Abstract
The formal structures of government — constitutions, legislatures and executives — have not normally been accorded much attention in the study of communist political systems. There are good reasons for this. In the first place, the electoral system is closely controlled in these countries, and, although there is sometimes a choice of candidate or even of party in local or national elections, the whole process is closely monitored by the communist party and no candidates openly opposed to Marxist–Leninist principles are allowed to stand. The legislatures to hich the deputies are elected meet infrequently, their votes are normally unanimous, their legislative output is fairly meagre, and no direct challenge is ever issued to the governments which are nominally responsible to them. The ommunist or ruling party normally provides a majority of deputies in these assemblies, its members constitute a party group or caucus which is expected to ake a leading part in their proceedings, and party members, all of them subject to party discipline, dominate the key positions at all levels. Although there is some ariety among them in terms of institutional form (see Table 3.1) and, as we shall see, in organisational effectiveness, it has been conventional, for reasons such s these, to regard communist legislatures as mere ‘rubber stamps’ and formal overnment structures more generally as of little consequence for the domestic political process.
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Further Reading
The constitutions of the communist states are reprinted in William B. Simons (ed.), The Constitutions of the Communist World (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1980).
The role of legislatures more particularly is considered in Daniel Nelson and Stephen White, (eds.), Communist Legislatures in Comparative Perspective (London, 1982), which devotes particular attention to Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, the USSR and China.
On the electoral system in the communist states, see Alex Pravda, ‘Elections in communist party states’, in Guy Hermet et al. (eds.), Elections without Choice (London, 1978).
The works of Marxist theory that bear most closely on the state are Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
and V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917), both of which are available in a variety of modern editions.These and other works of Marxist theory are of course open to a number of interpretations and do not necessarily justify all the actions that communist governments have taken in their name.
General treatments of state institutions in the USSR include Peter Vanneman, The Supreme Soviet (Durham, N.C., 1977),
Theodore H. Friedgut, Political Participation in the USSR (Princeton, N.J., 1979),
Ronald J. Hill, Soviet Politics, Political Science and Reform (Oxford, 1980)
and Stephen White, ‘The USSR Supreme Soviet: a developmental perspective’, in Nelson and White (eds.), Communist Legislatures in Comparative Perspective. The Soviet Constitution is available in pamphlet form (Moscow 1977, repr. 1980)
and with extensive introductions in Robert Sharlet (ed.), The New Soviet Constitution of 1977 (Brunswick, Ohio, 1978)
and in F. J. M. Feldbrugge (ed.), The Constitution of the USSR and the Union Republics (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1979).
The electoral process is considered in some detail in Victor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym, ‘The functions of elections in the USSR’, Soviet Studies XXX (1980);
the role of the Supreme Soviet in budgetary matters is examined in Stephen White, ‘The Supreme Soviet and budgetary politics in the USSR’, British Journal of Political Science XII (1982).
P. P. Gureyev and P. I. Segudin, Legislation in the USSR (Moscow, 1977)
and M. A. Krutogolov, Talks on Soviet Democracy (Moscow, 1980) give the Soviet point of view upon these matters.
An assessment of governmental structures in Eastern Europe, as well as in other communist polities, is available in Bogdan Szajkowski (ed.), Marxist Governments: A World Survey, 3 vols. (London, 1981).
General surveys of Eastern Europe in this connection include Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone and Andrew Gyorgy (eds.), Communism in Eastern Europe (Bloomington and London, 1979)
and François Fejtö, A History of the People’s Democracies, rev. edn (Harmondsworth, 1974), as well as the contributions on Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania to Nelson and White (eds.), Communist Legislatures.
On particular countries, Czechoslovakia 1968 is very fully dealt with in H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1976)
and also in Galia Golan, Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia 1968–1969 (Cambridge, 1973).
On Yugoslavia, Dennison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment 1948–1974 (London, 1977) is outstanding;
Fred Singleton, Twentieth Century Yugoslavia (London, 1976) has a useful chapter on constitutional changes.
The reform period in Hungary is fully covered in W. F. Robinson, The Pattern of Reform in Hungary (New York, 1975).
The Polish crisis of 1980 and after is fully documented in Radio Free Europe Research (available on subscription); earlier events in that country are covered in R. F. Leslie et al., A History of Poland since 1863 (Cambridge, 1980).
The Chinese Constitution of March 1978 is reprinted as a pamphlet, The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (Peking, 1978), and in Peking Review, no. 11 (1978).
The most thorough study of the NPC is Donald Gasper, ‘The Chinese National People’s Congress’, which is in Nelson and White, Communist Legislatures.
More generally, A. Doak Barnett, Bureaucracy and Political Power in Communist China (New York, 1967) is an immensely detailed and classic study,
and Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organisation in Communist China, 2nd edn (Berkeley and London, 1968) is also invaluable.
On the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the central state bureaucracy, see Donald W. Klein, ‘The State Council and the Cultural Revolution’, in John W. Lewis (ed.), Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China (London, 1970).
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© 1982 Stephen White, John Gardner and George Schöpflin
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White, S., Gardner, J., Schöpflin, G. (1982). Structures of Government. In: Communist Political Systems. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16851-4_3
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