Polarisation in society increases voter turnout

According to the survey authors, social polarisation has increased in all countries of the Visegrad Four Group (V4), the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, over the past ten years, with the Czech Republic showing the least significant increase.

Political scientist Petra Guasti is of the view that the polarisation in society is reinforcing two processes simultaneously. On the one hand, there is a growing disagreement with democracy as the best form of government and the opinion that other alternatives could be better. On the other hand, when people realise that democracy may be threatened, support for representative democracy is mobilised.

"Between 2010 and 2023, social polarisation rose significantly in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, while in the Czech Republic, the increase was not as steep. Hungary has consistently shown the highest level of polarisation, while Slovakia has experienced the most significant acceleration in recent years. Social polarisation positively influences mobilisation for democracy and autocracy, with a stronger and statistically more significant effect on mobilisation for democracy," Guasti said.

The conference in the Senate, the upper house of Czech parliament, also addressed the issue of the far right.

According to political scientist Jan Charvát, the far right has changed since 2001. In the past 20 years, the influence of far-right parties has increased and in some cases, they have gone from being extra-parliamentary groups to becoming ruling parties. The parties are finding new topis and slogans, focusing for example on anti-Islamism, he added.

"Since this transformation has been successful, the far right has followed it up with a total rebranding, in which it has tried to create a new image for itself, in which there will be no room for any of the usual criticism that has been levelled at the far right, such as, that it is anti-Semitic, racist, authoritarian, nationalist and follows the historical patterns of fascism and Nazism," Charvát noted.

Source: Czech News Agency