In 2021, the Czech Pirate Party won seats in a general election for the second time in a row and became the first Pirate party anywhere to be involved in government. Formerly, they ceased to be a single-issue party. The aim of this paper is to investigate the party’s changing position on the environment via the movement-party concept, methodologically by qualitative conventional content analysis of its election manifestos and political positions. Pro-internet Pirates followed movement-party characteristic of enlarging their manifesto scope even before national-wide political success. Going hand in hand with this development they flexibly increased emphasis on environmental and green policies in recent years. This, together with their emphases on digitalisation and transparency, became integral to their profile and the party’s overall post-materialist focus, representing mostly young, liberally-oriented voters. Compared to other Czech parties, they present themselves as a real environmental alternative with similar positions those of pragmatic non-orthodox European Greens with an effort to preserve original grassroots and protest-based ethos. After one term in opposition, the Pirates face their biggest challenge yet, as they set out to promote their values in executive.

Austrian Journal of Political Science, Bd. 52 Nr. 2 (2023): Offenes Heft