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In Romania, a semi-presidential system characterized by an exaltation of the powers of the President of the Republic, there would be critical observations to be reported in relation to this institution. More precisely, it refers to the constitutional provisions which weaken the President among the political institutions and could also lead to different interpretations. First of all, the paper examines the President as popularly elected body but that does not reflect fully the will of the nation. Secondly, its oath violated the freedom of religion and if the wording will not be changed, will continue to constitute a discrimination against other non Orthodox President that could be elected. Moreover, the Romanian legal system is characterized by an independence of the President in its relationship with the Parliament but on the one hand, that does not mean that the President is more powerful in the event of dissolution of the Parliament and the other hand, the Parliament is completely independent in determining its competences in relations with the office of the Presidency.

The referendum initiative of 2021 is the fourth attempt in Slovakia to call a referendum on early parliamentary elections in less than 30 years. The aim of this article is to answer the question of whether the shortening of the parliamentary term by referendum is in accordance with the Slovak Constitution. Since the shortening of parliamentary term by referendum is a constitutional issue which is a question of identity common to all European democracies, the authors analyse the existence of such direct democracy instrument in the Council of Europe member states and compare the relevant constitutional framework with the Slovak Constitution. The authors’ opinion is that the referendum on early elections contradicts not only several constitutional provisions, but also the overall philosophy of the Slovak Constitution and Western-type democracy.

This article considers both the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) and the political constitution, to place the former in its political and constitutional context. It begins by setting out the background to the FTPA – which was a part of a Coalition agreement – and considers difficulties with the most commonly-made arguments in favour of fixed-term parliaments. The second part of the article considers the impact and potential practical legal consequences if the FTPA is repealed without any replacement, arguing that it will only be possible to revive the 'dissolution' prerogative by express words in a new Act. The final part of the article addresses the question of whether the prerogative should be revived, before arguing both that it should not and that a statutory power to call an election should be conferred on the Prime Minister subject to a vote by simple majority in the House of Commons.

An important agenda power in parliamentary democracies is the discretion over the dissolution of parliament. We argue that variation in constitutional rules and the political environment will systematically affect the frequency of early elections. We hypothesize that dissolution will be more frequent under single-party governments, when the head of state plays an insignificant role, when neither parliament nor the cabinet can inhibit dissolution, when minority governments are in power, when the head of state can dissolve unilaterally, and later in the constitutional term. Using standard logistic and Cox-proportional hazard techniques, we test these expectations in a pooled time-series setting against observations of most OECD parliamentary democracies for the years 1960–1995. We find that parliamentary dissolutions are more frequent earlier in the constitutional term, under minority governments, when the head of state plays an insignificant role, and when the parliament or the cabinet is not involved.

Este artículo versa sobre la Constitución orgánica del Perú. En ese sentido, analiza sus características más salientes y, a partir de ello, llama la atención sobre sus inconsistencias prácticas, producto de un proceso de hibridación que se remonta a los inicios del constitucionalismo peruano. Asimismo, el texto discute críticamente la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Constitucional peruano sobre la Constitución orgánica. En particular, incide en las sentencias emitidas por este colegiado en los casos de la cuestión de confianza y la disolución constitucional del Congreso. Por último, plantea algunas medidas que deben implementarse en el corto y mediano plazo para fortalecer la institucionalidad democrática del país.

Durante décadas, la doctrina española dio por hecho que la disolución discrecional refuerza la posición del presidente y que la disolución automática estimula la formación de Gobierno, razón por la cual se prestó escasa atención a estos mecanismos. Sin embargo, en los últimos años esas expectativas se han visto defraudadas. Este trabajo estudia el papel que juega la disolución de las Cámaras en el régimen parlamentario, partiendo de un examen crítico de la teoría clásica y de las tres principales funciones atribuidas a esta institución, a saber: arbitrar conflictos entre ejecutivo y legislativo, preservar la estabilidad gubernamental y consultar al electorado sobre cuestiones relevantes. Seguidamente, analiza las razones de que el rendimiento de la disolución en España bajo el multipartidismo no haya sido el esperado, incidiendo en las diferencias observables entre el Estado y las Comunidades Autonomás. Asimismo se interroga por el significado e implicaciones de las llamadas «repeticiones electorales» y por los riesgos que acarrean. Finalmente, invita a reflexionar sobre la conveniencia de adecuar la disciplina constitucional de la disolución al contexto sociopolítico actual.

