Democratic institution-building in East Central Europe and the Balkans



Attila Agh



Democratic institution-building in general and the establishment of parliamentary institutions

in particular is the main task of democratic transition. Its blueprint has been formulated 

by the new democratic constitutions. East Central Europe is, by and large a zone of 

parliamentary democracies, although some countries show up, transitorily, some semi-

presidential features. In the Balkan countries (except for Bulgaria) the presidential 

systems dominate with a personal rule, but parliaments even there play a rather important role.

For both regions our point of departure is the above mentioned statement that parliaments 

are the central sites and parties the major actors of democratic transition. Therefore, the 

parliamentary system is to be discussed first in the presentation of the democratic 

institution-building in the ECE and the Balkan countries, in its constitutional arrangements 

and actual workings as connected with the role of the central government and the state 

president.



Institution building: transitory and final institutions



Democratic transition produced initially a series of institutions which were specially designed

for transition, or even for the pre-transition; some other fundamental institutions, in turn, 

had only some transitory character or features, as the parliaments and the governments. The 

life-span of these transitory institutions varies from a very short period to many years. The 

first is the case with the political institutions proper, the second one is more characteristic

for the socio-economic institutions. The central transitory political institution is the 

national roundtable, in the socio-economic field this is the central agency for privatization 

and marketization. The political transition with all of its problems can proceed quicker, the 

socio-economic one much slower; therefore the latter has kept its institutions for a 

much longer time.



The national roundtable is a particular ECE institution, although some elite negotiations have 

occurred in all new democracies. The national roundtable as an institution, as a device for 

negotiations in its role of "constituent assembly", came to the ECE from Spain, but it gained 

here a greater significance. It also worked in ECE as a legitimation device, since there was 

a big legitimacy vacuum, the ruling parties of the former system were not legitimate for the 

populations any longer, but the new opposition forces had not yet their own democratic 

legitimacy before the election. To cut this Gordian knot, these chief actors accepted each 

other as legitimate partners to talk to. By starting national roundtable negotiations 

"everything" was already decided, namely that (1) there would be no revolution but peaceful 

and evolutive change; (2) this change would have a lawful, constitutional character, through 

step by step transformations always making decisions within the existing legal order, but 

moving ahead with this legal order progressively and gradually towards democratization; 

(3) there would be no retrospective legislation or punishment, the partners accepted each 

other as legitimate forces, therefore, after the transfer of power in this negotiated way 

nobody can be punished or hanged for former political roles, except for public crime. It is 

true that these results of the negotiated transition were questioned in all countries 

concerned in the ensuing wave of "decommunisation", still they have been kept by and large 

against this new right-wing extremism. There were, in fact, real negotiations only in Poland 

and Hungary, the Czechoslovak case was already some sort of capitulation of the former elite. 

In the Balkans we have seen a lot of the intermediary type between the Bulgarian and Serbian 

solutions, that is Bulgaria close to the ECE type of negotiations and in Serbia there have 

been no talks between the new-old government and the opposition at all.



The partners at the national roundtable negotiated about the basic constitutional arrangements 

and the electoral law, and set a date for the first democratic elections - called founding 

elections because they led the foundations of the new democratic system. Most of the ECE and 

Balkans countries have opted for some kind of a proportional electoral system, based on party 

lists, in order to promote representativeness of the new parliaments. Only Hungary has 

introduced from the very beginning a mixed (proportional and majoritarian) system with a 

preference to governmental stability. The particular regulations of elections have been too 

often changing in Croatia, with its very complex electoral system. In Poland have also been 

some important changes for each elections, but smaller amendments from election to election 

have been made in most countries. The electoral law has played a significant role in shaping 

the party systems, although the fragmentation of parties has had many other, more basic, 

reasons than the proportional electoral systems. Finally, free and fair elections have been 

everywhere the minimal requirements for democracy which are not sufficient for the full 

democratization but have served as its base, and sorry to say even this minimum-democracy 

has been violated in a series of Balkan countries like Albania, Serbia and Romania.



