THE CZECH AND SLOVAK REPUBLIC IN THE FIRST DECADE OF INDEPENDENCE: THE PARLIAMENTARY DIMENSION OF STATE FORMATION

Abstract

The article examines the peculiarities of the struggle for power at the level of the parliament between different political forces in the Czech and Slovak republics in the conditions of the state-building process during the first decade after the division of Czechoslovakia into two sovereign countries. The use of the method of comparative analysis made it possible to identify both common and different trends in the Czech and Slovak republics at the level of formation of the legislative body of power. A common tendency was the support of the voters during the first elections to the parliaments of both states of the liberal-democratic political forces, as well as the change of these politicians to the social-democratic camp during the next term. A distinctive feature of the state-building process was the change of the constitutional model in the Czech Republic, which in turn led to a new institutional model of the legislative body – the division of the parliament into two chambers (the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate) and the election of the lower chamber for as long as the fourth year of the sovereign state, as well as holding early elections in the middle of the second term. During the first decade of sovereignty, the Slovak Republic had more stability in its political life than the Czech Republic, particularly at the level of the parliament. Considering the key role of the arrangement of parties within the legislative body and the formation of a coalition and its influence on the formation of the government in these two parliamentary republics, it was the political architecture of the first elections that allowed the formation of a government led by the political leaders of the countries who were in the highest positions during the time of the unified Czechoslovakia. However, the very next parliamentary elections led to a new coalition model, and thus to another government team, which had a different vision for the development of socio-political and economic processes in the republics towards a social orientation, that is, a left-centered direction.