cover of Post-Communist and Post-Soviet Parliaments: The Initial Decade

Post-Communist and Post-Soviet Parliaments

The Initial Decade

Edited by Philip Norton, David M. Olsen

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About the Book

This is a new assessment of the new parliaments that emerged as communism collapsed.

The sudden fall of the Soviet bloc stimulated both the rapid emergence of fledgling democracies and scholarly attention to the post-communist transition. The editors of this new volume characterize the newly democratized parliaments as "parliaments in adolescence" in their initial assessment (1966). They now face the challenge of chronicling the trajectory of these young democratic parliaments. Whether they survive or not into the third decade, this new text is a critical benchmark in understanding their fates.

This book modifies the usual organizational pattern of chapters concentrating on specific countries by the addition of three comparative chapters to complement the concluding one. The concluding chapter compares the post-communist parliaments with the presumptively more established west European parliaments. This book will bridge the usual gap in research between the post-communist parliaments and more "normal" democratic parliaments to develop a common legislative research perspective on both new and established parliaments.

This book was published as a special issue of the leading Journal of Legislative Studies.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Introduction 1. Post-Communist Parliaments Beyond Transition Part 2: The Parliaments 2. Hungary 3. Poland. 4. Czech Republic 5. Russia. 6. Moldova Part 3: Post-Communist Parliaments Compared 7. Internal Organization of Parliaments 8. The Members 9. Parliaments and Democratization 10. Post-Communist Parliaments: From Transition to Consolidation?

About the Author(s)

Philip Norton [Lord Norton of Louth]: Professor of Government and Director of the Centre for Legislative Studies, University of Hull.


David M. Olson: Professor Emeritus of Political Science, and Co-Director, Center for Legislative Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Co-Chair of Research Committee of Legislative Specialists, International Political Science Association