The Frustrated Peace? The Political, Social and Economic Impact of the Versailles Treaty

0543791 - HÚ 2022 RIV AT eng M - Monography Chapter
Slavíček, Jan
Constitutional Comparative Politics of Central and Eastern Europe after the Great War.
The Frustrated Peace? The Political, Social and Economic Impact of the Versailles Treaty. Wien: new academic press, 2021 - (Horčička, V.; Němeček, J.; Wakounig, M.; Kessler, V.; Valkoun, J.), s. 263-277. ISBN 978-3-7003-2206-1
Research Infrastructure: LINDAT/CLARIAH-CZ - 90101
Institutional support: RVO:67985963
Keywords : Comparative Politics * Inter-war * East-Central Europe * Direct Democracy
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

The study focuses on the institutional politics of 7 East-Central European countries (Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) after the Great War. In these countries, new constitutions and democratic politics were adopted after 1918. Based on the comparison of constitutions, and using methods of comparative politics, I analyze similarities and differences in the countries‘ politics. With the exception of Germany, which was a semi-presidentialism (although the term was unknown in the inter-war period), all the countries were typical parliamentarian systems. However, they were the cases of a (very) „polarized parliamentarism“ (according to Sartori’s typology), with legislatures significantly predominant over the executives. This led to political instability and – in most cases – to the fall of democracies in these countries (except Czechoslovakia). All the countries had instruments of direct Democracy incorporated in constitutions. In some cases, the overuse of these strengthened paradoxically the political instability.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0320918