Politics of intraexecutive conflict in semipresidential regimes in Eastern Europe

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 135-160

  Protsyk, Oleh ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Bulgaria; Cabinet; Lithuania; Moldova; Party system; Poland; President; Prime minister; Romania; Semipresidentialism

Indexed keywords

EID: 20744442015     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325404270672     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. There is a continuing debate about the utility and precise meaning of the concept of "semipresidential government."A political regime is defined in this research as semipresidential if it meets the first and third criteria of the classical Duverger definition: (1) the president of the republic is elected by universal suffrage; (2) he possesses quite considerable powers; (3) there is also a prime minister and ministers who possess executive and governmental powers and can stay in office only if the Parliament does not show its opposition to them. See Maurice Duverger, "A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government,"European Journal of Political Research 8:1(1980): 165-87.
2. Due to its imprecision, Duverger's second criteria has become the focus of much of the debates in the literature. Following some other authors, I chose to ignore the second criteria at the initial stage of research while identifying cases of semipresidentialism in Eastern Europe. See Robert Elgie, "The Politics of Semi-Presidentialism,"in Robert Elgie, ed., Semi-Presidentialism in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1-21.
3. See, for example, Matthew S. Shugart and John Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
4. Thomas Baylis, "Presidents versus Prime Ministers: Shaping the Executive Authority in Eastern Europe,"World Politics 48 (1996): 297-323;
5. Ray Taras, ed., Post-Communist Presidents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
6. Robert Elgie, ed., Semi-Presidentialism in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999);
7. and Jean Blondel and Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, Cabinets in Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
8. For a recent discussion of the nature of presidential powers in semipresidential regimes, see Lee Kendall Metcalf, "Measuring Presidential Power,"Comparative Political Studies 33 (2000): 660-85;
9. and Steven D. Roper, "Are All Semipresidential Regimes the Same? A Comparison of Premier-Presidential Regimes,"Comparative Politics 34 (April 2002): 253-76.
10. See Ray Taras, "Separating Power: Keeping Presidents in Check,"in Taras, Post-Communist Presidents, 15-37;
11. and Krysztof Jasciewicz, "Poland: Walesa's Legacy to the Presidency,"in Taras, Post-Communist Presidents, 130-68.
12. Duverger, "A New Political System,"165-87.
13. Terry Moe, "Integrating Politics and Organizations: Positive Theory and Public Administration, "Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory 4 (1994): 17-25.
14. Robert Elgie, "Semi-Presidentialism and Comparative Institutional Engineering,"in Elgie, Semi-Presidentialism in Europe, 298.
15. Lithuania was the latest of five countries to adopt semipresidentialism. The semipresidential constitutional framework was in place effectively since the 1993 presidential elections introduced the first Lithuanian president to office. See Dainius Urbanavicius, "Lithuania,"in Elgie, Semi-Presidentialism in Europe, 150-69.
16. Of the countries included in this study, Moldova is the only one where the transformation of a constitutional regime took place in recent years. The institutional framework in Moldova was radically altered in the middle of 2000 when an enduring conflict between the president and Parliament led to constitutional reform that transformed Moldova into a parliamentary republic. See "Moldova Update,"East European Constitutional Review 9:4(2000): 26-28.
17. While according to the formal Duverger criteria Bulgaria has a semipresidential regime, the exact constitutional rules regulating cabinet formation in Bulgaria follow parliamentary rather than semipresidential logic. The 1991 Bulgarian Constitution is the only one that imposes very strict restrictions on the presidential ability to choose a candidate for prime minister (Article 99). The fact that the Bulgarian president is popularly elected, and has considerable nonlegislative and legislative powers, justifies the inclusion of the Bulgarian case in this analysis and allows for an exploration of a broader variation in the design of semipresidential regimes.
18. For a discussion of how the experience of the French Fifth Republic can be relevant for the new semipresidential regimes, see Alfred Stepan and Ezra Suleiman, "The French Fifth Republic: A Model for Import? Reflections on Poland and Brazil,"in H. E. Chehabi and Alfred Stepan, eds., Politics, Society, and Democracy: Comparative Studies (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), 393-414.
19. Robert Elgie, "France,"in Elgie, Semi-Presidentialism in Europe, 67-86.
20. For a summary of these arguments, see Elgie, "Semi-Presidentialism and Comparative Institutional Engineering,"281-99.
21. Such a starting point is not, however, uncontested. Summarizing findings in a recent collective volume, Robert Elgie claimed that party and parliamentary politics were important but often not the most critical factors in explaining the practice of semipresidential leadership. See Elgie, "Semi-Presidentialism and Comparative Institutional Engineering,"291-93.
22. My classification of new cabinets for the period that overlaps with the period analyzed by Blondel and Muller-Rommel, which is 1991 to 2000, produced almost identical results to the ones obtained by these authors; see Jean Blondel and Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, Cabinets in Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave, 2001). The only major difference is in the number of technocratic cabinets. I use a less restrictive definition of a technocratic cabinet, which produced a larger count of this type of cabinet.
