Komparatívna analýza opozičných legislatívnych stratégií strán Smer-SD a ČSSD v rokoch 2010–2012, resp. 2010–2013

One of the essential functions of a parliament in a parliamentary democracy is the creation of legislation. And since governmental majorities prevail in most parliamentary democracies, the opposition confronts the government in the process of creating the legislation. This article concentrates on a comparison of oppositional strategies of two specific political parties when proposing legislation. The first is Smer-SD, a social-democratic party in Slovakia, while the second is ČSSD, a social-democratic party in the Czech Republic. Both are relevant parties with experience of being in government. The analysed period covers one electoral term when these parties were in opposition: the period of 2010–2012 in the case of the former and the period of 2010–2013 in the case of the latter. The analysis is conducted in five aspects: 1) the number of their legislative proposals; 2) the content of these proposals; 3) strategies used when proposing legislation (whether proposers create the legislation in cooperation with MPs from other parliamentary party groups or with the government); 4) the timing of proposing the legislation (whether any increase or decrease in the legislative activity may be observed during the electoral term) and 5) success of the legislation proposed by these parties (as a complementary factor to these four aspects).