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Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics
ISSN: 1352-3279 (Print) 1743-9116 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjcs20
Klaus, Havel and the debate over civil society in
the Czech Republic
Martin Myant
To cite this article: Martin Myant (2005) Klaus, Havel and the debate over civil society in the
Czech Republic , Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 21:2, 248-267, DOI:
10.1080/13523270500108758
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13523270500108758
Published online: 04 Aug 2006.
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Klaus, Havel and the Debate over Civil
Society in the Czech Republic
MARTIN MYANT
The term ‘civil society’ played a central role in a dispute between Klaus and Havel in
the mid-1990s. The use of such an academic term in practical politics requires an explanation.
It appears that its meaning is inevitably imprecise and its greatest use is in a
polemical context. The dispute grew out of the particular context of the early 1990s,
following the apparent victory of a spontaneous and decentralized movement over a
centralized power structure. Havel’s use of the term built from his pre-1989 thinking
and from various Western writers to give a unified basis, linked to moral principles,
for his opposition to certain aspects of the Klaus government’s policies that related
to the control and decentralization of power. Klaus, basing himself on Friedmanite
thinking, resisted these steps and tried to build a united political party around a
narrow base of social interests. Those using the term civil society appeared to him
as opponents of his project and he subjected their views to powerful polemical
attack. Havel’s involvement helped give coherence to some of the opposition to
Klaus’s government, but the outcome depended on political forces and events that
went beyond both protagonists’ conceptions. With the consolidation of various institutional
structures, the term has lost its prominent place in political debate.
I am for the decentralization of power . . . I am for the progressive creation
of the space for a diversified civil society in which the central government
will perform only those functions which nobody else can
perform, or which nobody else can perform better . . . The creation of
a genuine civil society of the western type will take a very long
time . . . It is a question of the method of thinking which enables citizens
to trust.
Va´clav Havel1
We face a crossroads which ‘concerns the very conception of the content
of our society . . . whether we want a standard system of relations
between the citizen (and community) and state, supplemented with
Martin Myant is a Professor at the Paisley Business School, University of Paisley, Scotland. His
recent publications include The Rise and Fall of Czech Capitalism (2003).
Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.21, No.2, June 2005, pp.248–267
ISSN 1352-3279 print=1743-9116 online
DOI: 10.1080=13523270500108758 # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
voluntary organizations, or whether we will create a new form of collectivism,
called civil society or communitarianism, where a network of
‘humanizing’, ‘altruizing’, morals-enhancing, more or less compulsory
(and therefore by no means exclusively voluntary!) institutions, called
regional self-government, professional self-government, public institutions,
non-profit making organizations . . . councils, committees and
commissions . . . are inserted between the citizen and the state.
Va´clav Klaus2
Introduction
This article follows the sharp conflict over ‘civil society’ in the Czech Republic
in the mid-1990s which appeared at times as a personal battle between ‘the
two Va´clavs’ quoted above. The aim is to explore the significance of this
debate and to explain how a term with rather a vague and imprecise
meaning could become central to a prolonged and semi-open dispute
between prime minister and president.
The answer to this question relates partly to the individuals themselves.
Both saw themselves as standard-bearers of particular intellectual traditions
and both were attracted to a ‘big’ concept that could provide some apparently
unifying theoretical base for some of the conflicts and disagreements of the
time. Neither of the key protagonists had a particularly sophisticated understanding
of ‘civil society’, but both claimed to be aiming to follow a ‘standard’
or ‘Western’ practice. Havel, the former dissident who became president of
Czechoslovakia in 1989 and then of the Czech Republic from 1993, saw
himself maintaining a position derived ultimately from fundamental moral
principles and he sought a notion of civil society that would link them to practical
political issues. Klaus, federal minister of finance from 1989 to 1992 and
then Czech prime minister until December 1997, was a disciple of the
monetarist economist Milton Friedman and admirer of the British prime
minister, Margaret Thatcher. The former’s theories tie in with the latter’s
famous assertion that there is no such thing as society. The ideal was free
individuals interacting through a market mechanism. As the above quotation
illustrates, he was also a ruthless polemicist who enjoyed enhancing his status
by referring to Western academic writing.
The context was provided by the transformation of political structures
which posed questions of the forms and control of political power, of the
place of political parties, of the representation of interests and of the appropriate
decentralization of administration, all in the context of reconciliation with
the communist past. There were choices over all of these issues. Klaus’s
version included minimal concern for the decentralization of power, for
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 249
controls on power beyond periodic elections or for inputs from outside his
circle. Havel’s use of the term ‘civil society’ gave his opposition to this the
appearance of greater coherence and theoretical depth.
The debate has importance for three reasons. The first is that it illustrates
the problematic nature of the term ‘civil society’, supporting the view that it
lacks theoretical precision, but ‘is most useful in polemical or normative con-
texts’.3
The second is that, despite the term’s imprecision, the debates and
events surrounding its use indicate the choices that were made and the alternatives
that were available in relation to issues of decentralization, control of
power and interest representation. The third is that the debate helped shape
events. It was not the decisive factor; there were other reasons for political
changes which, as will be indicated, were outside Havel’s concept of civil
society; nevertheless, this was one element in undermining a particular
conception of politics propagated for a time by Klaus and his party.
What is Civil Society?
The term ‘civil society’ has been used over a long period of time and given
several different meanings.4
Its origins, ‘at the dawn of the liberal state’,5
are associated with the rethinking of the relationship between power and citizenship.
The term found new life in the late twentieth century within two
broad lines of thought. The first emphasized the place of organized citizens
as a support to democratic institutions; the second emphasized autonomy
from, and hence possible opposition to, a power structure. Some earlier
usage could have provided a basis for a third, based on freedom for business
activity, but free-market thinking actually became Klaus’s theoretical starting
point for rejecting the term completely. Each approach gives civil society a
particular analytical content and a specific descriptive definition. In each
case it proves extremely difficult to settle on a clear definition, in terms of
what is to be included, and then to match that definition in a meaningful
way with a coherent place for civil society in political or social life.6
The first line of thought is often linked to Tocqueville’s account of a conscious
and involved citizenry, able to organize itself independently of organs
of power, acting as a constraint on potentially despotic governments.7
‘NeoTocquevilleans’,
such as Putnam in his comparative study of Italian
regions,8
have adapted and simplified Tocqueville’s thinking,9
giving autonomous,
non-hierarchical and frequently non-political organizations a role in
enabling citizens to create ‘social capital’ by an educating and socializing
process, spanning a historically long period of time, in which citizens learn
trust, responsibility and other virtuous qualities that can provide a foundation
for democratic politics.
