Syllabus
Class 1 Constitutions and Constitutionalism
Readings: Sartori, Giovanni. 1962. Constitutionalism. A Preliminary Discussion. The American political science review 56(4): 853-864
Class 2 Democratic Regime Types
Readings: Elgie, Robert. 2005. From Linz to Tsebelis: three waves of presidential/parliamentary studies?. Democratization 12(1): 106-122.
Class 3 Heads of States in a Comparative Perspective
Readings: Tavits, Margit. 2009. Presidents with prime ministers: Do direct elections matter?. Oxford: Oxford University Press chapter 1
Class 4 Constitutional Conventions
Readings: Taylor, Greg. 2014. Convention by consensus: Constitutional conventions in Germany. International Journal of Constitutional Law 12(2): 303-329.
Class 5 Political System of the USA (I)
Readings: US Election Booklet 2020
Class 6 Political System of the USA (II)
Readings: Marshall, William. 2008. Eleven reasons why presidential power inevitably expands and why it matters."Boston University Law Review 88: 505-522
Class 7 Political System of the USA (III)
Readings: Heitshusen, Valerie. 2020. Introduction to the Legislative Process in the U.S. Congress. Congressional Research Service.
Class 8 Political system of the United Kingdom (I)
Readinigs: Louhglin, Martin. 2015. The British Constitution: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Introduction and chapter 1.
Class 9 Political system of the United Kingdom (II)
Readings: Garnett, Mark and Philip Lynch. 2009. Exploring the British Politics. 2nd edition. London: Pearson and Longman. Chapter 8.
Class 10 Political system of the United Kingdom (III)
Readings: Garnett, Mark and Philip Lynch. 2009. Exploring the British Politics. 2nd edition. London: Pearson and Longman. Chapter 7.
Class 11 Political system of France
Knapp, Andrew, and Vincent Wright. 2006.The government and politics of France. Routledge. Chapter 4.
Class 12 Political system of Germany
Saalfeld, Thomas. 2003. Germany: Multiple Veto Points, Informal Co-ordination, and Problems of Hidden Action. In: Strøm, Kaare, Torbjörn Bergman, and Wolfgang C. Müller, eds. Delegation and accountability in parliamentary democracies. Oxford University Press (p. 347-375).
Annotation
The course provides students with basic knowledge on major models of constitutional systems of Western democracies, with a special focus on Europe. The course shows that political systems of Western countries are not only shaped by constitutions and other formal rules, but also by a range of factors that lay beyond the constitution. Hence, the course seeks to present current political systems of Western democracies as a result of interplay of constitutional and extra-constitutional factors. After accomplishing the course students will be able to define three democratic regimes types (presidentialism, semi-presidentialism and parliamentarism) as well as their varying conceptualizations. Furthermore, they will be able to identify major decision-makers in political systems in various democratic regimes types, they will understand key relations between the triangle of actors: head of state, government (cabinet) and parliament and their position and functions in respective regime types. In addition to the constitutional institutions in terms of their powers, students will be also able to identify and analyze impact of extra-constitutional factors such as party system, constitutional conventions, public expectations, timing of elections etc.
The course is divided into two parts. The first part of the course shall present key theoretical concepts that are essential for understanding major constitutional differences between Western democracies in a comparative perspective. It will discuss three democratic regimes types (presidentialism, semi-presidentialism and parliamentarism) in terms of their conceptualizations. The second part of the course shall focus on several key model countries that represent useful empirical cases of conceptual models presented in the first part: the USA, the UK and Germany and France. The course shall be completed with seminar where students shall present their papers on various theoretical or empirical themes closely connected to the course focus.