This article focuses at powers of the Presidents of the Slovak Republic during the period from 1999 to 2019. Therefore, the aim is to compare how selected constitutional presidential powers were exercised after the fundamental constitutional changes in 1999. The most significant change was by introducing direct presidential elections, and adjusting the President´s constitutional status. The ways how the individual Presidents holding their office within this period, exercised their powers towards the Parliament, government, and the judiciary do form the basic research questions here. Hence, whether a personal background of individual Presidents and political reality of seats distribution in the Parliament predetermined their exercise of these powers, or if there were some other rules present when they exercised their office. The findings presented in this research reflect 20 years of continuous exercise of Presidential office in the conditions of the Slovak Republic. This ultimately leads to the conclusion that the function itself, as well as its constitutional definition, has affected the exercise of Presidential powers more ultimately than the personal background of these directly elected Presidents at the beginning of their terms of office. The very first President, Mr. Michal Kováč, got into a major conflict with then Prime Minister, Vladimír Mečiar, even during the first year after taking the office. This conflict lasted nearly for five-years and altogether with the inability of the MPs to elect his successor led to the necessity of amending the Constitution. Presidents Rudolf Schuster, Ivan Gašparovič and Andrej Kiska gradually took their office, but only the second mentioned had managed to defend his position in an electoral competition. At present, the office of President is held by Zuzana Čaputová, who has been in the office since June 2019 - as the very first woman in this position in history of Slovakia.

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The aim of our paper is to describe the legislative development and changes within the functioning of tax assignation mechanism, which was firstly implemented into Slovak legislation in 1999. It presents one form of direct financial support for non-governmental and non-profit organizations. During the twenty years it underwent many changes and challenges, but it managed to persist and annually bring elements of citizen direct decision-making into the system of representative democracy. By using it, taxpayers can redistribute certain share of their income tax to certain entities. They do not pay the full amount of the tax to the government, but redistribute a share of it to selected beneficiary. Our paper has analytical and inductive character. The method of scientific abstraction was used during the processing of theoretical knowledge about our issue, and analytical method was utilized during the data collection from multiple sources, which was essential for detailed examination of specific parts of this issue. We have used multiple legislative Acts as our main research data, as well as the transcriptions of debates in the National council of the Slovak Republic. Tax assignation has found its place in Slovak tax system, gained large popularity among taxpayers and receiving beneficiaries, and legislation concerning its functioning was frequently discussed and amended. Implementation of tax assignation mechanism was successful, and it continues to support the development of non-profit sector, which is important in every post-communist country.

Territorial self-government has a significant place in the political system of the Slovak Republic. This fact is confirmed by its emplacement in the Constitution of the Slovak Republic. An inseparable part of self-government are the actors who shape it through their daily activities, most often by their governance in the public interest. This presented paper deals with the issue of local self-government in the conditions of the Slovak Republic, with an emphasis on the selection of its key actors. While expressing our considerations we identify with the assumption that local self-government is a space for political participation of its inhabitants, and in many ways can serve as a model of public administration for actors of public policy at higher levels of the state as well. Due to this reason, our ambition is to provide comprehensive information about the method of selection of directly elected representatives of the local self-government and to conduct critical reflections on the current conditions of this selection.