250 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
Critics have pointed to the theory’s numerous weaknesses and ambiguities
of which three are particularly important here. The first is the weakness of evidence
for the assumed link between autonomous organizations and, to quote
Havel, ‘the methods of thinking that enable citizens to trust’: without that,
there is no clear link between Putnam’s version of civil society and political
life. The second is the assumed autonomy of this civil society from state
power: a number of studies have pointed to the historical dependence of the
latter on the former.10
The third is the simplistic and non-conflictual notion
of civil society implied in much of the literature.
In reality, modern societies are ‘criss-crossed by group conflicts’,11
making problematic a simple juxtaposition between state and civil society.
Some autonomous organizations may actively oppose the state, while others
help or support it. Some may come into conflict with one another, most
obviously trade unions and employers’ organizations. Such conflicts are regulated
and reconciled by the state, meaning again that the two spheres may be
closely intertwined.
One way to avoid these difficulties is to follow Cohen and Arato in defining
civil society more narrowly and more precisely as anything apart from the
state, economic power, market relations and clearly formal forms of political
activity.12
This is a common usage in studies on Central and Eastern
Europe,13
but precision in the descriptive definition reduces the ambitions
associated with the term. It becomes one part of, rather than the historical
foundation and precondition for, democratic life, as sought by Havel in his
vision of trusting citizens. However, when it came to practical issues,
many on the Czech political scene used a narrower interpretation, often
amounting to NGOs and activists’ groups. There was some tension
between this and an obvious desire to give the notion a significance associated
with a more ambitious definition. A narrower interpretation was also
Klaus’s principal target, although – as the quotation at the beginning of
this article indicates – he could use the wider conception as an easier
target for attempted ridicule.
The second line of thought gives greater potential meaning to the Cohen
and Arato definition by placing the emphasis on independence from a
power structure, giving the term a new life in the late twentieth century
around an informal and spontaneous sphere brought forward by ‘new’
social movements. The dividing line is still vague, presumably moving as a
regime changes or as a movement gains ‘established’ status. Nevertheless,
this notion of civil society as a counter to formal political authority found
strong resonance in Eastern and Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s.
Indeed, in Czechoslovakia it echoed a nineteenth-century tradition. Masaryk
claimed to have set the aim to ‘de-Austrianize our people thoroughly while
they are still in Austria’.14
A ‘non-political politics’ would enable the
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 251
Czech nation to develop within the substantial space allowed for cultural and
economic advancement, while not challenging the key areas of ‘big’ politics,
such as foreign and military policy.15
The ‘non-political politics’ of the 1970s and 1980s carried forward this tradition
in the specific situation of a repressive regime confronting a weakly
organized and seemingly powerless opposition that was isolated from any
sources of social discontent. The dilemma, of ‘what to do when we can’t do
anything’,16
was resolved by involvement in small-scale activities, such as
seminars and samizdat publications. Havel gave this a theoretical justification
through his notion of ‘anti-political politics’ centring on individual moral
revival amounting to ‘living in truth’. There was no political strategy and
no clear vision for a political or economic system in the future. The agenda
was left at a very general level, at the ‘pre-political’ stage.17
Havel’s was a civil society in the sense of courageous individuals asserting
their independence, but they operated in a world of limited contacts and
organizational experience. He had combined the emphasis on autonomy and
spontaneity with an educating and socializing function, but the organization
element that was expected to achieve that function was missing. His approach
enabled him to gain prestige as an opponent of the old regime and then to play
a leading role in the mass movement that established Civic Forum (CF) in
November and December 1989 – he chose the ‘civic’ part of the name – as
the loose and spontaneously organized body that helped to end communist
power. However, it gave him only the vaguest of theoretical armouries
relevant to the new situation after November 1989.
The third, unfashionable, version interprets the idea of private, individual
activity, free from state control, along the lines of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible
hand’ of market relations. This tradition equates civil society with private
property, leaving the state to set rules, and Klaus was for a time happy to
view ‘liberal civil society’ as part of the heritage of his favoured ‘conservative
right’.18
As the initial quotation above indicates, it later served his polemical
ends better to imply that the term meant a complete alternative to the ‘standard’
form of political organization, although his practical target was the representation
of opinions and interests from outside, and also from within, his
own party.
He found support for this antipathy in ‘standard economic theory’. He followed
Schumpeter’s vision of democracy as meaning periodic election of a
professional politician – analogous to competition between firms in economic
theory – after which voters ‘must understand that . . . political action is his
business and not theirs’.19
Hayek and Friedman take this further, seeing interest
representation as positively harmful, threatening to distort the otherwise
ideal market outcomes for sectional gain.20
Private wealth is to them an adequate
barrier against political dictatorship while any form of state economic
252 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
activity, or ‘socialism’, even if from an elected government, is considered a
threat to freedom and economic prosperity.
Civil Society and the 1989 Revolution
The overthrow of communist power in November and December 1989 could
appear as a victory for the spontaneous and informal over entrenched power.
Civil society, it might seem, had triumphed over political society. However,
the changes that took place prove difficult to accommodate in any precise
way into the notions of civil society outlined above.
The spontaneous element amounted to single acts rather than permanent
structures. Civic Forum, the loose and informal structure that emerged as
the mobilizer of mass demonstrations against communist power,21
was soon
involved in transforming the structures of formal power at practically all
levels, with many of its activists moving into different levels of government.
An initial assumption that it would quickly disappear, giving way to newly
emerging political parties, proved unrealistic. The revolutionary process
was giving it a wider and bigger role and it was soon accepted that CF
would itself contest the first parliamentary elections, scheduled for June
1990 and duly won by CF with 51 per cent of the Czech vote. Thus, rather
than equating to civil society, it spanned the full range from the very
formal, with Havel as president, to the informal.
