DOI: 10.32725/978-80-7394-976-1.09

The influence of economic disparities of regions on political polarization in Czech Republic

Ondřej Rolník

Faculty of Business and Economics, Mendel University in Brno, Department of Economics, Zemědělská 1/1665, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic, xrolnik@mendelu.cz.

The aim of the paper is to prove a hypothesis concerning the causality of economic well-being and political polarization in the state. The causality is proven in all regions of the Czech Republic on the observed data set, from 1993 to the present. The evidence was provided by expressing the economic well-being by three indicators, i.e., gross domestic product per capita, unemployment and disposable income per capita in combination with the development of a created polarization index. This index depends on the left-right ideological party division combined with election results in the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic for regional districts. Socio-demographic indicators of the development of individual regions were used as control variables. These include, the average state of the population, the share of university-educated people in the average state of the population, age indicators, the population density of a given region, or voter turnout in a given election year. The most important variable of the economic well-being influencing the development of polarization is the disposable income of households. The proof is accomplished by quantitative economic analysis using the Least Squares Method.

Keywords: polarization, politics, economic well-being, Czech Republic, gross domestic pro-duct, dis-posable income, unemployment, political economics

pages: 54-60