Central European Parliaments over Two Decades – Diminishing Stability? Parliaments in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia

This paper compares the development in four Central European parliaments (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia) in the second decade after the fall of communism. At the end of the first decade, the four parliaments could be considered stabilised, functional, independent and internally organised institutions. Attention is paid particularly to the changing institutional context and pressure of ‘Europeanisation’, the changing party strengths, and the functional and political consequences of these changes. Parliaments have been transformed from primary legislative to mediating and supervisory bodies. Though Central European parliaments have become stable in their structure and formal rules as well as in their professionalisation, at the end of the second decade their stability was threatened.