The Role of Economic and Political Elites in Transformation of the Czech Society

According to the knowledge acquired in the research, the genesis of the new elite in the transformation process proceeded in three modes: firstly, as reproduction and more or less fluent adaptation of the old state socialist elite to the new conditions, secondly, as circulation that involved link up to the interrupted mobility trajectories in the family tradition reaching as far as to the grandparents, thirdly, as replacement – single pass substitution of the old elite by the new one – typical of political elite. However, some individuals could be found already in 2002 who unmatch this typology of the bounds to the past and whose career trajectory corresponded to the recruitment on the basis of education, qualification, and performance that is common in the developed democracies.

The Czech elite has been exposed to natural selection in the conditions of the free market and consolidated democracy since half of 1990s. The economic elite achieved the most advanced stage of this process in 2002. Numerous group of persons was registered whose attitudes and dealing style was comparable to EU environment that was already natural reference frame for them. The cultural elite was not well along enough and was still widely self-allocated towards the past. The situation of the political elite was paradoxically the most rigid despite the mentioned single pass replacement. Ideological attitude oriented to negation of the past and petrifaction of the earned position prevailed. This way of thinking led to new fragmentation even with elements of the new division. The necessity to solve new problems of the modernisation, europeisation, and globalisation was pragmatically accepted, however, positive vision or program was almost absent.

The research project reveals relationships and linkage among particular elite groups in historical context and initial theoretical frame. The most precious results of the project consist in the documentation of the development of the Czech elite by authentic statements of its forefront representatives that provides relevant incentives for future research.