was able to combine its appeal to voters with
attractive personalities in the leading places on its candidate lists. With a
population of more than 35 million, Poland is much bigger than Czechia
and Lithuania, and a proportional system is used to elect the 460-strong
lower chamber of parliament (Sejm) in forty-one constituencies. The prep-
aration of candidate lists for the whole country is therefore a demanding
process. In the spirit of his anticlerical and anti-establishment rhetoric,
Palikot rejected people currently established on the political scene and
approached publicly known activists, artists, and sports and business peo-
ple, of which most were young. Among the leaders of RP’s candidate lists
were popular activists of the LGBT community, who previously worked
with the left-wing SLD. The best known included the transsexual activist
Anna Grodzka; the founder of the Campaign Against Homophobia,
Robert Biedroń; and the feminist activist Wanda Nowicka. Palikot made
much of the gender parity of his candidate lists, and this again chimed with
RP’s profile.
The new party, however, had no significant cadre reservoir, and the
candidate lists were simply completed with people who registered their
interest at the party email address. The choice of candidates was in the
hands of Palikot and his circle. Applicants were assessed by a special five-
strong group, and the inner party leadership (the National Board) then
approved all candidate lists (Gazeta 2011; Superexpress 2011; Kosowska-
Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017). This selection process produced
candidates with colourful backgrounds rather than ensuring the cohesion
of the future party elite, the lack of which, after the elections, contributed
to the quick disintegration of the parliamentary party.
Polling data confirmed that the direction of the campaign and placing
the party’s bets on criticisms of PO and SLD were the correct choices.
Those who voted for Palikot were the young (including first-time voters)
with higher education, who were lukewarm towards religion. Half had
voted PO in the preceding election. Of the voters of all parliamentary par-
ties, RP’s were most often non-practising or non-believers; ideologically
centrist; and more liberal in their values than voters of other parties
(Cześnik et al. 2012). Two months before the elections, the polls indi-
cated only 1 per cent support for Palikot’s Movement; but when the votes
had been counted, it entered the Sejm as the third-strongest party, after
PO and PiS, taking 10 per cent of the vote and forty seats.
The success in the 2011 elections showed that Palikot was skilled at
capturing the spirit of the time and was a capable political orator and elec-
tion strategist. In the Sejm, he became chair of the RP parliamentary party,
which, in addition to the MPs elected on RP’s ticket, was joined by several
MPs elected on behalf of other parties, including SLD and PO, showing
that party discipline tends not to be strict in Poland. Although Palikot
offered to negotiate a coalition with PO, the winning party decided to
continue with the existing government coalition with the agrarian Polish
People’s Party, and RP remained in opposition. This gave Palikot limited
room to manoeuvre in achieving his electoral promises, and the party
failed to fulfil any of its major pledges, which was a factor in its subsequent
gradual loss of electoral support (Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-
Myślik 2018).
After the elections, Palikot dominated RP, including the parliamentary
party, but despite his political experience, his leadership abilities proved
fatally inadequate. Like Vít Bárta in Public Affairs, Palikot failed to keep
the party elite coherent. Many MPs complained about the ruthless way he
pushed his own views, rejected criticism and failed to allow discussion
within the party; and he valued media coverage over pursuing political
content. Palikot’s continuing crude and often vulgar communication
style—which some of his own MPs ended up on the receiving end of, to
their great displeasure—also had its consequences (Szacki 2014; Kosowska-
Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017).
The corollaries of Palikot’s failure as a communicator and mediator in
his parliamentary party were fatal. Throughout the electoral term, nearly
three-quarters of MPs left the parliamentary party or were expelled,
including Wanda Nowicka, who served as the parliament’s deputy speaker,
and the transsexual activist Anna Grodzka, one of the most distinctive
personalities in Palikot’s Movement. When expelling Nowicka, Palikot
commented that she ‘perhaps wants to be raped’—a telling illustration of
the brutal vocabulary he employed when responding to problems in his
party (Tvn 2013). At the same time, his statement was in flagrant conflict
with the feminist appeals on which—among others—he had originally
established the profile of his movement.
The leader was aware of the insufficient socialisation of his MPs, as

illustrated by an anecdotal quote from the RP’s first parliamentary session,
during which he allegedly said: ‘One third of you will change your wives,
another third your cars and one third your party’ (Szacki 2014). He did
not, however, take any active measures to prevent the disintegration of the
parliamentary party; indeed, he often initiated, or hastened, his MPs’
departures.
The decomposition of the parliamentary party was only one of the cri-
ses encountered by Palikot’s Movement. His voters quickly grew weary of
RP—perhaps unsurprisingly, given the young age of most. The loss of
voter loyalty was accelerated by Palikot’s missteps. Among the most seri-
ous was an attempt at an alliance with leftist has-beens, including the for-
mer SLD leader and president Alexander Kwaśniewski. Although it
encountered massive resistance from its MPs (Sikora 2013), RP, the party
that had scored success for its harsh anti-establishment appeal, did join
forces with Kwaśniewski, a prominent member of the establishment; but
the joint project soon foundered.
In autumn 2013, Palikot took another problematic step when he
renamed the party Your Movement (Twój Ruch, TR) and promised that he
would moderate his strong anticlerical rhetoric and social liberalism and
replace them with a free-market emphasis. The purpose was to appeal to a
broader spectrum of voters, but ultimately this move merely confused
RP’s remaining supporters. In the spring 2014 European elections, Your
Movement made another U-turn, standing for election in a coalition with
small left-wing parties and using rhetoric that was economically to the left.
This further muddied its exclusive agenda, which became incomprehen-
sible to voters. The coalition polled only 3.5 per cent of the vote, failing
to cross the electoral threshold. The ideological shifts and, in particular,
the alliance with Kwaśniewski, proved to be political suicide. Palikot ceased
to be attractive, and many young voters opted for radical alternatives
(Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017; Szacki 2014;
Szeczerbiak 2015).
Palikot’s TR party also performed poorly in elections to territorial self-
governance bodies in November 2014. In some regions, the party had no
structure at all; thus, in many places it did not put up a candidate list for
election, and polled only a minimal number of votes overall. Successes
were rare and limited to locales that elected their mayors directly, such as
the medium-sized city of Słupsk, where the activist and MP Robert
Biedroń won. The party crisis was further exacerbated by the spring 2015
presidential election, which the party sent Palikot to contest. But even the
great political provocateur himself failed to appeal to the electorate.
Outshone by rising star Paweł Kukiz (see Chap. 6), who successfully took
up the anti-establishment mantle, Palikot obtained a miserable 1.4 per
cent of the vote. His spell over the electorate was broken.
In the autumn 2015 parliamentary elections, the party tried to save
itself, entering into a left-liberal coalition in which SLD was the biggest
party. This electoral alliance narrowly failed to cross the 8 per cent thresh-
old for coalitions, but was nevertheless eligible for a state subsidy, of which
part went to Palikot’s party, allowing it to continue operations.
Attempts to overturn the unfavourable developments led to changes
not just in party programmes and the choice of its political partners but
equally in party organisation. Before the 2015 parliamentary elections, a
two-headed leadership was created, with a male and a female chair.
Palikot’s female counterpart was the feminist activist Barbara Nowacka,
who was also the leader of the electoral coalition for the 2015 parliamen-
tary elections. The choice of Nowacka was problematic, however. Although
she was the daughter of a well-known left-wing female politician who had
tragically perished in the Smolensk crash, she was virtually unknown to the
electorate (Szacki 2014).
Presentation of a new public face was required by Palikot’s gradual loss
of interest in politics. Immediately before the 2015 parliamentary elec-
tions, he even resigned his parliamentary seat. Although in the elections
he led the candidate list of the electoral coalition in the Lublin constitu-
ency, after the failure he entirely disappeared from the media and party-
political life. Although he remained formally one of the party’s two leaders,
he ceded the actual direction to Nowacka, who said that she met with
Palikot ‘perhaps three times a year’ (Gruca 2017). The agony of the party
was completed by the departure of its remaining leaders—even Nowacka
left in June 2017. Some went to a new party, Spring (Wiosna), which
emerged around a former prominent politician of Palikot’s Movement,
Robert Biedroń. In late 2018, Palikot announced his retirement from
politics on his blog, and he did not stand for the party chair at its congress
in March 2019 (Jaworski 2019). The party he founded is now living out
its days on the political periphery.
‘Creative’ Financing and an Underestimation of the Building

of the Party on the Ground
Palikot is different from other political entrepreneurs analysed in this
chapter in that he had sold his commercial interests several years before he
founded his political project.12 Thus, he lacked the corporate background
that would have helped him start his political party. Although he had a lot
of financial capital at his disposal, he faced a severe constraint. Officially, he
could not fund the start of the party himself, as, for instance, Andrej Babiš
could in Czechia and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Donations by individuals
to parties are limited in Poland to 15 times the minimum annual salary,
and donations by legal persons—typically companies—are entirely banned
(Bértoa and van Biezen 2014; Bértoa 2018). When he had stood on the
PO ticket in 2005, Palikot circumvented these limitations by hiring
stooges (students and old-age pensioners in particular) to deposit the
money he gave them in the bank account of the Lublin branch of PO, on
behalf of which he stood for election (Kocur and Majczak 2013: 45).
Palikot’s ‘creative’ finance did not stop there. The rules for funding
civic associations in Poland are much less strict than those applying to
political parties. Even before starting his official election campaign, Palikot
poured about €1.2 million into the Association in Support of Palikot,
whose aims and activities overlapped those of his party. Compared to the
spending power of Babiš or Berlusconi, this was not an enormous sum,
nor was it exceptional in the context of other political parties. To compare:
PO and PiS, the most successful parties in the election, invested much
more—each spending over €7 million—in the 2011 campaign, hitting the
legal limit; the smallest parliamentary Polish People’s Party spent less than
€3 million (Wojtasik 2012: 167). It is important, however, to evaluate
Palikot’s ‘creative’ methods in the context of the rules for political party
funding, and especially of the officially acknowledged spending of his
party on the campaign, which was less than €500,000. The injection of
Palikot’s funds into the campaign via his civic association significantly
aided the initial success of his political project.
It is worth noting, to provide some context, that the strict limitation of
party-political funding by individuals and the ban on company donations
probably helped to restrict access to the Polish political system. From the
adoption of these limits in 2001 to the success of Palikot’s Movement in
2011, no new party was able to enter the Sejm. Only those parties that
polled more than 3 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections were
eligible for state subsidy; parties received more money from the state for
winning parliamentary seats. Thus, the share of state subsidies entirely
dominates the income of Polish parliamentary parties, routinely account-
ing for more than 80 per cent of their resources. These funding rules
therefore create a great obstacle for new parties seeking to enter the Sejm,
because it is difficult for them to run in fair competition with established
parties (Bértoa and Walecki 2014; Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-
Myślik 2017: 140).
During its short existence, the organisational structure of Palikot’s
Movement underwent several changes, by which the party responded to
its deteriorating electoral prospects. According to the 2011 statutes, RP
had a three-tier structure: the local level, the medium level of the constitu-
encies and the national level. The building of a local territorial structure
and the party on the ground experienced a boom in the party’s early days.
In 2012, RP indicated that it had 6000 members. Although the number
was probably exaggerated, in Polish terms this was relatively high
(Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł 2019). For example, the much older PiS and PO
claimed around 18,000 and 40,000 members at that time, respectively
(Sobolewska-Myślik et al. 2010: 22).
Yet for Palikot, concentrating on his nationwide media show, the party
on the ground was not a priority. He used his initial financial investment
to set up territorial structures and recruit members, but he did not con-
sider further expansion or stabilising the party important (Kosowska-
Gąstoł 2019). He simply showed little interest in this ‘boring work’. The
initial enthusiasm of Palikot’s supporters, fuelled by the 2011 election
success, declined after the incomprehensible changes of direction and
electoral defeats, and the organisation regressed. In some regions, the
local structures never appeared; in others, they stopped functioning as the
party declined. Members left; in 2017 the party was estimated to have
only about 4000 (Gruca 2017), with some authors quoting even lower
figures (Borowiec et al. 2016: 314). Thus, when the party found itself in
crisis, the incomplete party on the ground could not serve as an emer-
gency brake.
The party’s local structures enjoyed relative autonomy. Members of
local branches came together at regional congresses, and their power
included the acceptance of new members (in cases where these were not
politically prominent people), and the election of their own local leader-
ships and of delegates to the national congress. Regional executives
actually decided the make-up of the candidate lists in local elections
(except for mayoral candidates) and the creation and disbanding of local
clubs. Regional political councils created their own election manifestos.
These powers show that in Palikot’s Movement, the territorial structures
had, in theory, a bigger say than in the other parties discussed in this chap-
ter. In reality, however, their role was smaller, due to the organisational
weakness of the party.
The territorial structures were also guaranteed a role in the central
decision-making process. The supreme body of the party was the National
Congress, made up of delegates chosen at regional congresses13 by secret
ballot and, at the national level, members of the party’s executive bodies.
Its main tasks were to elect the party chair (by an absolute majority of
votes, with at least half of the congress members present) and adopt
changes to the statutes, as suggested by the chair (Ruch Palikota 2011b).
The main executive power was held by the National Board, consisting
of five people elected by the National Congress: a chair, two deputies, a
secretary and a treasurer. Like other bodies, the Board made decisions by
majority vote. The National Board led and represented the party, and was
empowered to approve candidate lists for parliamentary, European, presi-
dential and regional elections, choose candidates for city mayors and man-
age the party’s property. The party chair’s powers were not explicitly
defined in the statutes, but as Beata Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Katarzyna
Sobolewska-Myślik (2017: 143) point out, as chair of the National Board
he had extensive prerogatives. Even more importantly, by force of his tem-
perament and activism, Palikot secured for himself total dominance of the
party’s policies and of the parliamentary party, albeit with rather detrimen-
tal consequences for the survival of the party.
At the national level, there were two further decision-making bodies
(the National Political Council and the National Committee), which gave
space to the regional chairs,14 MPs and representatives of the collateral
women’s and youth’s associations.15 The party leader was involved in both
of these bodies. Their main activities included organising the party’s
regional activities and recommending candidates for public offices; how-
ever, there was the safeguard that these had to be approved by the National
Board (Ruch Palikota 2011b; Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-Myślik
2017). In 2013, just as the party was renamed Your Movement, there
were more fundamental changes, including16 recognition for party sup-
porters, abolition of the National Committee,17 expansion of the National
Board and the already-mentioned two-headed leadership, which signalled

Palikot’s gradual withdrawal from politics and the transfer of power to the
new head of the party, Nowacka. This proved to be merely an episode;
none of these measures managed to stop the agonic crisis of the party.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
A characteristic shared by all the entrepreneurial parties analysed in this
chapter was massive investment by a rich father-founder, who also con-
trolled the party. This was combined with efforts to create a solid organ-
isational basis and ground the party in national politics and beyond,
especially in local politics. However, the measure of seriousness with which
these building efforts were undertaken varied across the parties. Sometimes
it was more of an imposing plan, aimed at showing the public that some-
thing new and mighty was emerging, but in reality the leader’s interest in
a strong organisation was less serious.
The leader’s business past, experience and business-firm platform were
strongly imprinted in the emergence and development of all parties stud-
ied here and in their characteristics. A particular logic that very often
applied during their formation is aptly expressed by the following com-
ment made by one ANO representative: ‘When you put your money into
something, you’ve an interest in the thing working well. And it’ll work as
long as it is managed’ (Pustějovský 2018).
The investment in the party was not just financial in character; it also
involved the employment of other resources that the businessman had at
his disposal. Noteworthy in terms of personnel resources was the use of
selected company managers, PR and marketing experts, as well as accoun-
tants, even though the extent and the intensity of the use of these varied
across the individual cases. An exception to this was Palikot’s Movement.
Although its leader came from a business environment and had the capital
and marketing experience needed to help him to launch his party ‘enter-
prise’, he did not make use of his companies or their employees, because
he had divested them before founding his party.
The most important personnel resource, however, was the ‘offer’ made
to the electorate of the figure of the leader himself, which, in the business-
think of these entrepreneurs, could be seen an ‘investment of oneself’. In
the initial political offering and political communication of Forza Italia,
ANO, the Labour Party and Palikot’s Movement, Berlusconi, Babiš,
Uspaskich and Palikot were crucial and entirely irreplaceable. The strategy
employed by Vít Bárta was very different: he himself was something of an

éminence grise of Public Affairs, and put the journalist Radek John in the
role of the attractive mascot of his party-political business as far as the
media were concerned. Sometime later, when Bárta himself entered the
political spotlight, the quality of voter communication became a major
weakness of his party.
Understandably, certain differences can be identified in the contents of
the various entrepreneurs’ political messages, and this reflected the politi-
cal and social situation in the different countries at the time. Berlusconi,
Babiš and Uspaskich employed anti-corruption and anti-establishment
appeals, accompanied by promises of better and more competent manage-
ment of the state, referring to their business successes and the corpora-
tions they had built. The effect of this message was not endangered by the
controversies and suspicions that accompanied their business practices, or
by their greater or lesser dependence on the ‘old’ politicians whom they
criticised.
In all cases, the character of the political message changed over time.
Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich, sharp critics of establishment parties,
started out with a strong component of protest rhetoric. As they gained
government power and accusations mounted of their own corrupt prac-
tices or other transgressions, their use of anti-corruption and anti-
establishment agendas logically decreased over time. The emphasis on a
technocratic and competent management of the state remained, however,
and sometimes even became more forceful as time went by. Another char-
acteristic trait, particularly conspicuous with Forza Italia and ANO, and
with the Labour Party somewhat less so, was their political pragmatism on
a grand scale, allowing them to flexibly manoeuvre between various groups
of voters. With Berlusconi and Babiš, this pragmatism was mixed at the
beginning of their political careers with a certain messianism, based on the
belief that their qualities and successes in the business world predestined
them for great political deeds.
By contrast, the rise of Public Affairs was dominated by the message of
the all-saving powers of direct democracy, combined, again, with anti-
establishment and anti-corruption slogans. This was the reason why the
Public Affairs party was officially headed by the journalist John, a different
type of figure from those leading the other parties. Yet John was unim-
portant in the internal workings of the party, and the actual leader Bárta,
linked with the business and his private security agency, initially remained
in the background.
Similarly, technocratic appeals were entirely alien to Palikot’s individu-

alistic temperament. This inventive provocateur and performer correctly
sensed the shifting political mood of some Poles and the window of
opportunity it opened. He successfully started his political vehicle on criti-
cism of the Catholic Church, a liberal accent on the rights of various
minorities and anti-establishment rhetoric. His repute, obtained through
his eccentric happenings, was instrumental in drawing attention to his
political message.
In terms of the character of the resources, it transpires that ownership
or control of important mass media is not necessary for successfully start-
ing a project of political entrepreneurship: media attractiveness and the
activities of the leader may be sufficient. This can be shown by the break-
through of three of the five parties analysed here: the Lithuanian Labour
Party, Czech Public Affairs and Polish Palikot’s Movement. Nor did the
media owned by the leader play a crucial role in the initial success of ANO,
because Andrej Babiš built his media empire after a certain delay. In this
comparison, Silvio Berlusconi with his influential television channels seems
more of an exception.
It is true, however, that their great media empires helped Berlusconi
and later Babiš to sustain support for their project and themselves in the
long term, especially at moments when they were exposed to substantial
external pressures and crises. Similarly, Uspaskich, by his strong media
presence and good relations with some television channels, was able to
retain the attention of his voters and sympathisers. What is more, media
outlets, whether owned outright or just allied, were an important instru-
ment of the political entrepreneurs’ crisis management. It is telling that
Bárta’s Public Affairs lacked any protective media ‘shield’ whatsoever; and
this was a factor in its quick collapse.
Compared to others, Palikot is unique for having chosen a path of
media-savvy happenings and shocking performances, which reliably
attracted attention. This was crucial in the initial stage of his project. Later,
by contrast, his media activities, often including unguided criticism of his
own MPs and an inability to correct the course of his communications,
created a strain on the stability and sustainability of his party.
There is an interesting paradox linked with this type of entrepreneurial
party. The requirement of an unlimited, or very centralist, leadership
clashes, at least potentially, with the effort to establish the party at all levels
of politics and to build a strong organisation. Looking inside the organisa-
tions of the various parties, we find interesting differences and specificities.
The case of Public Affairs demonstrates clearly how attempts to mask the
actual decision-making mechanisms in the party or the identity of the real
leader could backfire. Experimenting too much with unusual kinds of
membership, such as the idea of registering supporters who are not actual
members, was also dangerous. Registered supporters proved to be very
unreliable and could not replace the grassroots structures, the building of
which the party leadership neglected. Similarly, Public Affairs was unable
to resolve the problem of lacking cohesion among the party elite, which
was due to the duality of the leadership and Vít Bárta’s initial effort offi-
cially to stand outside the controlling structures of the party while main-
taining his decisive influence. Thus, after the first real shock, related to the
scandals surrounding its decision-making processes and the compromising
link between the party and the actual leader’s security agency, the party
collapsed.
Forza Italia, ANO and the Labour Party chose a more transparent
organisation with managerial and centralised governance and the found-
ing father playing a clear dominant role. From often informal, hastily cre-
ated party mechanisms all three transitioned over time to clearly defined
rules outlined in statutes, and established control over their party cadres.
They were selective in who they admitted into the party, and the various
mechanisms for ensuring unity and loyalty towards the leader became an
axis of their functioning. The aim was to create a disciplined and cohesive
party. Furthermore, electoral, marketing and other professionals were
enormously important for all three parties. This model allowed the politi-
cal entrepreneur to exploit the party as an efficient political and electoral
vehicle. The three vehicles became very strong organisationally, allowing
them to achieve greater electoral successes than Public Affairs and Palikot’s
Movement could hope for. Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich also had the
advantage in the political opportunity structure, in that the measure of
disorder in the political party system at the moment of inception of their
political ‘businesses’ was noticeably greater than that prevailing at the
emergence of the other two parties.
Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich created vehicles well able to withstand
external pressures and shocks, and this has ensured their long-term sur-
vival. True, in all three, personal and political tensions have appeared, but
these were resolved by their dissatisfied politicians leaving voluntarily or
being expelled, and did not lead to the kind of fight that might have
resulted in party disintegration. Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich learned
that there is no sense in keeping defiant MPs or other representatives in
the party at any cost, because their departure ultimately damages the
authority of the founding father and the political party brand much less
than protracted, acrimonious infighting. What is more, their business-firm
models do not offer much space for discussions and polemics, relying as
they do on the specific organisational culture of managerially run political
parties.
Of course, the founders of Forza Italia, ANO and the Labour Party
made organisational mistakes. Among the most striking were the errone-
ous initial idea of building a mass organisation in Forza based on football
fan clubs and, in ANO, the psychological testing of cadres, thoughtlessly
transferred from the corporate environment. There are also differences
between these three parties in the importance they attached to the various
levels of politics. Whereas the Labour Party placed strong emphasis on
local politics, with Forza Italia and ANO such accents, when present, were
more expedient, though their investment in territorial structures was sig-
nificantly greater than in Public Affairs and Palikot’s Movement.
Palikot’s relationship with the organisational units of his party was spe-
cific, and this was apparently connected with the fact that he did not have
commercial firm cadres at his disposal. He enabled the emergence of ter-
ritorial structures, admitted their autonomy and left substantial powers to
the local branches, which is unique among the parties analysed in this
chapter. Thus, formally, Palikot’s Movement created a relatively substan-
tial space for discussion in the party and independent action by local
branches. But Palikot did not consider the party on the ground important
and showed no interest in developing it. Furthermore, the powers of the
territorial party structures were particularly focused on the regional and
local levels, and judging by the little progress that was made in establishing
them, they were not very important for the workings of the party. Thus,
Palikot’s Movement too was characterised by a substantial centralisation of
power, even if representatives from the regions and collateral organisations
sat on the central decision-making bodies. As such, no one stood a chance
of limiting Palikot’s independence, and he could therefore dominate not
just the party’s image in the media but also the real decision-making within
it. This dominance in decision-making was ensured by formal rules, but
more importantly informally, by his strong personality.
Palikot’s conflictual action within the party and his faulty political deci-
sions on its course proved exceptionally destructive, contributing to the
quick disintegration of his parliamentary party. This type of leadership
simply proved suicidal for the survival of his party. Palikot’s withdrawal
into the background, the attempt to transfer the leadership to a new per-
son and the transformation of intraparty mechanisms were unable to stem
the collapse of his political enterprise. The Polish political entrepreneur
fatally underestimated the necessity of a united and cohesive organisation
for party survival.
Looking broadly at the various phases of institutionalisation, all parties
managed to deal with the identification phase well. A penetrating leader-
ship, commanding substantial private resources and a window of opportu-
nity, opened in all cases by a crisis of the political establishment, proved a
winning combination. With their protest and anti-party and sometimes
even anti-political appeals, all the political entrepreneurs were able to
respond to the demand for a new type of politics, created by indignant and
tired voters. The rhetoric of Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich, in present-
ing themselves as seasoned businessmen who were more effective than the
blathering politicians, worked well. The moral dilemmas stemming from a
new way in which they intertwined politics and the economy evidently
were not a hindrance in this phase of institutional identification.
The moral dilemmas did pose an issue during the organisation phase,
as showed by the disintegration of Public Affairs and the affairs and scan-
dals linked with Babiš, Berlusconi and Uspaskich. In Public Affairs, the
problem was amplified by Vít Bárta’s inability to manage the party from
the shadows and the related lack of transparency of party mechanisms; an
incorrect bet on the uncertain background of supporters only loosely
linked with the party; the unfinished business of building the party on the
ground; and, last but not least, low credibility in relations with other par-
ties. The fact that, unlike Forza Italia and the Labour Party, Public Affairs
entered government in the clear position of junior and complementary
partner, which did not determine the dynamics of interactions in the cabi-
net, also proved influential. ANO in its government years 2013–2017 was
politically more important than VV, although formally it was not the larg-
est party of government. Thus, during the process of institutionalisation,
Public Affairs, having managed the initial identification of their support-
ers, fatally failed in the second phase, for which the creation of a resilient
organisation is crucial. The destruction of Public Affairs was accelerated
by the party’s inability to find a modus vivendi with its partners in govern-
ment, and thus to stabilise its position in the political system (see the
summary in Table 3.4). Thus, VV is a clear example of a failed entrepre-
neurial party.
Table 3.4 The evolution of institutionalisation in Forza Italia, Public Affairs,

