The Czech Republic: Entrenching Proportional Representation

Abstract

After the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, the first free elections — to the then Czechoslovak Federal Assembly and the Czech and Slovak National Councils — were held simultaneously in June 1990. The same set of parliamentary elections was repeated in June 1992. After the split of the Czechoslovak Federation and the emergence of the independent Czech Republic and Slovakia in early 1993, there were separate elections to the two chambers of the Czech parliament and the Slovak assembly. Common to all post-communist elections held in the territory of the present Czech Republic is that they were conducted under similar electoral systems — a proportional representation list system in the case of the lower house and a majority system in the case of the upper house. Indeed, electoral systems proved to be rather resilient in the face of several far-reaching reforms that were attempted in the first decade of post-communist politics, as did in fact the entire institutional system of the Czech Republic enshrined in the compromise constitution adopted at the time of the peaceful partition of Czechoslovakia.