Twenty Years After: Dissident Tradition in Czech Foreign Policy Matters

In: East European politics and societies: EEPS, Band 26, Heft 1, S. 162-188

Abstract

However obsolete it may appear in the environment of the post-1989 Czech Republic, dissident activity has left its imprint on Czech society and politics. In Czech foreign policy, there is something like a dissident tradition, which dissidents themselves seem to uphold. In the Czech foreign policy process, there exists an explicit mechanism that has incorporated the dissident tradition, which, in quite a few cases, has affected policy outcomes. The introduction of the dissident tradition into Czech foreign policy was facilitated by the dissidents' great concern for foreign policy and for human rights issues, and, in particular, for human rights issues outside the Czech Republic. We present evidence that dissidents have been concerned with foreign policy and with human rights issues by analyzing the membership of parliamentary committees of both chambers of the Parliament as well as the dissidents' activities in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Significantly, when activities tied to the dissident tradition emerge in the Parliament, the initiators of such activities are always (although not exclusively) dissidents; the opponents, always nondissidents.