Alongside these changes in who held positions of power, a transformation
was taking place across much of society leading towards what could appear as
the ‘neo-Tocquevillean’ version of civil society. The trend was towards decentralization,
or rather ‘autonomization’, giving freedom to lower levels and
organizations that had previously been under central control. This was a
common theme across administration, with power rather chaotically transferred
towards lower levels and an increase in the number of parish councils
from 4,120 in 1989 to 5,768 in 1991. It applied to mass organizations, such as
trade unions, where the dominant themes were depoliticization and freedom of
basic organizations from any central authority.22
It applied across organizations
with less clear political roles, such as sports clubs.
The term ‘civil society’ later found a place in official sources as registered
non-state, non-profit-making organizations which numbered 2,500 by the end
of 1990 and 48,000 by December 1995,23
representing a range of interests,
opinions and activities. Membership is harder to follow. That of trade
unions fell from almost 100 per cent of the 4.8 million employees in 1989,
to below 50 per cent of employees in 1995; that recorded for sports clubs
rose from one million in 1989 to 1.5 million in 1995.24
Thus, the formal level of association was high both under communism and
afterwards. It can be added that the measurable level of ‘trust’ appeared to be
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 253
similar to that of the UK in 1990,25
raising questions, if Putnam’s approach is
followed, about the possible effectiveness of associations under communism
for generating ‘social capital’. However, following the previous critical
remarks on the ‘neo-Tocquevillean’ approach, the important question for
the present discussion remains the ability of autonomous organizations to
link to political power. Some individual ministers were responsive to
outside advice and opinions, but many former activists were themselves
moving into positions of formal power.26
Systematic clarification and stabilization
of the links between political power and autonomous organization
depended on reactions from the political sphere and that meant, in 1990,
from Civic Forum.
Civic Forum’s early development was dominated by two potentially conflicting
trends that roughly coincided with rapidly separating ‘spontaneous’
and ‘formal’ levels of activity. One emphasized the creation of a new political
system with all the checks and balances associated with a mature democracy,
while the other emphasized a firmer line against the remnants of the old
regime, merging in extreme cases into a crude anti-communism. The clearest
advocate of putting primacy on ‘creating’ was the Czech prime minister, Petr
Pithart. He was already worrying at a Civic Forum assembly on 21 January
1990 that the people could come to fear the new authorities as much as they
had feared the communists in the past. His call was to finish ‘as soon as possible
with the dismantling of the old’ and ‘to build a state, an independent civil
society, a prosperous economy, in short a civilized European society’.27
In this, the dominant usage at the time, civil society did not acquire a very
specific meaning, but its use implied a desire for power to be controlled and
open to influence from interests. Pithart drew practical conclusions, for
example responding positively to the trade unions’ idea of representation
through a tripartite structure, following some West European experience.
The more public face was a caution over removing communists from positions
in the economy, but it was not an easy task to win enthusiasm for the need to
control one’s own power when leading revolutionary changes. Pithart’s
concern not to appear vindictive towards opponents led to frequent accusations
of ‘own goals’ (self-inflicted political damage) that reduced his political
standing by making him appear ‘soft’ on communists.
The ‘anti-communist’ trend had an automatically easier appeal, seeming to
follow more naturally from the revolutionary changes. The primary aim was
not the creation of controls on a new power structure, or the decentralization
of power, but the removal of individuals who had held power in the past.
Demonstrations and petitions on the theme were the most significant
‘spontaneous’ or ‘informal’ input to political life in the early months of
1990. A significant, and very vocal, part of public opinion favoured banning
the communist party completely – 37 per cent of the population supported
254 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
this in an early opinion poll28
– and there were more widespread calls for a
thorough purge of positions of authority.
Havel responded to this mood with a recognition that ‘society’ was
‘nervous and impatient’, as reflected in ‘hundreds of letters daily’ demanding
more dramatic changes.29
This found acceptance in the aim of destroying the
‘nomenklatura brotherhood’ that was alleged, albeit with little definite
evidence, to be ‘strengthening its positions’.30
The feeling that there was still a battle to be fought against remnants of the
communist past coincided with Havel and others’ acceptance of the pragmatic
logic of the need for CF, as the dominant force in the new government, to continue
in existence at least until the next parliamentary elections in 1992. This
added urgency to thoughts of clarifying its form and role. It was taking on the
characteristics and thought processes of a political party, but there was resistance
to the adoption of fully ‘formal’ structures from those who rather liked
the chaotic informality of its origins and early months. A popular slogan in
the 1990 elections had been ‘parties are for party members, Civic Forum is
for everyone’.
Enter Va´clav Klaus
The dilemma over CF’s direction found a solution from a new direction.
Following a decision that Civic Forum needed a stronger profile around a
new chairman, Va´clav Klaus was elected at its assembly on 13 October
1990 with 115 votes to 52 for Havel’s favourite, Martin Palousˇ. Klaus was
enthusiastically received as ‘the author of the economic reform’31
that had
been approved by parliament in September.
Klaus’s thinking dominated the formulation of the CF programme at
assemblies in December 1990 and January 1991. His position – combining
pragmatism with Friedmanite thinking – can be characterized by reference
to three elements. The first was an insistence that Civic Forum should
become a party, not ‘an all-embracing political movement’, with a clear programme
based on economic reform and the proven models of democracy from
the Czechoslovak past, Western Europe and North America. This, he argued,
required support from a disciplined movement. The initial justification was
concern that the effects of economic reform would provoke social discontent,
but the idea also fitted with Klaus’s personality and the irrelevance of interest
representation to his theoretical position.
The second element was a clear commitment to a right-wing perspective
that required a firm rejection of socialism, social democracy and anyone
who wanted ‘to speak of a market economy with various kinds of adjec-
tives’.32
Klaus was rejecting the ‘social market economy’, the successful
slogan of Germany’s Christian Democrats. Elements of the reform scenario
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 255
agreed by parliament that implied active state involvement were replaced by
the Friedmanite insistence that private ownership is the key to solving all
economic, social and environmental problems.
