The Post-Communist Evolution and Constitutional-Legal Engineering of the Model of Democracy in North Macedonia

Driton Kuqi
University of Tetovo

Abstract

Abstract The thesis is a critical analysis of the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Macedonia, following the chronological process since the independence, through the armed conflict in 2001 that had brought constitutional changes, to this day. The first decade after the breakup of Yugoslavia, was crucial for the Macedonian state and its citizens. The constitution of the new, independent state was not an easy process and it did not pass peacefully and with no problems. The complex social process and relations have initiated the need for amendments to the Constitution, which, since its adoption in 1991 until today, has been changed 32 times in order to adapt to the new emerging situation and to give a constitutional and legal response to the real challenges. Of course, proper changes also occurred in the political system itself, as a result of numerous factors, which more or less influenced its character and shape. From the moment of independence, the electoral model in the Republic of Macedonia, as an important element of the electoral system in wider sense of the word, has undergone numerous transformations: from a majority principle election model in two rounds, to a proportional representation with closed lists. In the first parliamentary elections in 1990 and the second in 1994, the allocation of mandates was carried out by applying the majority principle election model in two rounds, within unanimous electoral units. The Law on the Election of Members of Parliament in the Parliament of the Republic of Macedonia since 1998 abandoned the majority electoral model and replaced it with the combined (mixed) electoral model, according to which 85 seats were allocated on the basis of the majority electoral model with a relative majority, and 35 MP seats, on the proportional model. In the 2001 elections held after the armed conflict and after the adoption of the Framework Agreement and the constitutional amendments, as well as all subsequent elections, the proportional election model is applied. Today, according to the decisions in the Electoral Code, adopted in 2006 and amended several times since then, a proportional electoral model is applied within six constituencies in which twenty deputies and three constituencies in the diaspora are elected, from which three MPs can be elected . The process of building the Macedonian state went through two different phases, which still had (t) something in common: the transition to democracy and democratic consolidation. In the first period, the Republic of Macedonia was oriented towards western liberal democracy, building a political system dominated by the elements and characteristics of the majority democracy. Of course, the first multi-party elections were preceded by a legal framework that guaranteed the freedom of political association, ie the formation of political parties, as a necessary presumption for competitive elections. In the 1991 Constitution, political pluralism and free, direct and democratic elections were one of the eleven fundamental values of the constitutional order of the Republic of Macedonia. From 2001 to the present, in conditions of post-conflict environment, the political system was moving towards the so-called. power sharing model, with strong elements of the "Liphart Concept" for consociational democracy. Keywords: democracy, consociational democracy, constitutional order


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