Suchergebnisse

AbstractVice-presidents in Latin America have often been at the centre of political turbulence. To prevent conflicts within the executive, most Latin American countries have therefore put in place formulae to elect presidents and vice-presidents on a joint electoral ticket. Still, it is common for presidential candidates to pick running mates from other parties in order to construct alliances and appeal to a broader set of voters. But the presence of such 'external' vice-presidents seems to increase the risk of presidential interruption in general and impeachment processes in particular. Accordingly, we argue that the frequently overlooked institution of the vice-president deserves attention as a possible intervening variable that can contribute to the explanation for government crises and their outcomes in Latin America.

TWO HIGHLY POLITICIZED CZECH TRIALS, FAMOUS AT THE TIME BUT HARDLY REMEMBERED TODAY, WERE MUCH MORE THAN SIMPLE CASES OF PROVING THE GUILT OR INNOCENCE OF THE PARTIES INVOLVED. INSTEAD, THEY WERE TWO OF THE MOST SPECTACULAR EXAMPLES OF HOW THE COURTS WERE INCREASINGLY USED AS VENUES FOR POLITICAL ACTION IN THE LATE HABSBURG MONARCHY. DURING THIS ERA, THE COURTS PROVED TO BE ENTICING VENUES OF POLITICAL ACTION FOR POLITICIANS OF ALL PERSUASIONS, BUT ESPECIALLY THOSE PURSUING SPECIFICALLY NATIONALIST AGENDAS. THUS, BY THE END OF THE LAST DECADE BEFORE THE WAR, NATIONAL STRUGGLES BEFORE THE BAR OFTEN CLAIMED AT LEAST AS MUCH PUBLIC ATTENTION AS THOSE IN PARLIAMENT.

On 4 March 1914 the Young Czech party newspaper Národní listy published the startling accusation that a prominent Czech politician, the National Socialist Karel Šviha, was a paid informant of the Habsburg imperial police. The paper alleged that for several years Šviha, who was the chairman of the National Socialist party's parliamentary club, had exchanged information on the activities of his colleagues for a police stipend. In the weeks that followed, the public was treated to a daily diet of charge and counter-charge in the Prague newspapers, a carnival of mutual recrimination that concluded with an elaborately staged public trial of Šviha in an attempt to settle once and for all whether he was truly an informant. During the proceedings leading figures of most of the main Czech political parties either sat in judgement of Šviha or testified for one side or the other, many of them displaying for all to see a level of personal animosity previously reserved for the Bohemian Germans or the Imperial government. As one observer (a National Socialist) put it, by the summer of 1914, "there was no nation in Europe as internally disorganized as were the Czechs" and according to another (a Young Czech), political life in Prague had reached a state where it was "everyone against everything."