ANO, the Labour Party and Palikot’s Movement
Political Identification (creator Organisation Stabilisation (stabiliser)
party/phase and preacher) (organiser)
and leader
role
Forza Italia Managed successfully Managed Managed, Berlusconi survived

despite the leader’s successfully various scandals and secessions
controversial past and in the position of the leader,
activities the reconstructed FI still has
substantial coalition potential,
but less attractiveness to voters
and especially persistent
dependence on the leader
remain marked problems
Public Managed successfully, Rapid destruction Confrontational strategy
Affairs but concealed links transformed the party into an
with a business-firm untrustworthy actor, fuelling
background and its destruction
duality of leadership
created massive
problems for the
future
ANO Managed successfully Managed Partially successful, leader’s
despite the leader’s successfully controversies negatively
controversial past and impacted coalition
activities acceptability, this may have
consequences in the future for
the unity of the party
organisation; persistent
Labour Managed successfully Managed Managed in terms of party
Party successfully cohesion, but there is a
problem of deteriorating
electoral support and persistent
Palikot’s Managed successfully Failed, rapid –
Movement thanks to the destruction of
recognisability and parliamentary
renown of the leader party and
territorial
structures, loss of
electorate
Source: Authors
Janusz Palikot proved an even worse organiser: he utterly failed the

transition from political preacher to organiser. Though his party remained
in opposition and thus did not have to deal with the challenges of adapting
itself to a government role, due to Palikot’s inappropriate use of his eccen-
tric political style—often targeting his own MPs—the parliamentary party
quickly fell apart. Together with other mistakes, including Palikot’s mea-
gre interest in building territorial structures and his inability to maintain
an attractive programme, this resulted in electoral failures and the party’s
agony. A change of leader then could not save the situation. Rather, this
was an expression of the fact that institutionalisation had not been
achieved, and that when the founder loses interest in his political project,
it is pretty well finished. Palikot’s Movement thus ranks among one-shot
party-political projects, where elementary mistakes on the part of the
founder causes their ephemerality.
ANO, FI and DP managed to institutionalise better, as testified to by,
among other things, their longer lifespans and repeated government
engagements. The political entrepreneurs Babiš, Berlusconi and Uspaskich
managed to link their image of protesting critic of the vices of the incum-
bents before the election with one of reform-oriented ‘statesman’ after the
election, who takes responsibility for the future fate of their country. Our
findings also imply that a highly managerial party, organised as a business
firm on the inside yet gravitating towards the mainstream in its external
activities with other parties in the political system, can be highly effective.
Evidently, this was the combination that allowed organisational success as
well as providing the reasons for persistence of the coalition potential of
these three parties. Their long-term survival has been aided by their root-
edness at various levels of politics, irrespective of the fact that the leaders
of FI and ANO in particular have tended to view grassroots structures as
expedient and service-providing supports.
The political entrepreneur and his abilities, crucial for the identification
and organisation phases, were also important in the last phase, that of
institutional stabilisation. Cum grano salis, we can consider ANO, FI and
DP as at least partly stabilised, because they showed substantial resilience
over the long term. The parties managed governing and opposition
(though, with ANO, the latter stint was short, occurring only in its nascent
phase), their mechanisms were centralised and professional political com-
munication with supporters worked well. What is important is that despite
some revisions the crucial position of their leaders in the parties was essen-
tially unchanged. This position survived electoral failures, or major shock
typically created by their leaders’ criminal or other scandals, as well as the

departure of some politicians, or, in worse cases, the secession of dissatis-
fied groups. The leaders’ scandals and affairs, of course, were not good for
voter support, and they complicated the entrepreneurial parties’ govern-
ment engagements. But in none of the cases analysed was this a factor that
would totally deprive the party of coalition potential or scupper its elec-
toral prospects. It also needs noting that for Berlusconi, Babiš and
Uspaskich, their own political project effectively compensated for the loss
of their political contacts and for the loss of ‘cover’ for their business-firm
activities that they had enjoyed in the past, and as such the parties have
served their intended purposes.
Despite all this, a crucial question mark hangs over this class of entre-
preneurial party, relatively very well endowed with resources and power:
will the party survive the departure of its leader from politics? Given the
key personal roles that Babiš, Berlusconi and Uspaskich continue to exer-
cise in their parties both on the inside (providing the linchpin for a cen-
tralised managerial structure) and on the outside (an attractive face
embodying the party for the electorate), it is unlikely. Despite all their
experiences and advanced institutionalisation, these parties remain the
vehicles of personal power of their political entrepreneurs. Thus, the for-
mulation used by Harmel, Svåsand and Mjelde remains apt: these parties
are not fully institutionalised because of their persistent dependence on
their leader, and they ‘continue to exist at the time of writing’ (Harmel
et al. 2018: 141).
NOTES
1. Some parts of this chapter are based on an earlier paper of ours on Public
Affairs and ANO: Hloušek and Kopeček (2017b).
2. Although VV was linked with a publisher, which issued a magazine that
bore the same name as the party and was distributed free of charge, the
impact of the periodical was small.
3. The surprising ruling by the Constitutional Court described the one-off
constitutional act, adopted by parliament to shorten the electoral term of
the Chamber of Deputies, as contravening the constitution.
4. A few months later, a superior court annulled the verdict, but this did not
have any further political impact.
5. District-level organisations were never created.
6. In the past, PSB worked for such figures as Michael Bloomberg, the mayor
of New York City, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
7. Nonetheless, the party remained formally inscribed in the register of politi-

cal parties and movements as ANO 2011.
8. The formalisation of the processes in ANO was not concerned with select-
ing its ministers, where Babiš continued to adhere to the informal practice
first used in creating the government after the 2013 elections. He himself
chose the personnel in question, discussed the matter with a few of his clos-
est collaborators and conducted ad hoc consultations with experts in rele-
vant areas. Whether the ministers nominated were or were not ANO
members mattered little to Babiš (Kolovratník 2018; Pilný 2018).
9. Party elite comprising its MPs, ministers, regional city mayors, members of
the party presidium and top staffers in party headquarters (Cirhan and
Kopecký 2017).
10. Another important change was the introduction of spending limits on elec-
toral campaigns. This was again connected with the fact that ANO had
practically unlimited financial resources at its disposal, placing it at a signifi-
cant advantage over other parties. Thus, for elections to the Chamber of
Deputies, a legal limit of about €3.5 million per party was established. This
created minor complications for ANO ahead of the 2017 elections, because
it could not put on as massive a campaign as it wanted to, and had to mod-
erate its expenditure much more than in 2013 (Pustějovský 2018).
11. Some members of these highest bodies held their posts ex officio. For the
presidium, for example, this included the chair of the party, his or her
deputies, the executive secretary, the elder of the faction in parliament etc.
(Krupavičius and Simonaitytė 2016: 266).
12. Palikot sold his shares in Polmos in 2006, having previously divested him-
self of the firm Ambra that imported wine (Ludzie Wprost 2012).
13. One delegate for 50 members, but at least one per region, and no more
than the number of MPs elected in the region.
14. Together with the party chair they constituted the National Committee.
15. The National Political Council was made up of the members of the
National Board, the National Committee, the MPs, and the leaderships of
the Youth Movement and the Women’s Movement.
16. The statutes also introduced a fourth organisational tier at the level of the
voivodeships, or provinces, and a shadow cabinet, but these were abolished
in 2015.
17. The chairs of the regions were nevertheless transferred to the National
Political Council, which could co-opt another 30 members, and thus the
representation of the regions at the national level was preserved. The
National Board remained the strongest body, but it was enlarged by 20
members—some of them chosen by the National Political Council on the
chair’s demand—the chair was thus able to control the National Board
through the people she or he had installed there (Kosowska-Gąstoł and
Sobolewska-Myślik 2017).
CHAPTER 4
Two Tycoons and Their One-Man Shows
The preceding chapter analysed political entrepreneurs who could use

their massive corporate resources to launch and run their political enter-
prises. At the same time, their party organisations were operating at vari-
ous levels of politics and involved a substantial membership and network
of territorial branches. The organisational strategy of rich political entre-
preneurs can, however, be different and employ only a minimal cadre
base—a small group of collaborators and professional experts—and sparse
or no territorial structure. Their financial and other corporate resources
provide the tycoons with options for major initial investment, something
that is denied to the political entrepreneurs without a firm, analysed in the
two subsequent chapters. An attempt at breakthrough with such a party-
political project—simple in its structure and with a minimal cadre base—is
more likely to succeed in smaller countries.
The comparative analysis that follows demonstrates one interesting
aspect of political entrepreneurship in particular: the influence of the polit-
ical opportunity structure, especially as concerned with the rootedness of
existing parties in society, or lack thereof. This circumstance is crucial for
the breakthrough of new parties run by political entrepreneurs. This aspect
was already presented in the previous chapter, but is seen here from the
perspective of a different organisational strategy.
This chapter examines two parties, Team Stronach in Austria and
Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽANO) in Slovakia.
Both were party projects made by colourful business tycoons to launch

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_4
themselves into politics. The story of Team Stronach provides a nice

example of how a strict business approach can be applied to party organ-
isation, and includes the remarkable clash this caused with the actual world
of politics. OĽANO, meanwhile, was an attempt to create a broad plat-
form encompassing many currents of opinion, yet based entirely on a
single personality. We show that beyond the political opportunity struc-
ture, for this type of entrepreneurial party, the personal involvement and
management of the founding entrepreneur provides the key to under-
standing the success or failure of the party. The Austro-Canadian billion-
aire, Frank Stronach, lost his initial enthusiasm for politics after a lukewarm
election result. His Slovak counterpart, Igor Matovič with his OĽANO,
by contrast, showed much greater tenacity. A comparison of these two
cases perfectly illustrates the importance of the founding father’s abilities
and his political persistence. The political projects of these entrepreneurs
are largely one-man shows.
AUSTRIA’S TEAM STRONACH: POLITICS AS A FAILED

FINANCIAL INVESTMENT
At first glance, it might seem that Austria’s Team Stronach (full name:
Team Stronach für Österreich) does not belong in this chapter. The party
experienced its first political baptism by fire in regional elections, which
might suggest that its foundation was an attempt to establish an entity
with a comprehensive territorial structure and substantial membership.
That appearance, however, is deceptive, as the party actually consisted of
only a small group of people acting on the initiative of a major business-
man. In 2014, two years after its founding, in a country with nearly nine
million inhabitants and nine regions that correspond to the constituencies
used for parliamentary elections,1 the party still had only about 350 mem-
bers. How marginal such a membership was became clear when we recall
that the established Austrian parties each had tens of thousands of mem-
bers (Entwicklung 2014).
Team Stronach was founded in summer 2012 and became an apparent
pike in the Austrian political pond, with some polls ahead of the parlia-
mentary election predicting up to 10 per cent support. Its founder and
sponsor was Frank Stronach, a billionaire of Austrian extraction living and
running his business in Canada, who invested substantially in his party.
Stronach was born in 1932 in Styria in a working-class family; his father,
paradoxically, was a communist and trade-union official. In 1954, Stronach
4 TWO TYCOONS AND THEIR ONE-MAN SHOWS 95
left Austria for Canada, where he built his empire. Owner of the automo-
tive parts company Magna, the Granite Real Estate company and the
Stronach Group with its show business, online betting and racing sports
interests, Stronach decided to return to his homeland at the turn of the
century.
At first, his activities in Austria were concerned with business and foot-
ball sponsorship, first of the famous Vienna-based club Austria
(1999–2007) and then SC Magna Wiener Neustadt (Fürweger 2013). In
1999–2005, he was even the president of Austria’s premier league. In
2011, he founded the Frank Stronach Institute (Frank Stronach Institut
für soziökonomische Gerechtigkeit), whose purpose was to advocate classic
economic and political liberalism in Austria.2 From spring 2010, he penned
regular columns for the highest-circulation Austrian tabloid, Kronen
Zeitung, continuing with this until the foundation of his party. His col-
umns focused on politics and the economy, but especially on self-
promotion. He told his readers that he was a successful self-made man
who knew how politics and the economy ought to work, and as such he
had a moral right, as well as an obligation, to help Austria develop further.
His columns mixed ordoliberalist economic considerations with opposi-
tion to corrupt traditional parties and an emphasis on law and order. To
counterbalance the party system, he proposed a politics of ‘independent
citizens’. Standing against politicians and civil servants would be successful
managers such as Stronach himself, who would streamline the manage-
ment of the country (Pühringer and Ötsch 2013: 17–20, 26–29).
Compared with the cases analysed in the previous chapter, Stronach’s lan-
guage was close to the appeals made by Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich,
though it was different in some respects, as noted below.
During 2011, Stronach, now almost eighty, entered Austrian politics in
earnest, proclaiming that there was a need to found a party that would
carry out fundamental economic reforms. He presented himself publicly
as someone who was able and willing to break the monopoly on power
exercised by traditional parties, fight corruption and radically transform
Austrian politics for the better. Although he repeatedly denied speculation
that he himself would lead the new party (he said, for instance, that such
a party should be led by young intellectuals), the party that ultimately was
registered in September 2012 as Team Stronach was his personal project
(Luther 2014: 24). Throughout 2013, Team Stronach contested regional
elections in Carinthia, Lower Austria, Tyrol and Salzburg, with very dif-
ferent results, ranging from 3.4 to 11.2 per cent of the vote (Filzmaier
et al. 2014: 113–114).3 As we shall see, this very brief political experience
was certainly insufficient to provide a springboard for a nationwide cam-
paign for parliamentary elections, as indeed a much earlier brief flirtation
with politics had been, when Stronach stood unsuccessfully for election to
Canada’s federal parliament on behalf of the Liberal Party.
Even before the end of the electoral term of the lower chamber of par-
liament, the National Council, Stronach managed to woo five defectors
from the nationalist-liberal Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) to
establish the Team Stronach parliamentary party, thus avoiding the neces-
sity of collecting signatures that would be required for candidacy of a new,
non-parliamentary party in the upcoming autumn elections (Dolezal and
Zeglovits 2014: 645).4
The ambition of Stronach’s party project—he himself, like Berlusconi
and Babiš, preferred the term movement—was to appeal, beyond conser-
vative and economically liberal voters, to those whose electoral choices
were motivated by protest against the two large traditional parties, the
Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ).
However, there were already plenty of competitors vying for these votes,
especially the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the already-mentioned
BZÖ, of which the former in particular had an established organisation
structure and existing electoral support. Stronach sought to set himself
apart by proposing an original manifesto and emphasising some unortho-
dox ideas (see manifesto analysis below). He would make repeated media
appearances with this and the media themselves would frequently com-
ment, thus contributing to the party’s publicity. What was crucial, how-
ever, was Stronach’s radical anti-establishment position, which struck a
chord in the context of a series of corruption scandals that shook Austria’s
politics in 2011–2013 (Filzmaier et al. 2014: 112; Jenny 2014: 29–30).
In particular, he attacked the People’s and the Social Democratic Parties,
but also trade unions, as well as the public service broadcaster, ÖRF
(Luther 2014: 25).
Stronach attracted attention with one of the first policy announcements
of his election campaign—the reintroduction of the death penalty for
hired killers—and in general established himself as a champion of law and
order. The vehemence with which his campaign pursued this issue over-
shadowed some other points of his anti-establishment strategy, such as
Euroscepticism and a crusade against ‘nepotism and corruption’. Law and
order, and issues of social and economic policy, were the major aspects of
the party’s campaign covered by the Austrian media, followed by European
Union issues (Schärdel and König 2017). Responses to Stronach’s appear-

ances in a series of discussions with party leaders on the public-service
television station ÖRF particularly helped to make Team Stronach more
visible.5
Overall, the campaign itself and its media coverage focused more on
Frank Stronach than on his party. An analysis of the media coverage shows
that the words most often connected with Team Stronach were ‘unreason-
able’, followed by ‘rich’, ‘immoral’, ‘anti-establishment’, and ‘inexperi-
enced’ or ‘incompetent’. These descriptions were often used in the context
of Stronach’s strong language on law and order (‘unreasonable’) or the
fact that, while standing for election in Austria, he paid the overwhelming
majority of his taxes in Canada (‘immoral’). Such characterisation of the
party in the media did not create a favourable image with voters, com-
pared with similar protest parties, the FPÖ and BZÖ (Schärdel and
König 2017).
The many fundamental factual mistakes about Austrian politics which
Stronach made in his television appearances had the same negative effect,
testifying to his lack of political competence (Wineroither and Seeber
2014: 162). Furthermore, Stronach seemed unwilling or perhaps even
unable to debate with his political opponents; his communication style
was based on insults and acrimonious, controversial statements. When
political opponents and media anchors posed awkward questions, he
would reproach them for lacking business knowledge and experience
(Dolezal and Zeglovits 2014: 647).
The essential points of the party’s manifesto for the 2013 election, pre-
sented as a work of ‘independent experts’, were mostly already present in
a piece called ‘Revolution for Austria’, authored and published by Frank
Stronach nearly two years earlier. The document proposed several areas for
radical change: strengthening democracy and weakening the influence of
parties; radically reducing public debt; slimming down the civil service;
simplifying the tax system; increasing universal welfare and reducing social
differences; and, finally, transforming the EU into a Europe of sovereign
nations (Pühringer and Ötsch 2013: 17). All these and some other issues
were elaborated in the party’s Basic Manifesto, dated April 2013. Its spirit
is best captured by the following quotation:
The government is a team of managers of the state. Unfortunately, this

managerial team is made up of politicians. A politician’s aim is to be elected,
or re-elected. For that reason, the state is directed on the basis of political,
not fundamental socio-economic considerations. We need that thinking to

change. The longer politicians serve their political offices, the more suscep-
tible they become to economic back-passes and corruption. We do not need
any professional politicians. What we want in politics are people endowed
with common sense, who would serve their homeland for one or at most
two electoral terms. Beyond that, we want to improve democratic structures
by means of independent citizens in parliament. They should constitute a
counterpoise to party-political MPs. (Team Stronach 2013a: 3)
The programme was generally populist, creating a notional dichotomy of

ordinary citizens on the one side and elites inimical to them on the other,
whether they be political or economic—the banks were explicitly men-
tioned. Economically, the programme was focused on improving Austria’s
competitiveness by decreasing tax and administrative burdens, linked with
a general emphasis on slimming down public administration and cutting
back on related expenses.
A major component of the party’s programme was soft Euroscepticism,
proposing a transformation of the EU into a union of sovereign states.
The common currency, the euro, was criticised: ‘Every Austrian knows
that an Austrian euro should be more valuable than, let’s say, a Greek,
Portuguese or Spanish euro’; thus, every country of the Eurozone ought
to have ‘its own euro’ with a flexible rate of exchange with the euros of
other states (Team Stronach 2013a: 27–28). Team Stronach also inveighed
strongly against the programme to aid Eurozone countries most affected
by the financial crisis. The manifesto itself did not extensively deal with law
and order issues, and compared with the FPÖ or the German Alternative
für Deutschland (AfD) manifestos it was not particularly radical. That,
however, was not true of the election rhetoric deployed by Frank Stronach
himself, as we saw above.
There was another Team Stronach vision worthy of note. It proposed
radical institutional reforms of the Austrian political system, which would
see the abolition of the Federal Council (upper house) and the number of
MPs in the National Council reduced to 100. What is more, half of MPs
would be elected from among independent ‘civic’ candidates, as a coun-
terweight to the party-political MPs. We have already noted the proposal
to limit MPs to two electoral terms (Team Stronach 2013a: 20–21).
Despite all the money, professional marketing and populist promises,
Team Stronach failed to shine in elections. The party polled only 5.7 per
cent of the vote—that is, not far above the 4 per cent threshold mandated
by the proportional electoral system. These were votes of people dissatis-

fied with parties across the political spectrum: the People’s Party, the
Social Democrats, the radical-right Freedom Party and, most importantly,
the Alliance for the Future of Austria (Filzmaier et al. 2014: 126). With
eleven parliamentary seats, Team Stronach ended up in opposition.
Although the party did not respect the €7-million limit on campaign
expenses, as Stronach warned would happen before the election—the
party spent about 50 per cent more—this did not make its result any bet-
ter (Jenny 2014: 30).
Internal disputes exacerbated this lacklustre performance. Seeking to
compensate for the excessive dependence of his party on his own personal-
ity, Stronach placed his bets in the campaign on well-known personalities,
installing the former director-general of the ÖRF public-service television
broadcaster, Monika Lindner, in a leading position on the candidate list.
However, Lindner managed to fall out with Stronach politically even
before the campaigning ended, and this did not create an image of a seri-
ous party, interested in real work on the parliamentary benches. The rea-
son for their parting ways was that, without prior consultation, Frank
Stronach had defined Monika Lindner as an ‘emergency brake against the
system of the ÖRF, the Raiffeisen Bank and [the leading People’s Party
politician] Erwin Pröll’ (quoted from Dolezal et al. 2014: 71). Given that
Lindner had spent many years in senior ÖRF positions, this was paradoxi-
cal. Lindner distanced herself from Stronach’s words; although she was
elected to Austria’s National Council on Team Stronach’s ticket, she soon
resigned her seat in November 2013.
Personal Infighting Despite Centralisation

and a Minimised Membership
Organisationally, Stronach’s party was directed by one man. Stronach pre-
sented himself as the ideas man who also funded the party’s activities; in
practice, he also had the main executive power in the party, including over
its personnel. According to statutes, Stronach, as the chair of the party,
could expel anyone for ‘non-compliance with values set by Frank Stronach’
or without giving a reason at all (Pühringer and Ötsch 2013: 16).
Many party activities, including writing the manifesto for the 2013
elections, were outsourced to external experts. This meant that the party
essentially consisted of a professional administrative apparatus (the person-
nel were not numerous) and professional politicians, elected on behalf of
the party in previous regional elections, or standing on its ticket in the

parliamentary elections. According to statutes, people aged 16+ and even
legal persons could become members, but their applications were
assessed—without specifying further details—directly by the party presid-
ium, which, as we shall see, was essentially Stronach himself (Team
Stronach 2013b: 2–3). The effort to minimise the number of members
and to exercise full control over them was evident.
The party organisation was very simple: the chair, the presidium, the
assembly of members, a financial auditor and a commission of arbitration.
Real power was reserved exclusively to the presidium; the statutes stipu-
lated that the assembly of members merely rubber-stamped decisions
coming from above (Gafà 2014: 128–130). The presidium consisted of
the chair (Frank Stronach), his deputy and the financial auditor, who was
appointed and could be removed by the chair, according to the statutes. It
was the chair alone who represented the party to the outside world. And
it was exclusively the presidium that decided the candidate lists for the
elections to the National Council (Team Stronach 2013b). Thus, the
party was managed in an entirely centralist manner.6 Stronach made all the
important decisions prior to the elections. The regional organisations of
the party were also rather peculiar, comprising only the members of the
regional assemblies where the party won seats, and a few other people.
These regional representatives soon sought to distance themselves from
Stronach, due to the character of the campaign for the National Council
and the subsequent disputes within the leadership of the party.
Following the 2013 elections, Stronach visited the national parliament
only twice, and quickly tired of politics, returning to Canada to manage
his Magna interests. Still in business mode, he handed the leadership of his
Team Stronach ‘firm’ to his assistant, Kathrin Nachbaur. Nachbaur had
worked for Magna since graduation and became the head of the Frank
Stronach Institute in 2011; she took over as the leader of the parliamen-
tary party in the National Council and, as deputy chair of Team Stronach,
managed the party on a day-to-day basis. However, an enormous chasm
soon appeared between these two personalities. Stronach assessed his
investment in Austrian politics as loss-making and demanded a return of
the €10 million (or at least part thereof) that he had invested in his politi-
cal project. This was to be paid back gradually, out of the state subsidies to
which the party was entitled thanks to its election result (Luther 2014:
27). At the same time, Stronach stopped any further funding from his
Magna concern. This brought Team Stronach to its knees.
During 2013, the Team Stronach parliamentary party largely fell to

pieces. Nachbaur herself resigned first the post of the party’s deputy chair
in November 2014 and, in March 2015, the Team Stronach parliamentary
party chair. She left the party for good in mid-2015, for the People’s Party.
After her departure, there were substantial changes in the parliamentary
party’s senior positions, with its MPs defecting to other parties. The party
ceased its activities in August 2017.
The only entity to survive, largely continuing the activities of the erst-
while Frank Stronach Institute, is the Team Stronach Akademie, promot-
ing economic and political education by means of conferences, seminars,
books and the magazine Frank&Frei (Frank&Free). It is led by Ulla
Weigerstorfer—the 1987 Miss World—who in November 2013 replaced
Monika Lindner, who had resigned her National Council seat.
THE SLOVAK PERFORMER IGOR MATOVIČ AND HIS

ORDINARY PEOPLE
While in Austria it was Frank Stronach’s own financial resources that were
crucial for setting up his political project, for Igor Matovič’s in neighbour-
ing Slovakia it was different, with his media company Regionpress provid-
ing the lynchpin. Thus, for example, the building of the Slovak party
showed some similarities with what Berlusconi did, although Matovič’s
media company was different in character and had much more limited
coverage. Matovič’s case is worthy of note in particular for his giving up
on the idea of creating a political formation that would show a united
front, and the consequences this decision had. Also interesting is the fact
that Matovič displayed an attractive style of performance based on emo-
tion and provocation. This political entrepreneur offered no technocratic-
managerial vision, but a radical, uninhibited political performance. In this
respect, he transgressed the conventional norms of political behaviour per-
haps even more than Janusz Palikot (introduced in the preceding chap-
ter) did.
Regionpress publishes nearly forty local free weeklies, which are directly
distributed to more than 1.5 million households. These sheets largely con-
sist of paid advertisements for local businesses and entrepreneurs. The free
weeklies successfully weathered the rise of the internet, and, at the time of
Matovič’s entrance into politics in 2010, had an estimated readership of
15–20 per cent of this small country’s population (ca. 5 million). Matovič
started to publish his advertising newspapers in the late 1990s, even before
he had finished his university studies in financial management. Exploiting
a gap in the market, he quickly became the biggest entrepreneur in this
media segment in Slovakia (Vagovič 2010).
Matovič’s newspapers became the platform on which he would publish
his brief, indignant articles criticising corruption and the state of Slovak
politics—pieces with which he sought to appeal to the public. Matovič’s
main target was the scandal-marred Robert Fico–led government, consist-
ing of Fico’s left-wing Smer party with nationalist leanings, the radical
right-wing Slovak National Party and Vladimír Mečiar’s People’s Party–
Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, the latter itself linked with the
destruction of a democratic regime during the 1990s.
When he entered into politics, Matovič no longer formally owned
Regionpress, having transferred it, along with other assets worth an esti-
mated €10–20 million, to his wife. Matovič justified this by saying that he
‘was thinking only about money, which was unhealthy’ and that once the
property was transferred to his wife, ‘the nightmares left him’ (Vagovič
2010; Klimeš 2012). As the years that followed showed, unlike Stronach,
Matovič found a permanent place for himself in politics, which became his
main occupation and a new sphere in which he could realise his ambition.
However, his family background—including the media and money—
remained very important for this ambition. Slovak party politics has long
been highly fluid, providing a major opportunity for a new political proj-
ect to establish itself (Deegan-Krause and Haughton 2010b, 2015).
Apart from Matovič himself, three other people formed the nucleus of
the new political project: his cousin, Jozef Viskupič, a media communica-
tions graduate and co-founder of Regionpress; Erika Jurinová, the editor-
in-chief of one of Matovič’s weeklies; and Martin Fecko, a civil servant and
passionate ornithologist, who found Matovič’s articles interesting. Over
the following decade, this small, compact group became the driving force
of the political project. They first founded a civic association called
Ordinary People and started to prepare their own political formation. As
the elections in June 2010 loomed, they were approached by Richard
Sulík, the leader of a new liberal party, Freedom and Solidarity (SaS),
which looked likely to win seats. Sulík offered them positions on his par-
ty’s candidate list, arguing that he did not wish to split the vote supporting
centre-right parties; more importantly, SaS was given extensive space in
Regionpress weeklies ahead of the election, which helped it to poll more
than 12 per cent of the vote.7 The price paid for this—the last spaces on
the SaS candidate list reserved for Ordinary People, as demanded by

