EUROPEANIZATION OF THE BALTIC PARLIAMENTS: EXPECTATIONS AND AGENDA FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

The article analyzes the tendencies of elections to the regional parliaments of Russia on the example of the State Assembly (Il Tumen) of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Local parliaments are called upon to fulfill the function of separating the legislative and executive branches of government. However, in the modern Russian political system, the institution of parliamentarism is poorly developed at the federal and local levels. Regional parliaments have little influence on decisions on financial aspects, often continuing the all-Russian legislative process. The electoral process associated with elections to local legislative assemblies developed based on the logic of the development of the federal electoral system and the development of federal relations. In the 1990s during the period of decentralized federalism, various types of regional regimes with developed party systems took shape. In the 2000s during the period of centralization, the powers of the regions were reduced, which led to the abolition of direct elections of heads of subjects, and the reform of party and electoral systems. By now, a mixed electoral system has been formed according to party lists and the majority system. The party composition of regional parliaments also does not differ from the federal list of Duma factions. The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is a national republic, which influences the formation of the local regional elite. There are noticeable tendencies in the interdependence of representatives of the elite of the executive and legislative branches of government, as well as signs of community, family ties. According to the party lists of the party of power “United Russia”, the Head of the Republic and representatives of the upper echelons of the republican government are usually represented. In the elections of 2013 and 2018 four parties, representatives of the small parties “Civic Platform” and “For Women of Russia”, are steadily receiving deputy mandates to the local parliament

The territorial “linking” of a career to a specific region sets a significant part of the structure of opportunities within which an individual implements his plans for building a career. Regional features of the political process, in particular, the established practice of forming a corps of regional politicians, the design of elections and the degree of their competitiveness, the practice of functioning of the legislative body, the conditions of activity of deputies and, of course, local legislative norms and rules determine the personal composition of regional politicians and the trajectories of their careers. The Russian Federation is a multinational, multi­religious country; in its political life there are various patterns of political behavior and types of political culture. The models of relationships within the corps of the regional elite are not identical — the practice of interaction between the executive and legislative branches of government within the borders of each subject of the Russian Federation. The level of autonomy of regional government institutions and regional leaders varies. The Soviet traditions of forming the ruling (political) class (nomenklatura) are perceived differently and have different consequences. Over the past three decades, there have been various models of interaction between the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and the federal center. We are talking about greater or lesser centralization/ decentralization of the structures of state power and management. The changes were caused by the needs to ensure controllability, as understood by the leadership at the level of the federal center of government. The strengthening of the role and influence of regional leaders was short­lived. It increased in the 1990s. But already in the early 2000s. the federal center has regained its leading role in relations with regional leaders. However, the specificity of the regions, embodied in the existence of various types of regional political regimes, remained. The processes of recentralization that have been going on in the country since the beginning of the 2000s are accompanied by the continued diversification of many characteristics that determine the structure of political opportunities. Recentralization, which brings with it obvious tendencies towards the unification of a number of parameters of the political process in each individual region, still leaves the possibility of organizing the political process according to familiar patterns (election design, interaction between the legislative and executive branches of government, recruitment, etc.). Therefore, from region to region we observe some peculiarities in the composition of the political elite and the career trajectories of politicians. The empirical basis of the study is an array of biographies of regional politicians, covering 2005­2020. In total, the biographical data of 1816 regional politicians were analyzed. In 2005 there were politicians in 4 regions, in 2010 — 6 regions, in 2014 and 2020 — 10 regions. During the analysis, comparisons were made using a number of indicators characterizing the career trajectories and recruitment pools of regional politicians. Among politicians in the studied regions, regional careers predominate. The pool for recruiting regional politicians consists of the economic and political­administrative spheres. However, the picture as a whole is motley; the movement of indicators characterizing the recruitment pool is chaotic.

