GV551 week 16

1
GV-551 (week 16)

• Application of law (week 20)
• Constitutional Legacy (week 16)
• Executive vs. legislative (week 18)
• Federalism (week 17)

2
Federalism and Democracy

• Federalism vs. confederalism vs. centralized
  power
• Federalism
• Federal and constituent units
• Different autonomous sphere of power
• Directly empowered by the people
• Power to levy taxesexecutive and legislative
  power
• Federalism is meaningful when democracy rules

3
Russian constitutional rule (1990-93)

• Why weak institutions are a problem
• Extreme distributional benefits
• Desire to change them ( no pareto
  optimal)instability
• Not clarity of rulesconfusion and abuse
• Application legislative vs. presidential power

4
Gorbachevs legacy

• Introduction of semi-presidential system
• Congress control over Russian Soviet
• Alternative explanation for the collapse of the
  union
• Multiple constitutional crisis until 1993

5
Constitution of 1993

• Liberal document (first time in Russian history)
• Social document (following continental German
  tradition)
• No mention of civil society (Russian state
  orientation)
• Gap between aspirations and achievement
• Unbalanced power between the executive and
  legislative
• Weakness of constitutional court

6
Failure to create incentives

• Presidential and Legislative powers
• Dual mandates
• Extreme powers of president
• Electoral process
• mixture of party PR-lists and single district
• Run off presidential election at 50
• Weak political parties.