The diploma thesis aims to explore and analyse the influence of a certain characteristic of a political system on the second chamber of parliament. The characteristic in this case is whether a country is based on a federal or unitary system. Most analysts associate federalism with strong bicameralism, but it would be wrong to assume that in unitary states, second chambers of parliament do not have a significant role in the policy process. The first part of the thesis describes in more detail the key concepts: federalism, unitarism and bicameralism. As an additional aspect, the theory of veto players is included, with the help of which we can better understand the role and power of second chambers of parliament in different political systems. In the second part, the second chambers of parliament in three federal and three unitary states are presented. The research is limited to democratic European countries, namely Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and France. Therefore the purpose of the diploma thesis is to determine how the federal or unitary system of a country affects the second chamber of parliament as a veto player based on the cases from selected countries.
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