Matovič (he himself chose the last, 150th place)—did not seem excessive.
However, all four of the ‘Ordinary People’ were successful, creating an
important and, as soon proved the case, autonomous section in the eleven-
strong SaS parliamentary party.
In order to understand how Ordinary People established itself, we must
briefly describe the Slovak electoral system. Like the Netherlands, Slovakia
is a single constituency, in which 150 members of parliament are elected,
and this system affords a popular politician substantial options in terms of
establishing their own party. However, unlike in the Netherlands, there is
a 5 per cent electoral threshold that parties have to cross in order to be
eligible for seats. The key strategy that elected Matovič’s group of four
MPs was the option given to voters to use up to four preferential votes. In
the past, only those candidates who polled at least 10 per cent of the pref-
erential votes cast for their party’s candidate list were moved to the top of
the list and won seats; this was a substantial barrier to entry. In 2005,
however, it was decreased to 3 per cent. Matovič was among the first
people to understand the implications of this change, and—more impor-
tantly—was skilful enough to use it to establish himself and his candidates.
Matovič conducted a massive and intensive campaign to draw attention
to the candidates in the last four places of the SaS list, via the Regionpress
weeklies and his own election newspaper, distributed through the chan-
nels of the family firm. Thanks to this, Ordinary People was shifted to the
fourth to seventh places on the SaS list. Matovič’s campaign deployed
aggressive anti-party, anti-corruption and anti-establishment appeals,
which would become typical of the man in the future (Rolko 2012: 27;
Spáč 2013c: 156–157; Dolný and Malová 2016: 405–406).
After the 2010 elections, a broad centre-right government coalition
was created, led by Prime Minister Iveta Radičová of the liberal-conservative
Slovak Democratic and Christian Union, and including SaS. However,
from the beginning of the government’s term, Ordinary People acted
more like an opposition faction than part of the ruling coalition.
Characteristically, before a vote was taken on the new government’s mani-
festo, Matovič renounced his loyalty to the coalition by pointing out that
many of Ordinary People’s demands were not included in the document.
This directly threatened the position of the government, as it relied on a
very slim majority in parliament. However, after a debate was held with
Sulík and a vague promise was made that their priorities would be
respected, Ordinary People did support the government.
In the months that followed, Matovič’s faction failed to respect the

discipline required of government MPs during important votes. As early as
February 2011, following one such vote, Matovič was expelled from the
SaS parliamentary party. The other three Ordinary People members left
several months later, when, in autumn 2011, Radičová’s government lost
a vote of confidence in parliament and an early election was called.
Matovič’s faction did not play the main role in the fall of Radičová’s gov-
ernment; rather, this was caused by a dispute between SaS and other gov-
ernment parties concerning the country’s participation in the European
Financial Stability Facility, which was to aid the southern countries of the
Eurozone, strongly affected by the financial crisis (Haughton 2014).
In November 2011, Matovič’s group was registered as a political move-
ment: Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (Obyčajní ludia ̌ a
nezávislé osobnosti, or OĽANO). By adding ‘Independent Personalities’ to
its name, the party responded to the fact that the original name had been
registered by another politician in the meantime; but it also reflected their
priority, which was to provide a platform for independent candidates
standing for election. At that time, the barrier to registering an entity per-
mitted to stand for election was not set high in Slovakia. In addition to
having a preparatory committee comprising no fewer than three members,
the entity had to produce 10,000 citizen signatures. OĽANO was inscribed
in the register as a political movement, rather than a party, since Matovič
had described parties as evil. However, Slovak law places the same demands
on a political party and a political movement, and does not distinguish
between them in practice. It needs noting that during its stint in parlia-
ment, Ordinary People loudly and unsuccessfully called for a change in
electoral law to allow the candidacy of independents with no party-political
backing. This was accompanied by other ideas and bills, which would, for
instance, abolish the immunity from prosecution enjoyed by MPs, tax
their entire incomes and publish a list of people appointed to managerial
positions in state institutions by political parties (Mesežnikov 2013;
Marušiak 2017).
Matovič’s radical, spectacular, and at times even exhibitionist perfor-
mances, in and out of parliament, attracted significant media attention and
were very important in publicising OĽANO. The politician further nur-
tured public notice by his social media activities. In many respects, this was
similar to what Janusz Palikot was doing in Poland and Beppe Grillo (Five
Star Movement) in Italy. Back at the time of the centre-right government
formation in 2010, Matovič announced that he had been offered a large
bribe for not supporting the government. After a huge media debate, he
described the whole affair as a joke invented by a friend. In another case,
he parked his car illegally on a pedestrian crossing in central Bratislava,
arguing that he was promoting his aim of abolishing the immunity from
prosecution enjoyed by MPs.
Verbal and physical conflicts with, and attacks on, other MPs from
across the political spectrum became routine in Matovič’s performances;
his former SaS colleagues were among his targets. For instance, after an
SaS MP admitted that he had used hard drugs in the past and claimed that
‘pure heroin is essentially harmless to the body’, the leader of Ordinary
People emptied a bag of syringes over him during a parliamentary session,
arguing that he was seeking to ‘instruct the person’ and to prevent the
promotion of drugs (Pilc 2012).
The ‘Gorilla’ scandal, named after the code word for a secret service
file, which erupted prior to the early elections in 2012, created an ideal
environment for the eclectic cocktail of OĽANO appeals, which was based
on questioning the moral suitability of party-political elites. This scandal
unmasked the corrupt practices of some centre-right politicians, especially
in 2002–2006, when they held government power. Gorilla instigated mas-
sive demonstrations, and, together with lesser corruption causes, substan-
tially damaged the trust in the largest party of the centre-right, Slovak
Democratic and Christian Union, and, to a lesser extent, SaS—their image
having been substantially damaged earlier by the fall of the government in
which both were involved.
The suspicion that Robert Fico, the leader of Smer, was embroiled in
the Gorilla scandal substantially decreased trust in the political class. Fico
remained the most popular politician prior to the 2012 elections and his
party won the contest, with a significant lead over the party that came
second. Yet, at the same time, opinion polls showed that a third of the
country did not trust any politician at all, and trust in political parties was
extremely low overall. This situation, and the accompanying social frustra-
tion, allowed OĽANO to woo many former voters of both the centre-
right parties and Smer (Bútorová and Gyárfášová 2013; Krivý 2013).
Matovič’s formation polled nearly 9 per cent of the vote and, with 16 seats
in parliament, became the second-strongest party in the country,
after Smer.8
In an atmosphere of deep mistrust of politics and politicians, one of
OĽANO’s slogans, suggesting that the electorate use their preferential
votes to select the ‘ordinary men and women’ from their candidate list and
not those of political parties, worked well: ‘Voting is not enough. Circle
the name!’ (Gyárfášová 2014: 86). This ‘new blood’ in Slovak politics did
indeed largely consist of non-partisans, but this was linked with an issue
that affected OĽANO. A month before the election, most politicians of
two small conservative parties, with whom Matovič originally agreed to
collaborate, left the OĽANO candidate list. This was because Matovič had
demanded that they all (including himself) take a lie detector test to estab-
lish whether they were corrupt. These politicians’ exits from the candidate
list—they said they would not be Matovič’s ‘trained monkeys’—probably
damaged OĽANO’s image, even though Matovič presented this publicly
as a ‘cleansing of the candidate list’ (Pravda 2012). The OĽANO leader
did ultimately submit himself to the lie detector test, but only by respond-
ing to questions that he had set himself.
Preferential voting in the 2012 elections showed strong identification
of the OĽANO electorate with Matovič. Just as two years earlier on the
SaS candidate list, the leader had contested the election from the last posi-
tion on his party list, and was given preferential votes by more than two-
thirds of those who chose his formation—about 150,000 people. The
other elected OĽANO candidates received much fewer preferential votes,
and this included the other three co-founders of Ordinary People. Like
Matovič, they were at the very bottom of the list, but preferential votes
secured their parliamentary seats (Spáč 2013c; Krivý 2013).
After the 2012 elections, Matovič claimed that OĽANO would estab-
lish a centrist profile, but what kept his project alive were his performances,
using the tried-and-proven cocktail of radical slogans, provocations, emo-
tions and happenings. His most frequent targets were Prime Minister
Fico, who led a single-party Smer cabinet, and some of his ministers. For
example, Matovič ‘offered’ a reward to Fico—which he kept increasing
until it reached several million euros—should Fico take a lie detector test
for corruption. Similarly, the OĽANO leader accused the prime minister
of holding several hundred million dollars in a secret Belize account.
Fico facilitated Matovič’s posturing as a champion of the common man
against the powerful. Before the 2016 elections, Fico attempted to exploit
a police investigation of Matovič over alleged tax evasion at the time when
he had owned his media firm, in order openly to question his trustworthi-
ness. However, the OĽANO leader managed to present the whole affair as
an attempt to bully an opposition politician, and the prime minister was
disgraced in the media.
In the eyes of his voters, Matovič therefore managed to sustain his

image as an intransigent scourge of the government, and of owning anti-
corruption policies. In the context of the various positions of other oppo-
sition parties towards the ruling Smer, this had a major effect on OĽANO’s
electoral support (Gyárfášová 2014; Rybář et al. 2017). In 2016, OĽANO
was a little more successful than in the previous elections, polling 11 per
cent of the vote (19 seats) and placing third after Smer and SaS.
In these elections, Matovič once again used his tested tactic, standing
alongside the three co-founders at the bottom of the candidate list and
managing to win nearly 160,000 preferential votes. As a proportion of
preferential votes, his support was slightly lower (ca 56 per cent) than it
had been four years earlier. This decline was evidently connected with
both the representation of politicians of two minor right-wing entities on
his candidate list (the ‘lie detector misunderstanding’ of the previous elec-
tion was not repeated) and Matovič having been able to score a major
success in convincing many well-known people nationally to stand on
behalf of his party, in consequence of which the preferential votes were
more dispersed.9 Rolling electoral polls showed substantial fluctuation in
OĽANO’s support, and similarly a 2016 election exit poll found that
about 40 per cent of the party’s voters only decided to favour it in the
week before the election (Rybář et al. 2017: 44). Thus, although OĽANO’s
electoral support was much more persistent than Team Stronach’s, it
remained fragile and uncertain.
Matovič’s enduring profile as a performer was why many Slovak politi-
cians as well as members of the general public thought of him as a clown
or an unpredictable player. This concerned some centre-right actors who
were potentially close to OĽANO, and partially isolated Matovič’s outfit
as a result. Incoherency in the OĽANO parliamentary party’s voting, ana-
lysed below, further dissuaded possible coalition partners. After the 2016
elections, all of this contributed to a continuation of Smer’s government,
now in a coalition with several smaller parties from the right of the politi-
cal spectrum. However, the failed attempt to create a broad centre-right
coalition, with the aim of pushing Smer out of government, was not
caused just by OĽANO’s weak coalition potential, but also by other
factors.
After the 2016 elections, OĽANO’s ideological profile became less
vague, as the party increasingly exploited conservative Christian issues,
such as marriage protection and religious freedom. Indeed, a conservative
platform emerged from among its MPs, involving Matovič himself.

Historically, this was not an unnatural step—when he had been involved
with SaS, Matovič claimed that his group wanted to form a conservative
wing of the party. The emphasis on a conservative inclination was con-
nected with an attempt to fill the void after the Christian Democrats lost
parliamentary representation. However, it was Matovič’s radical repertoire
of performances that remained crucial in sustaining the public’s attention.
Government scandals, especially those linked with Robert Fico, pro-
vided Matovič with ample opportunities for his performances. In the end,
in response to the murders of a journalist and his girlfriend, which caused
a tumultuous public debate about Fico’s links with the Italian mafia, and
major protests, Fico resigned as prime minister. He did not resign Smer’s
leadership, however, and the coalition government continued.
Matovič’s sustaining of OĽANO’s attractiveness for the public was some-
times based on a very spectacular use of his own persona. An example is
provided by the 2019 European Parliament elections. Matovič decided to
lead the OĽANO candidate list, providing the unusual justification that he
was not so much after a seat as wishing to confirm his own trustworthiness,
by winning no fewer than 50,000 preferential votes. Immediately before the
elections, however, Matovič called an unscheduled press conference, where
he surprisingly announced his withdrawal from candidature. He argued that
it was necessary to ‘prevent the victory of the fascists’ in Slovakia, by which he
meant the extreme-right People’s Party Our Slovakia (Mikušovič 2019). He
called on his supporters to circle number three on the OĽANO candidate
list, a Roma and hence a member of a minority under attack from the extreme
right in Slovakia. The press conference and the media debate that ensued
secured OĽANO’s visibility at an important moment and influenced at
least some voters. Indeed, a not particularly well-known Romani candi-
date became OĽANO’s only Member of the European Parliament (MEP),
thanks to preferential votes. (The party had won one European Parliament
seat in the previous elections, and Slovakia has only 13 MEPs—see Table 4.1.)
Table 4.1 OĽANO’s results in national and European parliamentary elections

Election National 2012 European 2014 National 2016 European 2019
Percentage of the votes 8.6 7.5 11 5.3

Number of seats 16 1 19 1
Source: Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic

The Platform of Independent Personalities and the Family

Business Background
The importance, and indeed the irreplaceability, of the leader, typical of
OĽANO’s public performance, is thrown into sharp relief when we look
at the party’s organisation. At the time of OĽANO’s registration, Slovak
law placed virtually no demands on political party organisation, and this
allowed Matovič to pursue a minimalist approach. This reflected the
founding father’s aversion to political parties and also provided him with
a powerful position in OĽANO as well as control over the whole project.
The extremely brief OĽANO statutes—comprising 11 short articles—
considered only two aspects: the chair and the congress. The statutes
allowed Matovič, in the role of party chair, to act in any matter not reserved
for the congress. The congress, comprising all OĽANO members, was
described in the statutes as the movement’s supreme organ, but the only
powers explicitly granted to it were to appoint and remove the chair, and
to approve the party’s programme (Stanovy OĽANO 2011). Testifying to
this body’s insignificance for Matovič was his comment that it was not this
organ that was the congress—it was ‘the parliamentary election every four
years’ (Leško and Lehuta 2015). The statutes mentioned no other party
body, or the parliamentary party, MPs or territorial party branches, which
were not created.
Crucial for understanding OĽANO’s party procedures are its closed
character and the fact that it had only four members: Matovič and his
three co-founders. The statutes ensured this seclusion by stating that a
new member may be accepted only with the consent of the chair or the
congress. In practice, the exclusivity of this four-member party allowed for
informal decision-making, where the leader had the main say. Throughout
the 2010s, this small circle around Matovič worked harmonically and
there was no visible discord. Although the OĽANO statutes did mention
the party’s sympathisers, the party did not attempt to organise them sys-
tematically, and their role was marginal. The party structure therefore pro-
vided no opportunity for a rival to the incumbent leader (Rybář and
Spáč 2019).
Also very important for the OĽANO organisation and the leader’s
supreme position were its symbiosis with Regionpress and Matovič’s fam-
ily background in Trnava, a medium-sized Slovak city about 40 km from
the capital, Bratislava. The party had no employees and, characteristically,
until 2018 had its headquarters in the same building in Trnava as the main
office of the media company, officially owned by Matovič’s wife. The

mutual links were clear: Regionpress owned several internet domains,
including igormatovic.sk and olano.sk, which it leased to the party. Matovič
himself had a trademark of the party’s name registered with the Industrial
Property Office—there is a parallel to this in Andrej Babiš’s ANO in
Czechia.
Matovič’s wife granted a large loan to OĽANO to conduct the 2012
election campaign. OĽANO funded further election campaigns from the
state subsidies to political parties; however, the party also continued to use
the options made available by Regionpress and its newspapers as a perma-
nent channel of communication, and Regionpress gave OĽANO major
discounts on services rendered (TASR 2014; Sme 2016; Marušiak 2017;
OĽANO 2017).
The use of Regionpress backing was sometimes strange. Matovič made
recordings of meetings with Radoslav Procházka, a candidate in the 2014
presidential election, with whom he was agreeing non-transparent funding
of advertisements for Procházka’s campaign in Regionpress newspapers.
Matovič subsequently handed these to the police and published them
himself, with the aim of compromising this politician who at that time was
founding a new centre-right party in competition with OĽANO. However,
the recordings also confirmed the continued active role of the OĽANO
leader in Regionpress’s activities (Plus 7 dní 2015).
In late 2017, largely under pressure of criticism from the media, which
sometimes called OĽANO an off-shore firm, damaging its reputation,
Matovič’s wife sold Regionpress. This weakened the connections between
the firm and the party (OĽANO moved its headquarters, obtained the
trademark linked with the party etc.) but they did not entirely disappear.
Regionpress weeklies continued to serve OĽANO as a major channel of
communication.
That Matovič and his three co-founders owned OĽANO was evident
from their approach to selecting candidates and their order on the lists for
both the 2012 and 2016 parliamentary elections. Their choices were not
constrained in any way. The party had no formal rules for compiling such
lists; the only partial limitation was the agreement with politicians from
smaller parties who stood on OĽANO’s ticket, but they simply had to
accept the places offered to them. The founding four used this freedom in
the 2012 elections, and even more successfully four years later, to recruit
a number of publicly known non-partisan figures, whom they approached
and allocated positions on the list. These candidates were typically activists
of various kinds (conservative-Catholic, anti-corruption, environmental
etc.), popular doctors or teachers. In both elections, women received
more than average representation—for Slovakia—on the OĽANO candi-
date lists. The intention was evidently to recruit people from various back-
grounds and across the whole country, and thus to create the most
attractive offer for the electorate in terms of personnel. There is no doubt
that this tactic helped the party’s electoral support (Rolko 2012; Dolný
and Malová 2016; Rybář and Spáč 2019).
However, this concept of OĽANO as a platform for independent can-
didates and members of small parties created an Achilles heel for the par-
liamentary party, which was a very mixed group of personalities with
different ideological orientations. In the comparative perspective on the
entrepreneurial parties presented in this book, it would be difficult to find
a better example of ideological diversity. The political consequences of this
were exacerbated by the leader’s explicit decision not to regulate the party
in any way. The lack of cohesion in the OĽANO parliamentary party was
exacerbated by the right given to its MPs to vote freely in parliament; no
attempt was made to correct their political positions. Matovič was not the
chair of the parliamentary party, and did not intend to set a political line.
Before voting in parliament, OĽANO MPs were merely invited to an
‘exchange of views’ (Dolný and Malová 2016: 407).
Symptomatic of Matovič’s approach to his political project and of his
thinking was his decision that incumbent MPs had to be placed last on the
candidate list for the 2016 elections, so that they would ‘defend’ them-
selves in the popular eye. In reality, this reduced their chances of defend-
ing their seats successfully, and hence also their loyalty to the party. This
approach on the part of the leader was in sharp contrast to the strategy
embraced by Geert Wilders, for example (as described in the next chapter
of this book), which was characterised by building and reinforcing parlia-
mentary party cohesion, based on carefully thought-out socialisation and
training of MPs.
The consequences of this lack of cohesion were inconsistent voting by
the OĽANO parliamentary party and dissatisfaction of some of its MPs, a
number of whom left. In the first electoral term, 2012–2016, a quarter of
MPs left the parliamentary party, and almost half of MPs in the next term.
Some of those leaving and some who remained criticised the OĽANO
organisation, in particular the role of the leader, the lack of clearly set
internal rules and the fact that the party remained closed to prospective
members (Ištok 2018; Rybář and Spáč 2019).
The criticisms to which the OĽANO organisation was subjected by
deserting MPs, the media and political competitors moved Matovič after
the 2016 elections to plan—or, as it soon emerged, to feign—to open the
party to new members. The admission of new members, the leader argued,
would help to turn OĽANO into a ‘broad popular movement’, although
it ‘would never become a standard party’ (HN 2016). This claim could
have been motivated by certain centre-right parties losing parliamentary
representation; Matovič perhaps thought he could replace them. However,
membership, according to OĽANO data, increased from four to only thir-
teen, but no leading OĽANO figure was willing to say specifically who
these additional people were. In early 2019, Matovič announced that he
had reached an agreement with the nine new members to leave the party.
OĽANO’s decision in the late 2010s to stand in local and regional elec-
tions looked more serious. Matovič originally claimed that he would not
contest these elections, arguing that he did not want to compete with
independent candidates and their lists. The change of approach evidently
reflected Matovič’s effort to fight Smer at the lower levels of politics as
well as in parliament. In late 2017, two of OĽANO’s co-founders success-
fully contested the direct elections of Slovakia’s regional governors (of
which there are eight). The next year, about twenty OĽANO-supported
candidates succeeded in the direct elections of municipality mayors. Yet, in
the context of the nearly 3000 municipalities in Slovakia, this was a negli-
gible representation. What is more, the links of these municipal represen-
tatives with the party were loose and ambiguous, because in virtually every
case they were people supported by a broader coalition of parties. OĽANO,
therefore, scored a one-off success, but its lack of a strong organisational
network and at least minimal personnel service facilities prevented any
serious establishment at the lower levels of Slovak politics.
The consequences of Matovič’s conception for OĽANO were perfectly
summarised in a proclamation by five of its MPs led by the popular anti-
corruption activist Veronika Remišová, who left the party in summer
2019. Remišová was originally the party’s number one in the 2016 elec-
tions; later she became the chair of the OĽANO parliamentary party, and
Matovič even claimed publicly that she might replace him as the leader in
the future. In their proclamation, those who left said: ‘Igor Matovič
allowed new people to enter politics, but did not allow them to become
regular members [of his party…] Hence many valuable people, who stood
on behalf of OĽANO in various elections, vanished.’ Only an open envi-

ronment with clearly set rules allows ‘a party to develop and a professional
politician to work in a systematic way’ (Denníkn 2019). The proclamation
also criticised Matovič’s inability to involve people in the regions in
OĽANO activities and to give the regions a say in the direction the party
would take.
Whether and how the party organisation would be influenced by new
regulations on political parties, pushed through in late 2018 by the govern-
ment coalition despite resistance from OĽANO and some other opposition
parties, remained unclear. The new regulations set multiple conditions that
OĽANO did not meet as it stood, such as certain obligatory party bodies,
numbers of members in some party bodies, and minimum party member-
ship, without which parties could not contest certain types of election. The
constitutionality of the new law was disputed before the Constitutional
Court, and OĽANO did not hurry to adapt its organisation structure.
Team Stronach was an extreme variant of an entrepreneurial party in the
sense that it was seen not only as an instrument for interlinking political
and economic power but also as a means of generating financial gain. In
this respect, it was similar to Tomio Okamura’s Dawn of Direct Democracy
and Freedom and Direct Democracy, analysed elsewhere in this book.
When, however, the business plan chosen proved ineffectual, Frank
Stronach mercilessly eliminated the ‘firm’. OĽANO, by contrast, was not
created to generate profit (or at least not primarily)—an idealistic concep-
tion of politics laid at its inception. Indeed, it was the idealist, and, what is
more important, lasting fervour of its founding father, Igor Matovič, that
drove the project forward. That Matovič’s initial financial investment was
substantially smaller than Stronach’s proved to be unimportant. Matovič
was also at a major advantage compared to Stronach in that he could use
his media interests, which operated as a formidable channel of communi-
cation. The Slovak entrepreneur also knew his political environment, while
his Austrian counterpart was severely handicapped by his long-term resi-
dence outside his motherland.
Political opportunity structure was a very important factor in deciding
the contrasting success and establishment of the two leaders. Despite evi-
dent social change and the opening up of the electoral market in the early
2000s, Austria was still a country very remote from the massive collapse of
older parties, as occurred in Italy in the first half of the 1990s and in
Czechia at the turn of the twenty-first century’s first and second decades.
In Slovakia, where OĽANO emerged at the same time, one can speak of a
partial political collapse, caused by the country’s discredited centre-right
parties, and the electoral market being very open. Likewise, in a situation
such as this, where this type of entrepreneurial party is entirely dependent
on a single person, Slovakia provided a much more favourable institutional
environment. Of particular importance was the fact that the whole of
Slovakia is one constituency; a media-savvy leader is furthermore aided by
the enormous concentration of the media in the capital. The federal
Austria, with many more constituencies and strong regional identities, is
more complicated in this respect. The small difference in their propor-
tional systems’ electoral thresholds—5 per cent in Slovakia, 4 per cent in
Austria—is not important in this context.
Both Team Stronach and OĽANO placed their bets on anti-
establishment, anti-party and other protest appeals, but their content was
substantially different. With its technocracy and notion of business-like
‘competent’ management, the Austrian project was similar to Berlusconi’s
Forza Italia and Babiš’s ANO. By contrast, the Slovak project, with its
emphasis on direct links and communication between political representa-
tives and voters, expressed chiefly in the vision of a party serving ‘merely’
as a platform for independent candidates, came closer to formations that
wager on direct-democracy slogans, such as Czechia’s Public Affairs party,
and Dawn of Direct Democracy (next chapter). There were also notice-
able differences in the form of political communication. Stronach’s appear-
ances turned off many potential voters, and he proved to be a not
particularly skilled communicator—this was connected with his advanced
age. The much younger Matovič, by contrast, displayed an attractive style
of performance based on emotion, provocation and moral indignation,
attacking pretty much every other political leader in the country.
More than in their appeals, there was similarity in the two parties’
organisation strategy—a major topic of this book. In terms of organisa-
tion, Team Stronach was a highly centralised aggregate of a handful of
professional politicians and a minimal party apparatus, fully dependent on
its founder and leader. Stronach not only attracted attention to himself in
campaigning; he also made the crucial decisions in political and personnel
matters. But his centralist managerial style hounded out some figures from
his party, and the relationship between the elected representatives in the
National Council and regional parliaments, on the one hand, and the
party locus of power, on the other, came unglued. When Stronach lost
interest in politics after a weak electoral performance in September 2013,
the party abandoned by its leader in managerial and financial terms had no
chance of survival. This is shown most eloquently by the rapid disintegra-
tion of the parliamentary party after the elections.
OĽANO was built on a similar organisation concept to Team Stronach.
Its leader, Matovič, created an even more minimalist and exclusive organ-
isation, which only had three other members besides himself, and nothing
whatsoever in terms of regional or local structures, party administration,
or external professional consultants and experts. The basic functions of
organisation were provided by the leader, his narrow circle and his family
business backing. In the conditions of a small country with a single con-
stituency, this proved to be a sustainable strategy, in the medium term at
least. A necessary consequence, however, was that OĽANO was essentially
limited to the national level and to the national parliament.
Even at this national level, a specific strategy was apparent, consisting
of giving up on any significant cohesion in the parliamentary party. This
was not due to the leader’s indifference, as was the case in Team Stronach.
Rather, it was a product of Matovič’s vision of OĽANO as a platform for
‘independent personalities’. The OĽANO candidate lists were colourful
in terms of the origins and ideological positions of the candidates, pro-
ducing a heterogeneous parliamentary party, which the leader, in the spirit
of his anti-party orientation, did not wish to integrate. But giving up on
creating a cohesive, united party caused permanent variation in OĽANO’s
parliamentary representation. Matovič’s leadership style is therefore a
graphic example of poor organisational practice. Weak cohesion, com-
bined with mistrust of other Slovak party leaders towards Matovič, who
was seen as politically unpredictable, partly limited OĽANO’s coalition
potential.
Team Stronach clearly demonstrates that an extremely centralist and
managerially administered party simply stands and falls with the successes
and failures of its founding father. The ability to communicate tradi-
tional, as well as new, protest themes and Stronach’s certain personal
enthusiasm for politics from spring 2010 to autumn 2013 permitted a
relatively quick identification of supporters with the new project. At the
same time, the inability of the selfsame Frank Stronach to abandon the
centralised exercise of power within his party killed off the green shoots
of its organisational rooting and, in combination with the leader’s loss of
interest, entirely prevented even a temporary institutionalisation (see

Table 4.2).
Matovič, by contrast, was much more methodical, systematic and suc-
cessful in nurturing supporter identification with his project. The estab-
lishment of a nucleus of his own party in parliament in 2010 using the
platform of another entity was politically neat, and over the two succeed-
ing years allowed major advances in nurturing supporters’ links with the
leader and his project. A successfully begun institutionalisation was not
even threatened by the leader’s blunder, when he caused a breakdown of
the party’s candidate list prior to the 2012 parliamentary elections.
Even after the founding phase, OĽANO’s organisation remained mini-
mal and there was virtually no development. This situation was a conse-
quence of the leader’s strong resistance to any comprehensive structure or
solid organisation. This position was not fundamentally altered by the
weakening of the link with the family firm and the ad hoc decisions to take
part in political competition outside the national level of politics in the late
2010s. Thus, OĽANO was more successful politically than Team Stronach,
but its organisation is a classic example of a party that has only been par-
tially institutionalised. If this form is preserved, OĽANO is unlikely to
survive the loss of its founding father.
Table 4.2 The evolution of institutionalisation in Team Stronach and OĽANO

Political Identification Organisation Stabilisation (stabiliser)
party/phase (creator and (organiser)
and leader preacher)
role
Team Only partially The leader’s loss of

Stronach managed interest in continuing
his project led to its
swift collapse
OĽANO Managed The leader’s lack of The leader’s unpredictable
successfully interest in building a behaviour, causing problems
resistant structure made with (potential) coalition
the party vulnerable partners
Source: Authors
NOTES
1. In practice, these constituencies are divided further, but that is irrelevant for
the purposes of this book.
2. When Stronach became involved in Austrian politics directly and actively,
the activities of his institute were rolled back. At the time of writing this
book (mid-2019), the most recent item on the Frank Stronach Institute
Facebook profile was dated 5 December 2013.
3. The failure to cross the 5 per cent threshold in Tyrol was due to internal
disputes among the party’s regional candidates.
4. This would involve collecting 100–500 signatures in each state (according
to size) and at least 2600 signatures in total.
5. Interestingly, in comparison with other candidate list leaders, Stronach par-
ticipated in the fewest television debates overall. Besides the BZÖ chair,
Joseph Bucher, he was also the candidate who was the least mentioned as a
potential chancellor, if citizens were, hypothetically, to elect the holder of
that office directly. What is more, Stronach’s popularity was in slow but
continuous decline from the beginning of the campaign to election day
(Dolezal et al. 2014: 77, 83–84).
6. Article 8(4) of the statutes was significant: ‘The respective chairman is enti-
tled, in the event of his departure from the party for whatever reason, to
appoint during his lifetime a person from the circle of founding members
until the election of a new chairman with all rights and duties connected
with the function of the chairman. This person takes the place of the retiring
chairman’ (Team Stronach 2013b: 4).
7. Sulík and Matovič claimed that SaS properly paid for the advertisements,
but, with volume discounts, the total sum cannot have been large. Given the
lack of transparency in party-political funding in Slovakia at the time, this
statement cannot be verified.
8. The Christian Democrats won the same number of seats as OĽANO.
9. Formally, OĽANO changed its name to OĽANO-NOVA to stand in this
election, thus accommodating one of the small right-wing entities, whose
acronym was NOVA. They did so to avoid a formal election coalition, which
faces a higher electoral threshold in Slovakia than parties standing on their
own, and they were not sure whether they would be able to cross this
threshold.
CHAPTER 5
Entrepreneurial Parties Without Firms

and Without Members
A lack of financial capital and business backing, enjoyed by the political

entrepreneurs in the preceding two chapters, poses a significant chal-
lenge—a challenge for someone who is able, despite these limitations, to
launch a successful party project. Political entrepreneurs without a firm
can, like their counterparts with a firm, embark on two distinct paths.
Either they can create a closed party and rely only on themselves and a
narrow circle of associates, or they can create a substantial party organisa-
tion with branches and a large membership.
This chapter analyses the first path, using the examples of two political
entrepreneurs, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Tomio Okamura in
Czechia. Both managed to break through, even if at the time of founding
their parties they had no major financial or other business assets. Both also
made the decision not to open their parties to members or to build a
robust party structure. The organisational strategy chosen secured for
Wilders and Okamura a very strong political position in their parties,
which were very simply constructed. At the same time, this strategy placed
great demands on their public performance, as it relied on the attractive-
ness of their personalities and political offerings. In this respect, the exploi-
tation of radical anti-establishment appeals, or even a fine balancing act
between radicalism and extremism, as well as their filling of thematic lacu-
nae of the political market, proved effective.
For this type of political entrepreneur, as for those described in the
previous chapter (without a firm and with no territorial structure or