A democratic transition, in fact, consists of many shorter or longer transitions. The most 

visible part of this "transition of transitions" is the start, duration and-the end of 

negotiations, usually finished by signing a pact, followed by a short period between the pact 

and the first free elections. These short transition periods of negotiations and electoral 

campaigns, however, were packed into a longer period of transitory parliaments, still before 

the first free elections, but already after these pacts. Actually, these transitory 

parliaments, which were not any longer "rubber stamps", appeared in Poland and Hungary before

the negotiations, and some erosion of the former power structure became more or less manifest 

everywhere, with the "reformers" or "openers" (aberturistas in Spain and Latin America) 

turning against the "conservatives" or "hard-liners". In Hungary and Poland we can talk 

even about the "transitory governments" before the national roundtable talks, making steps 

for marketization and liberalisation, these transitory governments appeared in all ECE and 

Balkan countries before the first free elections.



Constitution-making and the itinerary of institution-building



The first acts of the young democracies concern the constitutional changes

establishing the new rules of game for the democratic polity. It is rather quick to

transform macro-politics with its major institutions, but it is much slower to transform

the whole polity with its minor institutions in meso- and micro-politics; and even

more difficult to change the political culture and behaviour which enables these

institutions to work properly. After the collapse of state socialism, there has been a

general drive for democratization. Its concrete itinerary, however, has been

determined by the internal nature of institutionalisation going necessarily from the

transformation of macro-politics through meso- to that of micro-politics. This

itinerary has been identical in major outlines, but different in forms and speed, in the

various ECE and Balkan countries. Democratic institutionalisation has had three

major stages. The first one has been concerned with the parliamentary and

constitutional changes; the second one with the central government, state

administration and "functional governments", that is, nation-wide interest

organizations; and the third with the self-governing civil society institutions, first of

all, local and regional self-governments. In the first stage the focus is on -the

constitutional arrangement of the major power sub-centres through the constitution-making

process of the parliament. president and government, and on the regulation

of the parliament itself as the mother and model institution of the "parliamentary"

democracy.2

In the second stage the transformation of government, its reorganization and

the modernization of the central government machinery with state administration

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and its connections with the functional or "private" governments of the major interest

organization becomes the most important activity in democratic institution-building.

In the third stage, however, the so far relatively neglected or just abstractly regulated

civil society associations come to the fore, as the democratic institutionalisation of

micro-politics with their specific and detailed regulations for various associations and

self-governments. These stages, of course, can be separated only analytically. In the

real world they have run parallel and/or overlap to a great extent, but the focus of the

institutionalisation has been clearly changing between them, which delineates the

itinerary of democratisation unambiguously. It is obvious internal logic of the

democratic institutionalisation that the macro-political institutions can and has to be

shaped first, before those in meso- and micro-politics, since the latter can only be

articulated in a political space more or less already arranged by the macro-political

institutions as parliament, president and government.

The constitution-making process provides a polity based on the rule of law

and stability of democratic arrangements based on the separation of powers. In

newly democratising countries, usually, we distinguish macro-choices between

democracy and authoritarianism, meso-choices between parliamentary and

presidential forms of democratic power, and micro-choices among different forms of

democratic government. The macro-choices were made in favour of democracy

already by the national roundtable negotiations, but the meso- and micro-choices

were left for the constitution-making process in the new parliaments. In order to

describe this process in a more detailed way, we have to distinguish between the Big

Power Triangle (Parliament - President of Republic - Government), as the classical

triangle of power sub-centres in macro-politics, and Small Power Triangle (Central

Government - Functional Governments - Local Governments), as the vertical and

horizontal balance of power among many political actors of meso- and micro-politics.

Again, the actors of meso- and micro-politics enter the political scene somewhat later

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than those of macro-politics, because they can move freely and develop their self-identity

only in the democratic political space provided by the macro-political actors.

At the same time, these subsequent stages did not come fully to an end before a hew

one begins. Constitutions, for instance, were made to a great extent in a rare

historical moment of consent, but these constitutions usually are not comprehensive

and coherent enough. They contain some contradictions and legal gaps, that is, they

have not yet been completely finished. Still, with these basically democratic, although

to some extent "inperfect", constitutions the first stage was closed and the focus was

shifted to the next problem.

