The Cradle of Laws

In almost all states, laws (statutes) serve as the most important instruments to prompt social, economic or institutional change. Parliaments traditionally used to be considered as the locus of law-making, yet observers of politics pointed out that it had rather been the government (executive) that affects the outputs of the legislative game more prominently. Statistical data reveal that in most cases the governmental bills submitted to parliaments are adopted unchanged. Despite that little attention has been aimed at the previous phase of the legislative process: drafting and negotiating of bills within the executives. This book narrows the knowledge gap and analyse in detail who and how prepare the bills in their “cradle”. Six countries of Central Europe were selected for the analysis to provide comparable knowledge. The chapters, written by experienced scholars with local knowledge, have both descriptive and analytical dimensions and evaluate also practical functioning of the system in each state.