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_5
members), communication capabilities and the efficient use of the new

platforms offered by the twenty-first century—internet and social net-
works in particular—are important. As with the previous type of entrepre-
neur, their small organisational capacity and reliance on the founder’s
one-man show limited the electoral potential of their parties. Thus these
were by their nature relatively small political formations, which, again,
stood a reasonable chance of establishing themselves chiefly in smaller
countries. In terms of the political opportunity structure: the circum-
stances favourable for their rise included an open political market with
high voter volatility, and minimal electoral and legislative barriers to entry.
A specific problem for this type of political entrepreneur is how to sus-
tain the loyalty of their party’s political personnel, given that the entrepre-
neurs can have no recourse to their own corporate resources and are not
giving full membership to their staff. A resolution to this is very important
for the durability and long-term sustainability of this type of entrepreneur-
ial party. The cases chosen are eminently useful for a contrasting compari-
son. The first, Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, is a good example of a
well-thought-out design, where the founding father managed his political
enterprise carefully. He consistently worked on keeping his political per-
sonnel coherent and created effective tools for dealing with party dissent.
Wilders positioned his party on the politically salient issues of immigration
and Islam, thus not only achieving an electoral breakthrough for his party
but also uniting its personnel under the flag of a political mission. Through
all this, he turned his party into an important component of Dutch politics.
The second party, Tomio Okamura’s Dawn of Direct Democracy, by
contrast, provides a perfect illustration of flagrant mistakes made by the
leader, especially his lack of interest in internal party coherence, linked
with his failure to make good on promises to expand membership to the
party’s supporters. Numerous scandals, which damaged Okamura’s cred-
ibility, also proved devastating. These factors caused the quick collapse of
his enterprise.
HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL PROJECT: GEERT WILDERS’S

PARTY FOR FREEDOM
The Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands
has its origin in the secession of its founder and leader, Geert Wilders,
from the liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy
5 ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTIES WITHOUT FIRMS AND WITHOUT MEMBERS 121
(VVD) in 2004. Born in 1963, Wilders had already enjoyed a long politi-
cal career. He started working for the VVD in the lower chamber of parlia-
ment aged twenty-six, first as a speechwriter and assistant to the liberal
parliamentary group and then, from 1998, as an MP. He was among the
first Dutch politicians to use the confrontational style of politics, departing
from the consensual political practice more usual at the time. He gained
notoriety through his radical attacks on Islam and Muslims, whose num-
bers in the country sharply increased in the late twentieth century, as well
as by tackling the political taboos of the ‘Left Church’, as he called the
Netherlands’ progressivist and multicultural leaders. This led to conflict
with others in the VVD (Vossen 2017: 16–18). The impulse, or perhaps
the last straw, that led Wilders to resign from the party was its support for
Turkey’s potential EU membership. Wilders kept his seat in parliament,
and this helped him to continue to attract media attention.
Having left the VVD and influenced by his adviser, Bart Jan Spryut, as
well as by a study trip to the USA, Wilders first sought to appeal to voters
with slogans inspired by US intellectual neoconservatives, emphasising the
importance of education, among other things. Finding that this agenda
did not go down well with the electorate, he reverted to anti-immigration
and anti-Islam messages, which led to the establishment of the Party for
Freedom, formally founded in February 2006. In parliamentary elections
in the same year, the party won 5.9 per cent of the vote, and four years
later it became the third-largest Dutch party, with 15.5 per cent of the
vote. It managed to pull in slightly more than 10 per cent of the vote in
both of the elections that followed in 2012 and 2017 (see Table 5.1,
which also includes the party’s results in elections to the European
Parliament).
Table 5.1 Results for the Party for Freedom in national and European parlia-
mentary elections
DP EP DP DP EP DP EP
2006 2009 2010 2012 2014 2017 2019
Result (in per cent of 5.9 17.0 15.5 10.1 13.3 13.1 3.5
votes)
Source: Kiesraad (2019)

Note: DP Dutch Parliament (the Lower House), EP European Parliament
With his strong slogans, Wilders attracted attention. For example, he

described young Moroccan offenders as street terrorists; he demanded a
ban on the Quran, which he titled as a fascist book that promoted vio-
lence; he warned against a ‘tsunami of Islamisation and Muslims’, and
against the cultural relativism of the cosmopolitan Dutch elite, who he
alleged underestimated these threats and sold the interests of the common
people down the river. He drew an analogy between ignoring the threat of
Islam and the appeasement of fascism during the 1930s. Euroscepticism
became an important supplement to his new party’s ideology, largely
linked with opposition to labour migration from Central and Eastern
Europe. At the same time, Wilders remained partly within the liberal cur-
rent of Dutch politics, thanks to his accommodating stance towards wom-
en’s and gay rights (for more details on Wilders’s profile, see Vossen 2010,
2017: 24–25, 29–61; Akkerman 2016).
The Party for Freedom’s economic eclecticism, though intriguing, was
not a core topic in its agenda. While still a member of the VVD, Wilders
had established himself as an economic liberal, but the Party for Freedom
soon shifted towards a mixed socio-economic programme. For example,
as well as advocating lower taxes, before the 2010 elections the party
rejected proposed increases to the pension age and marketisation in the
healthcare sector. This attracted voters who appreciated the party’s anti-
immigration rhetoric but who tended to the left socio-economically (van
Kessel 2011). The paradox was that Wilders, originally a vocal critic of the
welfare state, suddenly became its defender.
A shift from opposition to support for Mark Rutte’s minority cabinet,
which, after the 2010 elections, was formed by the VVD and the Christian
Democrats, proved to be merely an episode in the history of the Party for
Freedom. It was made possible by the fact that Wilders emerged out of the
mainstream VVD and was not subject to a cordon sanitaire, as the Flemish
Bloc was in Belgium, for instance. Being a partner supporting the govern-
ment created better options for the party to promote some of its policy
proposals in parliament; yet it also brought substantial tension to the par-
ty’s parliamentary group, as it had to soften its anti-immigration rhetoric,
and there were also pressures on the party to democratise internally (see
below for details). Among the governing parties, too, cooperation with
the Party for Freedom created disagreements and objections. After less
than two years, Wilders decided to withdraw support from the govern-
ment, citing the cuts then being prepared for the following year’s budget,
which would affect ‘hard-working Dutch citizens’ (Vossen 2017: 75). The
subsequent early elections, in which the Party for Freedom lost seats,
showed that abandoning its previous role as a party manifestly in opposi-
tion had damaged its vote-winning potential.
The problems described, because of the uncertainty of its opposition
role, point to the vulnerability of Wilders’s party and its supporters’ sub-
stantial sensitivity to its position in the political system. This sensitivity was
evidently greater than was the case with entrepreneurial parties led by
Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich, described in a preceding chapter, which
employed a different, technocratic type of appeal.
This brings us to what secured for PVV the support of voters and long
durability. Its vote-seeking strategy was based on Wilders’s gripping media
performances, especially on TV. With the boom in the internet and espe-
cially in social networks, he gained valuable new channels of communica-
tion, of which he made very good use. By contrast, Wilders’s direct contact
with voters at rallies was very limited, as he was under constant police
protection due to concerns for his safety. In a way, this constant security
threat was a bonus for the party, as it created voter sympathy.
How to Create a Cohesive and Disciplined Party

Formally, the Party for Freedom had two founders—Wilders himself and
a foundation of which he was the sole member. This continues to be the
case today. The establishment of a party with virtually no members was
made possible by the liberalism of Dutch law, under which a party needs
only the legal form of a civic association to be registered (Andeweg 2012).
As we shall see in the case of Tomio Okamura’s Dawn, in Czechia the
conditions for party registration are only slightly more demanding—some-
thing that is important for the establishment of entrepreneurial parties of
this type.
Wilders’s decision not to have any members in his party was most likely
influenced by the rapid collapse of the party established by his political
predecessor, Pim Fortuyn, which Wilders may have had in mind when
founding the Party for Freedom. Fortuyn was the first politician in the
Netherlands to use anti-immigration slogans for political advantage; in
2002 his party polled 17 per cent of the vote, but shortly before the elec-
tions he was shot dead by a fanatical animal rights activist. Due to its hur-
ried emergence, Fortuyn’s party lacked cohesion after his death—its
members hardly knew each other and differed in their opinions. Internal
contradictions were further emphasised by the party’s involvement in a
coalition government, which necessitated quick decisions and consensus

on a range of practical matters. As the chair of the parliamentary party said
at the time, there was a ‘lack of willingness to achieve a common goal’ (De
Lange and Art 2011: 1237). Fortuyn’s party was therefore short-lived.
From this precedent Wilders learned about the risks that could come
from a party’s members. He initially refused to accept members at all, cit-
ing his concern about the danger of infiltration by right-wing extremists
and troublemakers; later his right-hand man Martin Bosma explained that
there was a need for clear leadership that was responsible to Dutch voters
only, and a mass-based membership supposedly had a ‘disruptive effect on
democracy’ (Mazzoleni and Voerman 2017: 787). Today, the Party for
Freedom still lacks members and has no local or regional branches; basi-
cally there is no party on the ground at all.
A related lesson from Fortuyn’s initiative was the effort at party cohe-
sion, linked with its slow and careful construction. The Party for Freedom’s
political personnel now largely consist of candidates for public office,
whom Wilders mostly seeks to choose himself. He makes sure his new-
comers are not ‘encumbered’ by previous stints with other political parties
and that they have professional experience. Typically, they are police offi-
cers, teachers, public prosecutors and the owners of shops, hotels and res-
taurants. He trains the candidates thoroughly, and this continues even
after they have won office. The axis around which the party has been built
is its parliamentary group around Wilders, who puts his substantial knowl-
edge of parliamentary practice to good use. He has been very careful to
oversee the activities of his MPs and to give them feedback on their parlia-
mentary appearances. Thus he has created a serried and professional-
looking parliamentary party. Wilders uses similar approaches to recruitment
and training in choosing candidates for other political offices, such as city
mayors. He has managed to impress on his party cadres a shared ethos and
a powerful sense of political mission.
The organisation of the Party for Freedom overall is strongly depen-
dent on Wilders’s zeal and his undeniable charisma. Loyalty to the leader
is an essential characteristic of party adherents; he not only determines the
party’s direction but also controls its MPs’ contacts with the media and
with other politicians. A similar relationship of loyalty and subordination
also exists among other party personnel, such as assistants, policy advisers
and press officers. Threats to Wilders’s security and the protective police
measures further strengthen the subculture characteristic of his party (De
Lange and Art 2011; Akkerman 2016; Vossen 2017).
Also involved in the party’s functioning are volunteers and supporters,

with private donors from the USA and Israel particularly important to its
funding. A party without members receives no membership fees and, in
the Netherlands, it gets no state subsidies as only parties with more than
1000 members are eligible for these. This is one of the reasons Wilders has
long called for the abolition of state funding for political parties.
Over the years, Wilders has built a stable hard core of party workers,
consisting of about eighty people (Vossen 2017: 106). He does not aim to
expand this group, and seeks to occupy only a limited number of public
offices locally and provincially in order to avoid his party becoming too
large in terms of the number of cadres and hence difficult to control.
Symptomatically, the early parliamentary elections in 2010 posed a prob-
lem for the leader; he had to compile the candidate list in some haste and
in choosing the candidates had to heed the opinions of the party’s other
MPs. Some of those chosen proved controversial before the elections, as
they found themselves on the wrong side of the law and had to be hur-
riedly removed from the list. After the 2010 elections, the problems con-
tinued, and some MPs were convicted of criminal offences. What is more,
thanks to success in the elections, the parliamentary party more than dou-
bled in size, to twenty-four members, creating an issue for the leader in
terms of effective control, as some MPs were critical of the party’s direc-
tion, particularly in its support for a centre-right minority government.
Full of enthusiasm, some newcomers demanded change, including greater
democracy in intraparty decision-making, weakening the leader’s domi-
nance and opening the party to members. The price the Party for Freedom
paid for eliminating dissent and troublemakers included losing some MPs
and damage to its public image (van Kessel 2011; De Lange and Art 2011;
Vossen 2017).
Dissent in the party, as well as controversy surrounding some of its poli-
ticians, continued later. Oscar Mazzoleni and Gerrit Voerman (2017: 787)
aptly noted: ‘As the representatives were not entitled to participate in the
internal decision-making process and in the absence of formal procedures
for resolving conflicts, disagreement within the party could easily escalate
and criticism often became personal, given Wilders’ erratic dominance
within the highly centralised and hierarchical party structure.’ The dissi-
dents left the Party for Freedom, and the organisation model remained
unchanged, however.
The story told here of a successful political entrepreneur in Dutch poli-
tics is not without clouds in the sky. In the spring 2019 European
elections, the Party for Freedom won only 3.5 per cent of the vote—that
is, much less than in earlier European and national elections—and no seats
(see Table 5.1). This sudden slump, which occurred despite the fact that
Wilders himself led the candidate list, was caused by the rise of the new,
thematically close Forum for Democracy, which stole much of Wilders’s
electorate (Margulies 2019). Like the Party for Freedom, the new party
worked with the issues of civilisational and economic threats allegedly
posed by migrants, and resistance to the EU, complementing this with
slogans promoting direct democracy. The charisma of its leader, Thierry
Baudet, and his ability to attract media attention played crucial roles in the
breakthrough—a perfect reflection of Wilders’s own rise. To many dissat-
isfied voters, Wilders simply became too stale and they decided to support
someone new, who would prove a bigger scare to the country’s political
elite (Bershidsky 2019). This provides a good illustration of a major weak-
ness of entrepreneurial parties without substantial territorial structure and
without members: their long-term success is vitally dependent on the
leader and the attractiveness of his political performance.
A CLOSED PARTY FAILED PROJECT: TOMIO OKAMURA’S

DAWN OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY
While Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands is a good example
of a well-thought-out design, where the founding father consistently
worked to keep his political personnel cohesive, the party project of Tomio
Okamura in Czechia is the opposite. This case is a perfect illustration of
how a political entrepreneur may destroy his own party.
Like the Party for Freedom, Okamura’s Dawn of Direct Democracy
(Úsvit přímé demokracie), or ‘Dawn’, was an entrepreneurial party with no
members and without business backing. However, unlike the Party for
Freedom, it was built precipitously, as had been Pim Fortuyn’s party from
which Wilders had learned so much. It is evident with hindsight that
Dawn was but the first stage in its founder Tomio Okamura’s political
career. Unlike Wilders, Okamura entered politics in middle age as a new-
comer with no prior political experience. Despite this, he quickly made a
breakthrough, first on his own by being elected to the Senate (the upper
chamber of the Czech parliament), which, thanks to its single-member
constituencies, allows individuals to participate. He then also succeeded as
the leader of a new party in the national elections. Okamura’s success was
greatly helped by the fact that, before embarking on a political career, he
had cultivated an image as a reasonably well-known, rich businessman

with exotic origins.
Okamura was born in 1972 in Tokyo, Japan, to a Japanese father and a
Czech mother, but grew up in what was then Czechoslovakia (and is
Czechia today). His Japanese (and also Korean) roots and appearance are
important elements in his life story, carefully crafted for public consump-
tion. Okamura likes to describe his younger self as a bullied boy who man-
aged to make it in business thanks to his diligence and good ideas. He
worked in tourism services for Japanese visitors to Prague and used his
eloquence and exotic allure to good effect as a spokesman and the media
face of an association of travel agents (Beranová 2010; Okamura and
Novák-Večerníček 2010; Kubát 2015). Thanks to his willingness to give
the media his opinion on pretty much any social issue and his appearances
on television programmes, including reality shows, he became a celebrity
of sorts in the decade before he entered politics. His blog, which had a
large audience, and biographies that described Okamura’s ‘Czech dream’
helped to develop his popularity.
Before announcing that he would enter politics, Okamura had little
involvement with it. Given his exotic origins and the fact that he originally
presented himself as an advocate of multiculturalism (e.g. he supported
the Miss Expat competition, an annual contest for the most beautiful
female foreigner in Czechia), his later expressions of xenophobia are
curious.
Okamura’s media exposure and popularity helped him to win a Senate
seat in the October 2012 elections as an independent. However, this vic-
tory was only a springboard for Okamura’s other political goals. In the
same month, he announced he would stand for president in the first direct
election to this post in the country (Okamura 2012). His candidacy was
stopped by the Ministry of the Interior, as some signatures on the petition
which candidates have to produce to be eligible for election were declared
invalid. This was later confirmed by a court judgement. Okamura made
political capital from his elimination from the contest, declaring this in his
anti-establishment rhetoric as interference with the popular will by a cor-
rupt elite. He described the presidential election in which he did not par-
ticipate as ‘manipulated’.
In connection with the campaign for the presidential election, Okamura
organised a string of discussion evenings in Czech towns and cities, where
he presented his protest image. At these meetings he criticised the political
system, corrupt parties supported by the judiciary and the mainstream
media, and called for the introduction of referenda and of a mechanism for
removing politicians from office. He obtained expert patronage from
Pavel Kohout, an economist well known for his media appearances, whose
book Dawn served Okamura in his criticism of the Czech political system
and gave him a name for his new party, announced in April 2013 (Kupka
2013a). Kohout and Okamura soon parted ways, however.
A ‘Flash in the Pan’ Party: Causes and Organisational Contexts

Czech law on association in political parties and political movements
requires at least three founding members and a petition signed by at least
a thousand supporters. Many regulations are addressed only in a general
manner (Filip 2003; Šimíček 2010). For instance, the party statutes must
list the rights and obligations of members, but further explanation is lack-
ing. Similarly, parties without democratic statutes or democratically
appointed bodies are prohibited, but a more precise legal specification of
what constitutes such parties is absent. Thus, what was originally
announced by Okamura as a ‘unified movement of anti-government initia-
tives’ (Kupka 2013b) could later take the form of an almost closed party,
comprising only nine founding members. These were Okamura’s closest
friends and collaborators, largely unknown to the general public. The
closed nature of the party and the informal relations between its members
facilitated preparations for the early elections unexpectedly called for in
October 2013, caused by the fall of Petr Nečas’s centre-right government.
At the same time, the closed nature of Dawn was presented as temporary.
Supporters and candidates were promised that they would obtain mem-
bership in the future and that local party structures would be built, and
this made Okamura’s project more attractive to them (Adam 2017; Zilvar
2017). Unlike in Wilders’s PVV, they had grounds for expecting that they
would be able to influence the party’s direction in the future.
Dawn’s organisational structure was very simple and the statutes were
designed to make Okamura’s personal responsibility for the political proj-
ect very clear (Zilvar 2017). Dawn had party bodies only at the national
level, and the statutes explicitly ruled out building a party on the ground.
Okamura was voted the party chair—the Czech equivalent of leader—for
the very long period of five years, and there was no formal option to
remove him. His powers included deciding on all matters that were not
reserved for other bodies, and he had ‘general responsibility for the party’s
activities between the sittings of its Congress’, formally the supreme body
of the party made up of all its members, which was convoked annually
(Statutes Úsvit 2013). The leader’s strong role was further reinforced by
his veto on admitting new members and any change to the statutes. He
and the party secretary were the party’s statutory body, and the chair on
his own could sign contracts worth up to €400,000, which in time proved
a very explosive topic in the party (Úsvit 2015). In addition to the super-
strong position of the party chair, the statutes envisaged the creation of a
five-strong Committee, which was more of a complementary body, staffed
by the leader’s close friends and handling the organisational work for all
elections. The Committee required a strong consensus in order to func-
tion, as four of the five members had to vote in favour for any decision to
be carried.
The thorough selection and personal training of candidates, which
proved its worth in the Party for Freedom, was unrealistic in Dawn due to
time pressure—the early elections were held only a few months after the
party’s foundation. Like the Netherlands, Czechia uses a proportional
electoral system, but unlike in the former, candidate lists need to be com-
piled not for one but for fourteen constituencies, whose boundaries cor-
respond to those of the country’s regions. This is no mean feat for a new
party lacking facilities. It was an informal circle of people around the
leader—over and above the members of the Committee—that decided
who would take the most attractive positions at the top of the candidate
lists. The selection was often based on Okamura’s personal contacts. There
were criteria, though they were vaguely applied: regional leaders were
expected to broadly chime in with Dawn’s goals, especially the notion of
direct democracy, and to have at least some backing and popularity in the
given region, which was important for campaigning (Zilvar 2017).
Sometimes the selection of candidate list leaders seemed more or less ran-
dom. For example, in the largely rural constituency of Vysočina, the leader
chosen was a local radio anchor who had conducted an interview with
Okamura and ‘seemed sympathetic’ (Adam 2017).
When Dawn’s candidate lists were created, candidates’ prior political
engagement in no way disqualified them, which was in sharp contrast to
Wilders’s opposite approach. In several regions, Dawn helped itself to the
candidates of Public Affairs, an entrepreneurial party that had succeeded
in the previous elections in 2010, but fell apart soon after (details in Chap.
3). Indeed, the leader of Public Affairs, the scandal-festooned Vít Bárta,
took the top place on the candidate list in one constituency, but failed in
the elections. The nomination of Public Affairs’ leader created the
suspicion that Dawn was Bárta’s new ‘investment’ project. Despite his
public presentation as a rich businessman, Okamura’s actual private
resources were very limited, and the funding of his electoral campaign
probably mostly came from other sources, including Bárta. The funding
of Dawn’s campaign was not transparent and cannot be mapped out with
any precision (Bastlová 2017; Pšenička 2017). Testifying to Bárta’s origi-
nally influential role is the fact that he was also a member of the informal
circle, noted above, which decided the leaders of candidate lists in the
regions. After the elections, Okamura started to distance himself from
Bárta (Adam 2017; Zilvar 2017).
Candidates on the lower rungs of the lists, who stood no real chance of
being elected to parliament, were recruited from the ranks of Okamura’s
many fans. The leader did not interfere in their selection; recruitment was
managed by the party secretary or other people surrounding Okamura.
Media training was the only schooling the candidate-list leaders received.
The systematic socialisation of candidates, in which Geert Wilders invested
so much time and energy in his party, was absent in Dawn.
With its centralism and absolute focus on the figure of the leader,
Dawn’s electoral campaign was similar to those run by the Party for
Freedom. There was a substantial difference, however, in Okamura’s strong
personal presence at rallies throughout Czechia. The campaign used virtu-
ally no external services, and its content was prepared by the leader and a
few people around him, and in consequence it was cheap (Šíma 2014;
Zilvar 2017). Contributing to the cost savings was the fact that, like
Wilders, Okamura started to use social networks extensively, creating one
of the largest—and most ardent—followings of all Czech politicians (Císař
and Štětka 2017). Okamura also exploited so-called alternative platforms,
which were websites disseminating unverified content and, often, outright
disinformation (their owners were various and not always known).
In his programme, Okamura developed his anti-establishment rhetoric.
He placed his bets on the public’s frustration with politics. He painted an
image of a dysfunctional political system controlled by mafia-infiltrated
political parties that sought only to maintain their hold on power and take
money from the public purse. The establishment, the Dawn leader argued,
ignored the will of the people and dissuaded them from participating in
politics. The salve to these problems would be direct democracy: universal
referendums and the power to remove politicians and public servants. The
party spiced up its calls for institutional change with racism that targeted
in particular the Roma minority, unpopular with many Czechs. Okamura
skilfully used his life story to deflect his critics, arguing that as someone
who had been discriminated against in childhood, he could not be racist
himself (Okamura 2013). The other appeals in his programme—such as
inconsistently looking pro-business and, at the same time, socialising pro-
posals, or suggestions of nationalist appeals in culture and education—
remained of marginal importance.
Okamura’s appeals for the 2013 elections were quite different from
those that populist radical right parties usually deployed in Western
Europe—typically, anti-immigration and Eurosceptic appeals. This differ-
ence can be explained by the contemporary Czech context. The topic of
migration and cultural threat was, as yet, virtually absent from the Czech
public discourse at the time, and the public was not particularly interested
in the EU either. By contrast, corruption and calls for institutional change
in the political system strongly resonated in Czech society during the 2010
parliamentary election campaign, which brought the Public Affairs party
to parliament. Frustration in society and mistrust in politics and political
institutions increased as Petr Nečas’s centre-right government found itself
engulfed by scandals; this was also a time of economic recession, accompa-
nied by high unemployment and social issues. As a consequence of this,
numerous protests and rallies called for change in the political system. The
circumstances of the Nečas government’s fall were also important: the
police raided the Government Office, arresting his chief of staff (and lover)
as well as several former MPs of government parties and senior officers in
the military intelligence agency. The atmosphere of political unrest was
then made worse by the instalment by the president of Jiří Rusnok’s tech-
nocratic government, which ruled with no parliamentary confidence
(Brunclík and Kubát 2019: 82).
In the 2013 parliamentary elections, Dawn polled 6.9 per cent of the
vote. Testifying to the key role of the leader in this success was the fact that
Okamura received nearly a quarter of the preferential votes awarded to
Dawn candidates and that according to polls he was the second most
trustworthy politician in the country at the time of the elections (CVVM
2013a). Considering how Dawn’s candidates were chosen, the fourteen-
strong parliamentary party was extremely varied. Only four Dawn mem-
bers became MPs. The rest either were connected with Public Affairs or
were non-partisans. Most of the MPs were political newcomers, and since
they had not been trained or socialised, there was a substantial risk that
they would lose their loyalty to the party, posing a massive challenge to
the leader.
Before the election Okamura declared that Dawn would not seek gov-
ernment posts and would remain in opposition, and this made eminent
sense, given the party’s strong anti-establishment rhetoric. Thus he
avoided exposing the party to internal pressures and disputes that would
surely have ensued had the party compromised by participating in a coali-
tion government. Despite this, quarrels started immediately after the elec-
tions; these were due to Dawn’s organisational character and especially to
its MPs’ unrest. The MPs and many supporters, naturally, wanted to
become party members after the elections; and though Okamura
announced plans to open the party and promised a change in the statutes,
for many months nothing happened, and many supporters lost interest in
Dawn. The MPs’ attempts to strengthen their positions vis-à-vis the party
leadership, too, came pretty much to nought (Adam 2017).
Okamura started to steer his party away from anti-establishment appeals
and to embrace the anti-immigration theme of the extreme right. Because
he failed to discuss the changes with his MPs, who often refused to iden-
tify with them, internal pressures in the party grew. To give an idea of this
change of agenda: in the spring 2014 elections to the European Parliament,
Dawn published a controversial poster, inspired by a campaign by Swiss
nationalists, in which white sheep were shown pushing a black one out of
the Czech flag. The campaign also included slogans against employing
foreigners and—no change here—the Roma (Kopecký 2014). Dawn
flopped in the European elections, polling a mere 3.1 per cent of the vote,
thus failing to cross the 5 per cent threshold necessary to win seats. Despite
this, the rejection of immigrants would continue to be the major topic for
Okamura in the future (Křtínová 2018).
Following this failure was another debacle in the local elections in late
2014, caused by shrinking support for the party and Okamura’s lack of
interest in local politics. Unlike Wilders, Okamura thought he could gain
support in most cities; but the quickly-put-together Dawn candidate lists,
which were unable to offer any programme tailored to local circumstances,
proved unsuccessful.
This was followed by a collapse in loyalty to the leader. When in January
2015 Okamura published a xenophobic piece on his Facebook profile,
calling for people to walk pigs near mosques and to boycott kebab shops,
the party’s foreign policy expert publicly criticised him and refused to be
involved any longer in formulating the party’s foreign policy. The
Committee’s announcement that party representatives would have to have
their foreign policy proclamations approved by the party leadership and
the parliamentary party group (Klang 2015; Zilvar 2017) could be read in
a similar vein. The dissatisfaction of most MPs with Okamura’s supremacy
in the party was also manifest in the replacement of the parliamentary
party leader, Radim Fiala, who was loyal to Okamura. His successor,
Marek Č ernoch, who would soon become the protagonist of an anti-
Okamura revolt in the party, set out a new vision of team collaboration,
exemplifying the attempts to push the leader into the background
(Aktuálně 2015).
In the intraparty conflict that developed, financial scandals played a
major role. Thanks to its result in the parliamentary election, the party
obtained a sizeable state subsidy, but it had weak controls over the leader’s
handling of this money. In spring 2014, the media highlighted possible
irregularities in the party’s bookkeeping, citing several tens of thousands
of euros that had moved from Dawn’s finances to Tomio Okamura’s per-
sonal account. Okamura explained these transfers as expenditure on mar-
keting and media consultancy, or as repayment of a loan he had granted to
the party to contest the European and Senate elections. Later investiga-
tion showed that money continued to flow from the party’s coffers to
Okamura and several other members of the Committee, and in February
2015, the participants at a party congress noted, evidently shocked, that
the ‘available finances until the end of the electoral term are nil’ (Lidovky
2015a)—this undermined the leader’s position for good.
In the ongoing dispute, Dawn’s anti-Okamura wing managed to obtain
a narrow majority in the nine-strong party membership. Despite Okamura’s
resistance, the February 2015 party congress voted to create a new party,
which the MPs would join; this would be open to new members and hence
terminate the closed character of the party. Indeed, it would spell an end
to the leader’s position and represent the radical emancipation of the party
from his influence. The leader described the result of the congress vote as
the ‘completion of a party putsch’ (Lidovky 2015b). It was followed by
the expulsion of Okamura and Fiala from the Dawn parliamentary party,
creating for a brief while a curious situation in which the party chair was
not a member of the parliamentary party. Okamura and Fiala responded in
May 2015 by leaving Dawn and founding a new party, Freedom and
Direct Democracy, for which they chose a somewhat different organisa-
tional strategy, as described in the next chapter.
From its inception to its leader’s departure, Dawn had lasted for a mere
three years, and for its poor longevity it can be aptly described as a ‘flash-
in-the-pan’ party. The Dawn did not long outlive the departure of its
founding father; the disputes continued, the support vanished, most of the
remaining MPs left the party and, after failing to contest the next parlia-
mentary elections, it vanished.
The foregoing text analysed two entrepreneurial parties of the same type:
in which the political entrepreneur lacked substantial financial or other
resources and at the same time gave up on building a membership and
extensive organisational structure. The results of their projects were very
different, however. Whereas the Western European example—Wilders’s
Party for Freedom—shows the successful establishment and survival of
such a party, the example from East-Central Europe—Okamura’s Dawn—
resulted in rapid collapse.
Important for the political rise of both political entrepreneurs was their
personal charisma and eccentricity, which attracted media attention. Anti-
establishment rhetoric was the dominant feature of both Wilders and
Okamura, even if they used different issues to appeal to their voters: the
former mainly focused on resistance to immigration and Islam, while the
latter highlighted direct democracy. This rhetoric exploited the dissatisfac-
tion and political alienation of the electorate—this was combined with
flexibility on the less important issues. As time went by, Okamura attempted
to shift his emphasis from direct democracy to denouncing immigration,
but was unable to convince even some of his collaborators of the salience
of this issue for the electorate, thus contributing to an escalation of dis-
putes within his party.
As both politicians lacked finance of their own, they had to search for
alternative sources. Wilders based his tactic on obtaining money from pri-
vate donors, especially from abroad. The foundation of Okamura’s Dawn
was funded from opaque sources. But this lack of transparency in financ-
ing, and especially the leader’s free, uncontrolled management of party
finances, was one of the factors that accelerated the implosion of Okamura’s
project.
In devising the organisation of their parties, both founders proceeded
on the basis of the undemanding laws of their countries, which gave large
space for the creativity of the party leaders. Thus, Wilders’s party could
consist of a sole member (technically, his foundation was another).
Okamura’s had to have at least three members, but actually there were a
few more. Similarly essential for the parties’ construction was the
dominant position of their leader, who could decide everything that mat-
tered, including the choice of candidates for public offices and financial
affairs. In Dawn, where there were other bodies besides the leader, the
formal and informal procedures were nevertheless set up in such a way as
to give the leader nearly unlimited power. The statutes anticipated the
central position of the leader. The party’s organs—indeed the whole body
of the party—consisted of the leader’s close friends and collaborators. But
at a moment of crisis, exacerbated by scandals and controversies engulfing
Okamura, it transpired that his power in Dawn had its limits. Acting under
the pressure created by the crisis in the party, some of his original faithful
turned against him, and the statutes allowed them to act contrary to
Okamura’s will, to the extent that he felt compelled to leave the party.
Wilders’s decision not to admit any members apart from himself proved a
more effective way of pacifying dissent.
Viewed through the lens of Harmel and Svåsand’s three-phase model
of party institutionalisation, both Wilders and Okamura proved their qual-
ities as creators and capable political preachers, and both secured success
for their parties in the first phase when supporters were beginning to iden-
tify with it (see Table 5.2). But in the second phase, in which the organ-
isational role of the leader is crucial, Wilders succeeded whereas Okamura
failed. Thus it would be meaningless to discuss the third phase—stabilisa-
tion—with respect to Okamura’s Dawn; the party collapsed before the
leader could even consider promoting his party as a partner acceptable to
other parties. Wilders, too, faced problems in the third phase, when his
inclusion of the Party for Freedom into the parliamentary backing of a
minority government created enormous tensions and a crisis in the party.
Despite this, the Party for Freedom, at least partly managed to get beyond
the position of an isolated actor.
This shows an important difference between the two parties, which
manifested itself in the organisational skills of their leaders; we might eval-
uate this in more detail. In connection with the Party for Freedom, De
Lange and Art (2011) defined best practice for a leader who wishes to
build a party with no members and a good chance of long-term survival.
The leader must be strong in internal leadership and use strategies for the
recruitment, training and socialisation of party candidates. Internal leader-
ship capabilities include—beyond a charismatic personality—a necessary
‘authoritarian leadership style and organizational talent, as well as practical
leadership skills’. The leader should be able to run a developing organisa-
tion, communicate with party activists and politicians, and choose suitable
Table 5.2 The evolution of institutionalisation in the Party for Freedom

and Dawn
Political Identification Organisation (organiser) Stabilisation
party/phase (creator and (stabiliser)
and leader preacher)
role
Geert The leader’s Successfully managed, with a Partially successful,

