Expert capacities of the Czech political parties: case study of defence policy

The thesis deals with marginally explored area of expert capacities of the Czech political parties with respect to the different organizational types of selected political parties and movements. The work aims to find out what expert capacities work for these types of political parties, how these experts are recruited in their position, whether it corresponds to their educational background and professional experiences with function, which are they holding in the expert authority. Work is elaborated in the form of case study, which focuses on the activities of defense policy expert commissions. The text is divided into two theoretical and one empirical chapters. The first chapter deals with the process of policy-making, its actors and activities associated with this process. The second chapter defines the various types of political parties first from the mainstream perspective (cadre, mass, catch-all parties), which complements the modern concept of business party and finally there is a typology of S. Wolinetz (office-seeking, vote-seeking, policy-seeking parties). The last empirical chapter presents the case study focused on four Czech political parties (TOP 09, KSČM, ČSSD and political movement ANO 2011) and their access to party expertise. The result of this work is to compare the level of analytical capacity across selected political parties/movements and testing of hypotheses formulated in the introduction of the thesis.