"How to Create a Loyal and Efficient Political Machine? Billionaire Andrej Babiš and His Party ANO”

The ANO („YES“) won the Czech general elections in October 2017. Before these elections, the founder and leader of this party, the billionaire Andrej Babiš, was at the center of serious controversies and had even been accused by the police with fraud. Despite of these controversies, party cadres remained fully loyal to the leader. This loyalty of cadres has not changed after the elections, although it proved very difficult for ANO to form a coalition government in which Babiš would be the prime minister. The aim of the paper is to analyse the specific organisational patterns developed within the ANO which influenced the loyalty of party cadres. In this analysis, the authors paid special attention to the role of Andrej Babiš and very strange tools that enabled him to change ANO into a disciplined and efficient political machine. The form of these tools is often disputable from the point of view of liberal democracy. This case study demonstrates how specific organisational features can a party of a political entrepreneur have.