Abstract
Reflections on the reform of the political system and economy in the 1960s were connected with discussions about the necessary transformation of the operation of public administration. From the end of the war, this was implemented by a system of national committees.
They were to combine state and local governments, ensuring full control of the population over the management. In fact, the element of state government was dominant from the beginning of the activity of national committees.
Local government lost all independence, and national committees were entirely tied to the state budget. This is how they became a strong pillar of the dictatorship of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
As soon as space was opened during the first half of the 1960s for critical thinking over current practice and for preparation of reforms, there were also opinions pointing out the need to return to the original mission of national committees and to put it in the contemporary terminology, to bring them closer to the people. It was for this purpose that work on a new bill on national committees was commenced, and the bill was finally adopted in 1967.
After many years, it was to strengthen their local-government element by defining several areas where national committees were to exercise their powers independently, subject only to generally binding legal regulations. This created a potential to weaken the dependence of national committees on state and political authorities and to ensure that they could really defend the interests of citizens to a greater extent.
However suppression of reforms nad the start of normalization quickly smothered those expectations.