Wilders’s successfully particular focus on socialisation the attempt to
Party for managed anti- and cohesion of the break down
Freedom establishment parliamentary party and party political isolation
message that largely activists had negative
used anti- consequences
immigration and inside the party
anti-Islam appeals
Tomio The leader’s The leader’s failure to organise
Okamura’s successfully and improve coherence of the
Dawn managed anti- parliamentary party; the
establishment activists’ expectation that a
message that party structure with members
particularly used the would be created was not met;
topic of direct the destruction of party
democracy organisation was accelerated by
financial scandals and other
controversies of the leader
Source: Authors
candidates and employees. A strong leader should have the ‘ability to

organise the party’s internal life, keep factions together, and discipline
activists when necessary’ (De Lange and Art 2011: 1233). Whereas
Wilders did have these qualities, Okamura did not. Before founding the
Party for Freedom, Wilders had had an extensive political career and expe-
rience, from which he learned how party and parliamentary politics
worked. By contrast, Okamura was a political newcomer, and despite his
charisma, which managed to secure parliamentary seats for Dawn, he
lacked the necessary practical leadership skills to maintain his party.
During the hurried formation of his party, Okamura neglected to
arrange the selection and socialisation of party activists and candidates,
unlike Wilders, who invested much effort and time in these processes.
Okamura was involved in selecting only the leaders of the candidate lists in
regions, and given the short time that elapsed between founding the party
and election day, he did not train his candidates and did not work with
supporters at all. He was unable to prepare his candidates—most of them
political novices like himself—for a future in parliamentary politics. The
result was an incoherent group of MPs with various ideas who were unable
to keep a united line. Even after the election, when he was no longer pres-
surised by time, Okamura failed to strengthen the cohesion of his parlia-
mentary party and work with its supporters.
What is more, in terms of internal party functioning, at the beginning
Okamura short-sightedly raised great expectations as to the future expan-
sion of the party’s membership and territorial structure. After the elec-
tions, this created, almost as a matter of course, an enormous pressure of
activists, MPs and even some members against the principle of keeping the
party closed. Internal dissent was made stronger by the leader’s inability
and unwillingness to negotiate and convince. Not only was Okamura
unable to resolve the conflict in his party organisation; he was its
very source.
Unlike Wilders, whose leadership of the Party for Freedom was never
questioned, Okamura did not build internal loyalty to make his position
similarly strong. Wilders also never made his party as vulnerable as
Okamura did. Although Dawn members were aware that Okamura’s per-
sonality was very important for electoral success, a sharp decline in voter
support and financial scandals ultimately outweighed in their thinking the
benefits of Okamura’s leadership. In Wilders’s party, the critics left; in
Okamura’s, it was the leader himself who had to leave.
The siphoning off of funds from Dawn by the leader and his lack of
interest in creating and maintaining a network of supporters and activists
also show that Okamura understood Dawn primarily as a vehicle to access
the top echelons of politics and as an instrument for the private ‘mining’
of state financial subsidies. Once internal problems escalated, the project
ceased to be useful to him. The long-term existence of Dawn probably
never was his main priority.
It is worth noting that despite obvious institutional progress, Wilders’s
party suffers from an Achilles heel similar to Dawn’s: it depends on the
founding father to maintain its electorate. Organisational cohesion in itself
cannot ensure that voters will remain faithful to the party if it suddenly
loses its leader or his popularity with supporters declines.
CHAPTER 6
How to Build a Party Organisation Without

Financial Capital
This chapter analyses the parties of political entrepreneurs who had virtu-
ally no financial resources of their own and developed extensive organisa-
tions. The decision to build such an organisation without commanding
major financial resources poses certain risks for the founder-leader. The
creation of organisational structures at the lower levels of politics transfers
decision-making and may dilute power beyond the leader’s inner circle.
Furthermore, insufficient private finance, implied by the lack of a com-
mercial firm, limits the founder-leader, who cannot simply apply the ANO
leader Andrej Babiš’s watchword, ‘I pay, I decide’. The necessity to scrape
money together to launch the political project also poses a challenge in
terms of organising election campaigns, and sometimes even motivates
political entrepreneurs to use ‘creative accounting’, that is, non-transparent
funding. The build-up of party membership, without enjoying the benefit
of loyal cadres produced by the parent commercial firm, requires a sub-
stantial personal effort on the part of the leader to create a solid organisa-
tion. Yet, if successful, such recruitment drives and work on educating the
cadres can have a positive influence on the party’s long-term prospects of
survival.
This chapter presents three political entrepreneurs who made it with
their parties into national parliaments: Carl I. Hagen’s Progress Party in
Norway, Paweł Kukiz and his Kukiz’15 in Poland, and Okamura’s second
party project, Freedom and Direct Democracy in Czechia. In this chapter
we first present the leaders’ personal histories, the stories of their parties,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_6
their appeals and the strategies of the leaders regarding the parties’ organ-
isational structures. Like those parties examined in Chap. 5, all of the par-
ties analysed here used an anti-establishment rhetoric to appeal to voters
and took radical, even extreme, positions. Yet the different political con-
texts of their countries and the different times in which they emerged
ultimately affected the issues chosen by the parties as well as their dissemi-
nation strategies. The legal environments and, sometimes, the leaders’
contacts influenced the options available to parties in terms of funding and
political communication with the general public. In terms of the parties’
long-term survival, crucial roles were played by decisions concerned with
building organisation structure and an emphasis on disciplining the party
cadres. As we shall show, all entrepreneurs sought to create centralised
organisations under their leadership, though these differed in the extent of
the attention they afforded to the business of recruiting and socialising
their cadres, and this was reflected in the parties’ chances of long-term
survival.
The chapter first focuses on a Western European example and shows an
interesting organisational change that occurred in the Progress Party.
Founded by Anders Lange as a small undisciplined party, it was trans-
formed under a new leader, Carl I. Hagen, into an extremely centralist and
authoritatively led mass organisation positioned on the anti-immigration
topic. With a new leader, the Progress Party established itself as a perma-
nent and relevant actor in Norwegian politics. Hagen’s use of the old idea
of a mass party in revised form provides the key for understanding the
party’s long-term success.
After Norway, we look to Poland, where in the 2010s, after the one-off
success of Palikot’s Movement analysed in Chap. 3, a formation around
the punk-rock frontman Paweł Kukiz was established with lightning speed.
But Kukiz’s attempt to give his project a solid institutional shape paradoxi-
cally contrasted with his vigorous rejection of political parties as such. His
outfit, called Kukiz’15, thus formally operated as a civic association under
the centralised power of its leader. Although it has not been functioning
long enough to be called a success comparable to the Norwegian Progress
Party, Kukiz’15 is certainly an interesting case, thanks to the originality of
its political and organisational strategy.
The last party discussed in this chapter is Tomio Okamura’s Freedom
and Direct Democracy in Czechia. This project was informed by Okamura’s
experience with its predecessor, the Dawn of Direct Democracy, which
was based on the concept of a closed, virtually memberless, party, whose
6 HOW TO BUILD A PARTY ORGANISATION WITHOUT FINANCIAL CAPITAL 141
quick rise and equally quick collapse are analysed in Chap. 5. After that
experience, Okamura opted for a much more robust political enterprise
with a firm organisational basis, some traits of which suggest that mass
parties inspired him.
THE NORWEGIAN PROGRESS PARTY:

FROM A FREE-WHEELING, INDIGNANT DOG-KENNEL
OWNER TO A CENTRALIST LEADER
In the September 1973 Norwegian parliamentary election, the party
recently founded by Anders Lange, who owned a dog kennel, created a
shock: surprisingly, it took 5 per cent of the vote and 4 seats. This was the
first party to make a parliamentary breakthrough in several decades. At the
time of founding his party, Lange was nearly seventy and had no prior
governmental or other significant political career; his only connection with
politics was that he had been a member of the centre-right Conservatives
for many years. Yet he was very interested in politics, and combined the
dog magazine he published with a political newsletter. Lange had a gift for
oration; he was able to express his indignation about the situation in the
country in simple terms, both at rallies and on television, which he man-
aged to reach before the elections. He inveighed against the actions of
politicians, who, he alleged, had lost contact with their voters; he was dis-
satisfied with tax increases and the extensive welfare state, which he
thought excessive; and he said that the foreign development aid granted
by Norway was simply a waste of money.
Establishing a protest party reliant on his own personality, he projected
these characteristics into its long name: Anders Lange’s Party for a Strong
Reduction in Taxes, Duties and Public Intervention (Anders Langes Parti
til sterk nedsettelse av skatter, avgifter og offentlige inngrep). The party was
launched at a rally that filled a cinema in the capital, Oslo, in April 1973.
Thus was born a political project led by a charismatic political preacher,
who was followed by a crowd of enthusiastic supporters (Harmel and
Svåsand 1993; Widfeldt 2015).
Lange was lucky because his message chimed with the dissatisfied mood
of some voters, especially those who until then had voted for the
Conservatives. The centre-right Conservative-led government was unable
to fulfil its promises of reducing taxation and public expenditure. Lange’s
political breakthrough was also facilitated by the referendum on whether
Norway should join the European Communities, held shortly before the
elections. The pro-integration enthusiasm of nearly the entire political
elite contrasted sharply with the much more sceptical view of the voters,
who rejected accession by a narrow majority. This disharmony and weak-
ening of voter loyalty towards traditional party elites opened a window of
opportunity for Lange’s party.
However, the indignant dog-kennel owner did not want to create a
political party based on hierarchy and clear rules, but rather something
that in its free and spontaneous character would be a protest movement.
This had an impact on parliamentary politics, where Lange was seen as an
unpredictable character. The workings of his party were therefore accom-
panied by chaos, and disputes soon erupted, because many disagreed with
the leader’s rejection of regular party organisation. This ended in the cre-
ation of a new secessionist party. In the midst of this looming political
collapse, the founding father died of a heart attack in late 1974 and his
party lost its parliamentary seats in the next election. It seemed as if its life
too was ending.
But the party was resuscitated by Carl Ivar Hagen. Originally an infor-
mal party secretary, Hagen left the party due to Lange’s resistance to party
organisation (Harmel et al. 2018: 57) and returned after the death of the
founding father. In 1978, he became its leader—a post he would hold for
nearly a quarter of a century—and quickly established an unshakeable
position for himself. Hagen was crucial for the party, not just for his sub-
stantial communication abilities, particularly in television debates, but also
in other respects. Following the model of a Danish party of similar out-
look, Hagen renamed the outfit Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet, FrP),
giving it broader neoliberal ideological appeal. In 1981, it was able to
make a parliamentary comeback.
Regaining re presentation and thus surviving as a parliamentary party
was facilitated by Norway’s proportional electoral system, which did not
have a threshold—similar to the Netherlands, for instance. In contrast to
the Netherlands, Norway does not have one large constituency, but 19
small constituencies, which nonetheless creates a barrier to the entry of
parties into parliament, and usually also decreases the number of seats won
by small parties.
The 1989 election was as surprising as the one in 1973, because
Hagen’s party polled 13 per cent of the vote and, with 22 MPs (in the
165-strong parliament), became the third-largest Norwegian party after
Labour and the Conservatives. Though in the next elections in 1993 it
Table 6.1 Election results of FrP, or Anders Lange’s Party, in parliamentary

elections
Year 1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2001 2005 2009 2013 2017
Result (in 5.0 1.9 4.5 3.7 13.0 6.3 15.3 14.6 22.1 22.9 16.3 15.2
per cent of
votes)
Sources: Caramani (2000) and Norway (2019)
suffered a slump linked with intraparty wrangling, this was a one-off; and
from there FrP grew from a medium-sized party with 15.3 per cent of the
vote (1997) to a large party with 22.1 per cent (2005) and 22.9 per cent
(2009) (Table 6.1). The major electoral breakthrough in the late 1980s
was linked with the increasing salience of the topics of asylum seekers and
immigration, which Hagen was able to exploit, and which decreased the
importance of the traditional cleavages in Norway’s politics (Bjørklund
and Saglie 2004). Although FrP had sporadically played the immigration
card before, now Hagen used this theme pragmatically and much more
intensively. The self-presentation of FrP as the only party opposing immi-
gration, which ‘told the truth’ and valiantly combated the political cor-
rectness that concealed the negative aspects of immigration, nevertheless
faced resistance from a libertarian faction in the party, who opposed this
political agenda. But the Hagen leadership forced the major figures of this
faction to leave in 1994, even though it meant losing some MPs and the
populous youth section of the party, from which the faction had particu-
larly strong backing.
The character of FrP’s anti-immigration appeal was not essentially dif-
ferent from that of the other radical right-wing parties analysed in this
book—for instance, Wilders’s PVV in the Netherlands and Okamura’s
Freedom and Direct Democracy in Czechia. FrP employed the classic
argument of cultural threat and linked it with security and law-and-order
issues. Sometimes implementing the agenda involved making mistakes, as,
for instance, in the early days of the party’s anti-immigration agitation
before the 1987 local elections. At that time, Hagen publicly quoted from
a ‘letter from Mustafa’, which he had received, and which disclosed a ‘con-
spiracy among Muslim immigrants planning to take over in Norway’
(Widfeldt 2015: 97). The letter, however, was shown to be a hoax, and the
FrP leader was ridiculed.
This xenophobic radicalism climaxed in the second half of the 1990s,

when FrP even maintained contacts with hardcore extremists. Later, the
party’s xenophobia decreased, as part of Hagen’s effort to break down the
party’s isolation from other parties at the national level and to become
part of the executive (Jupskås 2016a). It is worth noting that, unlike the
Euroscepticism that is common among other radical right parties, FrP did
not take a clearly negative stance towards the EU; like most major
Norwegian parties, it was divided on the issue.1
Essential for the attractiveness of FrP was the skilful reformulation of its
economic programme, undertaken as part of adjusting its anti-immigration
positions. The party continued to insist that taxes be reduced; the resources
were to be found by reducing the outgoings on asylum seekers, migration
and development aid, as well as from the income from oil extraction,
which had brought substantial revenues to Norway since the late twenti-
eth century. FrP also moderated its originally sharply negative view of the
welfare state and defended health and care benefits, especially for elderly
people. Thus, it shifted from economic neoliberalism to welfare chauvin-
ism. Though the party remained on the right of the political spectrum, it
managed to win over voters who previously supported the Social
Democrats, and became very attractive to labourers and pensioners
(Wagschal 1998: 75; Aardal 1998: 378; Heidar 2005: 827).
This carefully conceived ‘proletarianisation’ of FrP was perfectly
described in David Art’s commentary (2011: 160):
It is no coincidence that the FrP opened its party headquarters directly next
to those of the Labour Party in Youngstorget in Oslo, the historical and
symbolic heart of the Norwegian labour movement. In the 1997 parliamen-
tary election campaign, the banner hanging from the Labour Party’s head-
quarters read, ‘Sick and Elderly First’, while that of the FrP’s read, ‘Elderly
and Sick First’.
The Successful Establishment of a Mass Organisation

in the Postmodern Era
More important for this book than FrP’s competition with the Social
Democrats is the inspiration that Hagen took from the latter party’s
organisation strategy, more precisely its historical character. Even before
FrP’s electoral breakthrough, Hagen decided to build a strong mass-party
organisation, able to campaign at all levels of Norwegian politics
(Art 2011). The extensive grassroots backing that was thus created was
crucial for the long-term existence of the party and for increasing its elec-
toral support. From the moment he became party leader, Hagen criss-
crossed the country, creating party structures. While in 1973 the party had
only 50 local branches, by 1990 they were established in more than half of
the country’s 448 municipalities (Harmel et al. 2018: 57–58). FrP became
established at the local level in municipal elections: in the second half of
the 1970s, the party won less than 1 per cent of the vote (and 41 council-
lors); in 1983, it was more than 5 per cent (and 377 councillors); while in
1987, the party won over 10 per cent (and 763 councillors). This rise
foreshadowed a major success in the 1989 parliamentary election (Jupskås
2016b: 164). Analogically, FrP established itself at a higher level of self-
governance: the counties.
The growth trend in local branches and improved local electoral perfor-
mance relied on a boom in the number of party members: between 1973
and 1981, this increased tenfold from the original thousand, and in 1989
the party had nearly 17,000 members. However, this included members
who did not pay dues, so these numbers must be assessed carefully and are
only indicative, because the number of paying members—those important
for the party finances—was substantially smaller. Great emphasis was
placed on recruiting members. The party centre encouraged competition
between local branches and awarded points for every paying member;
points were totalled to produce branch ratings (Mjelde 2008: 29, 61–64).
The ideological conflict in the party, which resulted in the expulsion of
the libertarian wing in 1994, decreased the number of local branches and
members. Fewer than 11,000 members remained in the party, out of
which fewer than 4000 were paying. FrP responded by an intensive nation-
wide recruitment drive, and in 1999 pushed membership up to nearly
14,000 (out of which 11,000 were paying) and 289 local branches. In the
years that followed, the party headquarters continuously emphasised to
the regional and local organisations the importance of being active, and
each member was tasked with recruiting prospective supporters. Thanks
to these efforts, in 2007 the party had nearly 24,000 members (21,000
paying) and 358 local branches. FrP was therefore able to create candidate
lists for local elections in most Norwegian municipalities and to obtain
relatively stable electoral results at this level of politics. An important seg-
ment of the new membership was young and university educated, and
understood membership as a career opportunity (Art 2011: 163–164;
Jupskås 2016b: 167–169). This organisational boom contrasted sharply
with the situation in other Norwegian parties, including the Social

Democrats, who were losing members at the time.
In response to the 1994 shake-up, the party became more professional.
FrP took advantage of state programmes for funding political education
and tutored its members intensively. This training was not compulsory for
party cadres, but it was attractive, because participation led to better places
on local party lists in elections. This political education was considered the
most developed among Norwegian parties (Art 2011).
Unlike the classic conception of a mass party, FrP created only some
collateral organisations. This included a youth and senior organisation but
not, say, a women’s or students’ wing. But FrP was differentiated from a
classic mass party much more fundamentally by another aspect: the con-
figuration of its intraparty mechanisms and the position of the inner lead-
ership. In contrast to Lange’s vision of a loose movement with no hierarchy,
Hagen had undertaken a true organisational revolution. This might not
be immediately apparent from the structure of the party bodies, which
corresponded to the administrative division of the country and was not
fundamentally different from most other Norwegian parties. Local
branches sent delegates to meetings at the county level, which then sent
delegates to the party congress, defined in the statutes as the party’s high-
est authority. In addition, there was an executive committee, and a broader
body, the national council, which included members of the executive com-
mittee, MPs and chairs of county branches. But during the building of this
structure, Hagen imprinted some abnormal centralist traits onto it, which
are sometimes compared to the ‘democratic centralism’ of Marxist-
Leninist parties (Widfeldt 2015). This abnormal centralisation was
achieved by amending the party statutes in response to internal divisions,
and with the aim of reinforcing top-down control over territorial and
other party units.
In the 1980s, a rule was pushed through that allowed members of the
executive committee to take part in meetings of local and county branches
and to table proposals there (Harmel et al. 2018: 58). In the early 1990s,
there were other amendments to the statutes and all members and party
units were obliged to comply with the decisions of the central party. This
also held true for collateral party organisations. During the 1994 conflict,
when Hagen decided to rid himself of the libertarian faction, he used this
provision to pacify the youth organisation associated with the faction.2 A
similar approach to subordination was taken to MPs and the populous
parliamentary group, at whose meetings the executive committee and the

national council were represented (Jupskås 2016b: 172).
The emphasis on loyalty and strict discipline was also apparent from the
executive committee’s power to ‘sanction those who infringed on a good
organisational culture’ (Jupskås 2016b: 173). The instruments for expel-
ling members were very specific; in addition to the usual measures, at the
turn of the century a special clause was adopted. If the executive commit-
tee decided that a party’s representative in public office or a rank member
acted against the interests of the party, such a member would be deemed
to have resigned their membership (Widfeldt 2015: 105).
In reality, this tool allowed Hagen to get rid of undesirable members
without formalities—merely because they disagreed with an executive
committee decision. The leader used this power to quash intraparty dis-
sent. Such dissent continued to appear in the party after 1994, though its
motivation was different from the resistance of the libertarian faction. In
the early 2000s, the most common form of opposition was resistance to
Hagen’s pragmatic moderation of the party’s radical anti-immigration
course, in the interests of breaking the party’s political isolation and shed-
ding its pariah image. Some extremist FrP members, who disagreed with
this, had to leave the party. Thus, Hagen built a strong party organisation,
entirely subjugated to him; in doing so, he used strict mechanisms of con-
trol that prevented undesirable emancipation.
The FrP leader could also use less visible, informal methods, such as
persuading opponents, reducing their influence behind the scenes or pre-
venting their nomination for election. Although the process of nominat-
ing candidates for parliamentary election in constituencies was performed
at a subnational level, the party leadership was able to interfere with it, as
deemed necessary, by virtue of its strong position. The leader was also able
to exploit the fact that the inner leadership controlled most of the party
income. From the late 1980s onwards, generous state subsidies accounted
for three-quarters of the party budget, sometimes more. In 2005, for
instance, the party received a €3.5 million subsidy, in 2012, €9.3 million
and so on (Mjelde 2008: 56; Jupskås 2016b: 173).
Hagen referred to FrP as a corporation; the executive committee, he
said, was the equivalent of a company’s executive board. The party was to
sell the same product across the country at all the political levels where it
was active, from the local to the national. The Norwegian political scien-
tist Anders Ravik Jupskås (2016b: 173) aptly expressed Hagen’s under-
standing of the party’s branches. They ‘were simply regarded as subdivisions
of the party, expected loyally to implement the leadership’s decisions’.

