An Eternally unfinished parliamentary regime? Semipresidentialism as a prism to view Lithuanian politics
ENAccording to a famous ruling of the Lithuanian Constitutional Court (on January 10, 1998), Lithuania’s constitutional regime is a parliamentary system with “certain peculiarities of ... a mixed (semipresidential) form of governance.” Lithuanian politicians and specialists who support this thesis are discontent with the definition of semipresidentialism widely accepted among political scientists, namely regimes in which the popularly elected president appoints the prime minister with the consent of parliament. They regard this definition as formalistic and argue that the distribution of powers/authority and mutual relations among the branches of power are more important than the form of presidential elections (i.e., whether the president is elected by the population or parliament). Actually, during the 1990s, the Lithuanian political elite reached a consensus to interpret the Lithuanian Constitution of 1992 in a maximally parliamentarist manner. Nevertheless, both Lithuanian presidents, Valdas Adamkus and Rolandas Paksas, never turned into passive implementers of parliament’s will, but remained independent actors in Lithuanian politics. How could this happen? The answer to that question, which this paper will try to provide, may explain the viability and flexibility of semipresidential regimes in the Western part of the former socialist territories. [Extract, p. 146-147]
