(Preliminary version: paper prepared for ECPR General Conference 2017, Oslo)

Transcription

1 Exploring presidents as political actors: The case of Slovakia 1 (Preliminary version: paper prepared for ECPR General Conference 2017, Oslo) Veronika Oravcová 2 Abstract Since collapse of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe we have experienced growing number of literature dealing with role of the presidents. Various authors have been focusing on formal presidential powers (e.g. Shugart and Carey 1992, Siaroff 2003, Krouwel 2003), mode of election (e.g. Tavits 2008) inter-executive relations (e.g. Protsyk 2006, Sedelius 2006), veto power (e.g. Köker 2013) or their role in government formation. However, the use of presidential informal powers and their influence towards other institutions is still relatively unexplored. Even though presidents in Central and Eastern Europe possess limited formal powers and thus their role in executive matters is limited as well, they are still able to influence other political actors or institutions. The aim of the paper is to look to informal powers of the presidents of Slovak republic and to explore in which areas they address their critique towards the government. The paper analyses domestic presidential speeches and explores the importance of political and/or ideological orientation in president s attitude towards the government. key words: president; executive power; Slovakia 1 This paper was supported by the Slovak Grant Agency for Science (VEGA) under grant number 1/0599/17 2 Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University in Bratislava, Department of Political Science

2 Introduction Presidential politics of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) after collapse of the communist regime has gained attention of many scholars. This attention stem mainly (but not exclusively) because of its institutional design of two heads of executive: prime ministers who share executive power with directly elected presidents. Most of the studies focus on its institutional design and explore how presidents use their formal powers. These debates concentrate not only on constitutional design, but are also of empirical nature. Emphasis on formal powers in CEE region have origins in regime classification of Shugart and Carey (1992). The authors have brought also empirical findings regarding the role of the president in the government formation, veto power and the relation of the president towards the government. However, in researching less attention is devoted to presidential symbolic and representative function within the society. The scope of this paper is to analyze the president - prime minister relations in Slovakia through the presidential speeches and explore the factor of political orientation within these relations. The importance of different party or ideological affiliation affects the inter-executive relations (Martinez 1999, Protsyk 2005, Sedelius 2006, Elgie 2011). For defining different party affiliation of the president and prime minister term cohabitation is generally used. During this time the presidency and parliamentary majority is controlled by different parties which could strengthen political rivalry between the top executives. Moreover, during this period the president is in a position when he or she is in front of opposition parties on the one hand, but on the other hand must unite and lead the nation (Hague a Harrop, 2010). However, applying the definition of cohabitation in Slovak republic is not that clear as in case of other (e.g. western) countries. The political system is more fragmented and proportional election system give space to various political subjects. Moreover, the first president Michal Kováč was elected in a parliament and the incumbent president Andrej Kiska was a non-partisan candidate. However, the logic of president prime minister relation is similar. What we know from institutional approach of interexecutive relations is that the political party factor is important in explaining the relation between top executives. Different party or ideological affiliation increases the probability of political conflict among president and prime minister (Protsyk 2005 and 2006, Sedelius 2011). They have different views on functioning the executive power that stem from different ideological positions. Moreover, during the period of cohabitation president could be more active and more eager to engage in executive matters of the prime minister (Tavits 2008). The basic definition of cohabitation is when president and prime minister came from different political parties and the president s party is not in the government (Neto and Strøm 2006). Thus, non-partisan presidents cannot be in cohabitation with the government. Köker (2013) modifies the standard definition of cohabitation and adds cases when the president s party is

