Dissolution of the Chamber of the Deputies in the Czech Republic – the Origin and Essence of applicable Constitutional Legislation

Abstract

The constitutional system of the Czech Republic, which is established on the principles of a parliamentary form of government, takes into account the possibility of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The Chamber of Deputies is a chamber to which the government is accountable and this is the chamber in which the major part of the authority of Parliament is concentrated. Parliamentary systems have been also structured according to whether a certain amount of balance of power is preserved between parliament and the government. A typical characteristic of every parliamentary form of government is the possibility for a vote of confidence in the government by parliament, meaning a dependency of the government on the will of parliament. Some parliamentary systems counterbalance this relationship with a greater or lesser possibility for the government of dissolving that chamber of parliament, which votes confidence in it. This makes it possible for the government to be able to more significantly fulfil the role of political leader in a given country and it can actively initiate and form a political state. The contemporary Czech constitutional system lies within those variants in which the position of parliament in relation to the government is extraordinarily strong. The current Constitution in the first place does not give the government any possibility to initiate dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies. The Constitution moreover considers the dissolving of the Chamber of Deputies as only a sanction for inaction, if need be for inability to perform any kind of work. Thus the strictly formulated possibility of dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies means, among other things, that the Chamber of Deputies is extremely difficult to dissolve in a situation where it expresses a vote of non-confidence in the government, but is not able to form a majority for the creation and support of a new government. In light of this task, which, in the framework of the system of the separation of power within the parliamentary republic, is a principal task, the Chamber of Deputies is incapable of action and is in political fragmentation. Its capability to fulfil further functions, specifically in the area of legislative process, is however often untouched. At the same time the Constitution associates the possibility of dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies in three of four cases precisely with its complete inability to function. The fourth case, associated with the setting up of a new government, is however difficult to apply, because political representation marks this process, in large part by law, as wasting time in a situation when it is simply obvious that a new government under existing relations in the Chamber of Deputies cannot be put together, and, if it could, it would not afterwards be workable. It is necessary to look for the causes of this non-functional arrangement in the historical circumstances under which the contemporary Constitution was enacted and in the modifications, which preceded it. The pre-war version gave the power to dissolve both chambers of the National Assembly to the president of the Republic acting in cooperation with the government. This was a balanced and essentially classic arrangement. The period after the war together with the building of the system of a so-called people’s democracy led to a conceptual change blocking the primacy of parliament, from which the other constitutional bodies derived their own authority and to which they were also accountable. In the conditions of the government of the people and its assembly it was unthinkable that some of the bodies derived from the Assembly might initiate its dissolution. The dominating standing of parliament among the other constitutional bodies no doubt influenced the creators of the contemporary Czech Constitution. Now because the new constitution was prepared in Parliament and the creators of the new concept had experienced very well the blocking arrangement. A second significant factor was the reality that the applicable Constitution was prepared at the beginning of the period of an extensive transformation of society. The government of the time, among other things, wished for an arrangement of a type that a stable parliamentary background would preserve for it. In the 15 years following it has been shown several times that the contemporary inelastic Constitutional version is not suitable for a fully functioning and stable state. Already several bills were submitted for an appropriate renewal of the Constitution, but in the meantime none were passed. Also because of this dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies has already twice come about through a special change to the Constitution, which in the given cases was a one-time shortening of the electoral term of the respective Chambers of Deputies.