Even political reform was subordinated to economic reform. References
did remain to the need to find mechanisms to control the state apparatus
and to develop strong local government, but private property was creeping
forward as the only precondition worth mentioning for defending individual
rights,33
a position that can be found in Friedman’s works.
The third element was his approach to anti-communist rhetoric. Klaus was
from the start against any further ‘purges’. He claimed to be guided by a clear
position of favouring ‘a systemic solution, overcoming communism as a
system, and not an individual, personal confrontation with the individuals
responsible for the evil and injustice of the communist regime’.34
He even
suggested on occasion that the best way to deal with former communists
was to help them to become capitalists.
His opposition to the ‘individual’ approach was tempered by the pragmatic
need to retain the strong ‘fundamentalist anti-communist’ current. He frequently
made policy concessions while proving his credentials with scathing
rhetoric, accusing those to his left of threatening a return to the communist
past. Anti-communism to him was not a matter of individuals’ pasts – an
issue that caused him very little concern, not least because many of his political
allies at the time had been party members – but a weapon to be used
against political opponents of the present.
Taken together, these points left no space for civil society in either of the
first two senses outlined above: it was either vilified or incorporated. Klaus, it
was often said, did not like consulting with anyone who might hold different
views, and Friedmanite thinking seemed to give this a theoretical justification.
His familiarity with such ideas from Western academics was important in
reassuring much of the public that he was a figure to be trusted.
This aggressive shift to the right accelerated the fragmentation of the CF.
On 21 April 1991 Klaus was elected to chair the new Civic Democratic Party
(CDP). Following an impressive performance in the 1992 parliamentary elections,
with 30 per cent of the votes, and the subsequent break-up of Czechoslovakia,
it became the dominant party in a coalition government in the new
Czech Republic. The degree, and forms, of its responsiveness to interest representation
could be expected to have a strong influence on the development of
civil society in any of the senses outlined above.
Interest Representation and the CDP
The weakness of organized interest representation across Eastern and Central
Europe was a common feature in the early 1990s. The Hungarian political
256 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
scientist Attila A´ gh referred to a ‘partyist’ democracy, with visible politics
dominated by clashes between party oligarchies.35
This characterization,
however, risks giving only a partial picture. Czech parties were themselves
weak in measurable indicators, such as membership and committed
support.36
They appeared to be ‘cadre parties in the truest sense of the
term’,37
brought together round the vaguest of programmes, and possibly
charismatic leaders. However, those leaders had a difficult task in establishing
internal cohesion and discipline. More than 70 out of the 200 Czech members
of parliament had changed party before the 1996 elections, albeit with changes
overwhelmingly among opposition parties.38
The CDP fits to some extent with the characterization as a ‘cadre’ party,
heavily dependent on a single personality. Klaus denied that he had propagated
a personality cult and others feigned offence at the suggestion that it
was a one-man party, although their denials often conceded much of the
point. Miroslav Macek, then one of the party’s deputy chairmen, once
claimed to possess ‘convincing written evidence that Va´clav Klaus has
accepted a number of my suggestions’.39
Klaus initially hoped that ten per cent of Civic Forum supporters would be
willing to join the CDP, leading to a mass ‘conservative’ party. This proved
unrealistic – membership was steady at about 23,000 – but also unnecessary.
The party was to Klaus a vehicle for supporting his government so that it could
implement his conception of economic reform. He had no interest in a political
structure giving scope for interest representation, debate and freely competing
views, which would probably have been inevitable within a genuinely mass
party. It was ironically suggested that he would have been happy had the
party dissolved itself after the 1992 elections to re-emerge only for the next
elections in 1996.40
One critic referred to a ‘nomenklatura’ party ‘of a special type’,41
but there
were big differences from the old ruling party in terms of size, internal organization
and, obviously, the methods for winning the desired support. It won a
substantial committed following by appearing as the firmest advocate and
architect of the new political and economic order, but Klaus needed a bit
more from society than just periodic votes. To be successful, a party needs
members, at least to fill elected posts, and supporters sufficiently committed –
and rich – to help finance its electoral activities. Despite the rhetoric, it did
need to interact with some specific interests. It found a means that bypassed
mass organizations and the need for mass membership, but that could
promise success only to a certain extent – it never approached a parliamentary
majority on its own – and only for a time.
Membership was small when set against the demands of the decentralized
power structure. The party contested only 26 per cent of Czech parishes in
local elections in 1994 – only the communists could contest in more than
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 257
half – and, of the 20,000 representing the party, only half were members.42
Local organizations remained weak – the party vice-chairman in charge of
organization complained at the congress in December 1996 that only a few
activists were involved, while meetings were dominated by ‘formalities and
organizational issues’43
– but decentralization gave activists considerable
autonomy.
Two forms of interest representation were welcomed by the CDP. One was
from small, new organizations. They were often little more than a few individuals
influencing policy by personal links to MPs, ministers or officials in the
new power structure. They neither sought nor needed more public forms of
protest.44
They were effective because of the loose organizational structure
and lax discipline of parties and the state apparatus.
They were given an audience particularly when they dressed their
demands in anti-communist rhetoric. Individual MPs would willingly take
up such demands, a natural process in the days of CF but one that often embarrassed
CDP leaders. Thus the voice of emerging small businesses became
audible in mid-1990 through demands for the return of property confiscated
in the past. Klaus saw this as a diversion from rapid and comprehensive privatization,
but he conceded quickly enough for his position to receive little
publicity.
