Executive-Legislative Relations in Post-Communist Europe

Constitutional Systems and Methods of Appointment

There are two main methods for appointing the executive: the one used in parliamentary systems, and the other used in presidential systems. According to the parliamentary method, the people first elect the legislature, which in turn appoints the executive. In a pure parliamentary system, the executive can remain in office only as long as it enjoys the support, or confidence, of a majority in the legislature — a requirement often referred to as the parliamentary principle. According to the presidential method, separate popular elections are held for appointing a president and, thereby, the rest of the executive. In a presidential country, there are thus two main types of popular elections: those for electing the executive and those for electing the legislature.

As for methods for appointing members of the legislature, there are essentially two types. First, there are majoritarian methods using single-member constituencies, which award the mandate in each constituency to the candidate who, according to a defined set of rules, receives the most votes. Second, there are proportional methods, which use multi-member constituencies and distribute mandates to parties in proportion to their share of the vote.

By combining the methods for appointing the executive and the legislators, we arrive at the following four types of constitutions:

Communist Economic and Political Legacies

1. Parliamentary constitutions with proportional elections.
2. Parliamentary constitutions with majoritarian elections.
3. Presidential constitutions with proportional elections.
4. Presidential constitutions with majoritarian elections.

The former communist countries shared the same type of economic system before the collapse of communism. Communist rule in Eastern and Central Europe, Mongolia, and the former Soviet Union ended around the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Governments in these countries abandoned communist policies and initiated economic reforms. The scope of those reforms and the resulting decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) varied significantly among post-communist countries. The reforms were deeper and more comprehensive, and economic decline less severe, in Central European countries than in the former Soviet republics, with the exception of the Baltic States.

All communist countries attempted to implement industrialization, collectivization, and mass education policies, and to institute state control over the economy in the form of central planning and state ownership of enterprises (Kornai, 1992). Communist economic planning operated at both micro and macro levels. The communist state controlled the output, prices, and wages of enterprises and individuals. Macro-level planning encompassed macroeconomic aggregates such as national income, aggregate wages, and output across different sectors of the economy. Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia deviated from this model in certain respects. Limited market reforms were implemented in Hungary before the fall of communism. Private farming remained dominant in the agricultural sectors of communist Poland and Yugoslavia, and enterprises in Yugoslavia enjoyed greater autonomy in economic management.

Communist parties held a monopoly of power in communist countries. This monopoly helped hold together multi-ethnic communist states — the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. The Warsaw Pact, dominated by the Soviet Union, suppressed conflicts both among and within communist countries. Communist rule was established in Mongolia and the Soviet Union — with the exceptions of the Baltic States, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and most of Moldova — about three decades earlier than in other countries. By contrast, communist rule ended and market economic reforms began several years earlier in Central European countries than in the former Soviet Union.