Sources of Information in Parliamentary Speech

The proposed paper seeks to provide some answer to question on an answer how elites are informed about citizen’s preferences. More precisely, I focus mainly on what MPs in the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic directly claim as the source of information (public opinion surveys, media messages, party specialist, contact with people and own experience of MPs). Obviously, this research cannot offer objective information about the true source of information, but it can still provide important information especially in regard to the rhetorical connection between elite and citizens. Three electoral terms (2006 – 2010, 2010 – 2013 and 2013 – 2017) are analyzed. This time span allows to investigate differences between parties from “traditional” party families (communists, social democrats, Christian democrats, conservatives) and new populist parties and also whether the presence of populist parties has some impact on ways how former parties refer to the public. The Czech Republic is a good case for analysis because of sudden change between 2010 and 2013 which provide unique opportunity to compare features of political representation in three very different settings.