Party system stability and instability

The diploma thesis deals with party system stability and its aim is to verify the hypothesis, that the countries with the longest continuity of the political regime prove the highest level of party system stability. The author tries to confirm this hypothesis by analysing the party system stability in six chosen cases, which include the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Portugal, Spain, Austria and Germany. To confirm the hypothesis the author use qualitative and quantitative analysis based on the concept that focuses on relations between political parties, structure of party competition and patterns of coalition formation. This approach defines the party system stability by setting four criterions: frequency of government alternation, type of government alternation, innovation of governing formulas and access of political parties to government. The thesis analyses according to this concept the party systems of the six states in the term 1993-2013 and also covers the historical context of party systems development in the selected cases from the end of the World War II. The author stresses in the whole thesis the case of the Czech Republic