Corresponding to this authoritarian centralism of decision-making and
the ownership of the party was the handover of power in FrP, which took
place in 2006, when Hagen was 62 years old. Although the new leader, Siv
Jensen, was formally elected by the party congress, it was in fact Hagen
who chose her and prepared her to succeed him, during her many years as
his deputy.
The change of leader did not lead to major alterations in FrP organisa-
tion or profile, but it finally allowed the party to enter government. That
was a goal that Hagen never managed to reach. From the late 1990s, FrP
repeatedly tolerated some minority centre-right Norwegian governments,
and thanks to this it was able to win some policy concessions. It also man-
aged to establish itself in the executive at the local level. But Hagen was
seen as too controversial by most of the other parties’ elites. With Jensen
as leader, this barrier disappeared. Although FrP lost some of its voters in
the 2013 elections (see Table 6.1) in the context of the shock that the
country suffered from the bloody rampage perpetrated by a former FrP
member, the extremist Anders Breivik, the election produced a majority
for right-wing parties. The Conservatives, the biggest party in this seg-
ment of the political spectrum, formed a minority government coalition
with FrP for the first time. Two other small centre-right parties refused to
sit in government with FrP, but agreed to tolerate it. Thus, under Jensen’s
stewardship, the party was successfully integrated into the Norwegian
political mainstream.
FrP successfully negotiated the risks in transitioning from opposition to
government, especially the threat of losing voters. In mitigating this risk,
a Janus face proved effective, and was particularly conspicuous in the
important and sensitive questions of immigration and the relationship
with Islam. FrP government politicians, including Jensen, who became
the finance minister, drew more distinctions among the migrants, focused
on their poor integration into society, used more moderate rhetoric and
emphasised their rejection of radical Islam, not Islam as such. Many party
representatives who exercised no government office, by contrast, pre-
sented more radical positions, sometimes including xenophobic appeals
(Jupskås 2016a; Fangen and Vaage 2018). This duality was not without
consequences; it was criticised, and some dissatisfied members left. But
overall, the party’s government stint was seen as a success, not least because
there were no major scandals and the country’s economy was good (Aardal
and Bergh 2018). The party fared only very slightly worse in the 2017
elections than four years earlier. After the elections, the minority govern-
ment coalition continued in a modified version, now also including the
centre-right Liberals. This confirmed that FrP’s political isolation was a
thing of the past.
PAWEŁ KUKIZ: A POLISH PUNK-ROCK STAR’S CAMPAIGN

AGAINST POLITICAL PARTIES
While the transformation of FrP under Hagen’s leadership is an example
of the long-term success of a party in which the leader holds the reins of
the organisation and parliamentary party group firmly, the Polish Kukiz’15
presents a different story. What mattered in the latter was that Kukiz failed
to lead his parliamentary party (this is redolent of another Polish entrepre-
neurial party, Ruch Palikota, analysed in Chap. 3). Kukiz’15 is also note-
worthy for its unusual legal form—a civic association. Although, on the
one hand, this form facilitated Kukiz’s anti-party message, on the other it
posed severe complications for Kukiz’15 funding, ultimately contributing
to its demise.
Before entering politics, Paweł Kukiz was a celebrity of Polish show
business. From the 1980s, he was the frontman and songwriter of the
popular punk-rock band, Piersi (Breasts). The lyrics of his songs were
always strongly engaged politically and socially (Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and
Sobolewska-Myślik 2017), and criticised the actions of the political elite,
the Catholic Church and the media. He aimed particularly at the scandals
involving the ex-communist left-wing governments (Kiełbasa 2015;
Stankiewicz 2015). Kukiz saw hope for political change in the liberal Civic
Platform (PO), was personally involved in its 2005 campaign and cele-
brated its 2007 victory in the company of its leader, Donald Tusk.
Tusk’s government, however, disappointed Kukiz. He particularly
reproached it for failing to make good on its election pledge to introduce
single-member constituencies for the election of the Sejm, the lower cham-
ber of parliament. As Andrzej Stankiewicz (2015) noted, single-member
constituencies became an obsession for Kukiz and ‘he started to see the
change of method for electing MPs as a recipe for resolving all Poland’s ills’.
In 2012, Kukiz founded the movement Zmieleni.pl (Ground down.pl)—
the name referring to the disappointment with PO’s unfulfilled pledge.
Leading this movement, he spearheaded broader initiatives, criticising par-
ties and politicians. He sought to introduce single-member constituencies
and proposed a referendum to dissolve parliament (Sobolewska-Myślik

2016; Kosowska-Gąstoł and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017).
Kukiz first successfully tested his political ambition in the 2014 local
elections, where he won a seat in the Lower Silesian Regional Assembly.
He then announced his candidacy for president in May 2015. In his cam-
paign, which skilfully used social media and canvassing, he called for the
introduction of single-member constituencies and criticised political par-
ties and their funding from the public purse. By emphasising his indepen-
dence from traditional parties and state money, Kukiz differentiated
himself plausibly from the other candidates (Mazurek 2016).
Surprisingly, he took the third place in the first election round, polling
almost 21 per cent of the vote. Although he failed to pass to the second
round, the focus of his campaign on young people had evidently worked.
According to the polls, he was the most successful candidate among voters
up to twenty-nine years of age: 40 per cent of them had supported him.
These were largely inhabitants of small and medium-sized towns, with
secondary or higher education, of whom many held radical, even anti-
system views (Ścigaj 2015a; Olszanecka-Marmola 2015). Thus, Kukiz
achieved something similar to another radical, Janusz Palikot, several years
before: he appealed to voters who did not feel represented by the main-
stream parties (Turska-Kawa 2016).
Even during the presidential campaign, Kukiz indicated that his aim
was not to become head of state. He was establishing a movement that, he
hoped, would break into the Sejm with so many MPs that the two major
parties, PO and the conservative Law and Justice (PiS), would be pre-
vented from governing on their own. A change of the political system
could then be pursued (Ga ̨dek 2015). Shortly after the presidential elec-
tion, Kukiz announced that a civic movement would be formed, and in
summer 2015 with his collaborators he founded Kukiz’15, formally a
non-partisan electoral committee. Polish law allows groups of citizens—
without registering as a political party—to put up candidates for election
(Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017: 154). Immediately after
the parliamentary elections, Kukiz also founded a civic association, which
would serve as a more solid platform for his political enterprise, especially
to establish its organisation.
As with Palikot’s Movement in 2011, anyone could seek to stand for
election on a Kukiz’15 ballot—admission was administered via the
Ruchkukiza.pl website—but the screening of applicants was very detailed.
They had to fill in a questionnaire on not just their education, profession,
marital status and views on certain topics promoted by Kukiz but also their
political engagements, the value of their property and any distress warrants
issued against them (Głowacka-Wolf 2015; Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and
Sobolewska-Myślik 2017). Candidates were selected by a group of people
close to Kukiz, who applied their ‘completely free will’ (Lisowski 2018).
The top, electable places on the candidate lists were largely filled by people
who had personal contact with Kukiz and his colleagues. They tended to
be recruited from nationalist organisations and small parties, especially
those critical of the political system. After the elections, however, it trans-
pired that this process failed to secure elected candidates’ loyalty to Kukiz’s
political project. The will and energy to socialise or train them in any
meaningful way was likewise lacking (Lisowski 2018).
The Kukiz’15 manifesto was anti-establishment and anti-party, and
relied on elements of conspiracy theories. The core of its message, which
was not substantially different from Kukiz’s rhetoric in the presidential
elections, was that the quarter century of Polish transformation after 1989
was a massive fraud perpetrated on Poles by political parties. The mani-
festo argued that parties’ selfishness was aimed against the interests of the
citizens and benefited foreign capital and countries, specifically Russia and
the Germany-led EU. The parties had created a particracy, the argument
went, which ignored the voice of the nation and pitted people against each
other; sustaining this system was the 1997 constitution, which favoured
passive party members. The particracy allowed politicians to spend Polish
people’s taxes, load the country with debt and sell out Polish enterprises
to foreign corporations. The whole system, Kukiz argued, was sustained
by corruption and political manipulation targeting those who sought to
uncover the truth (Kukiz’15 2015a; Ścigaj 2015b).
The aim of Kukiz and his collaborators was the destruction of the Polish
particracy. Their most important instruments were to be single-member
constituencies, which would weaken the political parties and strengthen
independent candidates. Other proposals were to hand over government
to a directly elected president, introduce binding referendums with no
obligatory participation, mandate balanced budge and end the public
funding of parties. Kukiz’15 also demanded the decentralisation of offices
and institutions outside the capital; this was to make the elites less remote
from the problems faced by Polish regions. This return of the state into
the hands of Poles was to be ensured by changing the tax system, rejecting
the euro, withdrawing from the climate agreement and encouraging coal
mining (Ścigaj 2015b).
The anti-immigration issue is popular in this group of entrepreneurial

parties. At a time when the issue of refugees was subject to turbulent dis-
cussion close to the 2015 elections, Kukiz took up the issue, similar to
Hagen, who changed the FrP main issue to anti-immigration, and also to
Okamura in his second party project. The Polish leader firmly opposed the
refugee quotas adopted by the EU. Playing this strong card was made
more effective by the Civic Platform–led government supporting the quo-
tas immediately before the elections. After the elections, when the salience
of the topics of refugees and immigration peaked for Poles, Kukiz rhetori-
cally linked them with the dangers of Islam. Together with another small
radical right party, he appealed to Prime Minister Beata Szydlo (PiS) to
change government policy on immigrants and to object to accepting
Islamic refugees in the country. Kukiz’s argument was emotional: should
there be a terrorist attack in Poland, the prime minister would have blood
on her hands. Subsequently, in January 2016, he raised a petition for a
referendum on taking in refugees, arguing that Poland was not ready to
accept these culturally alien people (Potyrała 2016).
Refugees and immigration fit well into Kukiz’s grand conspiracy narra-
tive. The refugee quotas were just another concession made by the ‘per-
fidious’ Polish parties to Germany, which allegedly controlled the EU, and
several activists of the anti-vax movement stood for election to the Sejm
on behalf of Kukiz’15.
The campaign for the 2015 parliamentary election was organised
around Kukiz’s persona, and appealed to a similar group of voters as his
own candidacy for president. The party won 8.8 per cent of the vote,
which meant 42 seats in the 460-strong proportionally elected Sejm. This
result was similar to that of Palikot’s Movement in the previous elections.
As PiS won more than half of the seats in the Sejm and could form a
single-party majority government, Kukiz did not find himself in the piv-
otal position he had hoped for. The Kukiz’15 MPs voted against giving
the PiS government their confidence, arguing that PiS was not planning
the fundamental constitutional changes that Kukiz’15 demanded. Yet they
accepted there might be future cooperation with PiS on security and
defence, showing how close the two parties were on some issues
(Wiadomości 2015). In the years that followed, Kukiz’15 supported gov-
ernment bills more often than other opposition parties (Skibicki 2016),
but this cooperation did not develop into a parliamentary alliance with
PiS. Somewhat paradoxically, the closeness of PiS and Kukiz’15 was also
signalled by the fact that some MPs who left the latter joined the former.
Similar to Palikot’s Movement previously, which prepared its candidate

lists in the same haste, the Kukiz’15 MPs were a heterogeneous group
whose priorities varied. This heterogeneity, alongside Kukiz’s eccentricity
and his inability to mediate, unsurprisingly led to conflicts, which were
followed by MPs leaving or being expelled. Thus, after four years, what
was originally a 42-strong parliamentary party had shrunk to 15. The ren-
egades frequently criticised the centralisation of the decision-making pro-
cess in the hands of Kukiz and his close collaborators (Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł
and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017). In the end, even high-profile MPs, such as
the well-known pre-1989 dissident Kornel Morawiecki and the rapper
Piotr Liroy-Marzec, came into conflict with the eccentric leader, resulting
in the end of their engagement with Kukiz’15. Kukiz frequently con-
demned departing MPs in vulgar terms, which heightened emotions more
and precluded any further cooperation with the defectors (Tvn 2018).
Unlike Palikot, who over time transformed his political appeals in a way
that was unintelligible to voters, Kukiz continued after the 2015 parlia-
mentary elections with his anti-establishment and anti-immigration mes-
sages, and did not experiment with his political course or embark on
problematic electoral alliances. Kukiz’15, therefore, did not lose voters as
quickly as Palikot’s Movement had several years previously and maintained
some political prospects, even though its electoral support declined after
the 2015 elections. In the spring 2019 European elections, it won 3.7 per
cent of the vote, failing to cross the 5 per cent threshold.
For the parliamentary elections half a year later, Kukiz’15 took part in
an electoral alliance with the small but long-standing, agrarian Polish
People’s Party (PSL). The alliance was created only shortly before the
elections, and the problems of Kukiz’15 and the decrease in its popular
support meant that its representatives received only minor representation
on PSL candidate lists. In the 2019 elections, won by the government
party PiS by a landslide (the party received an absolute majority of seats in
parliament), the Kukiz’15-PSL alliance polled 8.55 per cent of the vote,
which meant thirty seats, of which Kukiz’15 received only six. After the
elections, PSL and Kukiz’15 founded a joint parliamentary party group.
For Kukiz’15, the electoral alliance was a marriage of convenience, but
one that had destructive consequences. PSL was a classic example of
the establishment, that is, something that Kukiz previously criticised.
Furthermore, the party rejected the introduction of single-member con-
stituencies. For many Kukiz’15 MPs as well as voters, this alliance was
incomprehensible. Some incumbent MPs refused to stand on the alliance’s
candidate lists, and the alliance deepened the problems faced by Kukiz’s
entity. In an attempt to save his parliamentary representation, Kukiz
repeated Palikot’s mistake and opted for an inappropriate electoral alli-
ance. The fact that Kukiz’15 retained some seats in the Sejm, therefore,
can be thought of as only a problematic success.
Centralised Power Through a Civic Association

Due to the negative experience of the erosion of the Kukiz’15 parliamen-
tary party, the work with candidates became professionalised over time, in
the hope of ensuring greater loyalty of future representatives in regional
and local representative bodies. The selection of candidates for elections to
the local and regional self-government bodies in 2018 was cautiously con-
ducted by the National Executive Board (the inner leadership) and several
invited collaborators. As in parliamentary elections, prospective candidates
could apply on the internet; they would be screened as to their earlier
candidacies, and their activities would be checked online. In this way, for
instance, people linked with extreme right organisations and former mem-
bers of the Communist Party were excluded. Those who passed the first
hurdle were invited to a meeting, where certain topics were discussed with
them, and ‘their responses checked’ (Lisowski 2018). For the 2018
regional elections, Kukiz’15 was able to put up candidate lists in almost
every constituency and took on average 5.6 per cent of the vote, which
was insufficient to win a single seat, due to the natural electoral threshold.
Its performance in concurrently held local elections was likewise weak.3
Some Kukiz’15 politicians blamed the failure on a lack of finances,
which had precluded them from waging an effective campaign. Kukiz
became a target of criticism for this within his party, and some MPs even
cited it as the reason for their departure (Onet 2018; Dziennik 2018).
Formally, Kukiz’15 contested the 2015 parliamentary elections as an elec-
toral committee, not as a political party, and so was not eligible for a state
subsidy, made to parties that win more than 3 per cent of the vote. Had it
been a party, Kukiz’15 would have qualified for more than €1.5 million
(Kacprzak 2018). Thus, Kukiz forfeited a substantial sum, with which he
could have developed his political project. The money for the electoral
committee, or Kukiz’s civic association, largely came from membership
dues and donations. But this did not amount to much—even before the
2015 elections, campaign expenses were largely covered by the candidates
themselves.
Kukiz’s opposition to the state funding of parties was not always con-
vincing. In 2015, he accepted a one-off subsidy to help pay for the elec-
tion campaign. All entities contesting an election, irrespective of whether
they are parties or not, are eligible for this subsidy, and in the case of
Kukiz’15 the sum was about €500,000, which was paid to the foundation
Potrafisz Polsko, led by senior Kukiz’15 figures with the support of
Kukiz’15 among its aims. This created a scandal, because it was in flagrant
contradiction to the leader’s rhetoric of refusing money from public bud-
gets. Kukiz resolved this compromising situation by giving most of the
money to charity (Sikora 2016).
The main organisational basis for Kukiz’s political enterprise was the
Association for a New Constitution Kukiz’15, founded in December 2015
as a civic association, which he chaired. Polish law is very accommodating
in this respect, allowing associations to engage in politics through the can-
didacy of their members for public offices, and hence to participate in polit-
ical campaigns. Acting in symbiosis with the electoral committee Kukiz’15,
the Association was a political party de facto and strongly centralised. The
National Executive Board, which had 9–13 members elected by the
National Assembly of Delegates for a five-year term, including a chair, dep-
uty chairs, secretary and treasurer, held most of the power. It decided on all
matters concerned with management, representation, finances and elec-
tions, and decided the admission and expulsion of members. Unlike FrP
(and Tomio Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy), the chair had no
specific powers. All decisions were made by the National Executive
Committee collectively, and the chair had one vote (Kukiz’15 2015b).
As of 2019, the Association had a three-tier structure: national, regional
(corresponding to the Sejm constituencies) and local. The founding of
regional and local branches began only in 2016—the official explanation
was lack of funding. However, in 2019, they covered the whole of Poland.
The branches worked top-down and were controlled by the National
Executive Board, which created them and was also able to abolish them.
The lower-level units sent one delegate each to meetings of the higher-
level units. These were complemented with members of various bodies at
the national level: the National Executive Board, the Review Board and
several representatives of the parliamentary group. In the supreme body of
the Association, the members of the Kukiz’15 executive bodies had there-
fore secured substantial representation for themselves, which was close to
half of the votes.
The statutes defined two advisory bodies of the National Executive

Board: the parliamentary group and the Council of the Association, con-
sisting of the regional chairs and people invited by the National Executive
Board. This illustrates the strong centralisation of power held by the
National Executive Board: the leaders of lower-level organisation units
only had an advisory vote in its decision-making (Kukiz’15 2015b;
Kosowska-Ga ̨stoł and Sobolewska-Myślik 2017).
Kukiz’15 endeavoured to create a network of collateral organisations,
associating, for instance, advocates of single-member constituencies and
conservative nationalists. This was similar to a mass-party strategy.
Particularly important and much promoted was the network of young
people’s clubs, which had a substantial membership. Tellingly, Kukiz’15
did not publish membership numbers on its website, but made a boast of
its 180 young people’s clubs with 1700 members. The activities of these
clubs were financially supported by party headquarters (Lisowski 2018),
yet they had no official status in the Association’s organisational chart.
The Association distinguished between regular members, honorary
members and supporters. The number of regular members was not pub-
lished but, according to one of the managers of the Association, was some-
where between 2500 and 3000 in 2018 (Lisowski 2018). Those interested
in membership applied on the website—similar to applying to be a
Kukiz’15 candidate. The application had to be supported by two existing
members of the Association. The decision was in the hands of the National
Executive Board, specifically, its member to whom this agenda had been
entrusted, and the opinion of the members of the local organisation which
the applicant was seeking to join did not affect the decision. In practice,
the acceptance of a member was preceded by the internet scanning of the
applicant by members of the National Executive Board. Reasons for reject-
ing the application included the candidate’s previous membership of the
Communist Party, a prison sentence or criminal record. However, their
political views also played a role, as the Association preferred candidates of
a right-wing, nationalist bent (Lisowski 2018).
The selectivity of the process shows that an effort was made not to
accept everyone, but to build an organisation with loyal and socialised
members. The relatively strict process for accepting members was evi-
dently motivated by an attempt to ensure that the party was functional and
to prevent scandals involving members or their departures damaging the
party’s public image. Thus, Kukiz’15 evidently tried to learn from its
problems with the heterogeneous parliamentary party and aimed at
homogeneity of opinion and loyalty among its members. But given the
decline of the leader’s credit and of the attractiveness of his message,
accompanied by his problematic alliance with the political establishment
he criticised so much, the long-term survival of this party project was very
uncertain.
TOMIO OKAMURA’S STRUGGLE ON BEHALF OF THE CZECH

NATION AGAINST IMMIGRANT ‘PARASITES’
The crisis of Tomio Okamura’s first political project in Czechia—the
Dawn of Direct Democracy, described in the previous chapter—provided
an impetus for this politician to come up with a new formation. In his
second political project, Okamura worked on building a disciplined mem-
bership, subordinated to him, and on making the party elite cohesive. This
is a good example of a leader’s ability to learn from past mistakes and his
substantial political tenacity. Furthermore, this party project entailed the
particular paradox of a leader originating from outside Czechia, whose
main message was targeted against immigrants. In what follows we explain
this peculiarity too.
To contextualise, we remind the reader that in March 2015, Okamura,
at the time still the chair of Dawn, and his closest collaborator, Radim
Fiala, were expelled from the Dawn parliamentary party, and this was
accompanied by an emotive conflict. Okamura accused MPs of having
betrayed voters and the manifesto; they, by contrast, accused him of
siphoning off party finances and of authoritarianism. After a stalemate of
several months, Okamura and Fiala announced in May 2015 the founda-
tion of a new party, the Freedom and Direct Democracy—Tomio Okamura
(Svoboda a přímá demokracie—Tomio Okamura, SPD).
Though SPD proclaimed programmatic continuity with Dawn, for
which the promotion of direct democracy had been crucial, in reality this
was soon sidetracked. Priority was given to the issue of immigration, on
which Dawn had sought to establish its platform from 2014, with not
much response. In 2015, when historically the greatest inflow of refugees
from Africa and the Middle East was heading for Europe, the situation
started to be intensively discussed in the Czech Republic. Okamura’s posi-
tion was no different from most of the European extreme right. He linked
the topic of illegal immigration with resistance to Islam and Euroscepticism.
Okamura described the process of illegal immigration as ‘an initial stage in
a conflict, which will ultimately threaten democracy and even the very
existence of the Czech Republic and our nation’ (SPD 2017). The essence
of this ‘threat’ was in Okamura’s conflation of immigrants and Muslims,
who were presented by him as radical Islamists. Thus, he emotively linked
immigration with Islamisation and terrorism.
Okamura described the EU as the cause of the immigration problems
and demanded a referendum on Czech departure from the EU. He alleged
that Islamisation was forced onto Czechia by the ideology of multicultur-
alism, as embodied by the EU and its representatives. If the country
adopted multiculturalism, it would, according to Okamura, fulfil the alleg-
edly Islamist vision of a ‘fifth column of radical Muslims’ (Okamura 2017).
In the SPD interpretation, Czech politicians kowtowed to the EU. SPD
leaders organised many anti-immigration and anti-Islam demonstrations
and events to promote leaving the EU (Havlík 2015b: 143; Michalová
2017: 17; SPD 2017).
Shortly after announcing the creation of his new party, Okamura
endorsed collaboration with other extreme right European parties, includ-
ing the Dutch Party for Freedom, the French National Front, the Austrian
Freedom Party and the Vlaams Belang. In December 2015, he applied to
join the European group Movement for a Europe of Nations and
Freedoms, which associates these parties (Fiala 2015).
In autumn 2016, SPD contested regional elections in collaboration
with the small left-nationalist Party of Civic Rights. The campaign, which
featured the struggle against illegal immigration and criticism of the EU
and the Czech government, was surprisingly successful: the coalition
crossed the 5 per cent threshold in most regions and therefore obtained
seats in regional assemblies (and received the associated financial subsidies
from the state). In one region, the SPD even became part of the executive
regional coalition. This sent out a signal for the future that a cordon sani-
taire was not in place around the party; this was confirmed by the situation
after the 2017 parliamentary elections.
The regional elections showed that Okamura’s voters had forgotten
about his Dawn-era scandals, or at least did not consider them fatal. Even
more importantly, SPD proved to be the only successful and viable expo-
nent of anti-immigration rhetoric, because other small parties with similar
profiles failed in the elections entirely (Šaradín 2016). It needs noting that
Okamura’s electoral ally—the Party of Civic Rights—stood on its own in
a few regions, but flopped. It was evident who was the more electorally
attractive in this political tandem.
Okamura adjusted his political strategy, and SPD contested the autumn
2017 parliamentary elections on its own. Unlike the previous Dawn strat-
egy, on whose behalf members of various parties as well as non-partisans
stood for election, this time the majority of candidates were SPD mem-
bers. Candidates were selected by district and regional party conferences,
but the final shape of the candidate lists was approved by the five-strong
Presidium (inner leadership). Appearing in the first, electable places on the
candidate lists were mostly the chairs and deputy chairs of the party’s
regional branches, who, by virtue of their offices, ranked among the vetted
and Okamura-loyal members—they had previously been confirmed in
their offices by the Presidium.4 This procedure pointed to an effort not to
repeat the negative experience of Dawn, whose parliamentary party was
extremely heterogeneous in its origins—most of its MPs were not even
members of the party.
SPD’s electoral result—10.6 per cent of the vote—was better than
Dawn’s in the preceding elections and exceeded the expectations of most
pollsters. The party was placed fourth and received 22 seats in the
200-strong lower chamber of parliament. The SPD success is at least par-
tially explained by its well-managed campaign. As in 2013, Okamura con-
vincingly showed his great personal zeal in meeting voters. The
anti-immigration ‘wave’ he had hyped drew SPD members and sympathis-
ers into face-to-face campaigning, as they would make the rounds of
Czech cities and towns with petitions against the EU and accepting
immigrants.
The party was also successful in its communication on social networks,
and conducted it in a way that was somewhat particular in Czech terms.
The party waged a de facto permanent election campaign. Okamura served
as the focal point, and was a permanent celebrity on social networks. His
profile was consistently the most favoured among politicians on Czech
Facebook, the most important social network in the country (Eibl and
Gregor 2019: 107–108). Before and after the 2017 election, Okamura
would frequently share videos and photos. The videos were mostly of his
speeches or reports of his meetings with voters. Okamura defined the SPD
positions and the communications, both on the inside and on the outside,
and was inseparably linked with his party. Thus, the SPD conveyed the
image of a ‘party of one man’. Social network profiles of the party, its
branches and various SPD figures republished the posts from Okamura’s
own profile and added their own materials, often taken from conspiracy
theory and disinformation websites.
There is one noteworthy fact that might seem difficult to explain at

first. How could Okamura, who is only partially Czech by origin and the
son of an immigrant—his father was Japanese with Korean roots, who
moved to Czechia—successfully mobilise anti-immigration sentiment?
The explanation is that immigrants from Asia are viewed relatively posi-
tively in Czechia, as they are associated with a strong work ethic and good
professional education. Okamura himself purposely encouraged this
notion. Against the ‘better’ East Asian incomers, he pitted the ‘worse’
immigrants from poor African and Middle Eastern countries, who, he
alleged, were not hardworking and only came to Europe in order to
exploit the Czech welfare state. In his rhetoric, the SPD leader also fre-
quently spoke of his respect for Czech traditions and culture. Thus, he was
able to convincingly pose as a defender of ‘decent Czech people’. He skil-
fully used his Japanese-Korean origins to deflect accusations of racism. His
critics, Okamura claimed, lost their moral credit and became racists and
xenophobes themselves (Křtínová 2018).
The structure of the SPD electorate was important for the effectiveness
of Okamura’s political strategy. Opinion polls ahead of the 2017 elections
revealed the extremely strong fixation of his voters on Okamura and their
trust in him. It is worth noting that the party scored best among manual
labourers, the unemployed and voters with elementary education, and was
more often supported by men and older voters (Č T 24 2017; Chytilek
2018). In addition to former supporters of Dawn, the party mobilised
many non-voters, and, similar to Andrej Babiš’s ANO, managed to woo
some voters from the left, that is the Social Democrats and the Communists
(Škop 2017). However, unlike ANO (which had been in government for
four years), SPD was revealed by polls as the radical protest choice of dis-
satisfied people alienated from the political system (Chytilek 2018).
Unlike Dawn in 2013 and the Republicans—a Czech extreme right
party of the 1990s—SPD did not find itself after the 2017 elections an
isolated political pariah. Rather, it was actively involved in post-election
negotiations. Okamura exploited the fact that ANO, the winner of the
election, was unacceptable to the mainstream parties, because at the time
its leader Babiš was facing criminal charges. The SPD chief expressed his
willingness to enter government with Babiš’s ANO, or with the Communist
Party to support Babiš’s minority cabinet, in exchange for some policy
concessions from its manifesto.
This scenario ultimately was not realised, because after several months
Babiš persuaded the Social Democrats to enter into a minority coalition
government with him, propped up in parliament by the Communists. But

the parliamentary collaboration with ANO (and the Communists) secured
a number of offices for SPD, including the prestigious post of deputy
speaker of the lower chamber for Okamura, and there was also coopera-
tion on bills (Kopecký 2017; Zpěváčková 2018; Deník Referendum
2018). Babiš’s ANO, whose coalition potential was low, simply did not
want to isolate SPD.
Despite the flexibility shown by SPD in post-election negotiations, the
positions of its politicians were sometimes on the boundary between radical
and extreme. Shortly after the elections, the party’s secretary drunkenly
shouted in the Chamber of Deputies that ‘Jews, homosexuals and Gypsies
should be gassed’—he was later prosecuted for hate speech. Okamura, mean-
while, criticised the government’s plan to buy a pig farm on the site of a
World War II Roma concentration camp and to build a memorial there, and
questioned the suffering of the inmates. One SPD MP even described it as a
‘non-existent pseudo-concentration camp’ (iRozhlas 2018). Many SPD MPs
and members were very active in spreading information, disinformation and
conspiracy theories aimed against Muslims, immigrants and Roma.
The SPD’s activities attracted the interest of the security forces. In
reports on extremism, the Ministry of the Interior repeatedly described
the party as an important player on the extreme right (Ministry of the
Interior 2018, 2019). The 2018 report observed that SPD purposely tar-
geted people who were easily susceptible to manipulation and that disin-
formation spread feelings of panic, fear and threat among these people.
This evaluation was confirmed by a terrorist attack, perpetrated by a
70-year-old SPD sympathiser, who felled trees on the railway, causing two
train accidents. He wanted to blame Muslim immigrants for his crime and
arouse fear in society (Č TK 2019).
A Peculiar Mass-Party Inspiration

