Power Sharing Between President and the Head of Government in Central and Eastern Europe

It is widely known that the head of state plays the leading role in Russia, China and France, but in India, Germany, Italy and other parliamentary republics he is de facto subordinate to the head of government. Hierarchy of relations between the two top officials in these countries is predetermined both by constitutions and political practice. One cannot be so unequivocal when considering the situation in Eastern Europe, where original forms of government emerged. They include features of both semipresidential and parliamentary regimes. Generally, the head of state does not have wide formal powers but is elected directly by the population and exercises considerable political influence. That is why it is difficult for many to determine whether it is president or prime minister who is the most influential politician, which elections (presidential or parliamentary) are more important, and which of the top officials is the main decision maker in such spheres as foreign policy, defense and security. For example, in 2014new presidents were elected in Romania and Slovakia who had run against the incumbent prime ministers. The PMs retained support of the parliamentary majority and secured their positions after the elections. The foreign leaders are facing a problem now: who is the most influential top official in these states, which one of them shall be their counterpart in the negotiations? Diplomats, experts in international relations and journalists are also asking the same questions. To answer these questions, we shall analyze the features of power sharing between the president and the head of government in 6 Eastern European states (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia). We cannot use only a formal-legal approach and ignore political practices. The formal legal approach has already been used by many other researchers, but it is difficult to formalize and systemize political practice because there are many informal customs. That is why special attention is paid in this article to establishing criteria that can be used to analyze political practice. This article is aimed at ranking 6 Eastern European states by political influence of the President. It studies the following issues. Firstly, the existing views on the forms of government of these states are considered. Secondly, the results of the previous research by other authors having the same aim are systemized and compared. As long as most of them are based mainly on formal-legal approach the third goal is set; namely, to establish criteria to assess political practices. After analyzing the political practices the states are ranked, this ranking being compared with the results of the previous research by other authors. In conclusion, we examine the reasons why such specific forms of government emerged in Eastern Europe, forms that contribute to the permanent struggle for power between presidents and prime ministers.

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