Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2026.016

The Effect of Socioeconomic Context on Citizens’ Relationship to the Political System of the Czech Republic

Jan Vondráček ORCID...
Institut politologických studií, Fakulta sociálních věd, Univerzita Karlova, Praha

Focusing on the case of the Czech Republic, this article contributes to the debate on the effect of territorial socioeconomic inequalities on political attitudes. The aim is to determine whether the socioeconomic characteristics of regions influence citizens’ attitudes towards the political system of the Czech Republic. To this end, four dimensions of the relationship to the political system are defined, namely the legitimacy of democracy, political discontent, individual disaffection, and institutional disaffection. Using a combination of aggregate- and individual-level data, the article then examines (1) the connection between direct changes in the dimensions of the relationship to the political system and different territorial socioeconomic conditions, and (2) the connection between changes in the strength of individual sources of the given dimensions and the context of different local socioeconomic characteristics. The analyses show that a worse socioeconomic context directly reduces the perceived legitimacy of democracy. In some cases, individual effects increase in strength for the legitimacy of democracy and political discontent, while they weaken for both the dimensions of disaffection and political discontent. Furthermore, the results for the dimension of the legitimacy of democracy show that in regions with poorer socioeconomic characteristics, even the people who are generally a source of support for democracy in society are beginning to be sceptical about this type of regime.

Keywords: legitimacy of democracy, political discontent, individual disaffection, institutional disaffection, socioeconomic context, regional inequalities

Received: March 27, 2025; Revised: April 26, 2026; Accepted: May 4, 2026; Prepublished online: June 24, 2026 

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