Communist Legislatures in Comparative Perspective

By Daniel Nelson & Stephen White

Paperback : 9780873955676, 201 pages, June 1983
Hardcover : 9780873955669, 201 pages, June 1983

Table of contents

Preface
Notes on the Contributors

1. Communist Legislatures and Communist Politics
Daniel Nelson

2. Politics as an Avocation: Legislative Professionalism and Participation in Yugoslavia
Lenard J. Cohen
3. The Institutional Development of a Minimal Parliament: the case of the Polish Sejm
David M. Olson and Maurice D. Simon

4. People's Council Deputies in Romania
Daniel Nelson

5. Legislative Politics in Czechoslovakia
Otto UlĨ

6. The USSR Supreme Soviet: a Developmental Perspective
Stephen White

7. The Chinese National People's Congress
Donald Gasper

8. Some Conclusions
Stephen White

Index

Description

Communist legislatures have not normally been taken seriously by Westerners, who tend to see them as passive instruments of the Party, playing little part in the political life of their countries. The contributors to this volume, a group of specialists in communist politics drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, take issue with this view.

The chapters of this cross-national study contain thoroughly researched and up-to-date studies of communist legislatures chosen to represent the most important sub-types: Yugoslavia (Lenard J. Cohen, Simon Fraser University, Canada), Poland (David M. Olson and Maurice D. Simon, University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Romania (Daniel Nelson), Czechoslovakia (Otto Ulc, SUNY Binghamton), China (Donald Gaspar, City University, London), and the USSR (Stephen White). A comprehensive introduction by Daniel Nelson provides background information, and Stephen White has contributed a concluding synthesis.

Daniel Nelson is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Stephen White is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Glasgow. Each has previously published several volumes on communist politics.