Czech Presidents In Trouble: How Successful Can The System Be Against Presidential Misbehaviour?
Czech Presidents In Trouble: How Successful Can The System Be Against Presidential Misbehaviour?

Summary/Abstract: Presidents in parliamentary regimes are generally less powerful in their competencies and serve more as moderators of political disputes rather than as the main actors of executive power. Despite this, they can often appear at the edge of constitutionality in the performance of their powers. In Central Europe, it is the President of the Czech Republic who finds the greatest discrepancy between written and politically practised powers. Constitutional actors can bring a constitutional lawsuit, a competence lawsuit, or activate against the president Article 66, transferring the performance of certain duties to the other constitutional actors. Often, however, these instruments are not used. Semi-structured interviews with experts (N = 6) in the field of constitutional law revealed to us that the Czech president has broader powers than the Constitution gives him because many constitutional actors do not file a lawsuit even if they had a significant possibility of winning. Our analysis also showed that there are some cases where the experts disagree among themselves such as on the appointment of the governor of Czech National Bank. At the same time, this work revealed the different approaches of the individual presidents in the situations studied.

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