This volume provides a comprehensive overview of Czech politics past and present. The authors not only cover the main political developments of the past two centuries, they also situate the current political system in the context of communist and precommunist legacies. They argue that amid the dramatic changes of the Velvet Revolution, one can find a plethora of continuities in culture and institutions that help explain the shape of Czech politics today.Czech politics has been the subject of numerous books and articles that tend to focus either on specific segments (e.g. parties and the party systems, features and functions of the political system, particular policies, public opinion), or on general description of political developments. However, these accounts fail to provide the full story of Czech politics―the political system of the country is just a part of a broader picture, of a narrative that consists of the historical realities but also of the myths, self-perceptions, and ideas of the Czech identity. This book intends to recount the story.On this basis, the book elaborates the major sectors of the political transformation of the Czech Republic in the last twenty-five years without resorting to a mundane presentation of well-known data; rather, it aspires to show how the recent developments in all these sectors are interwoven with the long-term process of (re-)creating the Czech identity and self-perception, and that they develop in such a way that makes it possible to understand them as interdependent elements of a great narrative of the fundamental features of Czech politics.