Original scientific paper
Changes in the system of government and consolidation of democracy: a comparison of the role of president in Croatia and Slovakia
Davor Boban
orcid.org/0000-0002-9748-3250
; Faculty of Political Sciences, Zagreb
Abstract
In the 1990s, Croatia and Slovakia had statesmen with authoritarian tendencies. This was in many ways associated with the institution of the president and the 1999 and 2000 constitutional reforms, which were connected with this institution, established a parliamentary system with a directly elected president in those countries. This paper tries to determine if that affected the functioning of the system of government and the consolidation of democracy. Given that those changes were meant to prevent the emergence of new authoritarian statesmen, premise is that they should have had a positive impact on democratic consolidation. On the other hand, the introduction of a parliamentary system with a directly elected president created a risk that a constitutionally weak president, by calling on his great legitimacy acquired by direct vote, would strive to get powers that do not belong to him. The system would therefore receive the characteristics of a defective democracy and would not turn into a consolidated liberal democracy. By comparing constitutions and political practice we try to get an answer to this question.
Keywords
political system; Croatia; Slovakia
Hrčak ID:
176245
URI
Publication date:
13.3.2017.
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