Czech Republic

Czech Republic is a new European Union (EU) member state in east–central Europe, sharing borders with Slovakia and Poland on the east and Germany and Austria on the west. What is now the Czech Republic was the portion of former Czechoslovakia that appeared under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union after 1945. Czechoslovakia was one of the states opened for tourism for Soviets who had the personal connections to get a permit to go abroad as part of a tourist group. Czech people, especially those in the Communist Party or government, also gained the practice of appealing to informal networks after more than 50 years of being in the sphere of the Soviet Union political and economic interests.

After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the socialist mode of development was left behind, and in 1993, the state was split into two countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. To some extent, due to its joining the EU in 2004, the Czech Republic—with more than 10 million people—experiences intensive migration inflows and outflows, although ethnic Czech people still constitute the majority of its population (about 95 percent).

The role of networks within power authorities in new EU member states like the Czech Republic is noticed in different spheres due to the continuity of some strong ties, common biographical experiences, and values between actors. Informality and the use of contacts in the Czech Republic are sometimes described as important and functional characteristics during the period of transition, when old institutional norms were rejected but new ones needed to be formulated. Despite this impact of informal networks into postcommunist state development through establishing interpersonal trust and common field of interests, the old-regime networks are perceived in a rather negative way, as they managed to survive after the Velvet Revolution, with some actors even keeping their positions in power.