Like Kukiz’15, the SPD parliamentary party after the 2017 elections
mostly consisted of people who lacked political experience. But in contrast
to Kukiz, Okamura himself had experience of an earlier project, Dawn,
and also two years in which to create regional party branches, from the
leadership of which the SPD MPs were largely recruited. Thus, they were
already socialised into the party’s workings. Given that they had been con-
firmed in their regional posts by the party leadership, they were loyal,
recognised the dominance of the leadership and were aware of their
dependence on it. Thus, public disputes with the leader were rare.
Testifying to strong party discipline is the fact that they complied with the
wishes of the leadership, and the only person to speak for the parliamen-
tary party was its chair, Okamura’s closest collaborator Radim Fiala. In the
few scandals that arose in connection with the funding of the party or the
controversial past of some MPs, the leadership supported the MPs. Thus,
the parliamentary party and the leadership seemed very united.
An exception to this was the departure in spring 2019 of three MPs
elected in the Moravia-Silesia region. Their exit followed swift action by the
leadership, caused by the scandal-prone MP and chair of the regional organ-
isation Lubomír Volný’s announcement that he would stand for election as
the SPD chair against Okamura. Shortly afterwards, the SPD presidium
abolished the entire organisation in Moravia-Silesia, arguing that the stat-
utes and democratic rights of members had been systematically infringed in
the region. It is true that local members had complained about this for a
long time; but until he announced his candidacy for SPD chair, Volný was
protected by the leadership. The abolition of the regional organisation was
not prevented by the fact that it was in that region that the party achieved
its best result in the 2017 elections. The MPs elected in Moravia-Silesia first
interpreted the event as a misunderstanding, but shortly after, criticising
Okamura loudly, they left the parliamentary party group and the party and
founded a new, ‘patriotic’ party (Seznam 2019). This political schism from
SPD remained electorally unimportant, however. The party conflict
described illustrates well the power of the leadership over its MPs—even
though these were its main regional representatives—as well as over its
branches. The leadership showed that any rebellion could be easily punished.
At SPD’s inception in 2015, Okamura spoke of his aim of building a
mass party. In practice, recruiting members, controlled from above, and
building party territorial structures started quickly. First, several of
Okamura’s loyal colleagues from the Dawn era were accepted into the
party and given important posts in the leadership (SPD 2015). A network
of coordinators was created in every region to organise meetings of sup-
porters and collect their applications. The ups and downs of membership
over time are difficult to quantify. Okamura was disingenuous when giving
numbers and mixed up members and membership candidates (see below
for the difference between the two). On different occasions he claimed
7000 or 12,000 members. This would make SPD similar in size to the
much older Czech parties, such as the Social Democrats or the liberal-
conservative Civic Democrats. But these numbers are probably highly
exaggerated. The data cited by the party’s press officer in mid-2018 seem
closer to the truth: the party allegedly had 1400 regular members and
5500 membership candidates (Janáková 2018).
At first glance, Okamura’s promise of building a mass party was fulfilled
by its three-tier structure. At the lowest level, there were the district clubs,
whose areas were contiguous with the country’s administrative districts
and which were created by the superordinate regional organisations. The
regional organisations sent delegates to the nationwide party conference,
which elected the party chair and four other members of its presidium.
However, to date, district clubs have not been created everywhere. Out of
the country 78 districts, as of June 2019 only 16 had elected leaderships;
in 45, there was only a coordinator chosen by the party presidium, and in
17 districts there was no club at all (SPD 2019).
SPD did not give the rank-and-file members many options to influence
the party orientation or in decision-making. Members and membership
candidates were given tasks and their work was checked by regional pre-
sidia. Only on their recommendation were candidates accepted as regular
members. Having submitted their application, membership candidates
had to wait for two years—the longest of any party. In practice, the wait
was often shortened based on the candidates’ activities in the party (Nový
2018). Should the regional presidium conclude that candidates were not
fulfilling their duties, they could strike them off the list. Thus, member-
ship candidates were second-rank members de facto, as they could not
stand for election to party office or vote at conferences. They could only
attend the meetings of the party and propose candidates for election (SPD
2016; Rozvoral 2015). The status of candidate members thus served as a
mechanism for control and discipline.
Regular members were allowed to vote at meetings and be elected to
party bodies. Regional presidia continued to check how they fulfilled their
duties, and they could be expelled by party headquarters on the recom-
mendation of the regional presidium (SPD 2016). Thus, the regional
leaderships wielded a very strong weapon to reinforce their own position:
they could recommend the membership of candidates loyal to them, strike
their critics from the ranks of candidates and recommend members be
expelled. In some regions, including Moravia-Silesia as noted above, the
chairs of regional organisations patently abused their powers. Typically,
they advantaged their family members and friends, and suppressed dissent
by striking out candidates and recommending expulsions. Thus, the prac-
tice in SPD was marked by frequent excess and arbitrariness, and the
position of the rank and file was much weaker than in a classic mass party.
Unlike classic mass parties and Kukiz’15, SPD did not yet create any col-
lateral organisations.
Thanks not least to their strong position with the rank-and-file mem-
bers, the leaders of regional organisations (regional chairs and deputy
chairs) were able to forge political careers for themselves and become
MPs. With respect to party influence, these regional officers only partici-
pated in an advisory body, the Board (grémium) (Rozvoral 2018). The
combination of a parliamentary seat and a regional party position was par-
ticularly advantageous from the viewpoint of the SPD top leadership, as
permanent contact in parliament facilitated the coordination of the work
of the regional presidia. The parliamentary party had no formal powers in
the decision-making of the leadership, and so far, the MPs have not made
a serious attempt to gain any.
Like the Progress Party in Norway, SPD had a strong top leadership
(the party presidium) which effectively controlled the regions. The party
presidium consisted of the party chair and four other members elected for
a three-year term by a three-quarters majority of the delegates at the party
conference and had very strong powers as far as the operations of the
party, preparations for elections and its economic activities were concerned
(SPD 2016). Acting on the recommendation of the regional leadership,
the party presidium approved the membership of every candidate, and
could abolish any district or regional organisation. The SPD leadership did
not hesitate to abolish even major territorial organisations, as it did in the
case of the one in Moravia-Silesia mentioned above. The district organisa-
tion in Brno, the second-largest Czech city, suffered the same fate in 2018,
when disputes erupted over candidate lists for local elections. This pro-
vides a good illustration of how SPD resolved internal problems, and how
the party leadership could enforce the obeisance of the regional leader-
ship—a process on which no limit seemed to be placed—and quickly and
effectively correct any undesirable deviation. The leadership also con-
trolled all aspects of organisation linked with elections, including compil-
ing candidate lists and approving the manifesto. Though the regional
meetings suggested the order of candidates on the lists, the decision was
made by the party presidium (Rozvoral 2018; Janouš and Janoušek 2017).
The party chair commanded absolute power in the presidium, or more
precisely over it, since he could veto any of its decisions. In order for any
motion to be carried, it had to be supported by at least three of its mem-
bers, the chair included (SPD 2016). Compared to Kukiz, Okamura had
a much stronger position, even formally, and one that was comparable to
the abnormal centralism in Hagen’s FrP. The powers of the chair over
finances were interesting. Though the presidium gave the chair its binding
opinion on loans, the rules meant they could not force the chair to do
anything he did not agree with. The personnel of the presidium have
remained virtually unchanged from the foundation of SPD to the present
(2019). They have consisted of Okamura’s close collaborators from Dawn,
and so have displayed a united front.
The position of the chair was also very strong in other respects, because
he was the only person who could act on behalf of the party and enter into
contracts. He was also the party’s spokesperson, something that Okamura
made extensive use of in his Facebook communications. Though the chair
could be removed if three-quarters of conference delegates voted for it, in
practice this was difficult to imagine not just because of the large majority
required, but also due to Okamura’s undisputed position as leader. The
deputy chair, Radim Fiala, also had a strong position in the party. He was
the co-founder of SPD as well as Dawn, and the chair of the parliamentary
party, speaking exclusively on its behalf; he also had strong informal influ-
ence over Okamura.
The lack of transparency in SPD funding is worthy of note. As Tomio
Okamura himself lacked major financial backing, the campaign for the
2015 election was funded largely from a bank loan and from the personal
resources of the candidates in the top places on the lists—those in the first
places donated nearly €4000 each, and those in the second places nearly
€2000. This money was paid to the party’s current account and not to a
transparent account as required by law, and thus we cannot be sure that
these contributions were actually used for campaigning. The SPD cam-
paign was suspected of being partly financed illegally by influential entre-
preneurs, and this was similar to the opacity of the funding of Dawn’s
campaign in 2013 (Pšenička 2017).
SPD’s performance in parliamentary elections meant that it received
about €6.5 million in state subsidies for the four-year electoral term. Its
existence was thus secure. Similar to Dawn previously, party finances after
the elections were sometimes managed in a peculiar manner. SPD sent
large amounts of money to unknown marketing agencies, and there was
evidence to support the suspicion that, channelled via these agencies, the
money went to allied media outlets and conspiracy theory websites, or
even to the party leader himself (Břeštǎ n 2018). The chair of the Moravian-
Silesian regional organisation, Volný (who was later expelled for his
intention to challenge Okamura for leadership), was involved in a financial

scandal of another kind. Volný pressured party members to buy SPD pro-
motional materials at their own expense, sell it and hand the proceeds to
him directly (Kubík and Slonková 2018). Such scandals are redolent of
Dawn’s ‘creative’ approach to party finances, but also show a certain shift.
Whereas in Dawn it was Okamura himself who sought to tap party
money—a clear example of the entrepreneurial party as a device for the
leader’s enrichment—in SPD it is not just the leader who profits financially
from the party; some other politicians do so too.
SPD’s attempt to establish itself at the lower levels of Czech politics has
been only partially successful so far. After the above-mentioned relative
success in the 2016 regional elections, the party did not do as well in the
2018 local elections. It nominated what in Czech terms was a very large
number of candidates—nearly 5000. This reflected the solidity of the
party on the ground. But it only polled about 3.2 per cent of the vote and
won about 150 councillor seats, lagging substantially behind most other
parliamentary parties.5 The relative lack of success, despite the massive
number of candidates and intensive campaigning, was evidently linked
with the fact that the SPD electorate was alienated from politics and fix-
ated on Okamura himself—and he did not stand for the election. Another
factor was the party’s emphasis on immigration and refugees, which evi-
dently does not work on voters in Czech local elections. Unlike, let’s say,
Norway, the number of immigrants or refugees from the Third World in
Czechia is minimal, and so this simply is not an issue in local politics.
In the May 2019 European elections SPD used its staple thematic fare
and did much better, taking over 9 per cent of the vote. In some aspects,
its rhetoric became harsher during the campaign, including calls for the
abolition of the EU. The party’s presentation was aided by cooperation
with European far-right parties; Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, for
example, appeared in Prague shortly before the elections.6 Nor was the
campaigning hindered by the following curious situation. Hoping to
exploit his popularity, Okamura planned to stand for election in the last
position on the candidate list, with the intention of giving up his MEP seat
if elected. But when he learned that MEPs cannot sit in the Czech parlia-
ment, he withdrew his candidacy. In the end, SPD gained two MEPs—the
country only has 21 of them. But the result confirmed that an anti-
immigration and radical protest party profile had substantial mobilising
potential. After the election, SPD MEPs joined the Identity and Democracy
far-right political group in the European Parliament.
The parties analysed in this chapter were created by political entrepreneurs
who had almost no financial resources of their own. It was their personal
qualities, characteristics, and also their political experience and ability to
learn lessons from past failed projects that were crucial at the beginning.
Once their parties were established, they allowed them to make a living
from politics. But these qualities, characteristics and experiences were very
individual to each of the entrepreneurs studied here and were accompa-
nied by different leadership styles and party organisational strategies. This
difference in leadership significantly influenced the historical development
of Lange’s, or Progress Party in Norway. While the founding father,
Anders Lange, did not have the ability (or indeed the will) to impose order
on his party and establish a clear line necessary for its parliamentary exis-
tence, his successor Carl I. Hagen manifested great political, strategic and
organisational abilities. A bunch of undisciplined activists led by the eccen-
tric Lange was thus replaced by an extremely centralist and authoritatively
led mass organisation, which is now able to act as a political player respected
by others.
Paweł Kukiz, a charismatic punk-rock frontman, had some prior experi-
ence of political movements. He principally founded his project on reject-
ing the concept of political partisanship. Instead of a party, he created only
a rudimentary formation with a political programme and candidates for
election, and only subsequently did he start to build a centralised civic
association, which is in reality a camouflaged political party. But Kukiz’s
eccentricity (superficially similar to Lange’s), together with the weak
socialisation of his MPs, heterogeneous in origin, led to the quick disinte-
gration of the parliamentary party and showed the weaknesses and limited
resilience of Kukiz’s project.
In contrast to Lange and Kukiz, Tomio Okamura already had substan-
tial political experience when he built his second political project. He had
led Dawn, with which he entered parliament and experienced an implo-
sion, which was very unpleasant for him. Okamura’s daring feat was that,
after the scandalous collapse of Dawn, he managed to convince a large
number of voters of his trustworthiness and competence in a new anti-
immigration agenda. Despite his partial Japanese-Korean origins, he
became the most successful Czech nationalist. At the same time, he turned
his SPD into a solid and loyal party base. All of this testifies to Okamura’s
great political talent and his ability to learn from his mistakes.
Lange, Hagen, Kukiz and Okamura were or are charismatic and more
or less eccentric personalities—in a certain sense, political celebrities—able
to convincingly convey their themes and appeal to voters. They differ in
the topics with which they identified their political projects, but what they
shared was a sharp critique of the political establishment and an inclination
towards the right edge of the political spectrum. Lange and Kukiz used
their dissatisfaction with traditional party-political elites as their main
issue, and the latter in particular gained notice thanks to his recipe for radi-
cal institutional change. Like Okamura, Lange’s successor Hagen lifted his
political vehicle upwards on the salient topic of immigration, putting his
finger on the pulse of the time. In doing so, Hagen transformed the origi-
nal liberal, anti-welfare-state message of his party. Okamura has been simi-
larly flexible: he pushed the idea of direct democracy, with which he once
entered politics, into the background, to the benefit of his new, more
attractive, anti-immigration agenda.
Characteristically, though, Hagen’s, Okamura’s and Kukiz’s choice of
political agenda did not always prove advantageous. Despite all his efforts,
including the rigorous pacification of extremist moods in the party, Hagen
was unable to secure FrP’s government participation. The failure in the
2018 local elections showed Okamura that his anti-immigrant position
did not work at all levels of Czech politics. Kukiz’s rejection of state sub-
sidies substantially complicated the stabilisation of his own political proj-
ect. From a long-term perspective, however, all three created, or are
creating, competence in the issue they sought or seek to own. FrP,
Kukiz’15 and SPD exploited the opportunity structure—that is, voters’
openness to new far-right, anti-establishment parties.
In terms of financial resources, the leaders initially had to rely largely on
membership dues and donations, and Okamura’s SPD had a bank loan as
well (the funding of this party is not clearly understood). As they entered
parliament, the parties became eligible for state funding, with which they
could continue to operate comfortably. Kukiz’15 is an interesting diver-
gence from this practice. The leader’s emotive campaign against parti-
cracy, including parties’ dependence on money from the state, was the
reason he rejected this funding. From a long-term perspective, this was
clearly a strategic mistake and an economic trap. Kukiz thus forfeited the
option of investing more in building territorial and collateral units, and
worsened his prospects of competing with other parties, which make no
bones about taking money from the state. What is more, Kukiz’s decision
increased intraparty disputes and stimulated the departure of MPs.
In building their parties, the leaders sooner or later embraced a strongly

centralised organisation. Lange’s originally loose project was transformed
by Hagen into a super-centralised structure; the party is understood by the
leader as a corporation subject to the top leadership, which can set the
political line at will and interfere with the decisions of lower organisational
units, including collateral organisations. The position of the leadership
was also very strong in terms of bringing the party on the ground in line,
through the simple procedure of expelling members, deciding about
financial flows and (mostly informal) influence over the compiling of can-
didate lists.
Despite their different evolutions, the arrangements in Hagen’s FrP are
similar to those in Okamura’s SPD. Okamura, having had the experience
of the rebellion in Dawn, paid attention to keeping SPD firmly in his
hands and only worked with tried-and-tested and loyal cadres. He does
not admit any criticism of himself in the party and punishes any dissenters
harshly. But he compensates for this, as far as the regional elites are con-
cerned, by allowing them access to political positions, especially in parlia-
ment. These mechanisms are very effective in preventing conflict and
opposition in Okamura’s party.
Though Kukiz’15 relies on the form of a civic association, in the cen-
tralisation of power by the inner leadership it is close to both FrP and
SPD. The inner leadership decides every important party matter, includ-
ing the admission of new members, and can significantly influence
decision-making in the formally supreme body, the Conference, because
regional branches send relatively few delegates to it. The regions are de
facto excluded from the central decision-making, and this is similar to
Okamura’s SPD.
Looking now at how the various phases of institutionalisation were
managed: the first phase, identification, was managed successfully by all
founding fathers (see Table 6.2). Lange, Kukiz and Okamura were charis-
matic personalities who exploited the opportunity well and presented their
political messages convincingly. They all appeared as trustworthy preach-
ers, able to convince their supporters that the existing elites were incom-
petent or corrupt and that they themselves knew how to resolve the issue.
The twenty-first century offered Kukiz and Okamura more than just face-
to-face campaigning and the use of traditional media: both managed their
campaigns on social media well; the latter in particular became a veritable
social media phenomenon.
Table 6.2 The evolution of institutionalisation in the Progress Party, Kukiz’15

and Freedom and Direct Democracy
Political Identification (creator Organisation Stabilisation (stabiliser)
party/phase and preacher) (organiser)
and leader
role
Progress A successfully managed When the failing Hagen eventually lifted

Party message based on leader Lange died, he the isolation of the party
Lange’s mobilisation was replaced by and supported minority
against bloated welfare Hagen, who gave a governments;
state robust structure to concurrently he pacified
the party, which made intraparty dissent. The
it very resilient; he final confirmation of
also reoriented it to FrP’s political
anti-immigration acceptability came when
topics it joined government
under his successor
Jensen
Kukiz’15 The leader’s successful The leader failed to
anti-establishment organise the
message was linked parliamentary party;
with his campaign for there are efforts to
the introduction of build territorial and
single-member collateral
constituencies organisations, but the
result remains
uncertain
Freedom Successfully managed Built a strongly
and Direct despite the collapse of centralised party
Democracy the leader’s previous organisation, ensuring
project; achieved the loyalty of both the
dominance over the party on the ground
immigration and and the party elite,
refugee agenda; this is but local branches not
linked with cultural yet complete
mobilisation against the
EU in particular
Source: Authors
The second phase of institutionalisation—organisation—took a more

varied course, and the evaluations are different too. The different leader-
ship styles of the Progress Party had a clear effect on how the party man-
aged the problems of organisation. Lange was not interested in building a
solid party organisation, and thus failed as an organiser and coordinator.
His successor, Hagen, by contrast, thought this a necessity; he gave a clear

order and hierarchy to the party. In constructing a cohesive and loyal
organisation, he did not hesitate to deal harshly with his critics in the
party, pushing out dissatisfied individuals and groups, despite the price he
had to pay (including losses of MPs, voters and the youth organisation).
This authoritative strategy reinforced his position, and its effectiveness was
confirmed over the long term.
In building his organisation, Kukiz faced the same problems as some
other political entrepreneurs discussed in this book, including another
Pole, Janusz Palikot. Due to its precipitous emergence, Kukiz’15 lacked
any solid organisational background before the first elections it contested,
and the quality control and socialisation of its candidates were very low.
Thus, its MPs not only had heterogeneous opinions, they were also politi-
cally inexperienced. It was no surprise, therefore, that the parliamentary
party soon fell to pieces and that this was accompanied by conflicts between
Kukiz and his MPs that were covered by the media and hence compro-
mised Kukiz. The leader responded to this by introducing a more rigorous
selection process for candidates. Likewise, operating under the official
label of a civic association, an effort was apparent to build a more solid
body for the party. But this is a recent development and it is difficult for
now to assess its resilience.
The story of SPD shows how important the established party structure
is for its successful functioning in parliament. Okamura’s party was
founded two years before the first parliamentary election in which it won
seats. During this time, it built regional structures, whose presidia were
loyal to the central leadership. Barring the rare excess, the operation of the
parliamentary party, which was recruited from these loyal presidia, was
problem-free. In contrast to his earlier project and Kukiz’15, Okamura
manifested substantial organisational abilities. Although SPD is still young
and its local structure is incomplete, it can be preliminarily assessed as rela-
tively advanced in organisational terms.
It is only with FrP that it makes sense to sum up the third phase, stabili-
sation. Hagen eventually managed to lift FrP’s isolation and supported
minority governments in exchange for policy concessions. He pacified
internal dissenters who disagreed with this strategy. Yet the final confirma-
tion of FrP’s political acceptability—entering government without this
causing internal destruction in the party—only came under his successor
Jensen. It is too early to evaluate the stabilisation phase in Kukiz’15 and
SPD. However, it is worth noting, as far as Okamura’s SPD is concerned,
that after the 2017 parliamentary elections it was a possible, though less
preferred, coalition partner option for the winning ANO and that it con-
cluded informal ad hoc agreements with this party (and also the Communist
Party) in parliament on multiple issues. Thus, despite its far-right profile,
the party has not been politically isolated.
NOTES
1. It is worth noting that a leading figure studying the extreme right, Cas
Mudde (2007: 47), described FrP as a neoliberal populist party, a label he
justified by the lack of nativism (i.e. a combination of ethnically conceived
nationalism and xenophobia) at the core of its ideology. Piero Ignazi (2003:
157) is similarly careful in his assessment of this party, which he said was ‘at
the fringe of the extreme right political family’.
2. The ultimate result was that FrP lost the youth organisation and had to
establish a new one.
3. In constituencies where a small number of seats is allocated, it is not suffi-
cient to pass the formal 5 per cent threshold—more votes are necessary to
actually win a seat. Kukiz’15 candidates won 19 seats in district councils and
93 in municipal councils, as well as 4 mayoral positions which are elected
directly. Compared to PO, PiS and other parties that were represented in
national parliament, these were negligible results.
4. Thirty of the 42 candidates in the top three places of the candidate lists were
either chairs of regional SPD branches or their deputies.
5. These numbers do not include electoral coalitions, which SPD entered into
in several instances at the local level (Czech Statistical Office 2019).
6. Okamura invited the leaders of anti-immigration parties to the Czech capital
for a similar meeting in late 2017.
CHAPTER 7
Collapse or Survival: The Organisational

Resilience of Entrepreneurial Parties
The European political playing field has witnessed many lightning-fast

rises and equally quick demises of parties run by political entrepreneurs.
The attractive message that first appealed to supporters and voters often
ensured only their initial success, which was not sustained. Yet other entre-
preneurial parties have endured and become relevant political players, at
least for a time. Crucial for such long-term survival are the political entre-
preneurs’ organisational abilities, which often prove more important than
their financial resources.
None of the types of entrepreneurial party analysed in this book enjoys
a guarantee of long-term survival. Let us choose four parties that repre-
sent four types: Palikot’s Movement, Team Stronach, Tomio Okamura’s
Dawn and Kukiz’15. What they had in common was that their leaders and
founding fathers had none (or little) of the skills that were necessary to
create an organisationally resilient political party (for Kukiz’15, this evalu-
ation is at present preliminary). Some measure of a preacher’s charisma
and an anti-establishment appeal, linked with anticlerical provocation
(Janusz Palikot), technocracy (Frank Stronach), invocations of direct
democracy and later Czech nationalism (Tomio Okamura) or a nationalist
and anti-immigration crusade (Paweł Kukiz), were sufficient to attract
public attention in these four cases. But following this public show, the
leaders failed to manifest sufficient talent and ability to create a cohesive
party organisation and to sustain the interest of their supporters. The most
visible confirmation of the lacking organisational qualities of the leader

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5_7
was, in all these cases, the collapse of their incoherent parliamentary

groups, which, naturally, are important for any party. None of these politi-
cal entrepreneurs managed to create a consensus among their MPs, nor
did they socialise and train them for political work. The collapse of Palikot’s
and Stronach’s party enterprises was accelerated by insufficient political
will: the leaders lost interest in politics and returned to their business
activities.
Despite this, the empirical examples of the various types of entrepre-
neurial party provide observable preconditions for the progress of their
institutionalisation and long-term survival. Sometimes these have to be
observed within a given type. This is particularly true of political entrepre-
neurs with a firm who created parties with a territorial structure and mem-
berships. Here the combination of the founding father’s huge business
assets and his decision to create a strong party organisation provided
favourable preconditions. For example, Silvio Berlusconi, Andrej Babiš
and Viktor Uspaskich invested large financial, managerial and other
resources into building electoral-professional backing for their parties,
which had substantial memberships and local branches. They did not need
the resources of the state to create a strong party organisation—they
started to use these only later. Their business-firm origins were matched
by the technocratic slogans touting the promise of competent governance.
Although over time the party organisations led by Berlusconi, Uspaskich
and Babiš became more independent of their commercial firms, these
remained an important support for the parties, and not just in financial
terms. Berlusconi’s and Babiš’s parties importantly still rely on the media
owned by the parent companies; the media are exploited for political com-
petition and to improve the leaders’ images, tainted as they are by numer-
ous scandals and ‘sins of the past’.
In their centralised, vetted, loyal and disciplined party organisations,
these rich political entrepreneurs have become the focal points of the
decision-making process. Members and a network of local branches have
grounded their parties at all levels of politics. Of course, in waging cam-
paigns for the most important national (and European) elections, each
leader’s performance, supported by experts and professionals at party
headquarters, has remained crucial. But in local (and regional) elections,
whose character is, after all, different, the party on the ground has usually
played a major role, as without it one could not even create candidate lists
and lead the campaign. But having members—and especially leading
members in national and European parliaments and in local and regional
7 COLLAPSE OR SURVIVAL: THE ORGANISATIONAL RESILIENCE… 175
government—creates the risk of criticism and factions emerging in the

party. By virtue of their crucial positions in the party, supported by their
indispensability, Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich have managed to pacify
such opposition. The price they have had to pay—in the shape of depart-
ing rebellious individuals or groups—has not been fatal for their parties.
The organisational success of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Babiš’s ANO
and Uspaskich’s Labour Party has had another important effect—they
were or still are able to win elections, at least occasionally. Compared with
other entrepreneurial parties, this is extraordinary. Yet at the beginning of
their rise, their great electoral successes were aided substantially by the
collapse—or at least significant weakening—of public trust in the ‘old’
party elites. This allowed the parties led by Berlusconi, Babiš and Uspaskich
to become major players on their countries’ political fields and to serve at
the core of government coalitions.
Janusz Palikot and Vít Bárta, though the same type of political entre-
preneur as the trio above, clearly had much less money at their disposal.
Their investment in the party-political business was thus more limited, and
their other resources (personnel, media and other) were small or non-
existent. Palikot, in particular, was disadvantaged by Poland’s large size:
the number of constituencies in which to field candidates was great, and
he also had to circumvent, in a complicated way, the strict legislation on
party funding from private resources. Another non-negligible circum-
stance was that at the time of the breakthrough made by Palikot’s
Movement and Bárta’s Public Affairs, popular trust in the traditional elites
was withering, but one cannot speak of party politics hitherto totally col-
lapsing. All these meant that the window of opportunity for Palikot and
Bárta was smaller, and their parties’ success in elections was not as marked
and was not repeated.
In connection with the short lifespans of Palikot’s and Bárta’s political
businesses it is crucial to note that they neglected to build any party organ-
isation. Focused entirely on his personal media show, Palikot did not con-
sider such organisation important. The organisational weaknesses of
Bárta’s Public Affairs provide even more lessons, representing a perfect
example of triple concealment: of the true leader of the party; of the links
with his commercial interests; and of the decision-making mechanisms in
the party. The uncovering of the real workings of the party contributed
substantially to its quick collapse. Bárta’s political enterprise also provides
an outstanding lesson about the risks of over-reliance on volatile support-
ers only loosely linked with the party, who cannot fully supplant local
branches with members. A successful leader’s performance on social net-

works may, of course, effectively support his message and achievements, as
Babiš, Matovič, Okamura and others have amply demonstrated. But even
in the twenty-first century, a wager primarily on a network of online sup-
porters is not a good bet for the long-term survival of the party organisation.
In another type of entrepreneurial party—with commercial-firm
resources but investing little in membership or the building of territorial
structures—the political entrepreneur has even freer hands, as far as the
handling of his project is concerned. Symptomatically, Matovič and Frank
Stronach placed their bets mainly on their own actions. Matovič the per-
former proved much more adept in this respect, and his party enterprise
therefore survived longer. Slovakia’s political infrastructure also provided
nearly ideal conditions for such a one-man show. It is a small country with
only one constituency, relatively liberal legislation as far as party creation
and candidacy in elections are concerned, and an open political market,
that is, weak ties between voters and parties.
As this type of entrepreneurial party has a negligible membership, the
threat of internal opposition is minimised. Dissatisfied MPs or other politi-
cians only have a small chance of successful rebellion against their leader,
and usually only one avenue is open to them: to resign. Lack of cohesion
in the party elite—typically the departure of dissatisfied MPs—is not nec-
essarily fatal, even though it understandably damages the image of the
party and its leader.
And yet, total dependence on the leader and his resources causes weak-
ness in the party organisation. Unless extraordinary circumstances arise—
for example, the total collapse of party politics in the country in
question—only limited electoral success can be expected, incomparably
smaller than that achieved by Forza Italia, ANO and the Labour Party, all
parties with strong organisation. What is more, they were fragile and much
more vulnerable political vehicles than these three examples, even though
they may have survived for longer than one electoral term, as Matovič’s
OĽANO shows. The collapse of such a fragile vehicle may be caused by its
political message—the issue on which it emerged—ceasing to be attractive
or, worse, a major decline in the leader’s popularity or credibility with his
supporters. Unlike the issue, the leader is almost irreplaceable. Such a
party simply lacks any strong organisation that could help it to weather
crises. Thus, its institutionalisation has no chance of moving forward in
any meaningful way.
Much of what has already been said of the preceding type also applies
to political entrepreneurs without a firm and without a party on the
ground. Again, a smaller country—when it has a single constituency, a
liberal approach towards political parties conceived in a minimalist way
and fluctuating voters—provides the ideal political opportunity for such
political entrepreneurs. In the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’s Party
for Freedom operates, the political market is further opened by the absence
of an electoral threshold. This has the advantage that even a loss of most
of his voters does not necessarily strip the entrepreneur of his political
(parliamentary) mandate. With this type of party, a charismatic, attractive
and capable leader is even more important than with the previous type—
indeed, he is more important here than in any other kind of entrepreneur-
ial party. What the founding father lacks in business resources, he must
provide by his own zeal and thanks to cheap communication platforms—
social media in particular—which are of exceptional importance for his
success. However, he may, of course, invite external collaborators, as
Okamura did with Bárta when he founded Dawn. Okamura’s Dawn also
shows that this type of party (again) substantially limits the risks of dissent
in the party, but cannot entirely remove it. If the leader neglects his party-
political enterprise, he gives an opportunity to his opponents in the party,
thus endangering his authority and leadership position.
The party leader can substantially bolster the resilience and endurance
of this type of entrepreneurial party by training and socialising the party
personnel, especially the MPs, as Wilders’s Party for Freedom shows. But
even such resilience and longer existence of the party do not guarantee full
party institutionalisation. Like the preceding type, what is lacking is deper-
sonalisation—that is, the shift of voters’ identification from the leader to
the party. The loss of the leader, a decline in his credibility or the takeover
of his main issue by another political player—all these might easily put the
party at risk of collapse.
The absence of external resources and organisational background has
one important effect. Wilders and Okamura could only make their break-
throughs because they represented a very radical political protest. Of
course, something like this is not excluded even in political entrepreneurs
with a firm, as Palikot and Matovič showed. However, in cases of political
entrepreneurs without a firm the probability of a radical strategy is much
greater. Both Wilders and Okamura carved out a niche for themselves—
they grasped an issue ignored by the mainstream parties, communicated it
in an attractive, sharp and ruthless manner, and supported it with their
rhetorical skills, social capital and personal charm. The appeal of this type
of political entrepreneur involves engaging in unconventional behaviour—
they oscillate between radicalism and extremism, or they exploit political
issues neglected by other political parties. Although technocratic appeals
might appear in this type of entrepreneurial party, they are much less likely
than in parties run by political entrepreneurs with a firm.
Political entrepreneurs without a firm who decided to build a party
with a territorial structure and recruit members also tended to adopt a
fringe strategy. They too were aware that they would be more likely to
attract attention by their radicalism, or unusual political appeals. More
interesting about this type of entrepreneurial party, however, are the lead-
ers’ motives for building a strong organisation and the effects of such a
decision. Both can be illustrated well with Carl I. Hagen’s Progress Party.
By building the party on the ground, Hagen compensated for his lack of
external resources. He understood that without a strong organisation he
had no chance of achieving lasting success in national politics. A disci-
plined, loyal and populous organisation, anchored at various levels,
allowed his party to extricate itself from the political periphery, survive
crises and become a respectable political actor. The extremely centralist
arrangements pacified dissent in the party. The passage of time confirmed
that a transfer of power in the leadership was possible in the Norwegian
Progress Party without creating a breach. A leader with no resources and
a strong organisation was, evidently, a successful combination, with the
electoral potential of a medium-sized party. (Two other entrepreneurial
parties, Kukiz’15 and Tomio Okamura’s second project, Freedom and
Direct Democracy, are of the same type as Hagen’s Progress Party, but
they are still too young to allow a comprehensive evaluation. The leader’s
mistakes have put a question mark over Kukiz’15 fate.)
All these confirm the premise proposed at the beginning of this book.
Of all four entrepreneurial party types, the one without a firm but with
strong organisation stands the best chance of surviving leader loss or
replacement. However, the successor to the charismatic founder also needs
a measure of personal magnetism and must be a capable communicator
and organiser; otherwise the party project is unviable in the long term.
What Kevin Deegan-Krause and Tim Haughton (2018: 482) note for par-
ties in Central and Eastern Europe generally—‘[a] well-developed organi-
zational structure […] is no guarantee of survival’—fully holds true here.
The main reason for entrepreneurial parties’ failure to survive is the
exhaustion of the leadership of their ‘founding fathers’ and of their appeals.
Table 7.1 A summary of entrepreneurial parties, their resilience and survival

