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After the collapse of communism, some thirty countries scrambled to craft democratic constitutions. Surprisingly, the constitutional model they most often chose was neither the pure parliamentary model found in most of Western Europe at the time, nor the presidential model of the Americas. Rather, it was semi-presidentialism--a rare model known more generally as the \"French type.\" This constitutional model melded elements of pure presidentialism with those of pure parliamentarism. Specifically, semi-presidentialism combined a popularly elected head of state with a head of government responsible to a legislature. Borrowing Constitutional Designsquestions the hasty adoption of semi-presidentialism by new democracies. Drawing on rich case studies of two of the most important countries for European politics in the twentieth century--Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic--Cindy Skach offers the first theoretically focused, and historically grounded, analysis of semi-presidentialism and democracy. She demonstrates that constitutional choice matters, because under certain conditions, semi-presidentialism structures incentives that make democratic consolidation difficult or that actually contribute to democratic collapse. She offers a new theory of constitutional design, integrating insights from law and the social sciences. In doing so, Skach challenges both democratic theory and democratic practice. This book will be welcomed not only by scholars and practitioners of constitutional law but also by those in fields such as comparative politics, European politics and history, and international and public affairs.

Professor Zolberg brings the factual material about the Ivory Coast's social, economic, and political development since 1961-1962. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

During its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic (1918-33) witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and cultural criticism, and the arts. Leading intellectuals, scholars, and critics--such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Martin Heidegger--emerged during this time to become the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. Even today, the Weimar era remains a vital resource for new intellectual movements. In this incomparable collection,Weimar Thoughtpresents both the specialist and the general reader a comprehensive guide and unified portrait of the most important innovators, themes, and trends of this fascinating period. The book is divided into four thematic sections: law, politics, and society; philosophy, theology, and science; aesthetics, literature, and film; and general cultural and social themes of the Weimar period. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars from a remarkable array of fields, and each individual essay serves as an overview for a particular discipline while offering distinctive critical engagement with relevant problems and debates. Whether used as an introductory companion or advanced scholarly resource,Weimar Thoughtprovides insight into the rich developments behind the intellectual foundations of modernity.

Germany’s defeat in World War I and proclamation of the first German republic significantly influenced the change of the role of the army in the German state. At the stage of reorganization of the Kaiser’s army into the Reichswehr (1918–1921) the main result of this transformation became the creation of a new model of the German Army in which the principle of “distancing” the army from politics was replaced by new legislative and political realities that raised the question of inevitability of relationship between the army and the state. The Versailles Treaty and the Weimar constitution put forward the task of turning the German army into integral part of the state apparatus which led to losing its apoliticality. They also contributed to the emergence of Reich Ministry and the post of Reich Minister combined in one person the representative of the army and the state power. Besides, they helped to form a united German professional army and provided joint search of allies in the field of armaments by politicians and military men. The army tried to defend the old Prussian military traditions in terms of the German State called itself the Reich, and Weimar politicians sought to put the army under a parliamentary-presidential control. At the later stage of the Weimar Republic political generals will appear in the army, and important government positions will be taken by the representatives of the Generalitat. But the outcome of the force balance already at the stage of development of the temporary Reichswehr, when the real power in the army was in hands of the commander of the ground forces, and not of the Reich President and Reich Minister largely predetermined the strength of the conservative military elite in the future.