The sequencing of the institution-building, from macro- to meso- and micro-politics

is the general rule of democratic institution-building, with the task mostly, but

not fully made in each stage, and some parallel developments can also be observed

from the very beginning at different levels of institutionalisation. In the first stage of

democratic institutionalisation the problem of the parliamentary versus presidential

system had to be decided. In ECE countries parliamentary systems came to being in

the early nineties, except for the war ravaged Croatia. In the Balkan countries

presidential systems have been formed, except for Bulgaria, and at least for the

Balkans we can say, that the more presidential, the less democratic, since in these

countries the necessary checks and balances do not exist at all. Therefore, the early

democratic institutionalisation was a process of parliamentarisation, as a dominant

process in ECE and a more secondary one in the Balkans. The organization of a new

democratic parliament has not only been the major task of the early democratization,

but it has also determined and articulated all the other ongoing functions of

institutionalisation. Parliaments were the mother and model institutions for the

entire democratization process, which led to a particular dominance of parliaments

("over-parliamentarization") in the first phase of democratic transition. This was

accompanied by a similar process of particular dominance of the parties as major

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actors ("overparticization"). It means that, for some years, the parliaments as central

sites of democratization were almost the only sites and parties as major actors of

democratization were almost the only ones. This is a typical contradiction of early

democratization and institution-building, which comes from the necessity of

beginning of democratization "from above", that is, in macro-politics and from-the

ensuing uneven development, since the new institutions and actors dominate too

much until the others emerge.

Parliaments as central sites and parties as major actors the major principle of

democratic transition which connects ECE with SE, where it was first formulated

(see Liebert and Cotta, eds, 1990). This principle at the same time separates ECE

from LA on one side and EE on the other where parliaments and parties are weak

and they have not played a decisive role in democratization, with the Balkans

situated between ECE and EE. In contrast to Western Europe where parliaments

are on decline, in the new ECE democracies they are certainly on rise because of

their decisive role in democratisation. This role may decline after the democratic

consolidation, that is, in mature democracies in a Western way, but it will be

maintained, for sure, until democratization has been going on.

Consequently, parliamentarisation has a special meaning in new democracies.

It is a special and decisive aspect of democratization, namely democratic institution-building

and learning democratic political culture have come to being in and through

the parliament. The moulding and modelling of other institutions and all the patterns

of political behaviour has also taken place according to the parliamentary rules and

designs. Parliaments have been so far the meeting place, the forum and battlefield

for parties, and for all political forces and tendencies. They have also been, to a great

extent, "governing parliaments", that is, even the governments have acted in and

through the parliaments, since they have had limited time and energy for the

tremendous tasks of transformation. The preparation of bills, for instance, has been

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rather insufficient everywhere, in such a way, parliaments have not only "passed", but

also prepared and processed the bills. Parliamentarisation, therefore, has an almost

"technical" meaning as well, as procedure of political processes to be acquainted with

through a process of political learning for all actors in order to be able to act in and

influence the other actors through the parliament. Parliaments in ECE, and to some

extent in the Balkan countries, have enjoyed high visibility and exposure, since they

have been the venue and concentration of all political struggles. This high visibility

brings about some negative consequences as well. The populations of these countries

have closely followed the parliamentary debates, most of which has been broadcast

alive by TV in all countries, and because of the high visibility of parliaments, people

have connected all the weaknesses and contradictions of democratic transition with

the parliaments. Hence, in spite of their very positive and innovative role in

democratization, the parliaments are very unpopular, even a bit more than parties,

precisely as it was in the SE countries during their democratic transition.

Paradoxically, the parliaments have been the most important and the least popular

institutions of the young ECE democracies.3

Parliamentarisation as the major road to democratisation

Parliaments have been the most important institutions of the democratisation

process in ECE and Balkan countries (see Olson and Norton, eds, 1996) Yet,

parliaments are less popular than governments, since they represent all the vices and

mistakes of the new regimes in the public eye, and they embrace and put on display

all the political actors and processes. They concentrate in themselves the

accumulated institutional as well as cultural deficit of the whole region in general and

the historical heritage of the former authoritarian regime in particular. Still,

compared to the "decline" of Western parliaments, in ECE and in some Balkan

countries we have certainly been witnesses to the "rise" of parliaments, that is, there

has been an extraordinary high importance placed on parliaments, but in a transitory

