Abstract
Constitutions provide the framework within which the president and parliament can legally function. Chapter 1 found that it is not possible to conclusively determine what type of political system exists in Russia using existing models. Depending on the factors that one chooses to employ and the time period in a given country to which they are applied, one can have up to four different outcomes to classify the system in Russia (superpresidentialism, presidentialism, semi-presidentialism, president-parliamentary). Although Maurice Duverger was not alone in showing that constitutional powers differ from actual practice, he espedaily clearly illustrated that while the constitution is an important basis from which parliament and president draw their power, they may or may not choose to exercise some of these powers.1 While it is important to consider the executive and legislature’s constitutional powers, they do not completely explain what powers are exercised in reality. Only by considering both written and actual powers can one determine which type of political system exists in a given country, in this case, Russia. This chapter will analyze the written powers of the Russian President and Parliament from the 1993 Constitution and compare the results with other countries. Later chapters will examine the extent to which these powers are actually utilized.
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Notes
Maurice Duverger. ‘A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government’, European Journal of Political Research 8, 2 (June 1980).
Matthew Shugart and John Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 150, Table 8.1. They also use electoral dynamics to determine regime type. These are explored in the next chapter.
For a more extensive analysis of the model see the working paper, ‘Comparing the Constitutions of the CIS and Eastern Europe’, by Tiffany Troxel and Cindy Skach.
Gisbert Franz (ed.), Constitutions of the Countries of the World (New York: Oceana Publications, Inc.), Article 62 of the Constitution of Brazil.
Franz, Constitutions of the Countries of the World, Article 85 of the 27 November 1996 Constitution of Belarus; Article 99 of the 21 November 1991 Constitution of Romania; Article 90 of the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation.
Ibid., Article 85 of the 1997 Belarus Constitution and Article 90 of the 1993 Russian Constitution.
Eugene Huskey, Executive Power and Soviet Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Soviet State (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 84.
Constitutions of the World, Article 122 of the 2 April 1997 Constitution of Poland. Article 122 states that ‘the President may refer the bill, with reasons given, to the House of Representatives (Sejm) for its reconsideration. If the said bill is passed again by the House of Representatives (Sejm) by a three-fifths majority vote in the presence of at least half of the statutory number of Deputies, then the President of the Republic shall sign it within seven days and shall order its promulgation in the Journal ofLaws of the Republic of Poland.’
Rossiyskiye vesti (25 December 1993): 1.
For a short discussion of the problems with the 1993 Russian Constitutional vote, including the doubts about whether more than half of the electorate in reality voted, see Robert Sharlet, ‘Transitional Constitutionalism: Politics and Law in the Second Republic’, Wisconsin International Law Journal 14, 3 (1996): 495–521. It is worth noting that the Center for the Study of Public Policy/Paul Lazarsfeld Society (New Russia Barometer III, 1994) questioned the Russian electorate as to who they thought should be more important in the Russian Federation, the president or parliament, or should they have equal powers. The result was that 39 percent thought the president and parliament should be equal, 25 percent voted that the president should be more important, and 22 percent believed parliament should be, while 13 percent were not sure.
Thomas Remington, ‘Representative Power and the Russian State’, in Stephen White, Alex Pravda and Zvi Gitelman, Developments in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics (London: Macmillan Press — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1994), 65.
Anatoliy Sobchak, former Mayor of St Petersburg, ‘The New Russian Constitution: Law as the Basis for Building a Democratic Society’, talk given at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 28 February 1995. This was also confirmed by Irina Kotelevskaya, another member of Yel’tsin’s committee for drafting the Constitution, a former Member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1991–93), and Chief of the Secretariat of the First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma. Interview with the author at the State Duma, Moscow, 20 March 1998.
Interview with Boris Yel’tsin, Izvestiya (2 December 1995).
Konstitutsiya (1993) Rossiyskoy Federatsii (Moscow: RAU Press, 1993), ch. 4, Article 80.
Ch. 4, Article 84. Federal Constitutional Law, ‘On Referendums in the Russian Federation’, published in Sbornik Federal’nykh Konstitutsionnykh Zakonov i Federal’nykh Zakonov (10 October 1995), no. 2.
Ruling of the Constitutional Court, ‘On the Case of the Interpretation of Article 136 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation’, Sbornik Federal’nykh Konstitutsionnykh Zakonov i Federal’nykh Zakonov (31 October 1995), no. 12.
The 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation, ch. 9, Article 136.
Rossiyskaya gazeta (9 November 1995). See ruling of the Constitutional Court in n. 54.
Ch. 9, Article 135. A law on the Constitutional Assembly, which would have to be formed for such full-scale revisions in the Constitution, has yet to be passed.
Vil’yam Smirnov, interview by the author, the Institute of State and Law, Moscow, 5 September 1997.
Robert Sharlet, ‘The Politics of Constitutional Amendments in Russia’, Post-Soviet Affairs 13, 3 (July—September 1997): 197. Sharlet provides the most comprehensive study to date on attempts to amend the 1993 Russian Constitution.
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© 2003 Tiffany A. Troxel
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Troxel, T.A. (2003). Constitutional Powers of the Russian Presidency and Parliament: the 1993 Russian Constitution. In: Parliamentary Power in Russia, 1994–2001. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505735_2
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