Local referendum - Institute of local referendum in the Czech Republic and Slovenia

This thesis deals with the essential aspects of the local referendum as a widely used complement of representative democracy and with the particular forms it appears in the Czech and Slovenian legal orders. The main objectives of this thesis are following: describing Czech and Slovenian legal regulations concerning the local referendum in detail, exploring certain areas of its practical use and finally concluding whether there is any significant difference in the way these two countries, that share similar experience historically and of the recent years too, approach direct democracy and the institute of the local referendum in particular. The body of the thesis is made up of nine chapters. In the first chapter Introduction I clarify what led me to focus on the respective issues. The second chapter Idea of Direct Democracy tackles the origins and the essence of direct democracy, its potential to be used in the modern world and also briefly describes those institutes of direct democracy that are used in the Czech and Slovenian practice. The third chapter Referendum in general classifies individual types of referendums. In the fourth chapter Local referendum in the Czech Republic, we can find an exhaustive description of the Czech legal regulation of the local referendum, analysis of the data..