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and contradictory way. However, the institutional and cultural deficit is a missing

capacity in and for democratisation. It appears in the forms of missing institutions

and missing cultural patterns, to a greater extent in the Balkan countries and to a

lesser extent in the ECE countries. As David Olson notices, "The new parliaments

lack an experienced membership. They lack a structure of parties and committees,

and they also lack the support facilities of space, equipment, and staff. Most

importantly, the newly democratized parliaments established procedures for both

raising and resolving policy disagreements. New members in new parliaments are not

well-equipped to face their tasks. (...) Communist legislatures typically had a skeletal

staff who themselves had little experience in providing support to an argumentative

and busy parliament." (Olson, 1994:37).4

The institutional deficit can be easily formulated into two aspects: the

presence of immature parties and missing or half-made internal parliamentary

institutions (structures and procedures). The cultural deficit, in turn, is bigger and it

is more difficult to identify. However, it irritates the public more than the

institutional deficit, since it appears to be an arrogant form of behaviour on the part

of the new parliamentary party elite. Parliamentary elites have provided a much less

democratic pattern of behaviour than the masses. The arrogant behaviour of the

new, transitory elites has led to a great extent to the delegitimation and unpopularity

of the new democratic parliaments. This has been apparent in direct anti-parliamentary

feelings, movements and slogans; these have shown the limitations of

this narrow "parliamentary", that is, transitorily "over-parliamentarised" democracy.

The democratic deficit in these "parliamentary" democracies as a gap between elites

and masses, leaderships and followers has at least three reasons:

(i) The elite-mass linkages changed dramatically after the first democratic

elections, since the new elites wanted to demobilize masses and turning movement

parties to well institutionalized ones, therefore, they used all means available to

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remove the masses from politics. The ways and means of direct democracy as

plebiscites were pushed back and people had no real chance to have their voices felt.

The politics, once again, became a remote realm for most of the ordinary people and

this alien politics was represented for them by the parliament and the parliamentary

elite.

(ii) Cultural struggle (kulturkampf) and ideological confrontation began in the

new elite right after the power transfer, following the interwar intellectual traditions.

The elites, fragmented in such a way into many overcompetitive subelites, turned

away in the parliamentary discussions and by their typical parliamentary discourse

from the most pressing issues of socio-economic crisis management - which was, in

turn, extremely important for the population - and engaged in obscure ideological

fights.

(iii) Unlike the Western elites, socialized for tolerance and compromise-seeking

behaviour, the new ECE political elites have been thinking in the terms of

"final victory" and they tried to push out their competitors from politics as "enemies".

The masses, however, would have preferred gradual and peaceful changes, and

consensus-oriented behaviour to the doctrinaire radicalism of the transitory elites

and they expected a model behaviour of tolerance and politeness from the MPs for

the entire democratization process. Therefore, they turned against the new

politicians appearing with a "moral vision" or "historical mission" in the parliaments

and they supported the incoming new pragmatic professional politicians learning the

rules of efficient decision-making.'

Thus, the negotiated transition came to an end abruptly after the so called

founding elections, as the first free elections, and the establishment of the first

democratic parliaments and governments, that is, with the transfer of power between

the old and new elites. This elite transfer did not produce a "negotiated" democracy

between the new governments and new oppositions, nor between the new elites and

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mobilised populations. Politics has been "running amok" in this early "post" period.

Better to say, these features were dominating in the first half of the nineties and have

become weakened in the mid-nineties when the first transitory elites have been

gradually changed to more professional and pragmatic elites, yet the new gap

between politics and the ordinary people has stayed to a great extent. In the early

nineties he parliaments became symbols of this isolated, self-centred politics, which

was far from the common people and from the everyday problems and interests of

the populations concerned. This politics was primarily and typically made by self-styled

and awkward parties that acted with low efficiency in the parliaments. The

most characteristic case of this ill-famed ECE parliaments, as symbols of "politics

running amok", was the Polish Sejm between 1991 and 1993 which had an

overfragmented party structure and many coalition failures. By the mid-nineties, the

situation has significantly improved but, to a lesser extent, these negative features

have stayed for a longer run with the new parliaments and their elites.

