After more than two decades of parliamentary democracy, the party system of the Czech Republic (as well as in many other countries in Central and Eastern Europe) continues to be characterized by turbulent fluctuations with a substantial amount of new parties arising and disappearing again within time-spans even as short as one legislative period. This development can be observed at the national level, but also at the regional sphere. Building on insights from studies on party life-spans and the electoral success of new political parties, this paper examines the determinants of the electoral success of newly formed political parties with special attention to the criteria of "representation" and "relevance". We hypothesize that newly formed parties have higher chances to survive in a fragmented party system if they not only cross the representation threshold by gaining votes, but also if they win control over governmental offices and thus proving themselves to be able to cross the threshold of relevance. In particular, this paper aims at identifying what effect regional government participation has on the subsequent electoral success of newly founded parties by drawing on data on regional elections since the inception of the Czech regions in 2000.
