PARLIAMENTARY SCRUTINY AND CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW

The strength of the Parliamentary oversight lies with the efficiency of the tools meant to be for the parliament to scrutinise the cabinet. This principle is at the core of the parliamentary regimes. One of the tools-the vote of confidence (non-confidence) - is at large perceived as the most rigid with heavy consequences for at least one actor - the cabinet, who is expected to resign. However, there are questions to be raised, whether the very rigidity of the tool traditionally designed for the opposition is nowadays meant to be used for killing cabinets. Some of the parliaments do not provide a clear-cut line between the majority and the opposition, some of them do not even have stable factions. In such a case faction membership flexibility and loose party loyalty may produce the killing of the parliament, provoking early elections. Parliamentary oversight thus turns to be a dangerous undertaking for the parliament itself. There seem to be another oversight tool which seems to be more efficient and offers better guarantees for the stability of both rival institutions: it is the motion and the power to put forward a claim for constitutional review by the Parliament itself. Cases to be studied are drawn from the Central/European Parliaments since in these countries the constitutional review is a rather new phenomenon.