Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
If It Works, Fine, If Not, So What? Initiatives in Slovakia
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | štic, Erik L. á |
| Copyright Year | 2012 |
| Abstract | In the 1992 federal elections in Czechoslovakia, none of the major parties emphasized dissolution of the federal state.1 Nevertheless, following a series of negotiations between the leaders of winning parties, Mr Klaus, the leader of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in the Czech republic, and Mr Meciar, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) in the Slovak Republic, a decision was reached on 26 August 1992 that after 80 years of living in a common state Czechs and Slovaks would go their separate ways. Soon after that an initiative with more than a million signatures asked both political representations to organize a referendum on the future of the federation. It was refused based on the argument that the break up was inevitable. On 25 November, the federal parliament, the only authority allowed to initiate a referendum on the future of the federation, approved the constitutional law on the break-up of Czechoslovakia. What started as a political agreement between two leaders, and continued as a constitutional law approved by the highest federal representative body, became a rare example of the non-violent end of a federal structure in post-communist Europe. The dissolution, over which voters had no say, symbolically envisaged the future of direct democracy in both countries. While the Czech Republic did not include direct democracy into its new constitution, Slovakia's constitution allowed a referendum on important matters of public life, initiated either by citizens or by the parliament. This chapter analyses initiative mechanisms available in the Slovak political system at the national level. Although all of them are based on the constitutional right to petition as defined in the 1992 Slovak Constitution, they vary significantly in their legal, political and policy |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1057/9780230369900.0015 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://page-one.springer.com/pdf/preview/10.1057/9780230369900_9 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230369900.0015 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
