Filling the Demand Gap: The Success of Centrist Entrepreneurial Populism in the Czech Republic

Abstract

This article argues that a new type of populism is emerging that combines entrepreneurial populism with centrist populism and takes as an example the success of the Czech party ANO and its leader Andrej Babiš. Entrepreneurial populist leaders are businesspeople who claim that because they have been successful in running a business, they can run a government efficiently, like a business. Entrepreneurial populists lack a coherent ideology and instead take advantage of where the political opening is greatest in the political spectrum. In the Czech Republic in the 2010s the opening was greatest in the centre, as much of the population had social liberal attitudes, although there were no social liberal parties to represent them. To test these hypotheses, the article presents a series of regression models explaining party vote choice in the 2013 and 2017 Czech elections. The findings confirm a demand for a centrist social liberal party that did not exist at that time.