Federal budget reforms initiated by the executive branch of government have been unsustainable. A commonality of these failed reforms is that they lack the support of Congress. The objective of this research is to determine whether the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), the most recent executive-initiated budget reform, was supported by Congress. The scope of this research includes an exploration of historic budget reforms, initiated from 1921 through 2008, to provide insight into previous reform sustainability.;Budget reforms provide context from which to view the power struggle between the executive and legislative branches of government; the tension of separate institutions sharing power. This research also offers insight into the extent that the U.S. separation of powers structure interferes with the implementation of government-wide performance measurement systems at the federal level.;Using data obtained from congressional committee hearings this research finds little congressional interest in PART; legislators were primarily indifferent to this executive tool. Generalizing congressional PART sentiment, results indicate that legislators with more business experience are more likely to be supportive of budget reforms making them important stakeholders to include in the next effort at reforming the budget process. Legislators with greater seniority and those who receive more campaign contributions from political action committee are more likely to resist reform.;The research demonstrates that reforms that are the product of cooperation between both executive and legislative branches are more likely to be sustained; legislating budget reforms is key to sustained executive-initiated reforms. In addition, analyses of historic budget reforms show that the legislature has been the driver of budget reforms, not the executive.

The article deals critically with the doctrine according to which in the process of shaping and implementing foreign policy, the executive branch of the government has many advantages over the legislative and should prevail over it. Foreign policy making in Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States is examined, both on the basis of the results of field research conducted by the author himself and on the findings of other authors. According to the author, the widely made assumption that in all countries foreign policy is almost the exclusive domain of the executive is not correct. In some countries, Parliament plays a relatively important role in this area. The role of the legislature in shaping foreign policy does not substantially depend upon the role a country is playing in world politics or on the content of the policy it pursues. This role depends much more on the character of the political system of that country. The legislature takes a much more active part in foreign policy making in a presidential system than in a parliamentary one. Accordingly, its role is much more important in the United States than in Sweden or the United Kingdom. On the other hand, the legislature is more influential in shaping the future orientation of a country's foreign policy than in current foreign policy making. In the interaction between the executive and legislative branches of government, the legislative process itself is not the focal point. In shaping foreign policy, discussions in the parliamentary committees on foreign affairs and hearings arranged by them are not less but even more important than general debates on the floor of the parliament. Private conversations between MPs and executive officials and contacts between them at various commissions, councils, and delegations have consequences as well. From the adoption of the 1992 Constitution which made Lithuania a semi-presidential republic, its President has formal authority to make the main decisions concerning foreign policy issues. The President's constitutional powers in foreign and domestic policy are unequal: he has little to say on domestic issues but foreign policy is his domain. Yet in practice, foreign policy making has been concentrated recently mainly in the Foreign Ministry and Cabinet chamber. Now both newly elected President Valdas Adamkus and Parliament under the leadership of Vytautas Landsbergis are making attempts to play a much more active role in foreign policy making.

There are certain similarities between the leadership process in both Britain and France. For the most part, these similarities result from the distribution of resources between the executive branch of the central government and the other branches and levels of government. Since the creation of the current French régime, the Fifth Republic, in 1958, the country’s leadership environment has exhibited two institutional characteristics that have mirrored those of its British counterpart. In the first place, state institutions at the central level have dominated those at the subcentral level. Second, at the central level, the executive branch of government has dominated both the judicial and legislative branches. Consequently, in France, as in Britain, the system has encouraged a form of executive leadership.

The “rules of law” function to guide and control the agencies of government and the behavior of individuals who are subject to the government. Rules of law can thus be viewed as a system for shaping behavior and adjusting or avoiding disputes. As such, law draws from the common expectations of society. Some rules of law represent regulations promulgated by executive order or by governmental administrative agencies. Others represent statutes, constitutions, or constitutional amendments developed by the legislative branch of government. The authoritative opinion of the courts will frequently set forth the precise construction to be given to these rules of law, and a succession of opinions on particular cases may lead to the development of “basic legal doctrines.” Where the legislative and executive branches of government are silent on a matter before the court, the court will not hesitate to articulate new law. There are also, of course, innumerable rules and standards of conduct that have their origin in community custom rather than any deliberate act of the government. Some of these customs may be enforceable by a formal agency of government. Others are not enforceable but, as we shall see, many rules of law, such as those governing mining, have had their origin in community custom.

