Functioning of the Parliamentary Groups in the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo 2011-2014

Abstract

The parliamentary groups are formed after free and democratic elections by political parties or various political coalitions under the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo. They play an important role by providing a great contribution to the functioning of parliamentary life, representing their voters in the realization of their interests. There are three diversity parliamentary groups, parliamentary groups formed by position, the ones formed by the opposition, and those which do not belong to any party (independent deputies). In democratic systems, members of the parliamentary groups express freely their opinions and interests in order to realize their political programmes. This study aims to reflect the functioning of the parliamentary groups of the Republic of Kosovo during the period 2011-2014. A better functioning of the parliamentary groups would contribute in enhancing the effectiveness of decisions undertaken in the parliamentary sessions on various political issues. The study includes the President of the Assembly of Kosovo, heads of the parliamentary groups, representatives of the parliamentary groups and the person who monitored the Assembly during the last legislation. Among the applied methods used in this study were: qualitative methods and semi-structured interviews; whilst the sourcing techniques (means) used to achieve the interview were: semi-structured questionnaire and a recorder with multimedia tools. Results show that the parliamentary groups in the previous legislation lacked the quality debates, professional assistance, genuine parliamentary democracy, etc. From these results we can conclude that the parliamentary groups of the last legislation did not function at the satisfactory level, and did not use all the legal mechanisms in their strengthening and the independence of their decisions.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n3s1p36