100 let československé a polské státnosti: Podobnosti a rozdíly
A hundred years of the Czech and Polish statehood: similarities and differences

Summary/Abstract: A 100th anniversary of constitutionalism of two neighbouring European states: former Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic and Poland inspire thinking about the development route to their constitutions, historical stages and successive changes in the political system not only in the context of their own constitutionalism but also similarities and differences. The present study is devoted to this issue: since the revival of the two states after World War I, through the interwar development of a democratic constitutional system and obstacles encountered on this way, through the period after World War II, when they existed in the conditions of real socialism, and finally until the time of transformation and stabilisation of a democratic state ruled by law. The text focuses on all the similarities with regard to general issues, e.g. reference to the European traditions of parliamentary governments, as well as with regard to some detailed solutions, e.g. differences in attitudes to the concept of a bicameral parliament. However, the article also presents some specific situations typical of one of the states, e.g. federalisation of Czechoslovakia or the creation of two separate states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia, or differences in the course and chronology of the democratic transformation in each state in the 1980s (martial law in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia) to finally indicate that, regardless of all the differences, the constitutional systems as well as the routes to democratic statehood of the two countries are really similar.

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