Risk Without Breakdown: Andrej Babiš, MAFRA, and Czech Democracy

Threats to democracy do not always arrive looking like threats. Sometimes there are no tanks in the streets and no sudden dissolution of parliament. Elections continue, and institutions still seem to function. Freedom House’s 2026 report scores Czechia 95 out of 100 and classifies it as Free. The same report also notes that powerful business actors still have visible influence in politics.

Elites can be understood as a small group with disproportionate power and influence. Andrej Babiš is an unusual case of that definition, because economic and political elite status came together in one person. He owned Agrofert, one of the country’s largest companies, and then became prime minister. This post argues that this overlap of office, business assets, and media ownership created a real risk to democratic accountability, while Czech institutions limited that risk and stopped it from becoming a breakdown. Babiš was prime minister from 2017 to 2021, and he returned to the office in December 2025.

In The Power of the Powerless, Václav Havel argued that communist Czechoslovakia was held together not only by force, but by a “world of appearances.” His greengrocer puts an official slogan in the shop window, and through that everyday ritual people live “within a lie.” Havel was writing about a post-totalitarian regime, not today’s Czech Republic, so this post uses his point only to ask one question. How far can political and economic power tilt the channels citizens use to learn what is happening?

The risk: one actor, three kinds of power

ANO (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) is the party Babiš founded and still leads. He entered politics as a billionaire manager and an anti-corruption figure. In 2013, his Agrofert group bought MAFRA, the publisher of major titles including Mladá fronta Dnes and Lidové noviny. Editors left in protest, arguing that a politician-owner made independent reporting hard to defend.

Why should a businessman in office worry us? Gilens and Page find that economic elites and organized business interests have substantial independent influence on policy, while average citizens have little. Their data come from the United States, so they do not prove the same pattern in Czechia. But they describe the mechanism that makes the Babiš case worrying. When the owner of a major company also heads the government, the line between business interest and public policy becomes hard to see.

A later episode shows what media ownership could change, and what it cannot prove. In May 2017, leaked recordings captured Babiš speaking with a Mladá fronta Dnes journalist about sensitive material on political opponents, including the prime minister, and advising that it not be published immediately because it would be more useful before the autumn election.

That recording is documented conduct, not a guess about influence. It shows that a political owner could discuss the timing of damaging coverage. It does not prove that MAFRA’s overall coverage changed, or that voters chose differently because of it. Those claims would need a comparison of stories, or evidence about what audiences saw. The narrower point still matters. Independent reporting is one way citizens learn enough to hold leaders to account, and an owner who can shape when a story runs weakens that check.

Checking the warning signs

Levitsky and Ziblatt identify four warning signs in the behavior of political elites: rejecting the democratic rules of the game, denying the legitimacy of opponents, tolerating or encouraging violence, and being willing to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Applied honestly, the Babiš case only partly fits. The recording raises concerns about media independence, but it does not by itself show an attempt to restrict the civil liberties of political opponents. There is no comparable evidence in this case that Babiš rejected election results or encouraged violence. That mixed result is itself useful. It suggests a risk to the quality of democracy, not a leader trying to end it.

Motive is not the same as opportunity

Comparison with Hungary makes the difference clearer. Under Viktor Orbán, the government’s influence extended beyond the media to independent institutions( Freedom House Hungary 2026). In Stealth Authoritarianism Varol describe this kind of strategy stealth authoritarianism, meaning the use of legal tools found in democracies, such as judicial review and electoral rules, to entrench power behind a democratic appearance. Media ownership is not one of Varol’s core mechanisms, so the Babiš case should not be forced into that label. The contrast is the point. In Hungary, governing-party influence extended into independent institutions. Czechia did not experience the same degree of institutional change during Babiš’s first premiership.

Bakke and Sitter explain why. They argue that backsliding in Central Europe depends on motive, opportunity, and weak constraints. Fidesz had a constitutional majority in Hungary. ANO did not. The 2017 election made ANO the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, with 78 of 200 seats. That was not a majority, and a constitutional amendment needs three-fifths of all deputies and three-fifths of the senators present. ANO was also weak in the Senate, which is renewed in parts rather than all at once, so one general election could not hand the party both chambers.

These limits illustrate horizontal accountability, the checks that institutions place on each other. The Senate, the amendment threshold, and courts that continued to handle the subsidy and conflict-of-interest cases around Agrofert all limited what the prime minister could do. Vertical accountability also remained active. Citizens could hold leaders accountable through elections, protests, and other forms of political expression, while independent media provided additional public scrutiny. In June 2019, the largest protest since the fall of communism in 1989 drew an estimated 250,000 people to Letná to demand his resignation. International IDEA still places Czechia in a high range for representation, rights, and the rule of law, and in a mid-range for participation.

What the case can and cannot show

The Babiš case shows that an elite who holds economic and political power at once can create a real risk to accountability, even inside a highly rated democracy. The 2017 recording is one concrete instance of that risk. It does not show that voters lost a meaningful choice, because other outlets still reported the scandals, elections stayed competitive, and ANO never had the seats to rewrite the constitution alone. Formal freedom to vote is not the whole of democratic choice if concentrated power shapes what people can learn. Horizontal and vertical accountability could still limit it and make it public.

The comparison with Hungary explains the outcome. Motive alone was not enough. Without the opportunity to capture courts and electoral rules, and with both horizontal and vertical checks still working, the risk did not become a breakdown. In 2023, Agrofert agreed to sell MAFRA ahead of a new law barring top politicians from owning media, so the ownership structure is no longer the same as it was in 2017. The earlier episode is therefore a historical example of the accountability problem rather than a description of Babiš’s current media holdings. With Babiš back in office since December 2025, those checks matter again.