The issue of whom the CDP chose to listen to and who was ignored is also
illustrated by its approach towards farmers, a group that was hit hard and very
early by economic changes. Their voice was at first most audible when it came
from newly emerging organizations that wanted the return to individual use of
land taken by co-operatives.45
The Civic Forum draft programme presented on
8 December 1990 started its agricultural policy section with a call to ‘redress
the crimes perpetrated by the totalitarian regime’,46
a position that dominated
much CDP thinking on agriculture, albeit with differing views on how it
should be achieved. The biggest organizations representing the agricultural
community were more concerned with addressing the difficulties created by
economic reform and defending existing co-operatives against what they
saw as a bigoted and politically motivated attack led by people ignorant of
farming. Their voices were eventually heard in government, but only after
powerful public demonstrations.47
The second, and financially more lucrative, form of interest representation
was linked to the privatization of big enterprises. Employers did not create a
powerful collective voice but, as individuals, the aspiring beneficiaries of privatization
by direct sale into domestic ownership could buy favourable
decisions with secret donations to political parties. A forensic audit of the
CDP’s accounts, published by Deloitte and Touche in May 1998, revealed
evidence of systematic errors, omissions and contraventions of the law. The
party’s accounts showed about one-quarter of its income in 1996 coming
258 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
from sponsorship, but this was supplemented by secret donations and by firms
themselves paying CDP election expenses directly. As one insider suggested
at the time, the 1996 campaign was financed partly from ‘black, untaxed
funds’.48
These individual, unpublicized transactions generally related to privatization
decisions and implied little more for CDP policy. Klaus was happy to
dismiss collective representation from business and showed hostility to individual
managers who publicly criticized government policies, even if they
were also donors to his party. His general policy direction was to remain
impervious to outside pressures, resisting anyone or anything that would
limit, control or disperse the power of a periodically elected government.
This can be followed through a number of themes that sparked controversy
at the time. Klaus was consistently guided by Friedman’s theoretical perspective,
dressed up with a portrayal of any deviation from the free market as
threatening a return to the communist past.
Thus, for him there was no place for an environmental policy, and no need
to listen to an environmental movement.49
An environmental policy proposed
by a minister from a Christian Democrat group allied to the CDP was voted
down by ten votes to nine in a government meeting in August 1994, with
Klaus giving assurances that the market and private property are ‘far more
important than activities of the government’.50
This view could be backed
up by the theoretical contribution of the Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase,
but that is tempered by important caveats.51
To Klaus anything more than
the market ‘would return us to the social system that we had before’.52
Self-regulation of professions was dismissed just as lightly. The main
practical issue was the medical profession, which had a different conception
from the government’s of the development of the health service. Klaus
agreed that he might talk to them, but never wavered from his interpretation
that the professional body was just ‘an ordinary pressure group’ the primary
aim of which was to limit competition by controlling entry qualifications.53
Representatives of the profession were baffled by a suggestion that to them
was a completely alien thought.54
Klaus was, in fact, simply echoing
Friedman’s assumption about the medical profession in the US.55
Regional government was a bigger theme, as it figured in CF programmatic
documents and in the Constitution adopted in 1993. The inherited structure
of eight administrative authorities had been dissolved in 1991, but no
agreement followed on how it should be replaced with new, self-governing
authorities. The CDP preference was for a large number which would have
little chance of challenging a central authority. Klaus in any case saw no
urgency, arguing that genuine decentralization should be directly to the
citizen, meaning the greatest possible reliance on market relations and the
minimum of bureaucracy. In the words of his press spokesperson, ‘do we
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 259
want every second citizen to be a state official or a representative, so that there
will be an even stronger bureaucracy?’56
In any case, Klaus was on strong ground in terms of public opinion and
was able to argue that regional administration was ‘a stale theme which
lacks popular support’.57
There were some who saw creating strong local government
as the key to a functioning ‘civil society’ – although it was unclear
why decentralization to that particular level would make a decisive difference
to public participation – but the wider public showed little interest.
Organized interest representation was ultimately a more troublesome area.
Trade unions, like farmers, were capable of mobilizing protest actions, thereby
forcing themselves on to the government’s attention. They preferred to seek
dialogue on issues relating to employment and social policies through the
formal tripartite structures, entrenched at least in form from 1990. This,
however, was anathema to Klaus, who contemptuously dismissed trade
unions and employers’ organizations as ‘a residual from socialism’.58
Unions should have no role outside the immediate workplace, but this had
been ‘rather poorly understood’ when tripartite structures were established.
It was ‘no small task to turn this back’.59
Klaus made a serious effort after
unions staged protest actions against a proposed reform of the pension
system in December 1994. He was held in check by his coalition partners,
however. The outcome was a compromise, restricting the tripartite’s competence
to a right to consultation on a narrow range of social and economic
issues.60
An alternative conception of how the CDP should operate was developed,
albeit in a vague and cautious form, by Josef Zieleniec, Czech minister for
foreign affairs from 1993 to 1997. He was said to be the ‘one man from
whom Klaus is capable of taking even very sharp criticism’61
and is sometimes
credited with authorship of the idea of creating a mass, right-wing
party.62
His criticisms began in 1994 with cautious suggestions that the
party might benefit from greater programmatic clarity. This was interpreted
as a veiled attack on Klaus’s method of holding together the diverse personal
interests within the party by a combination of charisma and improvization.63
The 1996 election still gave the CDP 30 per cent of the vote, but the
coalition lost its absolute majority. In the aftermath of this disappointment
Zieleniec suggested that policy should come not just from above but ‘from
plurality and political battles on all levels’ and saw the key in welcoming fractions
and an internal life that encouraged debate.64
Klaus returned early from
his holiday, described Zieleniec’s contribution as ‘important’, and ensured
that it was quickly buried. Zieleniec tried yet again in 1997, advocating a
shift in the ‘method’ of funding towards greater reliance on smaller donations,
backed by a shift in policy orientation towards heeding ‘small’ as well as ‘big’
voices.65
There was a pragmatic stimulus – secret donations to the CDP from
260 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
businesses were at the time being exposed – but this suggested a different
attitude towards interest representation, and with that a different conception
of intra-party life.
Ideas were still very vague and the nature of interest representation within
the party – for example whether there should be platforms for businessmen,
trade unionists, farmers, environmentalists and others – was not even
addressed. In view of the organizational forms, kinds of activists and modes
of thinking with which the CDP had taken shape, Zieleniec was proposing
an abstract idea with no resonance in a membership that had little reason to
challenge its leader.
