This research project adresses central questions within the study of parliamentary representation in the Czech Republic. Our study is focused on three themes: (1) Parlamentarians - who are Czech republic's political representatives and how do they conceptualise their role? (2) EU accession - how is political representation within a system of multilevel governance percieved by parlamentarians? Is there a division of labour or competition between representative institutions? What are Czech parlamentarians' attitudes toward EU institutions and proposals for reform? (3) Policy-making - how do parlamentarians percieve the legislative process? Has there been a fundamental change in the policymaking process following accession?
More generally, this project extends previous research at the national level and explores how accession has changed the nature of political representation in the Czech Republic. Using theoretically informed empirical methodology, this study makes a substantial contribution to debates surrounding the quality of democratic representation in the Czech Republic.
Project publications (total 16, displaying 11 - 16)
The chapter describes legislative process both in general terms from the point of view of the political institutions and in detail within the Chamber of deputies and the Senate. It also analyses organization and activity of the Chamber and looks in detail at passing the legislation. It pays special attention to the position of the government in the legislative process and to the relationship between both chambers.
The book deals with one of the three core functions of legislatures – the oversight, and demonstrates, how this function is performed in case of state budget. The chapter then analyses the specifics of the budget negotiation process in the Czech Republic, which is different from the general legislative process. Attention is paid to single stages of the budgeting process and the role the parliament and parliamentary oversight.
The chapter provides an overview of the Czech Parliamentarism, describes its current shape and basic internal structures. It describes the history of the Czech parliamentarism, its internal structure, relations between chambers and their different powers. It also analyses internal organization of the parliament, especially leadership, parliamentary party groups and committees.
The Czech political system is construed as a parliamentary democracy with a bicameral Parliament; the Parliament’s role is key even with regard to its role in creating other political institutions. The presented study deals successively with the legislative process, the role of political parties in the system of representation, the relationship between parliament and government, characteristics of deputies. The last chapter analyses the role of deputies and its perception by deputies.
This paper compares the development in four Central European parliaments in the second decade after the fall of communism. At the end of the first decade, the four parliaments could be considered stabilised, functional, independent and internally organised institutions. Attention is paid particularly to the changing institutional context and pressure of ‘Europeanisation’, the changing party strengths, and the functional and political consequences of these changes.
Using roll-call and parliamentary survey data from the sixth legislature in the Czech Republic (2006–2008), this research demonstrates that spatial models of roll-call data are not readily explainable in terms of party cohesion and discipline. The difficulty of making a substantive interpretation of dimensions extracted suggests the use of spatial models of roll-call voting where party discipline is strong requires more theoretical and methodological work.
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