The disintegration of KDU ‑ČSL in 2009: The network analysis of co ‑voting strategies of the KDU ‑ČSL deputies 1 DUŠAN BRABEC Politics in Central Europe (ISSN: 1801-3422) Vol. 16, No. 2 DOI: 10.2478/pce-2020-0023 Abstract: The main objective of this study is to capture and analyse the dynamics of co ‑voting ties among the members of the KDU ‑ČSL political party group in the 5th parliamentary term between 2006 and 2010 when some members of KDU ‑ČSL left this party and founded new political party TOP 09. For the analysis of the data, network approach and methods were used, with emphasis on the detection of possible rivalling communities in the constructed network of co‑voting ties between deputies belonging to the KDU‑ČSL parliamentary party group in the analysed time period. The co‑voting was treated as a proxy indicator of a possible relationship indicating co ‑operation or rivalry between the deputies. The main outcome of the study was the identification of the co ‑voting strategies and dynamics of the co ‑voting between deputies who left KDU ‑ČSL in 2009 and formed a new political party with their former party colleagues. The study is of a quantitative nature, but the main findings are connected to qualita‑ tive insights as well. Keywords: political parties; unity, party discipline, party factionalism, co‑voting, legislative networks 1 This study was supported by the Charles University Research Programme ‘Progres’ Q18 – Social Sciences: From Multidisciplinarity to Interdisciplinarity. The author would like to thank Lukáš Hájek for the initial data preparation. POLITICS IN CENTRAL EUROPE 16 (2020) 2 547 Introduction It has been more than ten years since the new political party TOP 09 was estab‑ lished in 2009. That year was very turbulent as, from the political perspective, the government lost the vote of confidence, which negatively influenced the stability of the Czech political environment. One of the oldest Czech political parties KDU ‑ČSL suffered from a long ‑lasting internal crisis, which escalated in early 2009. Right after the party congress in May 2009, which was supposed to resolve the party instability, many of its core members left the KDU ‑ČSL and joined the new political party TOP 09. The main goal of the study is to uncover the voting strategies of those mem‑ bers of KDU‑ČSL who left their party in 2009 and joined the newly established political party TOP 09. To be more specific, I will focus on the co ‑voting of these MPs (renegades) with their former colleagues from KDU ‑ČSL, as I’m interested in what their co ‑voting looked like during the fifth parliamentary term between 2006 and 2010. Because of the relational nature of the co ‑voting, I will make use of network analysis tools when investigating the co‑voting strategies among the deputies of the KDU ‑ČSL parliamentary party group. It can be expected that the MPs who left KDU ‑ČSL and joined TOP 09 af‑ terwards voted differently than their former party colleagues. It would be in‑ teresting to investigate if the renegades voted differently even before they left KDU‑ČSL, or if they were disciplined members until they decided to form a new political party. This brings several possible outcomes of the analysis that I will try to confirm or reject in the study. Outcome 1: Deputies that left KDU‑ČSL and joined TOP 09 voted differently than their KDU ‑ČSL colleagues before the TOP 09 was founded (before Miroslav Ka‑ lousek, former leader of KDU ‑ČSL, declared his departure from the party). Outcome 2: MPs who left the KDU ‑ČSL started to vote differently than their former party colleagues after they left the party. Outcome 3: Deputies who left KDU ‑ČSL voted similarly to (or differently than) their former colleagues during whole fifth parliamentary term. The resulting outcome will be put together with qualitative insights to better understand the dynamics of the co‑voting between the two ‘rivalling’ blocks inside the KDU ‑ČSL parliamentary party group. The aim of the article is not to contribute to the theoretical framework of party factionalism but rather to investigate specific co‑voting strategies of the MPs who left their original political party group and founded a new political party with the formation of TOP 09 in 2009, and to capture the moment when and if the legislative (co ‑voting) behaviour of these MPs changed. Theoretical background: 548 The disintegration of KDU-ČSL in 2009: The network analysis … Dušan Brabec In the introduction section, I presented three outcomes that would be the most probable results of the final analysis of roll‑call data of KDU ‑ČSL deputies between 2006 – 2010. At this stage, I will explain the main logic and theoretical background behind these expectations. First, all of the possible outcomes could be divided into two general categories. The first category reflects the outcomes