Enter Va´clav Havel
Havel’s implicit attacks on aspects of CDP policy took off after his New Year
address for 1994 and were amplified in a series of speeches over the following
years. The conflict took shape as he took up practical issues, particularly
noting delays over fulfilling constitutional requirements for the creation of a
senate and regional authorities. By 1995 Klaus was reported saying of one
of Havel’s speeches that ‘every sentence is directed against the CDP’.66
Havel never started his contributions from the CDP agenda, however, preferring
to base himself on a reiteration of what to him were fundamental
issues. ‘Civil society’ he rooted in the need for respect for general moral principles
of ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect for one another’. The basic pillars of political
life, he argued, should be respect for human rights, including measures against
racism, anti-Semitism and the abuse of power by state officials. The state itself
should be run by a trusted civil service, with a role protected and defined
by law.
Political parties had a role in politics, but not as ‘the monopoly owners of
all political activity’ and they should never place themselves ‘above the
state’.67
Instead, he favoured decentralization by strengthening regional government,
professional associations and non-profit-making organizations. He
had at first nothing to say on social or economic issues, only gradually
adding concerns over economic corruption – one source of Klaus’s difficulties
in 1997 – and ultimately joining in accusations of ‘mafia-like capitalism’.68
Havel’s mid-1990s conception of civil society had some common ground
with the vision of a non-political sphere that would educate and socialize citizens,
but he used the term to take up issues more directly linked to questions of
power. He never explicitly revisited his ideas from before 1989, although
echoes could still be heard in his vision of free individuals acting on their
own in line with their consciences. Interest representation had no place and
his ideas on decentralization to limit the role of central government were
vague enough to allow for misinterpretation. He had reportedly made an
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 261
off-the-cuff suggestion that all parties should be dissolved,69
giving some credence
to Klaus’s attack in the quotation at the head of this article. However,
the context of Havel’s contributions makes it clear that he had no such sweeping
aims. The term ‘civil society’ was used most enthusiastically in partially
veiled polemics against Klaus’s Friedmanite thinking.
It was by no means only Klaus who thought that once elected the CDP
should be free from any outside controls. In the lead-up to the 1996 election
Minister of the Interior Jan Ruml, generally closer to the ‘anti-communist’
trend in the party, described the idea of an Ombudsman, supported by
Havel and taken up vigorously by the Social Democrats, as ‘a refined
attempt to revise the results of the elections and to dominate our political
scene’. He saw nothing in the implementation of the constitutional requirements
for a senate and regional authorities beyond an attempt at ‘limiting
the influence of the CDP’.70
These, and similar, statements demonstrate a
quite extraordinary blindness to the importance of controls on political power.
Klaus, however, was the most persistent and articulate in attacking Havel,
as illustrated in the quotation at the head of this article. He tried to give his
criticisms academic weight, claiming that the notion of civil society ‘stands
outside current standard sociological or political disciplines’. Its basic
origins, he claimed, are in ‘rationalist philosophers’ – meaning, apparently,
that it amounts to another attempt at ‘social engineering’.71
Thus, as with
everything else he opposed, he tried to tar it with the socialist, or communist,
brush. He felt confident enough to counterpose ‘a society of free individuals’
to ‘so-called civil society’.
Oddly, his academic source, one that would have been unknown to practically
all his Czech readers, referred to the notion of civil society as ‘critical to
the history of western political thought’.72
Klaus could not convince those
with knowledge of the history of ideas,73
but the key question was whether
Havel’s position could find effective political support. The most direct
echoes came from the CDP’s coalition partners, particularly when preparing
for the 1996 parliamentary elections.
The Civic Democratic Alliance, a 2,000-strong neo-liberal group with its
roots partially in the dissident movement that won six per cent of the votes in
both 1992 and 1996, presented support for civil society as a feature distinguishing
it from the CDP. However, its conception was limited, excluding
representation of social interests, and even less ambitious than Havel’s. Its
1992 election programme proclaimed support for strong regional government,
while its 1996 programme added a role for ‘citizens’ initiatives’ in environmental
protection and cultural development. It was unlikely to be enthusiastic
about a genuine opening up of power to outside scrutiny since, like the CDP, it
was heavily dependent on sponsorship from business. It was even more of a
‘cadre’ party and, in 1996, declared the highest sponsorship income in 1996
262 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
in relation to membership of any party. It was destroyed as an electoral force in
early 1998 following revelations of anonymous donations widely assumed to
relate to privatization decisions.
The Christian Democrats, claiming 40,000 members and winning six per
cent and eight per cent of the votes in 1992 and 1996 respectively, gave
general support to Havel, with party leader and Deputy Prime Minister
Josef Lux calling for the speedy creation of a senate and regional authorities.
He saw a reluctance to complete the construction of the institutional structure
set out in the Constitution ‘primarily in those elements that lead to a division
of authority and power’. In place of the visible ‘efforts at e´tatisation’, he advocated
‘sharing out powers and building a many-layered, civil society’.74
This
was to prove more than just rhetoric. The Christian Democrats, embracing the
general idea of a ‘social market economy’, were less dependent on business
sponsorship and more willing to listen to organized interests both from agriculture,
for which Lux had ministerial responsibility, and from trade unions.
These differences within the coalition served as a check on the CDP. They
became more significant when that party was weakened by the 1996 elections
and then as economic difficulties further reduced its credibility. Social discontent
– the dangers of which were demonstrated most dramatically by a fiveday
railway strike in February 1997 – showed Lux to be better at seeking
compromises with social interests than the initially intransigent prime minister.
Klaus tried to regain the initiative, agreeing to restoration of the tripartite
in its original form in July 1997, although he still had no interest in listening to
what was said there and still faced a threat of trade union protests against his
economic policies.75
Klaus’s style of government was gradually leading his
party into isolation. His time as prime minister was brought to an end in
December 1997 after revelations of ‘irregularities’ in payments into party
funds led Zieleniec, Ruml and other previous allies to move against him.
