 Enhancing Democracy through Constitutional Reforms. Is Semi-Presidentialism Romanian Democracy's Achilles' Heel

The article investigates the causes and consequences of the semi-presidential system for the development of democracy in Romania, exploring the process of constitution-building and its modifications through the lens of the President’s place in the institutional system. The analysis reveals subtleties of the Romanian system of semi-presidentialism which are revealed as being not necessarily bad for democratic performance. The findings indicate that the hasty adoption of the 1991 Constitution and then the partial revision of it in 2003, different patterns of parliamentary majorities and the strong personalities of individual Presidents all produced different subtypes of semi-presidentialism, each with a different propensity for conflict. A sharp difference existed between relationships within the executive during the first and second decades after communism. Throughout the 1990s, both Romanian Presidents sought to formulate their own independent political agendas, trespassed on their Prime Ministers’ powers, and tried to influence a legislature in which they belonged to the parliamentary majority. Their interpretations of their institutional role was encouraged both by constitutional ambiguities and by the fact that both Presidents were the leaders of the party or alliance which supported them in Parliament. The second post-communist period brought periods of co-habitation and revealed a shift in both the type of conflict and in the solutions found. From the longitudinal perspective, there was a discontinuity in approach that sheds light on the complexities of executive relationships in the Romanian semi-presidential system in the context of fairly similar political actors.