Suchergebnisse

The research is dedicated to clarifying the parameters and features of the appointment, responsibilities and roles of prime ministers, ministers and civil servants in the governmental cabinets of parliamentary democracies, including on the example of European countries. This is actualized by the fact that governmental cabinets in parliamentary democracies, regardless of their type, i.e. majority or minority ones, are typically party cabinets, and thus inter-party and intra-party relations significantly determine the characteristics of appointment, responsibilities and roles of governmental cabinets' members and the fact of parties' interest or disinterest in forming and/or supporting governmental cabinets of one type or another. The study is con- ducted in a comparative manner, in particular by comparing the specifics of the appointment, responsibilities and roles of prime ministers, ministers and civil servants in majority govern- mental cabinets and minority government cabinets.

The article is dedicated to comparative analysis of causes, peculiarities of the implementation and consequences of the lustration of police system in post-communist countries of Europe, in particular in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It has been revealed that the features of the lustration and liberalization of police system in post-communist Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia were extremely various and therefore they were able to lead to various organizational and functional consequences and results of police functioning: both at the level of its transformation from an instrument of protection of the autocratic regime into a democracy oriented institution and at the level of processes of its demilitarization, professionalization, specialization, demystification, reduction, decentralization, decriminalization and so on. The author argued that the problem of all the analyzed countries of the region was the fact that the lustration of police system was used (or still continues to do so) to a large extent as manipulative technology by political rivals and media. At the same time, it was discovered that Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia used various models of lustration law and policy towards secret police and they are largely dependent on different models of transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

The article analyzes the importance and influence of parliamentary committees in the conditions of minority governments at the theoretical level and empirically, in particular in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The author assumes that the legitimate mechanism of people's representation in countries of this type is the parliamentary method of government formation and responsibility. Therefore, governmental cabinets, including minority ones, depend on party composition of parliaments in their formation, functioning and responsibility. It was suggested that the frequency of minority governments' formation is additionally determined by the specialization of parliaments, in particular through the prism of parliamentary committees as an arena of government-opposition relations, where the opposition almost always prevails in the case of minority governments. However, it was analytically proved that the committees themselves, in particular their various attributes and "power", do not or almost do not affect the frequency of minority governments' formation in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, the strengthening of committees can serve to strengthen parliamentary opposition, which contributes to the increase in frequency of minority governments' formation.

The article is dedicated to analyzing features of formation, principles of functioning and stability of minority cabinets in European systems of positive parliamentarism. The author identified the role of cabinets in systems of inter-institutional relations in European parliamentary democracies, specified the nature parliamentary democracies' distribution onto the systems of positive and negative parliamentarism, outlined minority cabinets' role and variations in systems of positive parliamentarism, detailed the history of minority cabinets in European systems of positive parliamentarism, outlined the key reasons/motives of formation and resignations of minority cabinets in systems of positive parliamentarism, characterized features of minority cabinets' stability in European systems of positive parliamentarism.

The article is dedicated to analyzing the features of formation, principles of functioning and stability of minority governments in European systems of negative parliamentarism. The author identified the role of governments in the systems of inter-institutional relations in European parliamentary democracies, specified the nature parliamentary democracies distribution into the systems of positive and negative parliamentarism, outlined minority governments role and variations in the systems of negative parliamentarism, tested the hypothesis that the negative parliamentarism promotes the formation of minority governments, detailed the history of minority governments in the European systems of negative parliamentarism, outlined the key reasons/motives of formation and resignations of minority governments in the systems of negative parliamentarism, characterized the features of minority governments' stability in European systems of negative parliamentarism.

