Reconstruction of the state: Lobbying against political corruption in the Czech Republic

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2054
• Author: Jakub Stauber,Michel Perottino,Daniel Šárovec
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Date: 01 February 2020

ACADEMIC PAPER

Reconstruction of the state: Lobbying against political

corruption in the Czech Republic

Michel Perottino | Jakub Stauber | Daniel Šárovec

Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University,

Prague, Czech Republic

Correspondence

Michel Perottino, Faculty of Social Sciences,

Charles University, U Kříže 8, Praha 5, Prague

158 00, Czech Repu blic.

Email: michel.perottino@fsv.cuni.cz

Funding information

Charles University, Grant/Award Number:

Progres Q18

High level of distrust in political elites accompanied with a strong perception of

corruption in Czech Republic has led to an increase of several anti-corruption

nongovernmental organisations' activities. About 18 organisations have created in

2013 an open coalition and established a project called “Reconstruction of the State”

(Rekonstrukce státu). This project is oriented towards political parties and political

elites to lead them to adopt nine anti-corruption legislative proposals. This paper

analyses how the project operates in its formal and informal aspects, which commu-

nication means are preferred and how the lobbyists interact with the politicians and

political parties. Apart from the analysis of publicly available pieces of information

from the project's website and official printed materials, semistructured interviews

with activists and field research were performed. It can be seen that Reconstruction

of the state has been most successful regarding agenda-setting, but in the context of

the legislative process, it has to face many obstacles either from legislators them-

selves or competitors with different goals.

1|INTRODUCTION

Three years ago, quite an unusual project started in the Czech

Republic. It has been motivated by a very low level of anti-corruption

fighting primarily. Although this topic was one of the essential points

of the then government programme, there was not possible to see

any changes for the better.

According to data from Comparative Study of Electoral Systems

for years 2006 and 2010, corruption was described as one of the

most important political problems in the Czech Republic. Relatively

high level of perception this problem is one of the factors affecting

the success of the new political parties in the Czech party system.

Project Reconstruction of the State (Rekonstrukce státu) was

launched March 12, 2013, with the goal of implementation nine key

bills. These proposals should help to improve the functioning of state

institutions and political parties.

This project is uncommon in several aspects. At first, it has not

developed an independent organisational structure. From this point of

view, the Reconstruction unites about 18 nongovernmental and non-

profit organisations, which are participating to varying degrees in this

project. This could be described as a loose coalition of these subjects.

In the context of the Czech Republic, the formation of lobbying coali-

tions is quite a novel strategy among anticorruption activists and

NGOs. The effort to formulate political topics acceptable for all politi-

cal parties across the political spectrum regardless of their ideological

background is also very unusual. In this sense, we would expect that

such a large-scale lobbying coalition promoting widely acceptable

topics and combining outside and inside strategies to influence the

political debate will be successful in its effort. On the other hand, our

research shows that lobbying action succeeded only in the sense of

agenda-setting, but the organisation was more or less unable to con-

trol the changes adopted during the legislative process.

The main task of this paper is to find out to what extent the

effectiveness of this lobbying organisation is dependent on

organisational and environmental factors. Theoretical framework

proceeds from the contingency model of lobbying (Jaatinen, 1998).

This study was supported by the Charles University Research Programme “Progres”Q18—Social Sciences: From Multidisciplinarity to Interdisciplinarity.

Received: 16 November 2018 Revised: 1 July 2019 Accepted: 2 November 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2054

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2054. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1of10

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2054