One of the main characteristics of any political regime is the power correlation between the legislative and executive branches of state power. In a democratic environment, it should reflect a certain balance of branches of power.The Constitution of Ukraine has defined the principle of separation of power into legislative, executive and judicial (art. 6), each of them is independent from the other one and acts within its competence. Theoretically fixed in the Constitution principles of power separation aim between legislative and executive branches. However in the conditions of social-economic crisis, in which the country has been acting since 1990s, between multi-vectored political forces and striving of executive power for widening of its authorities, that is fixed in the Constitution, the presidential-parliamentary form of administration very often has led not only to constitutional cooperation of powers but to the competition between the President and executive power on the one hand, and Verhovna Rada, on the other hand. So, today the need for reconsideration of both the correlation of authorities and cooperation between branches of power in Ukraine has become obvious.
 Keywords: legislative branch of government, executive branch of government, cooperation, political system.

The executive branch of government in Eastern Europe has undergone profound transformation since the fall of Communist regimes in 1989. Changes have affected the process of choosing political executives, or leaders, but they have also included the distribution of power that is vested in the executive branch. Of particular importance in designing the ‘architecture’ of power has been the manner of controlling the actions of leaders and, connected to this, the relationship between executive and legislative branches of government. For as Robert C. Tucker, a long-time analyst of Soviet politics, has hypothesised, ‘we can see the possibility of an authoritarian personality serving as leader in the regime of a constitutional democracy, and, conversely, of a democratic personality serving as the leader in an authoritarian system of rule’ (Tucker, 1981, p. 68). It is ‘the institutionalized difference between democratic and authoritarian forms of government’ which revolves around (i) the possibility or prohibition of active public participation in leadership choice, and (ii) control of or submission to executive prerogatives, that marks the boundary between democratic and undemocratic leadership.

It has become axiomatic that terrorists, who have no respect for international borders, can be countered only through an internationally coordinated programme. For this reason, the Security Council of the United Nations has invoked its powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to insist that states cooperate in regional and international anti-terrorism efforts in addition to setting up domestic anti-terrorism regimes. This chapter examines the main features of the anti-terrorism regimes of four African states, namely, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, all of which have had some experience of terrorism. It sets their anti-terrorism legislation in the international and regional context to establish how each state has integrated itself into the wider anti-terrorist framework. What emerges from this study is that the anti-terrorism regime in the four states has come to be dominated not only by the executive branches of government, but also by the powerful executive branches of other governments and the executive-like powers of the UN Security Council.

Typical advocacy activities focus almost always on the Legislative Branch of Government, which is entirely appropriate as members of Congress work directly for their constituents (see Chaps. 4 and 5). Advocacy efforts may also be directed to the Executive Branch, which may not be as accessible, however. But the Executive Departments are charged often with creating new rules and regulations to facilitate implementation of newly passed laws. To be effective here, advocacy requires knowledge about the structure of the Executive Branch, their strategic goals, their use of review panels and advisory committees, and other potential targets for advocacy activities.