En los Estados compuestos existen distintos principios e institutos cuyo propósito no es otro que mantener la vigencia y estabilidad del pacto territorial. Mediante estos no solo se persigue fortalecer la lealtad entre todas las partes de la relación federativa, sino también limitar las posibles conductas contrarias a la unidad de cualesquiera de ellas. En la República Federal de Alemania, entre las distintas herramientas que la ley fundamental proporciona para tal fin, la coerción federal ocupa un lugar destacado. En este artículo se pretende realizar un estudio de este instituto constitucional que no solo se centre en su actual regulación (art. 37 LFB), sino también en sus precedentes, lo que nos servirá para constatar la existencia de una específica tradición constitucional a este respecto. In federal States there are different principles and institutes whose purpose is none other than to maintain the validity and stability of the territorial pact. These not only seek to strengthen the loyalty between all parties to the federal relationship, but also to limit possible conduct that is contrary to the unity of any of them. In the Federal Republic of Germany, among the various tools provided by the Basic Law for this goal, federal coercion occupies a prominent place. This article aims to make a study of this constitutional institute, focusing not only on its current regulations (art. 37 LFB) but also on its precedents, which will serve to establish the existence of a specific constitutional tradition in this regard.

Contrary to what most of his critics maintain, democracy and not liberalism is, in my view, the main target of Schmitt's intellectual work during the Weimar period. My interpretation of his Parlamentarismus is aimed at proving this point.

When Adolf Hitler was ushered into power on 30 January 1933, few in Germany really expected him to be an effective chancellor. Both Hugenberg and Papen, who took the (ostensibly) crucial positions of economics minister and vice chancellor in Hitler’s government, believed the excitable would-be dictator was now under their control. The only other Nazis in the new Cabinet were Wilhelm Frick, the minister of the interior, and Hermann Göring, a minister without portfolio (although he was also Prussian minister of the interior). Hitler, outnumbered by non-Nazis eight to three in the Cabinet, appeared to be a weak “parliamentary” chancellor,

Do the elections and opinion polling help to assess the level of popular support for the policies of Russian president Vladimir Putin, such as the invasion of Ukraine? This essay argues that Russia under Putin represents an instance of plebiscitary democracy, a regime with a strong leader relying on popular legitimacy derived from the passive and disenchanted masses. In such a regime, both elections and polling function according to the principle of acclamation, validating the ready-made decisions rather than revealing the public choice. Historically, plebiscitary democracies tend to engage in unprovoked wars that precipitate their demise. However, the temptations of plebiscitary design for contemporary liberal democracies should not be underestimated.

The paper discusses one of the most important debates on the meaning of constitutional adjudication in the 20th century that engaged two eminent legal and political thinkers Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt. The paper focuses on the constitutional dispute over the guardianship of the constitution in the final years of Weimar’s Germany and reconstructs the arguments of the two major protagonists in this dispute concerning the Weimar constitution and the fundamental question whether the guardian of the constitution is (or should be) the constitutional court or the president of the Reich. The debate highlights the complexity of the political problems of a democratic state, as well as the intricate relationship between law and state and has retained high level of topicality. The paper also pays attention to the philosophical-political premises that underlined the distinctly different views on the relationship between law and politics in the thought of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt.

This article offers a new account of the rise of judicial power in modern Germany. Strong judicial control of the government is often associated with the constitutional ethos that emerged in postwar West Germany as a reaction to Nazi rule. This article locates the origins of German judicialization in the political struggles of the Weimar era. It shows how the assumption of a power to judicial review by Germany's highest court, the Reichsgericht, was the product of the successful cooperation of the judiciary with conservative political parties on the issue of property rights in the young republic. These were at the centre of two controversies examined in the article: the expropriation of princes of former ruling houses and the consequences of the hyperinflation of 1923. In both cases the Reichsgericht used an understanding of property as an inalienable right to radically reinterpret Germany's first democratic constitution, which had in fact granted the legislature extensive power to modify property relations. This suited the judiciary's own objective of assuming stronger controls over legislative action and bolstered the political position of conservative forces in Weimar politics. What emerged was a supra-positive constitutionalism that sought to supersede the written constitution. These political realities were an essential context for theoretical debates on the extent and limits of judicial power between theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, Hermann Heller, Franz Neumann, and Ernst Fraenkel. An examination of the complex interaction of parliamentary, judicial, and popular politics concerning the issue of property reveals that German judicial empowerment amounted to an attempt to rewrite the Weimar Constitution and limit the scope of Germany's democratic revolution.