Hasta hace poco, la relación entre la moción de censura y la facultad de disolución del Parlamento en el ordenamiento constitucional de 1978 parecía exenta de complicaciones. Sin embargo, acontecimientos recientes han demostrado que pueden presentarse supuestos de difícil salida, el más grave de los cuales es el empleo simultáneo de ambos procedimientos. Tales problemas se deben principalmente a la inusual y ecléctica estructuración del parlamentarismo español. Este trabajo busca profundizar en el estudio de nuestras instituciones, tratando de ofrecer una nueva perspectiva que vaya más allá de la hermenéutica y tenga en cuenta la previsible inte­racción entre el derecho y la realidad política. Until lately, the relationship between the motion of no-confidence and the power to dissolve the Parliament in the constitutional order of 1978 seemed to be free from complications. However, recent events have shown that difficult situations can arise, the most serious of which is the simultaneous use of both procedures. Such problems are mainly due to the unusual and eclectic structure of the Spanish parliamentary government. This work seeks to deepen the study of our institutions, aiming to offer a new perspective that goes beyond hermeneutics and takes into account the foreseeable interaction between law and political reality.

We attempt to resolve a recent controversy in the study of cabinet terminations pertaining to the shape of hazard rates. On the one hand, Warwick (1992b) provides evidence that cabinets are more likely to terminate the longer they are in office. Alt and King's (1994) analysis, on the other hand, suggests that hazard rates are constant over the life-time of a cabinet. This issue is of particular theoretical importance, since a constant hazard rate would add support to the nonstrategic model of cabinet termination due to Browne et al. (1986) while an increasing hazard rate would seem to favor Lupia and Strom's (1995) strategic approach. By applying a semi-parametric competing risk approach to data on cabinet durations, we are able to show that through its use of theory-based censoring the previous literature in effect analyzed only one mode in which cabinets terminate: the case where one cabinet is replaced by another without a new election. Once cabinet terminations that lead to chamber dissolutions with subsequent elections are analyzed directly, we can show that they are governed by a very different stochastic process. Hazard rates are not flat as in the case of replacements, but increase over the life of the government. Further the covariates governing replacement terminations fail to explain dissolution terminations. These findings add support to the strategic approach suggested by Lupia and Strom.

While, analytically, the character of the Romanian regime is sui generis and the consensus is absent, disputes and instability are the rule of political practice in the existing constitutional design. The article proposes a constructivist perspective of discursive institutionalism. It examines how political actors themselves have characterized the Romanian form of government in order to find equilibrium in the political system. The analyzed material originates in the 2003 debate on the revision of the Constitution and the 2009 speech the President gave on a proposed future revision. The conclusion shows a consistent position of parties, according to their genesis and their ability to propose a presidential personality. Also, the poor quality of the debates can be considered an indication of the inability to resolve disputes that may be anticipated and therefore a „chronicle of crises foretold”.

El artículo analiza la naturaleza y los diferentes tipos de medidas en relación con la coerción federal o estatal, destacando la singularidad de justificar la intervención del Estado cuando se produzca no solo un incumplimiento de obligaciones jurídicas sino un atentado al interés general de España, lo que introduce una perspectiva política. Se centra más adelante en las medidas utilizadas en la única ocasión en que se ha aplicado el art. 155 CE (octubre de 2017) y en la ejecución de estas respecto al cese del Gobierno y la disolución del Parlamento de Cataluña, reflejando, además, el debate generado entre sus partidarios y opositores acerca de su eficacia y constitucionalidad ratificada casi en su totalidad por las dos sentencias del Tribunal Constitucional de julio de 2019. This paper analyses, which is the nature of the federal and state coercion and what would be the accurate tools to evolve such coercion. But must highlight the great relevance of the State, acting against breaching of legal duties and even more, when such defaults mean a profound risk for the Spanish general interest. Besides, that could mean a new political view. After that, the paper is focussing on the exclusive occasion in which was applied the content of the 155 section over Catalonia (October 2017) and in the manner, in which those measures were developed provoking the dissolution of the Catalonian parliament and the dismission of its executive branch. In the same way, it was generated a deep debate between supporters and detractors around the significance of 155. What is really its effectiveness, after having been declared almost fully according to the constitution by the Spanish Constitutional Court through the two known judgment in July in 2019.