Suchergebnisse

Abstract: Analysis of the backgrounds of the Dail deputies elected in November 1982 shows certain strong similarities with previous Dala. Most deputies were born in their constituencies, and most were local authority members before entering the Dail. A high proportion are small businessmen. But change is also detectable: the number of professionals is growing larger, while farmers are a declining force. The educational level attained by deputies has been rising steadily, while the proportion of women in the Dail, though still low, is higher than ever before. Cohort analysis permits speculation about trends likely to develop in the future.

AbstractThe paper explores the legislative unity of government and opposition blocs in the Czech Chamber of Deputies over a period of 20 years. As voting unity is usually rather low in the Czech Republic, temporarily high concentrations of votes by these blocs are linked to higher rates of conflict between the government and opposition. I use the Rice and UNITY indices to compare average unity scores of individual cabinets and also explorative time series of unity vectors in order to analyse bloc concentration, success rate, and increased conflict. The outcomes are relevant both as comprising a case study and methodological observations: (1) Broad differences in the logic of interaction are confirmed (e.g. caretaker cabinets show less conflict than standard cabinets). Although no universal trend (e.g. no transition from consensual to conflictual practice) is found, the Czech opposition became more concentrated and resorted to serial blocking tactics in the second decade; thus, a major change of behavior occurred after all. (2) The Rice and UNITY indices correlate considerably; UNITY's discrimination capacity is not distorted significantly despite the nature of equilibria in the Chamber. Moreover; the UNITY index is able to easily distinguish contested votes not detectable by the Rice index alone.

The article evaluates the legislative effectiveness of parliamentarians in Russia. The author seeks to find answers to the question: what factors determine the legislative effectiveness of deputies? The article presents the results of assessing the impact of membership in the parliamentary majority party, formal status in the internal parliamentary hierarchy, work experience in legislatures, as well as legal education on legislative success. The study is grounded on the data on the "effectiveness" of deputies of two regional parliaments – St. Petersburg and the Kirov region. The work is based on regression analysis. The results of the study show that membership in the majority party, a position of a chairman of the committee or a leader of the majority party, as well as the previous experience in the legislative sphere are factors influencing the legislative success of a parliamentarian. Also, legislative efficiency rises with an increase of a deputy's term in office. The author concludes that the institutional characteristics that make some deputies more effective legislators than others are crucial for the development of a more profound understanding of political representation and public policy-making.