Discussing the paradoxes of parliamentarisation as the first period of

democratic institution-building, we have to put it into the broader framework of the

entire systemic change. The first stage of systemic change starts with the initial or

pre-transition crisis, in which the politico-cultural side plays and important role and

the masses are very active. In the second stage (democratic transition), however, the

institutionalisation, above all in the form of parliamentarisation, comes to the fore

and the masses are abruptly demobilised. Democratic consolidation which embodies

the third stage can only be reached with the re-mobilisation of masses for the

creation of their own organized interests and civil society organizations. This

common institutionalisation and "culturalisation" process would be capable of

leading these countries beyond the narrow confines of the just "parliamentary"

democracy, by enabling them to overcome both over-parliamentarisation and over-particisation

though the consolidation of the genuine parliamentary democracy.

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Thus, the parliamentarisation process is a special phase and form of

democratization in ECE and in some ways, also in the Balkan countries. It shows that

there are many difficulties in institutionalisation and even more in "culturalisation",

i.e. in elite recruitment and socialisation. Therefore, the transitory parliamentary

elite has changed very quickly, as it happened to the SE parliamentary elites during

their democratic transition. At every election about 70 per cent of MPs "fall out" of

the ECE parliaments and the newcomers step in. As a result of this very low

incumbency rate after three elections just about five to ten per cent of the

parliamentary elite remains. The new professional political elite has gradually

emerged in the parliaments, that is, even in the "natural selection" of elites, the

parliamentarisation process is the most important dimension of democratic

transition. The latter is a chaotic whirling of the old and new, and as a creative chaos,

"tames" political actors in and around the parliament. At the same time, it is only

through this process of parliamentarisation that the parliament itself can accomplish

its own internal systemic change.

Separation of powers and workings of parliaments

The Big Power Triangle in its particular shape varies from country to country

and so do the national parliaments within this Triangle. In Poland, e.g. the president

has the rights to appoint three important ministers (interior, exterior and defence),

which limits markedly the powers of parliament and government. The parliaments

vary not only in strength but also in their internal structures. In Poland, the Czech

Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Yugoslavia the parliaments are bicameral,

and in Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Macedonia unicameral. In Poland the

government is constitutionally weaker, in Hungary is stronger than in the other

countries. Compared to the actual political strength of the central governments,

however, all ECE parliaments can be classified as "subordinate" legislatures, because

they made up by party factions with rather strict party discipline and, therefore the

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governing parties control parliaments to a great extent. In the Balkans parliaments

are even weaker compared to the power of the presidents and his government,

therefore they can classified as "submissive" types. Initially, parliaments may also be

of "coordinate" or "intermediate" type as far as their relationship with the executive

power is concerned, but later on this relationship has been stabilised in the

subordinate or submissive types. At the same time, the parties are rather weak

sociologically, that is, as social organizations, but they are very strong as (the only)

political organizations. Thus, parties exist mostly as parliamentary parties, in and

through the parliament. Their leadership has been actually merged with the

parliamentary faction. They spend most of their active time in the parliaments and

they have most of their infrastructure and expert staff there, and communicate with

the public, including their own membership, mostly from the parliament. No doubt,

that the "partyness" of parliaments is high, but the "parliament-embededness" of

parties is high, too.

Whereas the Western parliaments have a clear functional division of Iabour

with the other political institutions and relatively narrowly defined tasks, in ECE and

in the Balkans the parliaments, as an "infantile disease", have a much more extended

role, since they replace also other institutions. In my understanding the parliaments

of young democracies have five major functions and most of them are directly

connected with the formation of the new democratic system. AI1 the five functions

have been very important for this "genesis", though their actual importance varies

from stage to stage in democratisation. The major functions are the following:

1. The legislative function, which has taken place in ECE above a11 in the

constitution-making process, that is, the establishment of the basic rules of the

political game for the whole transition and for the consolidation of democracy. The

production of laws for the new social and political order has been also a very

important task and the parliaments has produced a great number of laws and

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amendments every year. I have identified this function of parliaments as a "legislative

factory".

