Development of modern parliamentary culture in the Czech lands and Czechoslovakia

The project objective is to compile the development of modern Czech parliamentary culture with the use of digital humanities methods and tools, and its presentation to the general public. The project, covering the period from 1848 to 1992, shall include primarily the elaboration of a detailed overview of members of parliament – legislators. The project generally endeavours not only to elaborate an important but so far largely neglected topic (no summary elaboration of the history of Czech parliamentarianism has been performed yet), but also to present it to the general public and, first of all, to emphasise the importance of parliamentarianism and parliamentary democracy.
The project submitted deals with the research and presentation of the development of parliamentary culture in the Czech lands and Czechoslovakia in the modern and contemporary eras. The main items are: 1) Commencement of the research of Czech parliamentarianism and parliamentary culture through innovative digital humanities methods (i.e. through creating a permanent data platform utilisable for the project sustainability and further research); 2) Creation of a specialist map, upon this database, documenting the development and character of the Czech parliamentary culture;
3) Presentation of the research results in the form of an exhibition (including a critical catalogue), and thus, popularisation of parliamentarianism and its principles to the general public (educative relevance); 4) Publication of synthetic book elaboration of the development of modern Czech parliamentarianism and parliamentary culture (and other two specialised monographs, or several expert journal studies, etc.); 5) Organisation of an international conference dedicated to the topic of modern parliamentarianism. This part of the project shall be elaborated by cooperating leading Czech and foreign experts (such as J. Malíř, W. D. Godsey, V. Doubek, L. Velek, P. Maťa, J. Rychlík) who have been dealing with these issues in the long term and have published numerous relevant studies.

Project name: Development of modern parliamentary culture in Czech lands and Czechoslovakia
Code: DG18P02OVV025
Duration: 2018–2022
Agency: NAKI II (Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic)
Project type: consortial project (NM as the principal investigator)
NM’s investigator: prof. PhDr. Michal Stehlík, Ph.D.
Other participants: Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS (PhDr. Luboš Velek, Ph.D.), Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Mgr. Ondřej Matějka)

Anticipated results/outputs:
Other objectives and outputs of the project are: 1) Creation of an electronic database open to the public of all elected (and co-opted) members of parliament (both deputies and senators) in our territory (from 1848 to 1992); 2) Creation of a specialist map, upon this database, analysing the forming of modern parliamentarianism and parliamentary culture in our country upon statistical and prosopographical methods. Upon data comparison (with neighbouring countries, or with representatives of national minorities), national and regional specifics of Czech parliamentary culture shall be characterised; 3) These, as well as other results of the research shall be presented to the general public in the form of an exhibition (and a critical catalogue) presenting eight centuries of the development of Czech parliamentarianism (including assemblies of estates in the Middle Ages and early modern times) with emphasis laid on the modern and contemporary eras; 4) Documentation of the development of Czech parliamentary culture in the form of a specialist monograph (of a synthetic character) which will offer to the general public, in an accessible form and with the participation of leading experts, a picture of the development of Czech parliamentarianism and parliamentary culture. A number of expert journal studies and two other collective monographs shall be elaborated, and an international conference shall be organised in connection with this publication.