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The main objective of my diploma thesis is to analyze and evaluate the Political Movement ANO positioning within the political parties system of the Czech Republic by using a methodological framework approach. The thesis provides an analysis of electorate shifting and selected political parties manifestos as well as their comparison with the Political Movement ANO. Timewise, my focus is on the period prior to the election to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2017. As for analytical purposes, the Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling has been used. This statistical model helps to get the respective values and to show the electoral vote changes between the last two parliament elections (to Chamber of Deputies). The author uses quantitative and qualitative research for comparison and analysis of programmatical convergency as defined in the election manifestos of various political parties. For manifestos quantification a coding scheme by a Comparative manifesto project group has been applied. The reason for using the above mentioned scheme is that it provides a structured methodology to quantify the domains that the political parties do focus the most in their manifestos. The aim of the analytical part of the thesis is to define how and especially from where the Movement ANO...

This thesis examines the ways that fluctuations in voter expectations for the state of the economy affect party strategies, throughout 28 countries across the EU and OECD between 1995 and 2021. I thus make a theoretical contribution to the existing research by testing the theoretical models that claim that parties primarily respond to voter preferences and perceptions when conducting their policy strategies. Utilizing data from the Comparative Manifestos Project, the Eurobarometer, QOG and ParlGov, the study examines policy positions on economic issues, as presented in party manifestos ahead of elections. Using fixed-effects regressions with interaction variables, the effects of voter expectations on policy stances are examined, both in parliaments more generally as well as for each party family respectively. Specifically, Social-democratic, conservative, populist, Christian-democratic, and liberal parties are considered. Results show that when citizen expectations for the state of the economy worsen, parties show tendencies of shifting their policy stances to the left across the left-right scale. This is true across parliaments more generally, and results indicate that it may also be true when looking at each party family respectively. Most notably, results show that economic expectations impact the policy positions of parties even when controlling for the actual state of the economy, implying that parties are responsive to voter expectations independently of other macroeconomic considerations.