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and the lack in the Constitution of an enumeration of issues liable to be regulated only by the law

allow to give a rather wide interpretation of the president's lawmaking.

A group of lawyers from the State and Law Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences

that is also a competent and influential establishment and many of its staff have been recruited to

big policy, who are authors of another Commentary to the Constitution, write: Now the

president appears not a component part, peak, or personification of the executive power, but as

a strong, influential, and endowed with wide powers head of the state. At the same time, they

believe that this is an inevitable necessity predetermined by the recognition of the principle of

division of power so to say, keeping in balance the entire State mechanism. The president

realizes this destination without substituting and moving aside other authorities, without infringing

upon their independence and interfering into their Constitutional powers.

However, the political reality contradicts this assertion. By outstripping in issuing

normative acts, the president shoves aside the legislature. And by issuing decrees on questions

pertaining to the government's competence, in many respects he performs the duties of the

executive power.

Political system, with the institute of presidency excluded from the division of power is

called delegative democracy by contemporary science. This system is adequately described by

famous  politologist, Professor of  Notre Dame University (U.S.A.)  G.O'Donell.  Delegative

democracies are based on the premise that the victory at presidential elections gives the right to

the winner to govern the country to his own discretion. And in doing so he is limited only by

conditions of the existing power relations and the term of office by the Constitution. The

president is looked upon as an embodiment of the nation, the main custodian and connoisseur of

its interests. It is supposed that this figure takes paternal care of the entire nation, and a political

basis for the president should be such a movement that can overcome factionalism and reconcile

political parties. As a rule, in countries of delegative democracy a candidate for  the presidency

assures that he is above political parties and group interests. Can it be otherwise for the one

who is an embodiment of the entire Nation? From this standpoint, other institutions — the

judiciary and legislature — are only a hindrance, a load to the advantages given by the status of

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a democratically elected president on the internal and international arenas. Accountability to

such institutions seems to be an obstacle to a full execution of power delegated to the president.

The delegative democracy in Russian is, undoubtedly, very different from the dominating

in the West representative democracy or institutionalized democracy. The different nature of

delegative and representative — institutionalized democracies reveals itself especially clearly in

two different types of accountability of executive power bodies. According to  G.O'Donell's

words, under institutionalized democracy, accountability is realized not only vertically — to the

electorate, but also horizontally — in the system of relatively autonomous authorities (other

institutions) which can pose a question about a proper fulfillment of duties by a particular official

and even punish him.  Representativity and accountability create an additional, republican

dimension of democracy: existence and careful maintenance of a boundary between public and

private interests of those who are in power. Vertical accountability, alongside with the right to

form parties and influence public opinion, exists both in representative and  delegative

democracies. But horizontal accountability, characteristic of representative democracy, is

extremely weak or absent in delegative democracy. Furthermore, institutions ensuring horizontal

accountability are considered by  delegative presidents as an unnecessary hindrance to their

mission, so they block the development of such institutions by all means.

Blocking of horizontal accountability, which presupposes legislative supervision over

executive power bodies, is justified, as a rule, by effectiveness of decision-making.

Nevertheless, delegative democracy is hardly effective for solving social, political, and economic

tasks facing society. And the Russia's example fully confirms this conclusion. There is a curious

combination of the government's might and powerlessness, writes G.O'Donell about the Russian

situation. The might begins with the introduction of the first economic programs, continuing as a

wave of decisions aimed at their realization and unavoidable correction of their negative

consequences. This very brightly characterizes an anti-institutional direction of  delegative

democracy, consolidating the custom of distinctly marked personalization of powers and their

concentration in the hands of executive authorities. The seamy side of this is an extreme

ineffectiveness of implementing these decisions as efficient and long-lasting foundations of public

life. It is known that under institutionalized democracy decisions are taken slowly. But having

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been taken, they are implemented rather quickly. Contrary to this, under delegative democracy

we can watch feverish decision-making Implementation of these  hastly one-sided decrees is

hardly probable since they affect important politically organized interests. In the context of a

severe crisis and growing discontent, they resort to a new series of decisions which are even

more unlikely to be realized since in the various strata of society there is already an experience

of counter-acting the previous decisions. At the same time, most of political, social, and

economic subjects can declare their declining all responsibility for the mode of this decision-

making.

The principal difference in the functioning of representative and delegative systems can be

easily illustrated by the work of parliament's committees (that have in addition, control over

executive power bodies and government bureaucracy). In Russia (with its  delegative

democracy) these committees formally have wide, but extremely amorphous powers and cannot

count on receiving effective support from the governmen's bureaucracy. In contrast to this, in the

U.S.A. the committees of supreme legislative bodies have close links with top officials of the

government departments which are under their jurisdiction. American  politologist  M.Meddy

called the parliament's committees of his country small quasi governments.

They limit the president's a omnipotence strengthen business ties between the officials and

lawmakers. As far as Russia is concerned, the civil Bureaucracy relies mainly on the president,

at the same time ignoring the representative power bodies.

Basing on the above — said, one can name political regime of Russia as the mass

plebiscit leader democracy. If we are going to characterize the Russian power system using

Max Weber's notions, we can say that the present regime is an intermediate one between the

rational, law-governed and charismatic regimes. The main role here belongs to the president; the

legal source of his power is plebiscit in its essence (i.e. the nation-wide yes of no voting, vote or

lose, vote with heart, etc.). Ideology (I put this word in commas because formally in the given

context there is no ideology in contemporary Russia) of such a regime means that during the

transition period such a president can ensure national integration, supreme control over the state

administrative machine and realization of reforms in the system itself. He is entitled to adopt

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