Strong Committees Coming Out of Age in Strong Parliaments? The Case of Czech Chamber of Deputies and Slovak National Council

An effort to test applicability of various (US Congress based) theories related to committees on other chambers assumes good understanding of the latter committees’ operations. Unfortunately for some parliaments little information on the issue has been provided so far, the legislatures in Central and Eastern Europe providing a telling example (witness e.g. Andrews 2014). The Czech Republic and Slovakia are no exception (basics in Mansfeldova 2011), despite the fact that they might represent extremely interesting cases. First, if we utilize the measuring index developed by Martin (2011), the committees in both chambers belong formally to the strongest committees in the word as they actually record full scoresheet. At the same time they operate in parliaments that are again formally (and often in practice as well) extremely strong vis a vis the executive. Second, due to many commonalities, the Czech Republic and Slovakia offer most similar cases design, yet with variations in important independent variables (e.g. the composition and strength of governments). My (rather modest) objective is not only to provide insight into formal set-up of committees in both chambers, but mainly to follow various aspects of their practical functioning in the last 20 years. The analysis will rely on 1) data on general aspects such as structure and membership of committees, 2) large dataset covering all phases of legislative process to explore the legislative influence of committees. Although the empirical data will be presented mostly by descriptive statistics, they are to be tested against current theoretical assumptions in the field. My preliminary assessment suggests that partisan theories might have the highest explanatory value in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but the committees seem suprisingly more consensual that the plenaries and are willing to act independently against the executive. Finally, the role of committees has appeared to increase considerably over time.