Leaderships and Executives

Abstract

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.