Evolution of Parliamentary Assemblies in Contemporary Czechoslovakia. The Parliament has been since 1948 the supreme organ of State power in Czechoslovakia. At the local level, the elected « national committees » represent the most important organs of State administration. During the « dogmatic » period, the importance of parliamentary assemblies is less than is foreseen by the constitutional and legislative texts ; it is considerably below the authority given to leading organs of the Czechoslovak communist party. The XX-th Congress of the communist party of the Soviet Union showed however, that economic problems, particularly the progressive failure of the system of central management, played a decisive role in the ideological, political and institutional process which started in the 60-ties. The Constitution of 1960 and the constitutional Law of October 27 th, 1968, introduced a federal system governing the Czech and Slovak republics and represented an attempt to find a constitutional model which corresponded closely to national realities without rejecting socialism. The objective of this new model is to combine parliamentary with direct democracy. Several techniques are developped with aim to bring into closer contact the administration with the administrated, the authorities with the citizen. The most significant evolution since 1960 however, is the progessive reinforcement of the parliamentary assemblies, which seem to slowly regain that preeminence which they already enjoy from a legal standpoint. This shift from formal to actual power is caracterised by two interdependent movements : — growth of authority stemming from the improvement of the rules governing recrui- tement of deputies and from the extension of their legislative and political competences (a number of electoral laws, the last of which was passed in 1964, attribute more importance to elections which had been traditionnally relegated to a second place in People's democracies) ; — growth of their efficiency due to the adoption of new rules of parliamentary work (the assembly « committees » are assisted directly by the services of experts and by the administrative State apparatus and actually try to participate in the elaboration and execution of general policy). These trends are evolving in a very complex environment and are far from stable. The policy made after January 1968 and following the events of August of that same year, provoked in the institutional life of Czechoslovakia, phases of precipitation followed by slowdowns in some sectors. It seems however, that in spite of powerful obstacles which continue to exist, parliamentary assemblies can become, in a not distant future, the most important organs of the Czechoslovak State socialist system.