Parliamentary parties in the Czech Republic: functions, tools, stability

The thesis deals with activities of Czech parliamentary parties during EU-affairs discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, Parliament of the Czech Republic. The main focus is on three characteristic features of political parties during their activities on the parliamentary level: stability (rhetorical, voting, and programmatic), use of parliamentary oversight tools, and fulfilling their systemic function. The parties are seen through the prism of behavioural approach. EU-affairs are a rather new topic with a variable salience for national parties. EU-affairs influence party competition in extra-parliamentary arena. Conflict, however non-salient topics in parliamentary arena are ousted by governmental parties in order for them to keep governmental stability. The parties do not act according to their party manifestoes (low level of Europeanization); instead, their voting behaviour indicates that the parties follow logic of parliamentary competition between government and opposition. Parliamentarization of EU governance (engagement of national parliaments in broader institutional setting of the EU) leads to spreading of party competition on the national level to a new policy area. Political parties use tools of parliamentary scrutiny in a rather limited extent and according to their actual position within the system. The thesis also deals with party nomination and composition of the Committee on European affairs which holds oversight powers. The empirical analysis is based on the analysis of voting behaviour of parliamentary party groups (roll-call data), stenographic records, Committee and plenary session resolutions and quantitative analysis of composition of the Committee.