The Aftermath
The fact that Havel progressively nailed his colours to the anti-Klaus mast was
undoubtedly a significant factor in weakening Klaus’s prestige. It also meant
that ideas concerning civil society were thrust to the fore in that process. A´ gh
has referred to the party domination of Eastern and Central European politics
as a phase that should give way to a broadening of inputs from outside the
party system. Czech experience illustrates some of the complexities of this
process. Party domination depended on a determined effort by a particular
group to create the party that would aim to dominate and then to exclude
others from political influence. It could never be complete. The needs of competition
within a pluralist framework forced the creators of the CDP to seek
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 263
support by recognizing various outside interests, albeit in a very selective and
ultimately unsustainable way.
Opening up the political structure to a wider range of voices depended on
political battles in which a very diverse range of forces and pressures were
involved. The key themes in Klaus’s downfall – economic difficulties,
social interests and secret funding from businessmen – did not fit easily
into Havel’s notion of civil society.
Nevertheless, the specific issues that concerned Havel were generally
addressed at the time or in the following years. A senate started operating
after elections in November 1996, with an electoral system leading to a different
party composition from that of the main chamber. The creation of 14 new
regional authorities was approved in April 2000, with the CDP still hostile.
The electoral system led generally to CDP domination. That could presage
important changes within a party that had little previous experience of alternative
centres of power. The tripartite, albeit not one of Havel’s themes, operated
to give representative bodies direct access to government and the right to
comment on relevant legislation before it was passed. The potential power
of trade unions thus opened the way for involvement of a wider range of interests.
Privatization – again, not one of Havel’s themes – continued, but with
more scope for open scrutiny of decisions.
It therefore appears that much of the institutional framework for a ‘multilayered’
civil society was taking shape, with channels for interest representation,
more scope for the decentralization of authority and more means of
control over power. The new constitutional structures – the senate and
regional authorities – soon appeared permanent. Much, however, still
depended on the willingness of those in power to seek opinions from
autonomous organizations and activists.
Use of the term ‘civil society’ as a theoretical concept remains problematic.
In Havel’s polemical armoury it was used to refer to various institutional
forms and practices that were missing from Klaus’s conception of
political life. Borrowing from his pre-1989 thinking, and from a variety of
strands of thought in the West, he gave them an appearance of coherence
around a notion of moral advancement of society. In practical terms, he
included autonomous organizations that could influence state decisions and,
in some cases, that could act as substitutes for state activities. He noticeably
omitted representatives of social interests, such as trade unions, although
their strength was an important support to Havel’s specific policy aims.
Klaus was not concerned with a moral basis for society, starting
instead from a free market economy. He might have coexisted with a ‘neoTocquevillean’
version of civil society. Autonomous organizations that do
not distort the workings of the market – and that could include a substantial
range from charities to sports clubs – caused him no particular problems.
264 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
However, he was soon happy to accept the label of civil society for anything
apart from the state, parties and the business sphere which could influence, or
‘distort’, their operation. He remained for some years unable to use the term in
any but a pejorative sense. Generally, however, debate over following years
shifted on to different issues and, with the stabilization of the key institutional
structures, the term faded from the centre of attention.
NOTES
An earlier version of this article was presented to a workshop in Meˇchenice, near Prague, in April
2001, and valuable suggestions were made by Zdenka Vajdova´, Monika Cˇ amba´likova´, Zdenka
Mansfeldova´ and Simon Smith. Some of the same material was published in ‘Civil Society
and Political Parties in the Czech Republic’, in Simon Smith (ed.), Local Communities and
Post-Communist Transformation: Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (London:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). Further helpful suggestions were made by two anonymous referees.
1. Pra´vo, 18 Nov. 1995.
2. Lidove´ noviny, 11 July 1994.
3. Bob Edwards and Michael Foley, ‘Civil Society and Social Capital Beyond Putnam’,
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol.42, No.1 (1998), p.124.
4. See Norberto Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998),
pp.22–6.
5. Michael Foley and Bob Edwards, ‘Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and Social Capital in
Comparative Perspective’, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol.42, No.2 (1998), p.5.
6. Michael Foley and Bob Edwards, ‘The Paradox of Civil Society’, Journal of Democracy,
Vol.7, No.3 (1996), pp.38–52; Edwards and Foley, ‘Civil Society’; and Foley and
Edwards, ‘Beyond Tocqueville’.
7. Alexis de Tocqueville, On Democracy, Revolution and Society: Selected Writings, edited and
introduced by J. Stone and S. Mennell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
8. Robert Putnam (with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Nanetti), Making Democracy Work:
Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
9. Keith Whittington, ‘Revisiting Tocqueville’s America’, American Behavioral Scientist,
Vol.42, No.1 (1998), pp.21–32.
10. For example, Sidney Tarrow, ‘Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical
Reflection on Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work’, American Political Science
Review, Vol.90, No.2 (1996), pp.389–97; and Marc Morje´ Howard, The Weakness of Civil
Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
11. Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship, p.16; see also Michael Foley and Bob Edwards,
‘Escape From Politics? Social Theory and the Social Capital Debate’, American Behavioral
Scientist, Vol.40, No.5 (1996), pp.550–62.
12. Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1992).
13. Sarah Mendelson and John Glenn (eds.), The Power and Limits of NGOs (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002); and Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society, p.44.
14. Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914–1918
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1927), p.47.
15. Milosˇ Havelka, ‘“Nepoliticka´ politika”: kontexty a tradice’, Sociologicky´ cˇasopis, Vol.34
(1998), pp.460–61.
16. Milan Ota´hal, ‘O nepoliticke´ politice’, Sociologicky´ cˇasopis, Vol.34 (1998), pp.467–76.
17. Havelka, ‘Nepoliticka´ politika’; Ota´hal, ‘O nepoliticke´ politice’; and Va´clav Havel, ‘Antipolitical
Politics’, in John Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State (London: Verso, 1988),
pp.391–8.
18. Va´clav Klaus, Procˇ jsem konzervativcem? (Prague: TOP Agency, 1992), p.42.
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 265
19. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1943), p.295.
20. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1944); and Milton
Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
21. For a brief overview of events, see Kieran Williams, ‘The Czech Republic and Slovakia’, in
Stephen White, Judy Batt and Paul Lewis (eds.), Developments in Central and East European
Politics 3 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), pp.41–56.
