The outbidding model of intraethnic party competition has dominated the literature on ethnic party competition. The emphasis of this literature on radicalization as an inevitable consequence of intraethnic competition has recently faced fair criticism. Scholars have presented new empirical evidence for intraethnic party competition that runs counter to the predictions of outbidding. Nevertheless, the major assumptions of the outbidding model persist. Scholars generally focus on ethnic outgroups as a source of intraethnic party competition, disregarding other factors that affect competition between ethnic parties within the same ethnic group. My approach to study intraethnic party competition is different. Instead of merely focusing on ethnic politics as the main factor driving intraethnic competition, I investigate other factors that determine intraethnic competition beyond ethnic politics, including social cleavages, and the electoral system. I submit that intraethnic party competition cannot be boiled down simply to ethnic politics. Ethnic parties within the same ethnic group compete over various issues ranging from socioeconomic concerns, to foreign policy and regionalists.

This diploma thesis deals with the political participation of national minorities in the Czech Republic. The main aim of this thesis is to find out what the possibilities of national minorities are to enter the political process in order to articulate their specific minority interests and how effective these possibilities are from their perspective. The emphasis is placed on ethnic political parties, minority interest groups, advisory bodies such as the Government Council for National Minorities and committees for national minorities at all political levels. At the same time, these selected minority institutions and bodies are also examined at the international level, which makes it possible to gain an overview of the attitudes of some states to national minority policy and their comparison, or even inspiration for the Czech Republic. The analysis was carried out on a group of five national minorities: German, Polish, Roma, Slovak and Vietnamese. The author also tried to find out how these selected national minorities are politically active, what factors influence their political participation and what is the interest in the issue of national minorities among the majority political parties. The author chose a qualitative research method for the research project and the technique of...