2. The controlling function, in which the parliament has played the role of a

distributor of powers, and has balanced the executive in order to prevent the rise of a

new power monopoly. So far this role has been only partly and inefficiently fulfilled

by the new legislatures, whereas the Constitutional Courts have performed a more

important role in this respect. The legitimate role of the opposition, in general and in

the control of parliament in particular, has been acknowledged and institutionalised

in most ECE countries, but this has still been the major bottleneck in the democratic

workings of most of the Balkan parliaments.

3. The conflict management function, which has been particularly important

in the period of deep socio-economic crisis associated with democratic transition.

The transition has been accompanied by acute conflicts, and these have arisen in a

cumulative way. Therefore, in this period the parliaments have to be the major

means of conflict resolution. It is also unavoidable that the parliaments have been

the central targets of all mass protests and demonstrations.

4. The socialisation function, involving the schooling of the new elite after its

recruitment process by providing an "arena" for its "natural selection" and

establishing the rules of "parliamentarized" elite behaviour. The culturalisational-educational

process of parliamentarisation has been as important as -the

institutionalisation process and it deserves special attention and analysis6

5. The legitimation function can be regarded as the most essential one in the

first period of democratic transition, since the young democracies have emerged

from a legitimacy gap or vacuum and badly need a strong legitimation device.

Parliament as a central site provides a forum for the major political actors and they

mutually legitimise themselves and the new democratic order. The creation of a

parliamentary framework for democracy should facilitate at the same time the

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building of a bridge between the parties and ordinary citizens in a form of a social

and political dialogue, in and through the parliament.

Parliaments as central sites of democratic transition are still unfinished or

half-made institutions and they work with a rather low efficiency. They have been

"legislative factories", producing a great number of acts every year, but this extensive

overproduction has not been accompanied by an intensive internal workings. There

has been a tradition of parliamentary procedures, still the new Standing Orders have

emerged with a great delay and many contradictions concerning the legitimate role of

the opposition in the young democracies. Because of poor preparation of draft bills

and the hastily passed acts, a significant proportion of acts has had to be amended or

proved to be unfit for being implemented. The new parliaments, however, have

learned very quickly, for instance, they have already an extended system of

parliamentary committees, paralleling the structure of governmental departments.

These parliamentary committees are the meeting places of political and policy

dimensions of the parliamentary work and they symbolize the efforts of the new

parliaments in developing towards efficient and genuine parliamentary democracies.

Further stages of democratic institution-building

After parliamentarization, the second stage of democratic institutionalisation

comprises the organization of the new democratic (central) governments and/or

governance. It happened first and foremost in the parliament, when the new parties

have learned the new and changing roles of governing and opposition parties. As we

know, the new parliaments have been to some extent "governing parliaments", since

the governments have been absorbed by many tasks of parliamentary decision-making

process. This has significantly changed, yet, they still make some major

executive decisions in and through the parliament, including preparation and

completion of bills, etc. The parliamentary factions of governing parties have almost

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merged with the government, since to the small top leadership these everyday tasks

overlap the a great extent. Yet, the distance between the legislative and executive

powers has become bigger and bigger, and the governments have focused more and

more on their own internal institutionalisation and democratization. They have also

turned from the ideologically oriented "systemic" issues to more pragmatically and

policy oriented ones, hence the switch from democratization to political

modernization has manifestly appeared in the workings of central governments as

well.

The new democratic governance was organized first in the central

government, then in the entire state administration. The state administration has

been constitutionally separated from the public administration managed by the local

self-governments. Public administration has become a separate branch of powers

and, therefore, the first local government elections had a special political significance

in changing local elites. The public sector reform and the efficiency of new

democratic polity came to the forefront. With the administrative modernization the

separation of politics and administration ("elected and selected") became the basic

rule, from the ministries to local communities. Politicians appeared as figures

democratically controlled by elections, administrators as career civil servants with

clear professional criteria. The modernization of the central government machinery

led to the establishment of specific organs of government dealing with the

administrative modernization - as committees for public administration reforms,

organized in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in 1992.'

The third stage of democratic institutionalisation was initiated and prepared

by these public sectors reforms. The clear dividing line between the stages is,

however, that the first two stages were much more politically oriented and directly

connected with systemic change and general democratization. The third stage is,

however, much more policy and pragmatically oriented. It has been focusing on the

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particular way of democratization and on the efficiency of the entire polity. The new

democratic constitutions, evidently, already contained provisions on the self-governing

functional and local units, but these provisions initially were of abstract-general

nature and the detailed, specific regulations as "fine-tuning" were missing.

