Migration, corruption, and ideological centrism: Explanations of anti-establishment attitudes in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Although the Czech Republic has experienced an unprecedented rise of anti-establishment political parties in recent decades, a systematic examination of anti-establishment attitudes among the public is still missing from the scholarly literature. This paper tests different explanations for anti-establishment attitudes among the voting population, working with the concepts of anti-political establishment parties, populism, and taking into account the specific national context. Using original data from the 2017 Czech National Election Study (N = 919), we show that anti-establishment attitudes among the Czech public stem from feelings of low political efficacy, the perceived salience of corruption, and anti-immigration attitudes. These results demonstrate that researchers need to consider contextual specifics, including the nature of diverse anti-establishment actors, when searching for the causes of anti-establishment attitudes in a particular country or region.