THE REGIONAL ELECTIONS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC: THE SECOND-ORDER ELECTIONS?

The czech regional elections have belonged to among specific electoral arenas, that always looking for a natural position in the czech political system. The presented article analysed and described in detail the inner dynamics of regional elections in the Czech Republic between years 2000-2016. The research concurrently analysed a position of the regional electoral structure towards a primary electoral level represented by elections to The Chamber of Deputies. The electoral analysis is based on assumptions of the theory of second-order elections. This theoretical concept was made by K. Reif and H. Schmitt in 1980 due to explain some specifics of election results of the first european election which were held in 1979. Therefore the most important analysed electoral data reflected this theoretical concept; for example voter turnout-lower level of participation, the proportion of wasted and invalidated votes or the position of government parties in the regional elections, etc. The research should confirm or refute the validity of these theoretical assumptions that define the regional elections in the Czech Rebublic as second-order elections. The results show that the regional elections in the Czech Republic fulfil features of the second-order elections and comparisons with the elections to The Chamber of Deputies discover a link betweeen primary and secondary electoral level.