The Scottish Parliament which (re)convened in 1999 was designed to engender a new style of political practice. This ‘new politics’ was intended to address perceived failures within the ‘Westminster approach’ to policy‐making and the ‘democratic deficit’ believed to have emerged during the 1980s in Scotland. Key to achieving this were four principles around which the Parliament’s operations were designed: power‐sharing; accountability; accessibility and participation; and equal opportunities. Citing accessibility and participation as the ‘cornerstone’ of their work, the Parliament’s institutional architects (the Consultative Steering Group) argued that devolution should deliver a participatory democracy, with proactive efforts to be made by the Parliament to involve groups traditionally excluded from the policy process. Due to the increasing prominence in recent years of discourse relating to young people’s disillusionment with organised politics and the CSG’s recommendation that every effort should be made to include them in the new Parliament’s work, this research examines the degree to which greater accessibility to and participation in the Parliament’s work has been delivered for children and young people during the Parliament’s first two terms (1999‐2007). Findings are based upon a mixed‐methodological case‐study approach, involving an audit of the Parliament's activity and qualitative input from MSPs, Parliament staff, representatives of youth charities / organisations / advocacy groups, and young people themselves. The thesis argues that progress has been more pronounced in relation to accessibility than participation for younger people. The neoinstitutionalist theoretical framework suggests that insufficient rule specification in relation to the value of public participation and younger people has resulted in the emergence of hybridised logics of appropriate behaviour, particularly among parliamentarians. The result is the persistence of attitudes and practices which appear to reinforce aspects of Westminster practice and an adultist approach to young people’s role in politics. Drawing upon recent developments in neoinstitutionalist theories of reliable reproduction, institutional breakdown and gradual change, the thesis examines the institutional logic behind the failure to consolidate the Parliament’s founding vision.

The understanding of Swedish lobbyism is so far insufficient and misguided. In order to understand Swedish lobbyism better this thesis calls for a shift to theory testing case studies of actors that are capable to lobby in an organized and recurring way. To do this it offers a theoretical framework developed from three established theories of lobbying strategy adjusted for a Swedish context. The purpose of this framework is to chart strategies for how Swedish lobbyists lobby against Members of Parliament (MPs) and if and how these strategies influence MPs’ attitudes towards a policy. The case is the lobbying campaign for a reduced restaurant sales tax from 2000 to 2014 ending with a reduction from 25% to 12%. The study concludes that Swedish lobbyism is built from alliances, trust, perceived seriousity, and public interest, more than actual expertize of a specific topic.

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...

My thesis deals with the legal concept of sovereign Parliament, the very keystone of British constitution according to A. V. Dicey. This model has been challenged both normatively and descriptively. Concerning the normative point of view, concept of unlimited sovereignty is incoherent. Descriptively, courts don't simply take the parliamentary supremacy for granted, even if they say so. Relationship between the Parliament and courts is certainly more complex than Dicey suggested. Goals of this thesis are rather tentative. Since the popularity of this topic among British constitutional lawyers, comprehensive analysis is implausible due to the limited space. This paper aims to gather fundamental theories and disputes regarding the parliamentary sovereignty and its relationship with courts. In other words, it explores connection between the Parliament and courts in contemporary British constitution. First chapter analyses the constitutional conventions, which forms the basics of several other fundamental concepts in UK constitution. It suggests that there are no clear boundaries between law and conventions. Second chapter focuses on the general concept of sovereignty and Diceyan classic theory of Parliamentary sovereignty. There is also a brief explanation of sovereignty's connection to Scot's law....

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...

The purpose of this study is to describe and compare eurosceptic elements of the Swedish Left-Party and the Sweden Democrats leading up to the European Parliament elecetions of 2014 and 2019. Previous research has focused on many different aspects of eurocepticism; the definition and meaning of euroscepticism, eurosceptic voting among citizens and euroscepticism in democratic party-systems. Hence, this case-study aims at explaining euroscepticism in a Swedish context among the two clearly eurosceptic parties in the Swedish party-system. The two parties both have eurosceptic sentiments, although they have different ideological starting points and values. The Sweden Democrats consider themselves social conservatives with a nationalistic basic view. On the other hand, the Swedish Left-Party consider themselves as socialists and feminists with an ecological basic view. In order to find and compare these eurosceptic sentiments, a text analysis is combined with an analysis of arguments used in the two party’s election platforms leading up to the European Parliament elections. The empirical evidence is consequently interconnected with Taggart and Szczerbiak theory of soft and hard euroscepticism. This theory, or model of analysis, is used the catogorize parties based on their ”resistance” against different aspects of the European Union or the European process of integration as a whole. The study finds that the euroscepticism of the Swedish Left-Party and the Sweden Democrats have somewhat changed from the elections of 2014 and 2019. The resistance has mitigated to some degree leading up to the 2019 elections, in comparison to the elections of 2014. Although netither party could be categorized as soft or hard eurosceptics, they both lean more towards the features of soft euroscepticism.