Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2026.006

Interactions between Interest Groups and Political Parties in the Czech Republic and Slovakia – Three Decades after the Velvet Divorce

Szczepan Czarnecki ORCID...
Department of Sociology, Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic / Institute of Central Europe, Lublin, Poland

Interactions between political parties and interest groups represent a crucial mechanism through which organised interests gain access to the policymaking process and parties maintain connections with societal actors. Despite a growing body of research on interest representation in Central and Eastern Europe, systematic comparative analyses of party–interest group relations in the region remain relatively limited. Czechia and Slovakia offer a valuable comparative context. Although both countries emerged from similar post-socialist political foundations, they since pursued divergent paths in democratic consolidation, party competition, state–society relations, and institutional openness, shaped partly by the rise of populist and illiberal actors. These divergences translate into distinct political conditions for interest group activity, shaping the forms of engagement available to them and the strategic repertoires they can effectively deploy. In turn, this provides the backdrop for analysing the post-dissolution evolution of interest intermediation and for understanding how interest groups seek to engage political parties in distinct institutional and political contexts. Drawing on an original survey of national-level organisations (N = 493) conducted in 2023–2024 in both countries, this article examines how organisational resources shape efforts to seek access to political parties, and how these patterns vary across different types of interest groups and political contexts. It argues that organisational capacity and political context jointly condition access-seeking behaviour in post-communist settings. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between structural conditions and agency in post-communist democracies, highlighting how variations in political development influence the channels through which organised interests attempt to exert influence.

Keywords: political parties, interest groups, mobilization, access, Slovakia, Czech Republic

Received: April 15, 2025; Revised: February 10, 2026; Accepted: February 16, 2026; Prepublished online: March 18, 2026 

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