They were formulated in the early nineties as very minor issues, very far from the real

battlefields of political parties. Local government regulations, of course, were passed

and elections held in 1990-91 in order to change and/or legitimise the local elites, but

the local power and its regulations gained significance only later. As parties became

organized nation-wide or after the first elections, they immediately realized the

salience of these local political issues. The nation-wide party organizations with their

general electoral bases had to face the resistance of local powers, as opposing or

supporting the central power, and, therefore, the parties have tried to penetrate local

and regional self-governments. Thus, the second local government elections were

much more politicized and particized than the first ones in the ECE and Balkan

regions. Two contradictory tendencies appeared at the same time: the increasing

legal autonomy of local self-governments with a higher level of organization and

professionalisation on one side, and the increasing effort of parties to make local self-governments

subservient to their political lines and to turn them into means for the

parties in national politics on the other. The states in both the ECE and the Balkan

regions have also made some efforts for recentralisation in the mid-nineties, usually

under the banner of economic crisis management and arguing with more efficiency in

the case of a bigger institutional centralisation. These recentralisation efforts have

clashed with the autonomy of resurgent civil society in general and that of the local

self-governments in particular, which indicates that the national system of public

administration has been the least developed part of the democratic

institutionalisation process.

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Yet, the democratic institutionalisation reached a turning point in ECE by the

mid-nineties, and more and more the political modernization has come to the

forefront. In the Balkans this process has been lagging behind and still unfinished,

since it has been a process of redemocratization in ECE and the beginnings of

democratization in the Balkans. The emergence of the Constitutional Courts has

been one of the new decisive elements in both regions, strengthening the democratic

institution building and providing a control function over both executive and

legislative powers. They have represented a rule of law and have played a vital role in

the "checks and balances" mechanisms of the young democracies, often confronting

the overwhelming presidential rule in the Balkans, e.g. in Serbia and Albania. The

"perils of presidentialism" have been the biggest danger in the Balkans which can

lead to a new reverse way, therefore the checks and balances mechanisms have to be

strengthened against them as far as possible. As a bottom line, however, the

democratic institution-building has been going on in most of the countries at an

incredible speed.9

18

Notes:

1. These transitory institutions have been carefully studied in Poland and

Hungary, together with the newly emerging parliamentary and party systems, see

Agh (ed.), 1994; Agh and Kurtan (eds) 1995; and Agh and Ilonszki (eds) 1996.

2. The constitutional developments in ECE and the Balkans have been

discussed in the book edited by Howard, 1993 and by the periodical East European

Constitutional Review.

3. Concerning the South European developments see first of all the works

edited by Pridham; and Bonime-Blanc, 1987 and Wiarda, 1989.

4. The most recent assessment about the parliamentary developments in ECE

and Balkan regions in the book edited by Olson and Norton, 1996.

5. The unpopularity of the SE parliaments has been documented by the

papers of Libert and Cotta (1990) volume and by Bonime-Blanc, 1987. The

Hungarian Centre for Democracy Studies has edited, in Hungarian, every year since

1988 The Political Yearbook of Hungary, a thick volume with analyses,

documentation and public opinion surveys. The paper of Wyman et al, 1995, gives a

comparative overview about the popularity of parliaments (p. 540) which shows that

it is somewhat above the parties (22-29 per cent versus 11-24 per cent) and below all

the other organizations (president, government and mass media).

6. The role of MPs and their socialisation process have been analysed in the

studies of W. Patzelt, G. Ilonszki and others in Agh (ed.), 1994, and Agh and Ilonszki

(eds), 1996.

7. It is not by chance that the Legislative Research Committee organized an

international conference about the role of parliamentary committees in June 1996 in

Budapest, since the committees have been the most important moments of the

19

recent political modernization of parliaments, especially in the young democracies.

The conference papers see Longley and Agh (eds), 1997.

