Authors

Discussion

Czechoslovakia, the youngest of the three socialist federations, joined the club under remarkable circumstances. Legislation was hastily prepared during the Prague Spring of 1968, under pressure from Slovak emancipatory demands, and passed in October, in the presence of Soviet occupation troops. Nevertheless, it introduced an exemplary federal parliamentary system, which, however, only operated in a very formal way in the years that followed, and its decentralisation effect remained on paper.

The paper will examine the design of the Czechoslovak federation, the distribution of powers and the way national and federal institutions were formed, and relate them to federalist ideas, the Czechoslovak democratic tradition, and the late-socialist ideal of parliament.

Two case studies, dealing with parliamentary procedure and the process of uncompetitive elections, will demonstrate the ceremonial character of the constitutional process. The paper argues that it was the trinity of parliamentary institutions that embodied the federal system and its ritualized functioning.