Political Perspectives of Sustainability of Welfare State in the Czech republic

The problem of the sustainability of the welfare state became over several last years one of the most important political, medial and social topics in the Czech republic. Recent experience from countries of southern Europe are showing, that large welfare states are in their current size economically unsustainable, because they significantly participate on creating public budget's deficits and on the growth of government debt. In this master's thesis I deal with exploring the possibility, that political parties in the Czech republic conduct a reduction of the Czech welfare state's size. The thesis draws on the economic theory of democracy developed by Joseph Schumpeter and Anthony Downs and the argumentation builds on its assumption that political parties are rational actors motivated purely by gaining votes and winning elections. Based on this assumption, I develop an economic model of partisan decision-making and conclude conditions, that allow political parties to decide rationally in accordance with their assumed motivation to conduct the reduction of the welfare state. The fulfillment of these conditions is consequently being empirically analyzed for the specific case of the Czech republic. The results of my analysis show, that none of these conditions is fulfilled in the Czech republic - by..