Richard Kluger, author of Simple Justice (1975), is correct in stating that Brown deserves high place in the literature of liberty (Kluger 1975: X). Historian John Hope Franklin has written that Perhaps no public question in the United States in the twentieth century aroused more interest at home and abroad than the debate about the constitutionality of segregated public (Franklin 1974: 421). Brown, indeed, became both an exhilarating and a troubling experience for citizens of a nation-state whose government is guided by a Constitution. The Declaration of Independence, adopted unanimously July 4, 1776 by the second Continental Congress, declared that all...are created And the Preamble the Constitution of the United States ratified in 1789 indicated that this nation was founded to create a more perfect union, to establish justice...[and] promote the general welfare... (Harvard Classics 1938: 150-155). And the Fourteenth Amendment proscribes all state-imposed discrimination against any citizen of the United States. Brown was exhilarating citizens of this nation who recognized it as a way of achieving these goals mentioned above. Brown was troubling citizens who classified it as judicial activism that ignored the authority of the legislative and executive branches of government. They pointed out that the Constitution empowered three separate but interdependent units of government serve as checks and balances on each unit (Harvard Classics 1938: 180-198). Actually, the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the U.S. Supreme Court descended upon this nation as a way of checking the pervasive injustice rendered by public educational institutions on people of color, particularly African Americans. The injustices resulted from laws, regulations and other public policies promulgated or facilitated by actions of legislative and executive branches of government. Thus, Brown was a legitimate limitation on discriminatory activities facilitated by policies of government that violated the Constitution. In 1896, the Supreme Court in its Plessy vs. Ferguson decision permitted public agencies separate people of different races, if the separate accommodations were equal. In the Brown decision, the Court rejected the Plessy opinion because the segregated public accommodations for black people and white people were unequal. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP) fashioned a litigation strategy beginning in 1938 designed demonstrate in courts of law that separate educational facilities and policies in local communities for black and white populations were never equal. The Brown decision in 1954 was the outcome of several court cases argued by NAACP lawyers. I, personally, experienced the inequality of secondary schools in Dallas, Texas, the city of my birth where I grew up. Before 1940, all blacks in this big city attended one high school, The Booker T. Washington High School located in North Dallas. From East Dallas, West Dallas, and South Dallas came black students matriculate in this single high school reserved exclusively for them. Parenthetically, may I say, the black students used public transportation go and from Booker T. Washington High School; and the price for this transportation maintain segregation was assumed by black students and their parents. In effect, we were forced cooperate in our own oppression. There is a limit the capacity of any school, including a segregated school for black people, accommodate one more student. Booker T. Washington High School was so crowded that it had operate in double sessions, half of the student body attending school in the morning and half attending in the afternoon. Thus, the Dallas Independent School District decided erect a new high school in South Dallas for black students. Students like me who lived in Oak Cliff in the western sector of Dallas were reassigned the new school in South Dallas. …

Government Documents Reference Service in Canada: A Nationwide Unobtrusive Study of Public and Academic Depository Libraries

This chapter writes about judicial independence and the distinction between the roles of the legislature and the courts. It discusses how the judiciary plays a unique and vital role in democratic governance and how its functions interact with the functions of the legislative and executive branches of government, to ensure legitimate constitutional governance and just legal outcomes in accordance with the rule of law. Further, the chapter argues that in order to discharge its proper constitutional function, the judiciary must function independently of the legislative and executive branches of the governance in discharging its responsibility of interpreting and applying the law. Finally, the chapter discusses what the necessary conditions of independent judicial functioning are.

The title assigned for this article suggests that a group of bureaucrats can accurately predict the actions of both the legislative and executive branches of government. Though the compliment is appreciated, it must be recognized that both the legislative and executive branches of government are subject not only to periodic changes in personnel, but also to abrupt changes in the attitudes exhibited by given personnel. Probably the most dramatic recent example of abrupt change in legislative and executive attitude in the area of agricultural policy is the series of events that occurred immediately before, during and subsequent to the January 4, 1980, announcement of the suspension of trade with the Soviet Union. Thus, it is unlikely that any analyst — be he bureaucrat, academic, or businessman — can accurately predict either legislative or executive decisions over the next 30 days, let alone over the next 30 years. Therefore, in analyzing the future of federal programs for Southern commodities, one is to some extent limited to an examination of whether such programs have in fact accomplished their stated purpose, and secondarily to an examination of whether the conditions and circumstances that originally created the need for these programs persist to a degree that justifies their continuation with or without any necessary modifications.

Interaction between the institutions of state power ensures normal performing of their duties as entire state mechanism. It does not enable any of the branches of power. It is for this purpose that the founder of the division of power created a system of restraints and counter balances. To ensure their independence of one branch of government from another, it is necessary that each one has a real opportunity to influence another. Through the division of powers, the rule of law is organized and operates by legal means.
 At the same time, the principle of distribution of power is not so much a rigid division of functions and competences as the mechanism of their close interaction to solve problems of state formation.
 The interaction of the institutions of state power as the principle of the Constitutional system of Ukraine is currently a very topical problem, since our state is only at the prime of developing such institutions as an institution for the distribution and interaction of the branches of state power, and, therefore, needs the best possible solution to urgent problems.
 Keywords: Legislative branch of government, executive branch of government, interaction, powers of branches