Metamorphosis of the Civic Democratic Party Attitudes to European Integration and the New Cleavage in the Czech Party System

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Czech Civic Democratic Party (CDP) together with the Civic Democratic Alliance belonged to the key liberally defined, reform-oriented parties that launched the initial extensive impulse toward transition. A clear foreign policy orientation implying the fastest possible integration into the Euro-Atlantic and European structures of NATO and the EU was an inherent part of transition and modernization plans. Viewing the initial reform impetus of the CDP as connected to its key position and substantial involvement with the extensive transition agenda (with political actors responding to new emerging economic interests by taking advantage of the unique and specific conditions of the transitory regime) resulted in a substantial shift in transition strategy and a trend toward maintaining a centrally controlled regime that blocked change in the specific transition conditions of a rudimentary, non-regulated market that effectively led the CDP to the adoption of more conservative statist positions. A Euroskeptic agenda emerged along with this process as accession to the EU threatened the political-economic structures of the transitory regime.