Entrepreneurial Party resilience and survival
party type
Quick collapse Repeated Long-term Fully
parliamentary survival, entry institutionalised
presence but no into
government government
involvement
Entrepreneur with Palikot’s ANO in

a firm, structure Movement in Czechia,
and members Poland, Public Forza Italia,
Affairs in Labour Party
Czechia in Lithuania
Entrepreneur Kukiz’15 in Freedom and Progress Party
without a firm, Poland Direct Democracy in Norway
with structure and in Czechia
members
Entrepreneur with Team Stronach OĽANO in
a firm, without in Austria Slovakia
structure and
members
Entrepreneur Dawn of Party for
without a firm, Direct Freedom in the
structure and Democracy in Netherlands
members Czechia
Source: Authors
This is also true for political entrepreneurs with a firm such as Berlusconi’s
and Uspaskich’s parties, where a trend of declining electoral support is
noticeable. Table 7.1 provides a synoptic overview of the parties’ fates.
The ability to learn from the experience of others is an interesting
aspect of political entrepreneurship, and affects the behaviour of some
political entrepreneurs. The Czech context, where this phenomenon is
widespread, is illustrative in this respect. In conceiving ANO, Andrej Babiš
reflected upon the mistakes made by Vít Bárta in Public Affairs, especially
concealing the true leader and the business-firm background, and the lack
of transparency in party decision-making mechanisms. The organisation of
Tomio Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy, meanwhile, is visibly
informed by lessons learned from the mistakes that this political entrepre-
neur committed in his first political project. Similar examples of learning
from predecessors’ mistakes can be observed outside Czechia. For instance,
Geert Wilders in the Netherlands had the sudden rise and collapse of Pim
Fortuyn’s party before his eyes, and adapted his organisational strategy
accordingly. Indeed, the ability to learn from the experience and mistakes
of others is a strong indicator that the phenomenon of political entrepre-
neurship has become established in the contemporary world.
Here an interesting question emerges. Are entrepreneurial parties spe-
cial in terms of the conditions necessary for their institutionalisation and
political survival? Peter Mair (1989), investigating Western European
examples, and Kevin Deegan-Krause and Tim Haughton (2018: 481–487),
examining their East-Central European counterparts, discussed three cru-
cial elements of parties’ survival: party organisation, catchy appeals to the
voters and leadership. Theoretically, this should apply to all types of party,
including entrepreneurial parties. However, entrepreneurial parties, more
than other parties, might face something that Nicole Bolleyer (2013:
51–75) calls the leadership-structure dilemma. All the entrepreneurial par-
ties under our scrutiny, especially in the phase of identification, made a
leadership-based attempt to institutionalise. However, the parties scoring
better—in terms of reaching the more mature stages—were those that
opted for including elements of organisation-based institutionalisation in
their strategies.1
Yet it is a leader-founder who remains crucial for the internal as well as
the external life of an entrepreneurial party. Therefore, inside an entrepre-
neurial party, the leadership-structure dilemma will never be fully resolved
in favour of the organisation against the leader. Business-like structures,
ties and practices actually help the leader against attempts by party struc-
tures or members to subvert the existing leadership. However, this also
means that an entrepreneurial party cannot compensate for the mistakes
and flaws of the leadership by means of its organisation. Among the three
conditions of survival, leadership is a necessary, and sometimes almost a
sufficient, one for an entrepreneurial party. Organisation is never sufficient
but it seems necessary when an entrepreneurial party strives for what we
call long-term survival.
What about the appeal? In post-industrial European societies, political
parties face profound socio-economic changes, changing political values
and political cultures, changing channels of political communication and a
changing political agenda (Luther and Müller-Rommel 2005: 7–10).
Entrepreneurial parties that deliberately ignore any firmer ideological base
are well equipped for using various electoral appeals and for reacting to
swift changes of public opinion, media agenda and voters’ preferences.
The leadership-based political style of entrepreneurial parties corresponds

well with a focus on the ‘valence issues of competence, personalist leaders,
and new issues of corruption’ (Deegan-Krause and Haughton 2018: 483)
that helps newcomers—political entrepreneurs—to break into the elec-
toral market.
Yet when we look at the issue of appeal from the perspective of long-
term survival, it is exactly this unbounded flexibility, in combination with
a strong focus on the leadership of the founder, that might become tire-
some for voters. Among the entrepreneurial parties under our scrutiny,
only those that tried and succeeded to develop a clear political profile of
some sort (such as the anti-immigrant protest identity of the Norwegian
Progress Party) managed to institutionalise. The role of appeal in the sur-
vival of an entrepreneurial party is important but, at the same time, ambig-
uous. An entrepreneurial party, by the nature of its characteristics and its
modus operandi, is stronger at the outset and more vulnerable in the long-
term perspective than most other parties.
We saw that all three key elements of survival are important for entre-
preneurial parties, but we also saw that, contrary to what prevails in many
other parties, the leadership only plays a dominant role during the pro-
cesses of survival and institutionalisation. This is hardly surprising, since
any personal vehicle depends primarily on the qualities and resilience of its
political ‘driver’—a driver who might show greater or lesser willingness to
soften his business instincts in order to obey the political limits drawn by
the political institutions of the liberal democratic regimes. This leads us to
our final consideration: assessing the relationship between political entre-
preneurs and the quality of democracy.
RISKS POSED BY POLITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

TO DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
Entrepreneurial parties are interesting not just because of the position and
importance of the leader, the nature of their decision-making procedures
and other aspects of their functioning, but also due to the impact they
have on the quality of contemporary liberal democracies. The boom of
this phenomenon necessitates at least a brief consideration in this section,
which in its character is more normative than the rest of the book.
Of course, we cannot a priori blame the phenomenon of entrepreneurial
parties for a threat to the quality of democracy. This book has shown how
the rise of entrepreneurial parties typically responds to demand by a dis-

satisfied population, which by means of this protest reacts to social change,
economic problems, the actions of mainstream politicians, or feeling of
being no longer represented by them. The gamut of entrepreneurial parties
or other parties of similar character is very broad, as are their effects on
democratic politics. Beyond the parties presented in this book, we could,
cum grano salis, analyse the politics of such different entities as Movimento
5 Stelle (The Five Star Movement) and La République En Marche! The
crisis of the more traditional instruments for representing citizens politi-
cally truly must be seen as a major window of opportunity, through which
entrepreneurial parties have been very well able to penetrate the political
discourse and win the favour of Europe’s electorates. Without this, the
political entrepreneurs’ messages would stand no chance of success.
It is also true that, given how varied this phenomenon is, a black-and-
white optic cannot be applied. For instance, the Slovak, Igor Matovič,
established his OĽANO party not just to promote his personal ambition
but also as a loose platform for independent personalities, which was
intended to serve as an alternative to party politics. The idea was naïve and
Matovič’s style and methods (including his use of a lie detector) were con-
troversial, yet there is no gainsaying some idealism in his motives. Looking
back at the beginnings of controversial leaders such as Berlusconi and
Babiš, we note their authentic conviction that they could do politics better
than the professional incumbents. Often this was just unwarranted mes-
sianism. Many political entrepreneurs soon found out that politics is a
distinctive craft, one they had to learn gradually and often painfully. Their
initial experience with coalition governance in particular confirmed how
little success they could have in resolving political and economic problems,
or in communicating with coalition partners and the opposition—even
when compared to the ‘old, corrupt and incompetent’ parties.
But failures and incompetence are not the main reasons for our concern
with entrepreneurial parties’ impact on the quality of democratic represen-
tation. More dangerous are their following characteristics: typically, little
or no internal democracy; perilous connections between high politics and
big business created by political entrepreneurs with a firm; and the eco-
nomic exploitation of politics particularly observable in some political
entrepreneurs without a firm. These phenomena are integrally connected
with the fact that, in their working methods and organisation, entrepre-
neurial parties take their inspiration from business. Thus, this is not just an
empirical weakness of the existing entrepreneurial parties but a
consequence of the internal logic according to which this model of politi-

cal organisation operates. But while the commercial market allows compe-
tition, even where large corporations are concerned, and the potential
dominance of a single business can be regulated, the state’s political appa-
ratus is much more susceptible to a ‘hostile takeover’ by a particular com-
mercial interest in the guise of an entrepreneurial party. If we subscribe to
Max Weber’s notion of the state as a monopoly on the legal use of political
power, we need to be a lot more careful here than in the economy.
The lack of intraparty democracy is a product of centralist decision-
making processes within the party and the fact that even those entrepre-
neurial parties which attempt to build some membership do not consider
the voice of the rank and file a strong political imperative. Party policy,
ideological direction, personnel policy—all these are typically decided by a
small circle around the founding father and his closest collaborators, often
drawn from the founding father’s business empire. One might object that
a tendency to centralise may appear in any political party. Indeed, Robert
Michels’s notion of the iron law of oligarchy predates World War I. Yet the
domination by the inner circle is crucial for the workings of the over-
whelming majority of entrepreneurial parties, and attempts to mask their
lack of interest in the opinions of the broader membership by inventing
new models of participation, such as the véčkaři (the ‘Vs’, or registered
supporters) in Vít Bárta’s party, are not very convincing.
As long as we do not give up on the idea that political parties should
serve as organisations to aggregate and represent collective interests, the
absence of intraparty democracy is a problem, not least because it permits
too much ideological and policy flexibility. In a changing society, we can
hardly return to the conception of socially integrating mass parties, repre-
senting clearly delineated segments of the population. But, by their very
nature, entrepreneurial parties give up on any collective representation,
and by their actions they transform the party-political arena into a market
with voters understood as political consumers, who create demand largely
according to what is on offer—the supply having been prepared in advance
by slick political marketing. Blurring the behavioural differences between
actors in a political system and a market economy threatens the tradition
of liberal democracy, as it has gradually evolved in Europe since the eigh-
teenth century.
The new model of an entirely unmediated relationship between economic
and political power, and economic and political interests—as it appears in
many entrepreneurial parties—is perhaps even more problematic. Certainly,
economic interests have always played a very important role in politics, and
there is no need to delude ourselves about ‘traditional’ political parties. But
even those instances where the relationships between political parties and
big business could be described as essentially corrupt, they were still medi-
ated. There was always, at least formally, a certain organisational, personnel
and financial divide between the business and (party) political spheres.
Examples include the relations between Berlusconi and the Italian Socialist
Party in the 1980s and Babiš and the two major Czech parties, the Civic
and Social Democrats, at the turn of the millennium. There have always
been politicians more than willing to listen to their sponsors, and entrepre-
neurs seeking to profit from a privileged relationship with those in power.
However, the entrepreneurial party model has radically transformed
these mutually advantageous links by identifying the politician with the
entrepreneur and by integrally connecting the economic and political
powers, and their financial and other resources. Another aspect of this
fusion is the loss of accountability of political entrepreneurs. Sooner or
later, Berlusconi, Babiš, Uspaskich and others started to abuse their politi-
cal position to dodge justice. Finally, an unavoidable negative aspect of
identifying politics and business is concerned with the direct revenues
from political activities. Frank Stronach and his attempt to recover the
failed investment in his party is only an amusing tip of the iceberg. Tomio
Okamura, meanwhile, is an example of a politician who turned his party
into a business profitable in the long term. But even financially much more
skilled political entrepreneurs make no bones about ‘obtaining a return’
on their investment in political parties, whether this takes the form of state
subsidies for political party operations, or public contracts or subsidies for
their commercial firms.
We do not believe that the phenomenon of entrepreneurial parties is
temporary. They have been with us for decades; new ones are being cre-
ated incessantly in Europe and beyond. The European liberal democratic
model is facing a number of fundamental challenges (Zielonka 2018).
Entrepreneurial parties are quite good at appearing to know the recipes
that will resolve the crisis. This model of the party, deftly navigating the
choppy waters of voters’ favour, is often seductive for those who see poli-
tics largely in terms of power and not as an opportunity to promote ideas.
The hyper-centralised organisational model, independent of intraparty
democracy, is attractive to those leaders who, in their pursuit of political
office, do not want to waste time in debating with those representing col-
lective interests, or their own party members. The model of an
unmediated linkage between politics and business provides a tonic to

entrepreneurs who, lacking state subsidies, are losing steam. The person-
alisation and medialisation of politics play into the hands of those who are
able to deal with voters primarily as ‘consumers of political products’, and
of the related advertising activities.
In a discussion of the normative aspects of entrepreneurial party activi-
ties, it would be therefore counterproductive to consider how we could
rid ourselves of them. From the perspective of political science, it makes
more sense to consider new ways of regulating the relations between the
business and political spheres. From the perspective of ‘traditional’ party
politicians, one needs to reconsider the relations between interests, ideas,
voters and political communication. But such considerations go beyond
the scope of this book.
NOTE
1. See Bolleyer (2013: 58–60) for an explanation of the terms ‘leadership-
based’ and ‘organisation-based institutionalisation’.
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INDEX1
A B
Agrofert (Czech holding), Babiš, Andrej, 3, 19–21, 26, 29, 30,
48, 53–56, 61, 62 48–64, 67, 71, 73, 79, 82–85,
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for 87, 89, 90, 91n8, 95, 96, 110,
Europe (ALDE), 53, 68 114, 139, 160, 161, 174–176,
ANO, 3, 5, 22, 28, 30, 42, 48–63, 68, 179, 182, 184
69, 82–89, 90n1, 91n8, 91n10, Bárta, Vít, 3, 19, 21, 29, 30, 39–41,
110, 114, 139, 160, 161, 172, 43–51, 58, 63, 64, 71, 73, 76,
175, 176, 179 83–85, 87, 130, 175, 177,
Anti-establishment (politics, rhetoric), 179, 183
39, 49, 52, 54, 74, 75, 78, 83, Baudet, Thierry, 126
84, 96, 103, 114, 119, 127, 130, Berlusconi, Silvio, 2–4, 16, 19–21, 26,
132, 134, 140, 151, 168, 173 31–41, 43–45, 48–51, 53–55, 57,
Anti-immigration (politics, rhetoric), 61, 63, 64, 67, 70, 71, 73, 79,
122, 123, 131, 132, 143, 144, 82–85, 87, 89, 90, 95, 96, 101,
147, 152, 153, 158–160, 166, 114, 123, 174, 175, 179,
168, 172n6 182, 184
Anti-party (rhetoric), 33, 52, 87, 103, Biedroń, Robert, 75, 77, 78
114, 115, 149, 151 Blair, Tony, 90n6
Art, David, 17, 24, 124, 125, 135, Bloomberg, Michael, 90n6
136, 144–146 Bolleyer, Nicole, 17, 180
Arter, David, 17, 24, 25 Borisov, Yuri, 65
1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41916-5
212 INDEX
Bosma, Martin, 124 organisation, 2–4, 6–8, 26,

Brabec, Richard, 60 64, 173–185
Brazauskas, Algirdas, 66 territorial structures, 5, 8, 11,
Bucher, Joseph, 41, 117n5 21–23, 26, 174, 176, 178
Business-firm party, 3, 15–17 typology, 4, 5, 11, 18–23, 28n2
Bytzek, Evelyn, 17 Euroscepticism, 33, 96, 98, 122,
144, 157
C
Cadre parties, 6, 11 F
Cartel parties, 2, 4, 13, 15 Faltýnek, Jaroslav, 61
Catch-all parties, 2, 12, 13 Fiala, Radim, 133, 157, 158, 162, 165
Č ernoch, Marek, 133 Fico, Robert, 102, 105, 106, 108
Clinton, Bill, 90n6 Fininvest, 20, 31, 34, 35, 37
Conceptual Council (of Public Fortuyn, Pim, 123, 124, 126, 180
Affairs), 45, 58 Forza Italia (FI), 3, 5, 16, 17, 20, 21,
Corruption, 31, 32, 38, 41, 51, 66, 26, 30–39, 41, 44, 45, 48, 51,
68, 95, 96, 98, 102, 105, 106, 53, 55, 58, 60, 61, 68, 82, 83,
131, 151, 181 85–89, 114, 175, 176
Craxi, Bettino, 2, 32 Frank Stronach Institute, 95, 100,
101, 117n2
Freedom and Direct Democracy
D (SPD), 3, 6, 113, 114, 133, 139,
Dawn of Direct Democracy (Dawn, 140, 143, 155, 157–171, 172n4,
Czech party), 3, 5, 44, 120, 172n5, 178, 179
126–134, 140, 157
Dealignment, 12
Deegan-Krause, Kevin, 21, 41, 102, G
178, 180, 181 Gazprom, 64
Direct democracy (issue of), 30, 37, Grillo, Beppe, 104
39, 42, 44, 49, 83, 114, 126, Grodzka, Anna, 75, 76
129, 130, 134, 157, 168, 173 Grybauskaitė, Dalia, 67
Duverger, Maurice, 1, 11, 12
H
E Hagen, Carl Ivar, 3, 21, 139, 140,
Electoral-professional party, 13 142–149, 152, 165, 167–169,
Entrepreneurial party 171, 178
concept, 3, 14–18 Harmel, Robert, 16, 17, 24, 25, 38,
definition, 3, 11, 14–19 90, 135, 141, 142, 145, 146
institutionalisation, 4–7, 11, 22–26 Haughton, Tim, 8n2, 21, 41, 102,
membership, 8, 21–23, 26, 174, 104, 178, 180, 181
176, 183 Hopkin, Jonathan, 3, 15, 17, 33–36
INDEX 213
I Le Pen, Marine, 166

Ignazi, Piero, 13, 31, 33, 37, 172n1 Leadership, 16, 23, 24, 30, 31, 38,
Innes, Abby, 15 43–47, 57, 59–61, 69, 75, 76,
Institutionalisation, 4–7, 14, 18, 78, 80, 82, 84–87, 91n15, 100,
23–27, 87–90, 116, 135, 136, 108, 115, 124, 132, 135–137,
169, 170, 174, 176, 177, 180, 140, 143, 146–149, 154, 159,
181, 185n1 161–164, 166, 167, 169–171,
Italian Socialist Party (PSI), 177, 178, 180, 181
2, 31, 184 Lincoln, Abraham, 10
Lindner, Monika, 99, 101
Liroy-Marzec, Piotr, 153
J Lucardie, Paul, 9
Jensen, Siv, 148, 171
John, Radek, 40–43, 45, 46, 83
Johnson, Lyndon, 10 M
Jupskås, Anders Ravik, 144, 145, Mair, Peter, 2, 11–13, 180
147, 148 Mass parties, 1, 11, 12, 15, 17, 140,
Jurinová, Erika, 102 141, 144, 146, 156,
161–166, 183
Matovič, Igor, 20, 21, 94, 101–116,
K 117n7, 176, 177, 182
Kaczyński, Lech, 72, 73 Mazzoleni, Oscar, 17, 21, 124, 125
Katz, Richard, 2, 11, 13 Mečiar, Vladimír, 102
Kirchheimer, Otto, 2, 12 Media ownership, 19, 48
Klasnová, Kateřina, 40 Mediaset, 32, 34, 35, 38
Kohout, Pavel, 128 Memberless parties, 17, 21
Krouwel, André, 13, 15–17 Michels, Robert, 183
Kukiz, Pawel, 3, 21, 78, 139, 140, Morawiecki, Kornel, 153
149–157, 161, 164, 167–169, Mudde, Cas, 172n1
171, 173
Kukiz’15, 3, 5, 139, 140, 149–156,
161, 164, 168–171, 173, 178 N
Kwaśniewski, Alexander, 77 Nachbaur, Kathrin, 100, 101
Nečas, Petr, 43, 44, 51, 128, 131
Neumann, Sigmund, 12
L New Union (party in Lithuania),
Labour Party (DP), 3, 30, 63–71, 64, 65, 68, 70
82–89, 144, 175, 176 Norwegian Progress Party (FrP),
Lang, Kai-Olaf, 67, 68 5, 21, 140–149, 152, 155, 168,
Lange, Anders, 21, 140–143, 169, 171, 172n1, 172n2,
146, 167–170 178, 181
Law and order (politics, rhetoric), Nowacka, Barbara, 78, 82
95–97, 143 Nowicka, Wanda, 75, 76
214 INDEX
O R
Okamura, Tomio, 3, 21, 28, 113, 119, Radičová, Iveta, 103, 104
120, 123, 126–137, 139–141, Registered sympathisers, 61
143, 152, 155, 157–169, 171, Remišová, Veronika, 112
172n6, 173, 176–179, 184 Rusnok, Jiří, 131
Ordinary People and Independent
Personalities (OĽ ANO), 3, 5, 21,
93, 94, 104–116, 117n9, S
176, 182 Salvini, Matteo, 39
Schumpeter, Joseph A., 9
Škárka, Jaroslav, 40, 43, 44
P Spring (Polish political party), 78
Paksas, Rolandas, 65 Spryut, Bart Jan, 121
Palikot, Janusz, 3, 21, 29, 30, 71–82, Stankiewicz, Andrzej, 149
84, 86, 89, 91n12, 101, 104, Stronach, Frank, 3, 19–22, 94–101,
149, 150, 153, 154, 171, 113–115, 117n2, 117n5, 173,
173–175, 177 174, 176, 184
Palikot Movement (RP), 3, 5, Sulík, Richard, 102, 103, 117n7
71–82, 140, 150, 152, 153, Svåsand, Lars, 16, 17, 24, 25, 90,
173, 175 135, 141
Panebianco, Angelo, 12, 13, Szydlo, Beata, 152
15, 16, 23
Paolucci, Caterina, 3, 15, 17, 33–36
Party for Freedom (PVV), 3, 5, 17, T
21, 120–126, 128–130, 134–137, Tavits, Margit, 14, 21, 22
143, 158, 177 Team Stronach, 3, 5, 21, 23, 93–101,
Pasquino, Gianfranco, 20 107, 113–116, 117n6, 173
Paul II, John, 73 Trump, Donald, 9
Paulauskas, Artūras, 64, 65 Tusk, Donald, 149
People of Freedom, 36–38
Political communication, 12, 34,
61–63, 68, 70, 82, 89, 114, U
140, 180, 185 Uspaskich, Viktor, 3, 19–21, 29, 30,
Poroshenko, Petro, 9 63–73, 82–85, 87, 89, 90, 95,
Procházka, Radoslav, 110 123, 174, 175, 179, 184
Pröll, Erwin, 99
Public Affairs (VV, party in
Czechia), 3, 21, 22, 28, 30, V
39–42, 48, 51, 55, 57, 60, 63, Viskupič, Jozef, 102
69, 76, 83–88, 90n1, 114, 129, Voerman, Gerrit, 17, 21, 124, 125
131, 175, 179 Volný, Lubomír, 162, 165, 166
INDEX 215
W Y
Weber, Max, 183 Your Movement (TR), see Palikot
Weigerstorfer, Ulla, 101 Movement (RP)
White Lion Agency, 39
Wilders, Geert, 3, 19, 21, 111, 119,
120, 126, 128–130, 132, Z
134–137, 143, 166, 177, 180 Zeman, Miloš, 51

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Vít Hloušek · Lubomír Kopeček · Petra Vodová

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

Cover illustration: Cube / Alamy Stock Photo

We are glad Palgrave Macmillan is open to supporting projects such as

Authors, Brno, December 2019

2 Political Entrepreneurs and Their Parties: Conceptual and

3 The Party as a Spin-off from a Business Empire 29

4 Two Tycoons and Their One-Man Shows 93

5 Entrepreneurial Parties Without Firms and Without

6 How to Build a Party Organisation Without Financial

7 Collapse or Survival: The Organisational Resilience of

ABL Agentura bílého lva; White Lion Agency (Czechia)

SPÖ Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs; Social Democratic Party

Table 2.1 Concept of entrepreneurial party 18

In liberal democracies, the relationship between politics and business,

© The Author(s) 2020 1

preferences of the various segments of European societies. The era of

analysis is still lacking of the processes of emergence and development, the

every entrepreneurial party in Europe. Bearing in mind how many there

and Direct Democracy. The successes and failures of the institutionalisa-

Nevertheless, regardless of the presence or absence of a commercial

Political Entrepreneurs and Their Parties:

As Paul Lucardie (2000: 175) pertinently noted, ‘newcomers are rarely

© The Author(s) 2020 9

The concepts of political entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial parties,

remarkable similarities between entrepreneurial parties in the ‘old’ and

TYPES OF PARTIES IN THE CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL

When Maurice Duverger (1954) described the origins of modern political

functioning of the party organisation. This aspect is well captured by the

many of these parties share the same set of characteristics, differentiating

CONCEPTUAL DIFFERENCES, DEFINITION AND CONCEPT

emphasise that the leadership of a business-firm party is linked to ‘personal

Parties, both established in the early 1970s—two decades before Forza

It is also important to offer a basic concept that covers all entrepreneur-

Table 2.1 Concept of entrepreneurial party

Origin Founded as leader’s private initiative.

A TYPOLOGY OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTIES

‘enterprise’. They are represented in this book by Janusz Palikot (Poland),

Of course, electoral and political success is not just about a ‘simple’

Table 2.2 Typology of entrepreneurial parties

THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTIES

Table 2.3 Phases of institutionalisation of entrepreneurial parties

1. Identification Develop message CREATOR and PREACHER

Source: Adapted from Harmel and Svåsand (1993: 75)

RESEARCH SOURCES AND INSTRUMENTS

parties (Morlino 2018). One of our goals is to increase our knowledge

will rely on a comprehensive parsing of the secondary sources available

The Party as a Spin-off

© The Author(s) 2020 29

THE (IN)FAMOUS PIONEER: BERLUSCONI’S FORZA ITALIA

What was curious about the alleged newness of Berlusconi’s political

The Business and Media Empire Serving as Forza Italia’s Base

Change in the Organisation While Maintaining Its Essence

government. The Berlusconi-led centre-right government coalition that

Table 3.1 Results of Forza Italia/The People of Freedom in parliamentary

Source: Italy (2019)

further compounded by its inability to resolve Italy’s economic problems,

‘DOWN WITH THE DINOSAURS!’ OR TOO PRIVATE PUBLIC

originally founded in 2001 as a local Prague party with a handful of mem-

manager and secured an electable position on the Prague candidate list. At

Table 3.2 Election results of Public Affairs and ANO