IV. The institutional design of governmental system (constitution)
T
he reorganisation of the governmental systems began in many countries during the communist era with the introduction of the presidential office. Among the communist states, only Czechoslovakia retained the office it knew from the interwar period. In the other countries of the “Eastern Bloc,” it had been abolished. Before the existential system crisis of socialism, it had only been created in Romania for Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1974. During the existential system crisis at the end of the 1980s, the presidential office was first reinstated in Poland. During secret negotiations (February–April 1989) it was implicitly agreed that Wojciech Jaruzelski, who had been responsible for the martial law in the 1980s, would be elected as the new head of state. At that time, the Breshnev Doctrine was still valid and the general was to guarantee that Poland would remain in the Warsaw Pact. One year later, the Soviet party leader Mikhail Gorbachev also became state President. The final establishment of the office, however, was only achieved through constitution-making (the constitutional process) in the post-communist era. In this process, which some political scientists term “institutional engineering,” the following factors have always played a significant role: 1. the constitutional tradition of the country concerned and (if no such tradition exists, or) the example of other countries, 2. the institutions of the regime to be overcome, 3. the daily political life of the period of constitution-making. “Daily political life” can be understood as all political processes, developments, and actions that result from the assertion of current interests and procedures by political actors. In this context both the duration of constitution-making and the constellation of political forces that influence this process plays an important role.
“institutional engineering”
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