On Saturday, January 27, Miloš Zeman won his second term as president of the Czech Republic with 51.36 percent of the vote in the second round of the presidential election. His opponent, Jiří Drahoš – a rather bland candidate who used to lead the Czech Academy of sciences, was a novice politician – garnered nearly 49 percent of the vote. Zeman is a veteran politician who served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002.

Politically, Zeman is a social democrat and his leadership made the Czech Social Democratic Party one of the two major parties until the classical party system collapsed in the Czech Republic. (After his party failed to elect him president in 2002, he began attacking it.) However, that is not to say he is a progressive; he could be described as a traditional social democrat: in U.S. parlance, fiscally liberal but socially conservative. Economically, he supports progressive taxation, a wide social net, and other traditional social democratic themes. In his first term, he usually brought a significant contingent of businessmen with him on his foreign trips and tried to encourage foreign investment in the Czech Republic, especially from China and Russia. But while a lot of contracts...

Andrej Babiš, who was elected prime minister of the Czech Republic this fall and appointed to office on December 6, is at first glance an unlikely leader of a populist, anti-Establishment party. Babiš is a billionaire. He owns a large concern, Agrofert, which in turn owns many companies in various fields - including the publishing company Mafra, which owns two of the nation’s leading newspapers. After becoming minister of finance in the previous government, Babiš put Agrofert into a trust to try to avoid conflict of interest charges.

He stands accused of crony capitalism, manipulating the media, and illegal use of EU funds.

Babiš said he founded his political party, Action for Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO), in 2011 because he could no longer bear to see the Establishment ruining the country. His opponents claim he is using politics to advance his business interests. The party is run like a private company, with Babiš clearly at the helm. While this was (and is) controversial to some people, most simply accept it. Babiš does not consider himself a populist but calls himself a pragmatist, or an anti-Establishment, politician.

Where does he stand, and what should we expect of him in office?

Political manifesto...

More than a week after the Czech Republic’s elections, the nation’s political future remains murky. The election of charismatic billionaire Andrej Babiš is another example of populism’s success in Europe and the weakening of traditional political ideologies. However, it is unclear that he will be able to create a government coalition in the new parliament, which will contain the largest number of parties in its history.

How the Czech political system works

The Czech Republic is a parliamentary democracy, in which the legislative branch is theoretically (and unlike, e.g., the UK, in fact) the most powerful of the three branches of government. The Czech parliament is bicameral but the lower chamber (the Chamber of Deputies) is much more powerful that the upper chamber (the Senate). In most cases, Chamber can pass laws against the will of the Senate with an absolute majority. The exception are changes to the constitution, where the agreement of three-fifths of both chambers is needed. The Senate is meant to function more a safety mechanism, but it is so unpopular that the majority would like to abolish it, as would some politicians. The rest of this article will deal with the Chamber, unless specified otherwise.

The...