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.
Publikace vydané v rámci projektu (celkem 16, zobrazeno 1 - 10)
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.
The objective of the introductory chapter is to summarise the knowledge contained in literature to date about the Czech Parliament, inform about the existing surveys done there, touch upon the theoretical framework of the submitted publications based on the theory of representation, and introduce the structure of the literary works.
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.
This chapter describes the role of the political parties in the elections and in the system of political representation. First, it presents the features and the development of the electoral system for both chambers. Then it describes the development of the party system and focuses on the election results, programmes of the parties and their position on the left-right scale. Finally, it brings and overview of the development of the partisanship and parties in the parliament.
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 chapter is devoted to the relationship between the Chamber of Deputies and the government. The first part deals with the position of both these subjects in the Czech political system; the second part focuses on the composition of government and the vote of confidence or no confidence in each election term.
The Chapter deals with the socio-demographic structure of the MPs. It focuses on the age, sex, education and occupation before the election and presents them from the point of view of the electoral terms and political parties. Finally, it analyses the effect of those features on the political attitudes and positioning of the seats within the Chamber.
The chapter concentrates on the role of an MP and its perception. First it analyzes who deputies represent, how do they perceive tenor mandate and what linkage do they have to their party and electoral district. The second part of the chapter deals with the work of MPs in the parliamentary commissions, so to their specialist work. The result of this analysis is a complex evaluation of the role of an MP and its perception.
National rather than regional party systems are the norm in most democratic states.The link between party system nationalization and the individual voter has not been examined in the same detail. Here this link is explored using an ecological inference analysis of vote switching. This research, using the Czech Republic as a case study, shows that the presence of high party system nationalization evident across a pair of elections may be associated with non-uniform electoral swings.
The article examines four centre-right parties in East-Central Europe in order to assess the impact of ideology on party organization and revisit the thesis of organizational weakness in the region. The data collected indicate that, together with electoral success, inherited resources and national context, ideology does indeed shape the style of organization.
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