Wirtschaftsuniv., Diss.--Wien, 2004.

Univ., Diss.--St. Gallen, 2001.

Members of the European Parliament are chosen according to 28 different election systems. The European Union determines only few basic rules, which are concretised by member states in their law systems. Diploma thesis "Election system of European Parliament" deals with similarities and differences between these regulations in order to show inequality of European elections. In the second part of this thesis the author compares a partial aspect of the election system, election threshold in Germany and in the Czech Republic. While the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany invalidated firstly the five-percent-threshold and then even the three-percent-threshold because of its contradiction to Basic Law, the Czech Constitutional Court confirmed it as constitutional afterwards. Both courts judicated that it is a violation of election equality but in the opinion of the Czech one fragmentation of the Parliament would hinder its work with such intensity that election threshold preventing from this fragmentation is justifiable. The judgements are compared and their argumentations analysed if reasonable. This thesis comes to the conclusion, that considered the current state and predictable development election threshold has its justification. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Representative democracy at the European level This thesis deals with representative democracy, as one of the fundamental principles underpinning the organisation of states or, as the case may be, interstate-type entities. At the European level, this principle is embodied by the European Parliament and the national parliaments of the Member States whose functions and competences complement each other. In the context of the role of the European Parliament the fundamental question concerns direct elections as an instrument of political legitimacy. This thesis offers a comparison of the findings of the Czech and the German Constitutional Courts, which took different views on the case of the electoral treshold in elections to the European Parliament. Arguments of these courts enable the reader to see European Union, position of the European Parliament in its institutional structure and its democratic legitimacy in wider context.

The Diploma Thesis named Social and Political Role of the Revue Parliament (1921-1936) and its Position on the Media Market during the First Republic in Czechoslovakia describes the role of the revue Parliament on the media market in the First Republic in Czechoslovakia. It introduces the period of the First Republic as time of alignment and stabilization of the new country based on democratic principles which were mirrored also in the then media creation. That was characterized by extensive diversity although having been subject to a censorship - in which numerous journals with various specializations and ideological values were finding their place. The Parliament, which I focused on, was significant by being published in the homonymous institution and specialized primarily in sociopolitical topics. It is obvious from its content that it set itself the task to defend an independent position of the republic and to introduce the public to its law and political culture. Whereas the lack of materials about the journal I decided to define it completely. Primarily I used the journal itself and archival materials of the National Archives. I focused on figures who were creating this journal, on the frequence of its publishing, organization and financial matters and especially on the analysis of its...

This diploma thesis has several objetcs. The main objective is to answer the research question and seven hypotheses including elections to the European Parliament and MEPs behaviour from individual europarties. Some hypotheses include the participation of the electorate of the member states in elections to the EP, while others relate to participation of MEPs in voting, cohesion and coalitions that are formed in the parliament. Data on voting are obtained thanks to a project created by the London School of Economics. These data are already clearly adjusted, because official data on voting the European Parliament show in a form that could not be analyzed without software support. After the introduction follow two chapters, in which there is described theoretical framework involving the search of relevant sources on the European Parliament, describing his position within key institutions of the EU, its function, history, and empowerment to the election of MEPs to the europarties. The results show some charasteristic patterns in the European Parliament. MEPs in most cases hold the party line rather than national. However, there are some cases, where individual nations across europarties vote uniformly, even though this behavior in some of them oppose to the attitude of a majority of the party. Large...

The aim of this master thesis is to compare electoral systems of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic and the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany. Firstly, basic terms regarding substance and types of elections, suffrage and primary classification of electoral systems are briefly characterized with the help of literature. Secondly, electoral system of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, its form in the context of the political system of the Czech Republic as a whole, its development over time and its impact on the results of elections in the last twenty years is described in detail. Furthermore, the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany is analysed in the same way, too. At the end of this thesis, advantages and disadvantages of both electoral systems are compared and their possible changes are outlined. Keywords: elections, electoral system, Parliament, Bundestag, Chamber of Deputies, comparison

The presented diploma thesis focuses on the parliamentary immunity of Deputies and Senators in the Czech Republic and consists of two not explicitly titled parts. The first one deals with the genesis of the concept of immunity; the historical course describes the origin of the concept that goes back to the 13th century. Immunity might have been described as protection given by an English monarch towards Representatives; it gradually changed in privileged status recognition of a newly emerging institution, nowadays called Parliament. This excursion back into the 800 year history is supposed to help us understand the basic idea that the immunity of deputies or senators serves as an instrument of protection of a legislative body, or rather the Parliament of the Czech Republic. As for the immunity of deputies (senators) in the Czech Republic, relevant chapters deal with the first attempts to create functional constitutions at the end of the 19th century when Bohemia was part of the Austrian empire. Significant space is dedicated to the 1920 Constitutional Act, which may be considered as a crucial document for today's concept of the immunity of deputies and senators in the Czech Republic. Finally, the first part includes also chapters dealing with later constitutions from 1948 and 1960. The second part...

- 145 - Abstract Role of the Parliamentary Party Groups in the Constitutional system of the Czech Republic The ultimate goal of my work was to fill in the blank spaces on the map of the Constitutional system of the Czech Republic by thorough examination and detailed description of the role and the status of the parliamentary party groups (PPGs) in it. However, this thesis is not just a general introduction, but a complex study of the actors of such importance and influence that it keeps one wondering, why they had remained out of a scope of the mainstream scientific research in our country for so long. After the necessary theoretical introduction to the subject of the parliamentary party groups within the field of the legal and political sciences, I examined the existence of the PPGs within the Chamber of Deputies, their relationships, interdependence and interconnections with the political parties and finally their inner functioning in close detail. It was necessary to deal with a number of serious issues and answer several important questions during my research, most notably: the question of the nature of the parliamentary party groups, i.e. whether they are bodies of the Chamber of Deputies, bodies of the political parties or whether they even possess their own legal personality. It was necessary to deal...

The study aims to empirically study the Early warning system and how national parliaments in the EU vary regarding the issuing of reasoned opinions. In recent years the subject of subsidiarity within the EU has become an increasingly debated and controversial topic. The Early warning system aims to alleviate the democratic deficiency of the EU, but the scientific community is divided on how efficient it is. Using data from the European parliament this study examines reasoned opinions and factors that influences why national parliaments issue them and why there is such a variation amongst the national parliaments issuing them. The study finds that being a member of the Eurozone and the EU15 has important implications for parliaments issuing reasoned opinions.