22. Martin Myant and Simon Smith, ‘Czech Trade Unions in Comparative Perspective’,
European Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol.5, No.3 (1999), pp.265–85.
23. Zpra´va vla´dy o stavu cˇeske´ spolecˇnosti (Prague: typescript produced by Czech prime minister’s
office, 1999), p.19; and Statistical Yearbook of the Czech Republic ’96 (Prague: Scientia,
1996), p.527.
24. Statisticka´ rocˇenka Cˇ eske´ a Slovenske´ Federativnı´ Republiky 1990 (Prague: SNTL, 1990),
p.656; and Statistical Yearbook of the Czech Republic ’96, p.568.
25. Performance and Innovation Unit (2002), Social Capital: A Discussion Paper, at <http://
www.number-10.gov.uk/su/social%20capital/socialcapital.pdf>, accessed 18 April 2005,
p.15.
26. Adam Fagin and Petr Jehlicˇka (1998), ‘Sustainable Development in the Czech Republic: A
Doomed Process?’, in Susan Baker and Petr Jehlicˇka (eds.), Dilemmas of Transition: The
Environment, Democracy and Economic Reform in East Central Europe (London: Frank
Cass, 1998), pp.113–28; and Adam Fagan, Environment and Democracy in the Czech
Republic: The Environmental Movement in the Transition Process (Cheltenham, UK and
Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2004).
27. inFo´rum, 23 Jan. 1990.
28. Rude´ pra´vo, 17 May 1990.
29. inFo´rum, 18 Sept. 1990.
30. I. Fisˇera, inFo´rum, 21 Aug. 1990.
31. inFo´rum, 17 Oct. 1990.
32. inFo´rum, 17 Jan. 1991.
33. inFo´rum, 17 Jan. 1991.
34. Rude´ pra´vo, 13 Aug. 1994.
35. Attila A´ gh, The Politics of Central Europe (London: Sage, 1998), p.12.
36. Zdeneˇk Jicˇı´nsky´, U´ stavneˇpra´vnı´ a politicke´ proble´my Cˇ eske´ republiky (Prague: Victoria Publishing
House, 1995), pp.167–70.
37. Frantisek Sˇamalı´k, Obcˇanska´ spolecˇnost v modernı´m sta´teˇ (Brno: Doplneˇk, 1995), p.257.
38. A. Ve´br, Rude´ pra´vo, 13 May 1995; and Lubomı´r Brokl, Zdenka Mansfeldova´ and Alesˇ
Kroupa, Poslanci prvnı´ho cˇeske´ho parlamentu (1992–96) (Prague: Sociologicky´ u´stav AV
Cˇ R, Working Paper, 1998), p.25.
39. Pra´vo, 20 Nov. 1999.
40. B. Pecˇinka, Lidove´ noviny, 9 Sept. 1994.
41. Z. Jicˇı´nsky´, Rude´ pra´vo, 24 Jan. 1994.
42. Hospoda´rˇske´ noviny, 6 Oct. 1994.
43. Libor Nova´k, at <http://www.ods.cz/akce/kongresy/7.kongres/novak.php>, accessed 18 April
2005.
44. Pavol Fricˇ, Neziskove´ organizace a ovlivnˇova´nı´ verˇejne´ politiky (Rozhovory o neziskove´m
sektoru II.) (Prague: Agnes, 2000).
45. Fo´rum, No.15 (1990), p.11.
46. inFo´rum, 13 Dec. 1990, supplement.
47. Martin Myant, ‘Employers’ Interest Representation in the Czech Republic’, Journal of Communist
Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.16, No.4 (2000), pp.1–20 (p.6).
48. T. Dvorˇa´k, Pra´vo, 2 Sept. 1996.
49. See Fagan, Environment and Democracy, p.86.
50. Hospoda´rˇske´ noviny, 23 Aug. 1994.
51. Richard Coase, ‘The Problem of Social Cost’, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol.3 (1960),
pp.1–44.
266 JOURNAL OF COMMUNIST STUDIES AND TRANSITION POLITICS
52. Lidove´ noviny, 29 Aug. 1994.
53. Hospoda´rˇske´ noviny, 19 Jan. 1995 and 12 Feb. 1999.
54. I. Pelika´nova´, Hospoda´rˇske´ noviny, 25 Jan. 1995.
55. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Ch.9.
56. J. Petrova´, Lidove´ noviny, 27 June 1994.
57. Rude´ pra´vo, 24 June 1995.
58. Lidove´ noviny, 5 Nov. 1993.
59. Lidove´ noviny, 18 April 1994.
60. Martin Myant, Brian Slocock and Simon Smith, ‘Tripartism in the Czech and Slovak Republics’,
Europe–Asia Studies, Vol.52, No.4 (2000), pp.723–39 (p.731).
61. B. Pecˇinka, Lidove´ noviny, 9 Sept. 1994.
62. Petr Husa´k, Budova´nı´ kapitalismu v Cˇ echa´ch: Rozhovory s Toma´sˇem Jezˇkem (Prague: Volvox
Globator, 1997), p.84.
63. P. Prˇı´hoda, Lidove´ noviny, 15 Sept. 1994; and P. Sˇafr, Lidove´ noviny, 28 Sept. 1994.
64. Mlada´ fronta Dnes, 5 Aug. 1996.
65. Mlada´ fronta Dnes, 30 Oct. 1997.
66. Rude´ pra´vo, 15 March 1995.
67. Pra´vo, 13 March 1996; and Hospoda´rˇske´ noviny, 15 March 1995.
68. For example, Pra´vo, 2 Jan. 1996 and 29 March 2000.
69. John Keane, Va´clav Klaus: A Political Tragedy in Six Parts (London: Bloomsbury, 1999),
p.464.
70. Pra´vo, 4 April 1996.
71. Lidove´ noviny, 7 March 1994.
72. Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: Free Press, 1992), p.5.
73. For example, P. Pithart, Lidove´ noviny, 25 March 1994.
74. Rude´ pra´vo, 18 July 1995.
75. Myant, Slocock and Smith, ‘Tripartism’, p.732.
DEBATE OVER CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC 267