Regional parties are among the younger topics of political science research, their issue is not addressed by too many authors, and therefore we do not find many works that would contribute to this not very researched area. One of the authors, who included regional parties in her research, is Bonnie Meguid. She introduced the concept of niche parties, dealing with the success of "parties of gaps" compared to mainstream parties. In this work, the concept of niche parties is applied to Spanish regional parties to determine whether the concept is suitable for regional parties and whether we can speak of Spanish regional parties as niche parties. The analysis of the concept will be performed based on five established criteria, based on the work of Meguid and Wagner, who followed up on her concept and expanded it. Eight regional parties from six Spanish regions, selected based on several conditions, will be examined. The source basis of this work are party documents of selected regional parties, especially their election programs.

This essay examines the strategies adopted by the Swedish parliamentary parties against the Pirate Party (Piratpartiet). The study uses the PSO-theory, which attempt to explain the success of niche parties as a consequence of the established parties’ strategies against the new competitor. A qualitative analysis and a comparison of the parties’ manifestos from the 2002, 2006 and 2010 national elections is used to determine which strategies are adopted. Results show that a mixture of accommodative and dismissive strategies is used, which could help explain the failure of the Pirate Party in the elections.

This thesis analyses selected program documents of the Czech Pirate Party for the period 2009- 2017 in terms of content of its themes. Specifically, these are the Statute and all election programs created at that time. The aim of the thesis is to determine whether the program development of the Czech Pirate Party occurred during the monitored period. From a methodological point of view, this is a content analysis supplemented by a comparative method. The thesis is based on the characteristic of the theoretical concept of the niche party, which will be presented in the first, theoretical part of thesis. The second part of the thesis takes a closer look at methodology. The third and at the same time the most comprehensive part deals with the introduction of pirate parties and the Czech Pirate Party, the actual content analysis of selected program documents and the subsequent comparison.