8. I was a participant of the project on the public sector reforms in ECE led by

J. J. Hesse and I benefited a lot from this project in writing this chapter. About the

problems of the ECE public administration see Hesse, 1993.

9. In a well-known paper (1990, in: Linz and Valenzuela, eds, 1994) Juan Linz

has discussed the "perils of presidentialism" for young democracies and I share his

worries, since the developments in Croatia, Serbia and Albania have illustrated very

much his arguments.

20

Chronology:

I. Negotiating mechanisms

February - April 1989 - National Roundtable in Poland

June - September 1989 - National Roundtable in Hungary

November 1989 - National Roundtable in Czechoslovakia

January 1990 - "Soft" National Roundtable in Bulgaria

January 1990 - Some fake negotiations in Romania

February 1990 - Negotiations in Slovenia

January 1991 - Talks between government and opposition in Albania

II. First free and/or multiparty elections

June 1989 - First (semi)democratic elections and parliament in Poland

March 1990 - First democratic elections in Hungary

April 1990 - First democratic elections in Slovenia

April 1990 - First multiparty elections in Croatia

May 1990 - First multiparty elections in Romania

June 1990 - First democratic elections in Czechoslovakia

June 1990 - First multiparty elections in Bulgaria

November 1990 - First multiparty elections in Bosnia and Macedonia

December 1990 - First multiparty elections in Serbia and Montenegro

March 1991 - First multiparty elections in Albania

May 1990 - First democratic local elections in Poland

September 1990 - First democratic local elections in Hungary

November 1990 - First democratic local elections in Czechoslovakia

February 1992 - First local elections in Romania

21

Bulgaria

III. Constitution-making

23 October 1989 - The new constitution of Hungary

July-August 1990 - Amendment of the new constitution in Hungary

21 December 1990 - The new constitution of Croatia

25 June 1991 - The new constitution of Slovenia

23 December 1992 - Amendment of Slovenian constitution

12 July 1991 - The new constitution of Bulgaria

19 November 1991 - The first constitution of Macedonia

8 December 1991 - The new constitution of Romania

27 April 1992 - The constitution of (small) Yugoslavia

1 September 1992 - The first constitution of independent Slovakia

17 October 1992 - The Little Constitution of Poland

16 December 1992 - The first constitution of the Czech Republic

6 November 1994 - The referendum disapproves the draft constitution in Albania

IV. Constitutional order and electoral system

Albania: unicameral parliament (140 seats), presidential system with direct, popular

election of president, mixed electoral system with individual single member

constituencies and party lists with 4 per cent threshold (no final constitution)

Bulgaria: unicameral parliament (240 seats), parliamentary system with direct,

popular election of president, proportional electoral system with party lists and 4 per

cent threshold

Czech Republic: bicameral parliament (200 and 81 seats), parliamentary system with

indirect election of president, proportional electoral system with party lists and 5 per

cent threshold

22

Croatia: bicameral parliament (138 and 68 seats), presidential system with the direct,

popular election of president, mixed (both majoritarian and proportional) electoral

system with 5 per cent threshold

Hungary: unicameral parliament (386 seats), parliamentary system with indirect

election of president, mixed (both single member individual districts and party lists)

electoral system with 5 per cent threshold

Macedonia: unicameral parliament (120 seats), parliamentary system with direct,

popular election of president, proportional electoral system with party lists and no

threshold

Poland: bicameral parliament (460 and 100 seats), parliamentary system with direct,

popular election of president, proportional electoral system for the Sejm with 5 per

cent threshold, majoritarian electoral system for the Senate (only Small Constitution,

no final arrangement yet concerning the role of president and its relation to the

parliament)

Romania: bicameral parliament (341 and 143 seats), presidential system with direct,

popular election of president, proportional electoral system with 3 per cent threshold

Slovakia: unicameral electoral system (150 seats), parliamentary system with indirect

election of president, proportional electoral system with 5 per cent threshold

Slovenia: bicameral parliament (90 and 40 seats), parliamentary system with direct,

popular election of president, proportional electoral system with 3.4 per cent

threshold

Yugoslavia: bicameral parliament (138 and 40 seats), presidential system with direct,

popular election of president, proportional electoral system with 5 per cent threshold

(federal regulation, the Serbian parliament is different)

23

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