We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
SENATI SI ALTERNATIVE DHE TREGUES I KRIZËS SË PARLAMENTARIZMIT NË EVROPEN JUGLINDORE.
- Authors
KRASNIQI, Afrim
- Abstract
The institution of the Senate, as the second chamber of the parliament, has a minimum experience in the political tradition of South East European countries. Because the parliamentary representation institution has a modest experience, the debate about a two-chamber organization is not included in the priority agenda of government systems, but it has remained as an experimental alternative in isolated historical periods or in the cases of the need for balanced inter-ethnical representation. The paper examines the modest experiences of the second chamber of the parliament in some countries (Albania, Croatia, Bosnia, Romania, and Slovenia), as well as some other functional models from the rest of the former communist part of the Eastern Europe. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the institution of the Senate has been, and is still, characterized by its balancing and functional properties not only in well-developed democracies but also in the new democracies, especially in countries where there are problems of ethnic representation or bipolar ideological divisions. The very fact that, whenever countries experience representation crises and political crisis, and the debate about the senate and need to change the constitutional parliamentary model is started, constitutes an indicator according to which it is highly expected that this institution be part of a long-term solution project in many of the SEE countries, and it is still regarded as such. The Senate might not be the ideal solution but it remains an optimal alternative, as the constitutional debates in Albania in 1998 demonstrate. It does not extend the quantitative aspect of the parliamentary representation but it enhances its qualitative aspect by way of sharing with the current unicameral parliaments the number of seats and a part of important competencies, which are, and remain, vital for the functional long-term democratic achievement projects and reforms.
- Subjects
LEGISLATIVE bodies; COMMUNISTS; PRACTICAL politics; DEMOCRACY; CRISES
- Publication
Vizione, 2014, Vol 21, p91
- ISSN
1409-8962
- Publication type
Article