Parlamentní vyšetřovací komise: faktory a meze účinnosti

The master’s thesis deals with the topic of legislative oversight of the executive whose proper institutional enshrining and real use in practice is a vital condition for democratic nature of the country. Legislative oversight of the executive is intentional or unintentional action of the legislators though which they a priori or ex post influence the government’s action while preparing and carrying out its program. Based on the theory of legislative oversight and the separation of powers, the thesis examines which legislative-executive arrangement is favorable for parliamentary control. Theoretical analysis of particular political systems shows that it is the presidential system with strictly separated and independent legislative and executive powers that provides more favorable conditions for performing the oversight. On the contrary, parliamentary system based on a close connection between legislative and executive branch does not really encourage the legislators’ control activity. Parliamentary commissions of inquiry are one of the examples of legislative oversight tools. They are the bodies of parliaments established ad hoc, whose objective is to investigate a controversial event which has a negative connotations in the eyes of society and, usually, has an impact on public budgets. In the Czech Republic, during the given period 1996 – 2017, 20 commissions of inquiry were set up. Through the quantitative analysis of the investigation committees’ establishment proposals and their settings (initiator, staffing, investigated period), the thesis seeks to answer the question if, in the Czech political context, the use of investigation committees is motivated by party competition (government vs. opposition) or by the whole Chamber of Deputies’ real effort to control government’s action (legislative vs. executive). The data shows that the question cannot be answered definitely, however, based on the analysis, we tend to believe that in practice, the commissions of inquiry are more used as an instrument of the rivalry between government and opposition and among particular political parties. The results of the analysis show that particular settings of the commissions does not have a real impact on their ability to provide conclusions in the form of report which is then approved by the chamber.