Suchergebnisse

The Constitution of 1990 established a bicameral parliamentary system. The constitutional bicameralism has never been seriously theoretically and politically expounded; thus the issue of the representativeness and functionality of the second House of "Sabor" has remained open. The constitution of "zupanija" (county) casts some doubts on the representative function of that body, while the consultative and deliberative functions and especially the interventions into the legislative system by means of the suspensory veto have remained unfulfilled due to the same party's majorities in both houses. Regarding the 1997 electoral results for the House of Counties, this situation will not be dramatically changed. (SOI : PM: S. 103)

In the first part of the text, the author lists standard theoretical arguments used in the debates about parliamentarism and presidentialism and points up the ways of their contextualisations and instrumentalisations in Eastern Europe as a transitional region of unconsolidated democracies. In the second part she deals with the approaches and difficulties in the classification of empirical constitutional systems in Eastern Europe. In the third part she highlights several sources of real and potential institutional and political conflicts which are caused by certain constitutional designs in some countries. (SOI : PM: S. 20)

Croatia is the only postcommunist country in which the process of democratic transition coincided with the process of creating the state by means of a war. These three processes are in a special interaction: the transition enabled the realization of the state-building programme, which triggered off the war which, in turn, jeopardized the completion of both projects. The author illustrates the dynamics of the political changes in Croatia since the eighties, which started with the liberalization of political life and continued with two stages of democratic transition, before and after gaining independence. The Serbian insurgence and later an open aggression have somewhat hampered the transition and brought about the "ethnification" of politics. At the end the author analyses the pattern of the creation of democratic institutions which has been, in both stages (before and after the 1990 elections) under the control of the ruling political party. (SOI : PM: S. 99)

In the first part of the text, the author lists standard theoretical arguments used in the debates about parliamentarism and presidentialism and points up the ways of their contextualisations and instrumentalisations in Eastern Europe as a transitional region of unconsolidated democracies. In the second part she deals with the approaches and difficulties in the classification of empirical constitutional systems in Eastern Europe. In the third part she highlights several sources of real and potential institutional and political conflicts which are caused by certain constitutional designs in some countries. (SOI : PM: S. 120)