Who Votes with Whom: Co-voting Network of the Lower House of Czech Parliament after the 2017 Elections
Abstract
This article aims to identify and analyse the structure of co-voting ties among the members of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The structure of co-voting ties is approached as a network of members of parliament that represents the rate of co-voting between each pair of deputies that were elected to the lower house of the Czech parliament in 2017.
Sim- ilarity of the voting of deputies is treated as a proxy indicator of a potential relationship, either co-operation or rivalry between the MPs. This study focuses exclusively on the level of political party groups, their internal cohesion and intra-party co-operation, based on the co-voting ties between all members of the parliament.
The main findings of this research are that the dynamics of the inter- nal party cohesion of each parliamentary party and their voting co-operation are heavily influenced by the time the government is formed. As the internal cohesion of political party groups present in the Czech parliament and even the co-operation between them changed drastically after the gov- ernment of Andrej Babiš got the vote of confidence.
This research connects the findings with the previous works on the internal cohesion of Czech political parties.