3 in the government, but his ideological position is different (Köker 2013: 90). Such case was during the first presidency of Michal Kováč. He was a member of HZDS party that nominated him for the office. After being elected Kováč started to work with people who were close to the opposition parties. Moreover, he refused the party membership and as a non-partisan president declared his impartiality (Malová 1993). By that time began his conflictual relation with the prime minister Vladimír Mečiar (Spáč 2013). On the other hand, Slovakia experienced situation when the president and prime minister were from different political parties, but were ideologically close. President Ivan Gašparovič marked himself as a party member of SMER- SD (Tódová 2009) even if he was a candidate of HZD party that was not even represented in the parliament. Slovak constitution does not regulate the active membership of president in political party. Despite the absence of formal provision it is expected that the head of state would act impartially and would not have formal ties with any of the political party. In Slovak republic the function as a head of state is rather symbolic and the president does not poses strong executive powers (Spáč 2013). However, he is able to deliver critique to the government through his speeches. That is why this paper has the objective to focus on what do presidents say instead of what do presidents do. Data and Methodology While in exploring the formal powers it is interesting what the presidents actually do, in analyzing their political preferences is interesting what they say. Thus, the scope of the paper is to focus on informal powers and to bring about the rhetoric of presidents. The main research questions are: Q1: In which political topics do presidents criticize (challenge policies) the government? Q2: What is the role of the party affiliation / ideological orientation in frequency of their critique? Because of particular design and language barrier, this paper is a single country study and deals with four presidents of Slovak republic: three former presidents Michal Kováč, Ivan Gašparovič, Rudolf Schuster and incumbent Andrej Kiska. In Slovakia there have been four presidents during five terms of the presidential office. Slovak presidents are elected for five years term. The first president Michal Kováč was elected within parliament and the other presidents were elected in popular elections. The mode of the election of head of state was changed because of practical reasons and political compromise. When the first president completed his term in 1998 National Council (parliament) was not able to elect new president. In order to elect the president, constitutional majority of three fifths of MPs was required, which

4 counted 90 MPs. Because of the inability to elect new president, Slovakia remained without elected head of state for the whole year. What is interesting, together with direct elections some restrictions of presidential powers were introduced (Malová and Rybář 2008). President Election First round % first round Second round % second round Michal Kováč 1993: parliament N/A N/A ,62% Rudolf Schuster 1999: direct ,37% ,18% Ivan Gašparovič : direct ,28% ,91% Ivan Gašparovič : direct ,70% ,53% Andrej Kiska 2014: direct % ,38% Table 1. Number and percentage of votes in presidential elections (Source: Statistical Office of Slovakia) The selected period is since the independence of Slovak republic in January 1993 until December During the selected period, 428 domestic presidential speeches were analyzed. Presidential speeches are available on their websites and some of them are also published (see references). In paper, there are analyzed all domestic speeches that were delivered to various institutions, organizations, parliament, people or private companies. There were excluded only those speeches delivered to formal foreign visits and state officials as those were purely formal ones. Moreover, the paper did not include speeches and press releases delivered to the parliament during veto procedure. The argumentation of the presidents during veto procedure deserve separate analysis. Data were coded by qualitative content analysis. The analysis focuses on the identification of specific contents or topics of the discourse (Liebhart 2013). The author of the paper decided not to select the speeches based on key words as it is sometimes preferred in this kind of analyses. The reason is that the president does not have to mention explicitly the government or a particular minister in order to criticize their work 3. All 428 speeches were treated equally, which means that there were not any differences made regarding their importance. The most important speech of the president towards the government is granted also by the Constitution (Art. 102): [the president] shall inform the National Council of the Slovak Republic of the state of the Slovak Republic and of major political issues. What is interesting, only three presidents did use these prerogative every year. The only exception is Ivan Gašparovič who delivered his speech to parliament only three times, in 2005, 2006 and Most important topics in domestic politics The paper analyzed 428 domestic speeches of Slovak presidents that were delivered to people and various institutions. For coding the attitude of the presidents towards the government was used content analysis. Table 3 sums up the percentage of negative and positive references. 3 As president Andrej Kiska puts it: It it not my intention to criticize someone. Not today and not here. (Kiska 2014)