23. Policy expertise and government experience rather than party ties are usually cited as the criteria employed to select candidates for ministerial positions in technocratic cabinets. For a discussion of the effects that technocratic cabinets have on policy making and political process, see, for example, Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
24. Leonardo Morlino, "Constitutional Architectures and Democratic Politics in Eastern Europe,"in Jan Zielonka, ed., Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe: Institutional Engineering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 53-78.
25. For a comparative discussion of the ideological maturity of the Polish party system, see Herbert Kitschelt, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslaw Markowski, and Gabor Toka, Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 387-88.
26. William Crowther, "The Politics of Democratization in Post-Communist Moldova,"in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds., Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 282-330.
27. Shugart and Carey, Presidents and Assemblies, 54-75.
28. Blondel and Muller-Rommel, Cabinets in Eastern Europe, 194-95.
29. Timothy Frye, "A Politics of Institutional Change,"Comparative Political Studies 30 (1997): 523-52.
30. See "Country Updates,"East European Constitutional Review (EECR), 1992-2001.
31. Moldova is the only country out of five included in this study that was not systematically covered by the EECR during the analyzed period (the coverage started only in the last years of the 1990s). I relied on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reports and secondary sources to form a judgment on intraexecutive relations in this country during the first years of the post-communist transition. See "Daily Reports,"Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), 1991-2000.
32. Nida Gelazis, "Institutional Engineering in Lithuania: Stability through Compromise,"in Zielonka, ed., Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, 165-85;
33. and Dainius Urbanavicius, "Lithuania,"in Elgie, Semi-Presidentialism in Europe, 150-69.
34. Tony Verheijen, "Romania,"in Elgie, Semi-Presidentialism in Europe, 193-215.
35. Renate Weber, "Constitutionalism as a Vehicle for Democratic Consolidation in Romania,"in Zielonka, Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, 212-42.
36. By including both the cases of high and low levels of intraexecutive conflict in each cell of Table 2, I tried to avoid the dangers of selecting on a dependent variable. The claims that I make, including the proposition that coalition majority governments can be more prone to interexecutive conflict that one-party majority governments, are likelihood claims, not deterministic claims.
37. Krysztof Jasciewicz, "Poland: Walesa's Legacy to the Presidency,"in Taras, Post-Communist Presidents, 130-68.
38. M. Wyrzykowski, "Legitimacy: The Price of a Delayed Constitution in Poland,"in Zielonka, Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, 431-54.
39. "Poland Update,", East European Constitutional Review 9:1-2(2000): 35-38;
40. and "Poland Update,"East European Constitutional Review 9:3(2000): 28-31.
41. "Lithuania Update,"East European Constitutional Review 8:3(1999): 21-23;
42. "Lithuania Update,"East European Constitutional Review 11:3(2002): 24-27.
43. Elgie, "France,"73.
44. Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, "'Effective' Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to Western Europe,"Comparative Political Studies 12:1(1979): 3-27.
45. Verheijen, "Romania,"206;
46. and Crowther, "The Politics of Democratization in Post-Communist Moldova,"302.
47. Herbert Kitschelt, "Formation of Party Cleavages in Post-Communist Democracies,"Party Politics 1:4(1995): 447-72.
48. No specific index that would allow for the measurement and comparison of the degree of clientelistic structuring of a party system exists in comparative literature. The closest thing to such an index as of today is country corruption scores composed by a number of international organizations. Transparency International (TI) corruption perception index (CPI) is one of the most widely used such scores. Lambsdorff distinguishes five distinct groups of countries in Eastern Europe based on the TI CPI, which is published regularly for most of the countries in the region. In TI CPI reports, Estonia and Hungary are consistently rated as the countries with low levels of corruption. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia belong to the group with medium levels of corruption. Romania, Russia, and Ukraine have the highest levels of corruption. Lithuania falls in between the groups with low and medium levels of corruption and Latvia and Moldova between the second and third groups. See J. Lambsdorff, How Precise Are Perceived Levels of Corruption? Background Paper to the 2001 Corruption Perception Index (Berlin: TI, 2001). I would like to thank Herbert Kitschelt for bringing to my attention the relevance of corruption scores to the discussion of the clientelistic structuring of the party system.
49. Matthew S. Shugart, "The Electoral Cycle and Institutional Sources of Divided Presidential Government,"American Political Science Review 89:2(1995): 327-43.
50. "Lithuania Update,"East European Constitutional Review 7:1(1998): 17-19.
51. Due to a number of factors, which include both the formation of a broad legislative coalition favoring a parliamentary option and a significant involvement in the constitutional debates in Moldova of such European Union organizations as the Venice Commission, Parliament was able to prevail in the executive-legislative conflict over the distribution of executive powers and to enact constitutional changes. See "Moldova Update,"East European Constitutional Review 8:4(1999): 24-26.
52. Shugart and Carey, Presidents and Assemblies, 49-54.
53. Kaare Strom, Minority Government and Majority Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
54. and Michael Laver and Norman Schofield, Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
55. Morlino, "Constitutional Architectures and Democratic Politics in Eastern Europe,"53-78.