Archive 4/2002

Abstract

The article is divided into two parts. The first part comments upon methodological issues and challenges of the research into the transformations of competitive party arrangements in the context of contemporary pluralist democracies. It proposes and examines schematics and typology applicable to processes of party system transformations. A number of changes in party arrangements can materialize, which could be studied in various ways. However, this does not mean that any of these ways could be legitimized effectively. It is necessary to assess primarily changes in prevailing party interactions (including the system-making changes in party competition and cooperation patterns) and their impact on the working logic, systemic properties and "outputs" of party system in the wider political system framework. From this point of view, it seems particularly helpful to distinguish between party arrangement changes according to their differing system-making impact and try to explain which kind of changes is likely (or by definition) to bring about system transformation effect. The second part concentrates upon interpretations of the Italian and Japan party arrangements transformations in the 1990s. The two cases are both important and interesting for the comparative research into party systems transformations, because of particular combinations of system-breaking and/or system-making changes, which have played a role here.

Key words

party system; parties; transformation; typology; competition; democracy.

Abstract

The development of the Schweizerische Volkspartei was intensely affected by an interesting transformation in the last decade. The old traditional political movement of small business has step by step changed to a modern populist party of the radical right. Concerning the typological characterization of this political subject, the Volkspartei belongs to the "nacionalist" type of the European populist parties. Its economical conception is strong liberal, while the common social values remain rigorously christian-conservative. The Helvetic-national element appears in the party ideology only in the foreign affairs themes, whereas the internal problems are seen rather 1rom the regionalist views. The great successes of the SVP in last federal, cantonal and district elections were a result of the fact, that the party had occupied the former ideological positions of the Christdemokralische Volkspartei (CVP), which had little by little renounced on its integral conservativ character (for example in questions of the swiss neutrality). The future of the SVP in the next years depends now on the development of the programm positions of the other political parties in 1he Switzerland and also on the behaviour of the old electorat of the CVP in the traditional catholic cantons.

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Schweizerische Volkspartei, populism, Switzerland, politics and government, Christoph Blocher.

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Present article tries to describe the pathway which this concept traced since the days of the most famous theory of Stein Rokkan in the late 1960s. Lipset’s and Rokkan’s developmental model of cleavages is described. Main advantages and disadvantages of Rokkan’s model are discussed. The problem of strong cross-cutting cleavages and their impact for party system stability are also discussed. Then the impact of post-materialistic values and post-materialistic cleavage (R. Ingleharťs concept) is discussed with the conclusion that post-materialistic cleavage brought important division to the Western societies and party systems, but its impact is not so revolutionary as Inglehart foresaw. The development of different concepts and scientific uses are described, however, the main attention is paid to the phenomenon of translation of cleavages based research method beyond the territory of Western Europe. The article concludes that, speaking generally, there are two basic approaches of using cleavages in political science research: so called "political cleavages" and "social cleavages".

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cleavages, Stein Rokkan, post-materiailistic values, political and social cleavages, cross-cutting cleavages.

Abstract

This paper tries to examine the link between the integration paradigms and the political development of the Community since 1952. It aims to find the key signs of neofunctionalism, federalism and the intergovernmental approach in the ES/EU treaties, in other reform papers and necessary in the institutional structure. The text intends to offer an answer to the question concerning the EU future, especially in prospect of enlargement and expectations of the candidate countries. With regard to the treaties modifications during the 90’s the author analyses the Community development and presents the conclusion that the European integration process reinforced the supranational elements in principle and tends unambiguous to the political union in federal sense. This conclusion is supported by the concrete examples of the lost of the member state sovereignty in decision making process.

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supranationalism, neofunctionalism, federalism, intergovernmentalism, EU institutions, policies.

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The main aim of this article is to foreshadow the possible process of scrutinising European matters in the Czech Parliament after accession to the European Union. As the most important part of this process the authors discover the creation of proper internal parliamentary structures needed for effective parliamentary control over governmental action on European level. At the first part of this article, the authors recount the recent steps done in this field, i.e. establishing of the European Integration Committees in both chambers of the Parliament, and the so called European Amendment to the Czech Constitution that seem to be the basic preconditions for future development. The authors anticipate that the competences of the chambers will be to a great extent delegated to the committees. Pursuant to this fact, the authors describe, at the second part of the article, the structure and competences of the European committees in the EU Member States and they focus mainly on bicameral parliamentary systems that seems to be instructive for the Czech Republic. The second followed problem is the possibility of a committee to give an obligatory statement which could fix the action of particular minister in the Council. Finally, the authors analyse the models possible in the Czech political and constitutional reality.

Key words

Austria, Committee, Committee powers, Chamber of Deputies, Euroamendment of the Czech Constitution, European matters scrutinising, European Integration, France, Government, Italy, Ireland, Parliament of the Czech Republic, Senate, Spain, United Kingdom.

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Ján Kráľ, Eduard Kačík (2001): Komparativně štátne právo Velkej Británie, USA, Nemecka, Francúzska a verejná správa, Trnava: Univerzita sv. Cyrila a Metoda.

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Jan Kysela (2000): Senát Parlamentu ČR v historickém a mezinárodním kontextu. Příspěvek ke studiu dvoukomorových soustav, Praha: Senát, Parlament České republiky, 183 pages.

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Wolfgang Ismayr (Ed.) (2002): Die politischen Systéme Osteuropas, Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 903 pages.

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Karel Müller jr. (2002): Češi a občanská společnost. Pojem, problémy, východiska, Praha: Triton, 251 pages.

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Roman F. Michelko (Ed.) (2002): Slovensko v roku 2001 (Súhrnná správa). Zborník politologického odboru Matice slovenskej, Martin: Vydavateľstvo Matice slovenskej, 318 pages.

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