5 The percentage of positive or negative references about the government performance was counted from the number of all the speeches that were delivered during selected period. For example Michal Kováč made negative reference about the government performance of the first Mečiar s government in 33 percent of all of his speeches delivered during that period. Table 2 sums up main topics that were addressed by presidents in order to criticize the government. Firstly, it is important to mention that the steps of the government in the field of foreign politics were positively evaluated by all presidents except for the first one, Michal Kováč. The presidents highlighted the success in the field of EU and NATO access and performance of Slovak diplomacy. During the term of Kováč, there was a fear of international isolation due to quasi-authoritarian practices of prime minister Mečiar (Malová 1998). As can be seen from Table 2., there is relatively high percentage of presidential speeches in which they delivered critique towards governmental politics. The most critical president towards the government was Michal Kováč during Vladimír Mečiar s second term. The least critical was Ivan Gašparovič during the second term of Robert Fico. He was overall satisfied with government activities. Michal Kováč criticized the governmental performance mainly in fundamental character of the state and political performance of the government: The struggle for the character of our democracy and defend of its indisputable principals and its value is the main feature of our political life in Slovakia (Kováč 1996). Rudolf Schuster was the first directly elected president. He often used this argument in order to criticize the government performance and had very activist approach. He often mentioned his social feeling in order to criticize economic performance and state reforms of Dzurinda s cabinet. His main objection that he raised was that the government reforms left behind people and their social securities. Even if he highlighted the importance of transformation of economy and state institutions, he criticized the way how reforms were carried without being specific: It is very important that the government would realize that these reforms are made for people and should be implemented so that all of the people could live in dignity. I am referring to retired people or other weak social groups, as unemployed families with many children (Schuster 2003) or I do support reforms, but these should be for the people and not against them (Schuster 2004). Interestingly enough, the third president Ivan Gašparovič did not criticize the cabinet of Robert Fico, but even during his two terms he often mentioned bad performance of Dzurinda s and Radičová s governments. He argued in line with previous president and accentuated his leftist thinking and social feeling as well which he put in a sharp contrast with their economic

6 performance: During the transformation process the state abandoned its national wealth and transferred it to neoliberal economic theories. We have been fighting with the consequences of reducing politics to economy We built social safety nets in a rush. Unfortunately, these are very weak and thin. (Gašparovič 2008) The incumbent president Andrej Kiska focused on more specific areas, such as healthcare and education. He was more specific also in the field of corruption: I will continue in saying that the state and its institutions have no excuse in their performance in healthcare. They have direct influence on healthcare. The state fails in this field and I consider that healthcare should finally become top priority of the government. (Kiska 2016) President In office Government In office Critique of the government % Michal Kováč Vladimír Mečiar political conflicts 33 Jozef Moravčík N/A N/A Vladimír Mečiar economy, corruption, democracy 63 Rudolf Schuster Mikuláš Dzurinda regional differences, economy 61 Mikuláš Dzurinda reforms, social securities 58 Ivan Gašparovič Mikuláš Dzurinda reforms, social securities 38 Robert Fico education 4 Ivan Gašparovič Robert Fico education 2 Iveta Radičová social securities, political conflicts 55 Robert Fico no 0 Andrej Kiska inc. Robert Fico corruption, healthcare, education 45 Robert Fico inc. corruption 30 Table 2. Governmental politics criticized by the presidents In inter-executive relations party affiliation is an important factor that lies behind political conflicts (Protsyk 2005, 2006). The analysis of presidential speeches shows that the party or ideological affiliation is significant also in delivering critique towards the government. In case of different political orientation the number of negative critique is substantially higher than positive remarks of government s performance. The only exception is the second president Rudolf Schuster who was active not only politically, but also in government s critique. On the other hand, similar political orientation could be seen only during the terms of the president Ivan Gašparovič and prime minister Robert Fico. Gašparovič did not address any critique towards Fico s second government and was his loyal partner in political matters. Somewhat illustrative is his statement during the cabinet formation: Let s be positive and let the government to implement their ideas; that is how we give chance to ourselves as well (Gašparovič 2006) Moreover, even during Fico s cabinet he addressed critique to previous governments of Mikuláš Dzurinda or Iveta Radičová.