Political theory and practice show that parliamentary democracies, including in Europe, independently or almost independently of the forms and systems of government that they are implementing, are divided into systems of positive and negative parliamentarism. An indicator of the dichotomy is presence (constitutionally provided) or absence (constitutionally unprovided) of the vote of confidence/investiture in expected/hypothetical government. It actualizes the issue of the influence of vote of confidence/investiture on the formation of minority governments (and other types of governments) in the European parliamentary democracies. Accordingly, the article is dedicated to analyzing the institute of vote of confidence/investiture and statistical outlining its impact on the formation of minority government in European parliamentary democracies. It is argued that the presence or absence of votes of confidence/investiture and their combinations and procedural patterns affect the frequency of formation of minority governments in different ways. Among such patterns there are the following: participation or non-participation of parliament in the procedure of vote of confidence/investiture and formation of government (presence or absence of vote of investiture); type of parliamentary vote of confidence/investiture («ex ante» or «ex post»); the rule of deciding on a parliamentary vote of confidence/investiture in a government (by absolute, relative or negative parliamentary majority); permissible number of formateurs or alternatives of governments for parliamentary vote of investiture; the right to nominate prime ministers/formateurs or alternatives of governments; the number of attempts to obtain a parliamentary vote of confidence/investiture; consequence of the failure to get vote of confidence/investiture. As a consequence, checking the correlation between the various patterns of votes of investiture and the frequency of formation of minority governments generally shows that the institutional design of votes investiture mostly and averaging does not affect the frequency of formation of minority governments, although some patterns of votes of investiture are decisive.

The article provides a regional comparison of social, political and economic factors and consequences of morbidity and counteraction to COVID-19 in the countries of Central-Eastern, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe during the 2020–2021 period. To do this, there have been made correlations between the morbidity and counteraction to COVID-19 in the analyzed regions and its individual countries with such indicators as the dynamics of political regimes change, human development, equality or inequality of resource allocation, GDP per capita, governance efficiency, etc. Some of the correlations have been shown to be positive and some of them to be negative ones. Most importantly is, however, that the situation with COVID-19 has an extremely negative impact on the dynamics of political regimes in the analyzed regions, in particular on the "erosion" of democracy and autocratization.

The article is dedicated to analyzing patterns of minority governments' stability in European parliamentary democracies, in particular in the European systems of positive and negative parliamentarism (in 1944-2016). The author found that minority governments are relatively less stable than majority governments. However, the researcher argued that the single-party minority governments on average are more stable than minority coalition governments.

Effectiveness, socio-economic and political implications and perceptions of minority governments in European parliamentary democracies: theoretical and practical context

The article is dedicated to analyzing the phenomenon of minority governments in parliamentary democracies. The author examined the political, institutional and legal determinants, essence, features, peculiarities and causes for the formation of minority governments in parliamentary democracies. From the position of Political Science, it was argued that minority government is an alternative of a minority situation. The researcher determined that a minority government is a governmental cabinet, consisting of persons acting as representatives of the parliamentary parties or parliamentary groups, totally not controlling more than a half of the seats in a parliament or relevant chamber of a parliament, to whom by a constitution the government is responsible.

The article deals with the consideration and systematisation of the history, paradigms, perspectives and features of the study of minority governments in contemporary political science, in particular in the theoretical and methodological context. The author found that the number of scientific and theoretical researches devoted to minority governments is directly proportional to the number of empirical cases of minority governments in different countries. It was stated that all researches on minority governments should be divided into three clusters or groups: from the standpoint of the theory and tradition of rational choice, from the standpoint of the new institutionalism approach and from the standpoint of party theory. In view of this, it was argued that the studies of minority governments are basically determined by a combination of differ- ent theoretical and methodological paradigms, which focus on outlining the various factors of formation and functioning of minority governments. Among them, the article highlighted such as: strategic factors that outline the electoral prospects of various political actors; institutional factors that are determined primarily by the peculiarities of parliamentary norms and procedures and the parameters of their implementation; structural factors that are described by intra-party and inter-party interactions of different parties.

The article is dedicated to analyzing the peculiarities of minority governments through the prism of the party systems of the European parliamentary democracies. The researcher noted that it is exactly the characteristics of party systems in the vast majority of the European parliamentary democracies that are decisive factors that influence the government-formation process and the functioning and accountability of governments, including minority governments. It was determined that of all the characteristics of party systems that influence the structuring of minority governments in parliamentary democracies, it is advisable to distinguish between different quantitative and ideological dimensions of explanations. The author found that it is the quantitative and ideological determinants that influence the particularities of the formation, functioning and responsibility of minority governments, in particular at the example of the European parliamentary democracies.