Assured Newcomers on a Squally Sea? The Czech Pirate Party before and after the 2017 Elections

The elections to the Chamber of Deputies in October 2017 were a turning point for the Czech Pirate Party (called “Piráti”). It was the first time since establishing the party in 2009 that the Pirates entered the lower house of the Czech Parliament. They took the third place with 10.79 % votes and won 22 seats out of 200. Their main programme points came out of typical “pirate policies” like control of power and the powerful ones, simplification of the running of the state through technology, protection of citizens from bullying and defence of freedom as well as basic Pirate principles including liberalism and direct democracy. Their programme was called “New Ideas for the New Age”. From a different view, this party presented itself as a watchdog of democracy and as an alternative mostly for liberal voters. This qualitative case study will provide a complex overview of the Pirate phenomenon in the Czech Republic from their establishment to their current role of an opposition party. This article aims to show and describe how the position of the Czech Pirates has varied over time. For this purpose, open data from the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) and the findings from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) dataset will be used. It is possible to say that the Pirates are playing the role of newcomers in the Chamber of Deputies after the 2017 elections, but they are not newcomers in the Czech party system.