7 President Political party Government Political party Party affiliation / % % Ideological orientation neg. pos. Michal Kováč HZDS Vladimír Mečiar 1 HZDS different 33 0 Vladimír Mečiar 2 HZDS different 63 0 Rudolf Schuster SOP Mikuláš Dzurinda 1 SDK 4 similar Mikuláš Dzurinda 2 SDKÚ different Ivan Gašparovič 1 HZD Mikuláš Dzurinda 2 SDKÚ different Robert Fico 1 SMER-SD similar 4 21 Ivan Gašparovič 2 SMER-SD Robert Fico 1 SMER-SD similar 2 24 Iveta Radičová SDKÚ different Robert Fico 2 SMER-SD similar 0 17 Andrej Kiska non-partisan Robert Fico 2 SMER-SD different Robert Fico 3 SMER-SD different Table 3. Party affiliation of top executives and percentage of negative and positive remarks towards the government in presidents speeches Conclusion President of Slovakia has weak constitutional competences and his role includes mainly ceremonial and representative functions. So far there have been four presidents during five presidential terms. Even if the formal position of the president is quite weak and is not a key political actor (Spáč 2013), he can effectively deliver his political preferences. The scope of this paper was to look closely to domestic presidential speeches that they delivered and to explore in which areas they criticized the government. The study comes with three main conclusions. The first one is that the presidents criticized the government in the field of domestic politics, whereas foreign politics was considered as successful. Thus, presidents often accentuated the government success regarding negotiation process and acting in the European Union and NATO. The second conclusion is that presidents did not come up with the own political ideas. This conclusion supports the characteristic of Slovak presidents as merely representative figures who do not pursue their own political agenda. The third conclusion is in a line with previous studies that identified party affiliation as important factor in inter-executive relations (Protsyk 2005, Sedelius 2006, Sedelius and Mashtaler 2013). In case of Slovakia, presidents tend to criticize more the government that is ideologically different. An interesting example is Ivan Gašparovič who used to criticize former governments. As the third conclusion suggests, even though presidents in their speeches declare independence and neutrality, in reality they follow division of political parties. 4 SDK was created as an electoral party composed of the candidates of the five founding parties - the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the Democratic Union (DU), the Democratic Party (DS), the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia (SDSS) and the Green Party in Slovakia (SZS) (Malová and Učeň 1999)

8 References Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. [Online] [Date: 23. November 2016.] Amorim Neto, Octavio and Kaare, Strøm Breaking the Parliamentary Chain of Delegation: Presidents and Non-Partisan Cabinet Members in European Democracies. British Journal of Political Science. 2006, Vol. 36, No. 4, p Andrej Kiska. Andrej Kiska prezident Slovenskej republiky. [Online] [Date: 18. July 2017.] Baylis, Thomas A Embattled executives: Prime ministerial weakness in East Central Europe. Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 2007, Vol. 40, No. 1, p Presidents versus Prime Ministers: Shaping Executive Authority in Eastern Europe. World Politics. 1996, Vol. 48, No. 3, p Constitution of the Slovak Republic. Prezident Slovenskej republiky. [Online] [Date: 10. July 2017.] Hague, Rod and Harrop, Martin Government and Governance. Comparative Government and Politics. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p ISBN Ivan Gašparovič. Prezident Slovenskej republiky Ivan Gašparovič. [Online] [Date: 18. July 2017.] Köker, Philipp Veto et Peto: Patterns of Presidential Activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London) Krouwel, André Measuring presidentialism and parliamentarism: An Application to Central and East European Countries. Acta Politica. 2003, Vol. 38, No. 4, p Leško, Marián Mečiar a mečiarizmus. Bratislava : VMV, a.s., ISBN Liebhart, Karin Icon of the Orange Revolution, Evita of Kyiv, Ukrainian Barbie doll, Jeanne d Arc, innocent victim? The multifaceted visual representations of Yulia Tymoshenko. Politics in Central Europe. 2013, p Malová, Darina and Rybář, Marek Slovakia s presidency: consolidating democracy by curbing ambiguous powers. [aut. book] Robert Elgie a Sophia Moestrup. Semi-Presidentialism in Central and Eastern Europe. Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2008, p ISBN

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10 Siaroff, Alan Comparative presidencies: The inadequacy of the presidential, semipresidential and parliamentary distinction. European Journal of Political Research. 2003, No. 42, p SITA Pravda. Gašparovič: Prezident nemôže byť apolitický. [Online] 13. January [Date: 23. November 2016.] Spáč, Peter Slovakia: In search of limits. [aut. book] Vít Hloušek. Presidents above Parties? Presidents in Central and Eastern Europe, Their Formal Competencies and Informal Power. Brno : Masarykova univerzita, Tavits, Margit Presidents with Prime Ministers: Do Direct Elections Matter? New York : Oxford University Press, ISBN Tódová, Monika sme.sk. Som člen Smeru. [Online] 31. March [Date: 10. Máj 2016.] List of Abbreviations HZD Hnutie za demokraciu; Movement for Democracy HZDS Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko; Movement for a Democratic Slovakia SDK Slovenská demokratická koalícia; Slovak Democratic Coalition Slovenská demokratická a kresťanská Únia; SDKÚ Slovak Democratic and Christian Union SMER-SD Smer - Sociálna demokracia; Direction Social Democracy SOP Strana občianskeho porozumenia, Party of Civic Understanding