in which any community or sub‑ ‑community of deputies who would vote in a similar fashion could not be iden‑ tified. These outcomes would be possible if the deputies of the KDU‑ČSL voted randomly with no co ‑operation. This category would present the outcomes with no or very weak intraparty unity. The second category reflects these outcomes in which I will be able to identify cohesive groups of the deputies (and possible subcommunities in its parliamen‑ tary party group if the party is suffering from an internal crisis) thanks to the fact that the deputies of the specific political party should be voting unanimously to a large extent (or co ‑ordinating their political actions). The concept of party unity stems from two specific sources, namely from the ideological cohesion of a party and party discipline. Ideological cohesion is based on the shared opinions and views of the deputies, who consequently tend to vote together or sit in the same political party because of their shared preferences. Party discipline, on the other hand, could be understood as a pressure that the party imposes on its members to secure their obedience (Ozbundun 1970). According to the concept of party unity, political parties should consist of members that have similar preferences and opinions and the party management should endorse this cohesion so the political party can survive in the long run. I assume that the results of the analysis of KDU ‑ČSL members’ co ‑voting behaviour between 2006–2010 will fall into this (second) category. Apart from the theoretical perspective, this assumption could even be supported by empirical studies that investigated the internal unity and cohesion of Czech political parties (Linek – Lacina 2011). Specifically, Dvořák (2017: 113) identifies the rates of internal party cohesion of Czech parliamen‑ tary parties in 2006–2010. According to his study, KDU ‑ČSL was an internally cohesive parliamentary party, with an exception that occurred during the fifth parliamentary term, when KDU ‑ČSL suffered from an internal crisis. Based on this evidence, I will focus more specifically on the rationale behind the individual outcomes that fall into the second category (as the possible out‑ comes belonging to the first category could not be obtained, based on theoretical assumptions as well as empirical evidence) where the party unity affects the votes of deputies. As was already presented in the introductory part of the text, I expect that the final analysis should result in one of these outcomes: Outcome 1: Deputies that left KDU‑ČSL and joined TOP 09 voted differently than their KDU ‑ČSL colleagues before the TOP 09 was founded (before Miroslav Ka‑ lousek, former leader of KDU ‑ČSL, declared his departure from the party). POLITICS IN CENTRAL EUROPE 16 (2020) 2 549 Outcome 2: MPs who left the KDU ‑ČSL, started to vote differently than their former party colleagues after they left the party. Outcome 3: Deputies who left KDU ‑ČSL voted similarly to their former colleagues during whole fifth parliamentary term. The main difference between these outcomes is directly linked to the concepts of exit, voice and loyalty introduced by Albert O. Hirschman (1970). As related to the content of this study: exit could be labelled as a strategy where the mem‑ bers of the political party choose to leave when they are dissatisfied with the internal or external situation of the party. The voice, on the other hand, could be perceived as a strategy where the political party members attempt to improve the situation they are displeased with. Both exit and voice could be legitimate strategies taken by the members of a party which is on the decline (suffers from an internal or external crisis, etc.). The concept of loyalty has a decisive effect on whether the individual inclines more towards the strategy of exit or voice. Where there is present loyalty to the organisation (political party), the inclina‑ tion of its members to use the exit strategy should be mitigated, as they should most likely accept voice strategy first. It is therefore interesting to investigate what strategy the deputies who left KDU ‑ČSL and joined TOP 09 incorporated. It has to be stated here that “Since the TOP 09 formed practically in Parliament, before its official establishment it had its people in both chambers, from the ranks of independent, mayors (such as Jaromír Štětina), representatives of smaller parties and former members of the KDU ‑ČSL, which the KDU‑ČSL labelled for their affection for ODS as “bluish” (Mach 2010). We can assume that this group of new TOP 09 members would have a slightly different voting preference than their former party colleagues. The first introduced outcome (Outcome 1) of the analysis would indicate that the renegades did use the strategy of voice first and then they incorporated the strategy of exit.