Abstract
Even though Montenegro represents a semi-presidential political system with the president possessing weak power, political parties in Montenegro are under strong influence of the process of their presidentialisation. The presidentialisation of political parties does not represent only a direct product of institutional influence on the political system, as Montenegro has never had a presidential system. Montenegro’s semi-presidential system is closest to the president-parliamentary type. Analysing the statutes of six dominant political parties, it is evident that “the power of presidents of political parties in Montenegro is very important” (Vujović and Tomović, 2015: 177). The strong power of presidents to appoint the members of relevant party executive bodies and party members who are candidates for holding positions in the Parliament, as well as in the government, is noticeable. Party presidents in most Montenegrin parties control decision-making processes within the party. Aside from prerogatives which originate from the party’s statutes, party leaders possess significant power through informal methods of influence.
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Notes
- 1.
Most Montenegrin scholars classify Montenegro as a parliamentary regime (Darmanović 2015) and not as semi-presidential as it fits only two of the four criteria for that type of system developed by Shugart and Carey (1992: 24): (1) directly elected President and (2) cabinet ministers are subject to parliamentary confidence. The other two criteria, the President appoints and dismisses cabinet ministers and the President has the power to dissolve parliament or legislative powers, do not fit the Montenegrin case.
- 2.
“The criterion by which a party is declared dominant is seldom operationalised, but the general idea is clear enough: Whenever we find, in a polity, a party that outdistances all the others, this party is dominant in that it is significantly stronger than the others. Let us draw up, therefore, a list of countries that meet this general idea. Assuming that about 10 percentage points of difference between the stronger and the other parties suffices to qualify a dominant party, some twenty countries can be rank-ordered on the basis of the interval between their dominant party and the one that comes next… (Sartori 1976: 171).
- 3.
Due to the frequent appearances of coalition parties, there is no data on the number of votes that the parties win individually, so we used the percentages of seats won.
- 4.
If we apply the formula for calculating the number of effective parties to DF as a single entity, then the number of effective parties is reduced, amounting to 4.2 for the elections held in 2012, and 3.9 for those held in 2016.
- 5.
The President of the party and the state was Momir Bulatović, whilst Vice-Presidents of the party held the position of the Prime Minister—Djukanović—and the position of the Montenegrin Parliament Speaker—Svetozar Marović. The fourth Vice-President, Milica Pejanović-Djurisic, did not hold state functions at that time. Pejanović-Djurisic covered the position of the DPS President for a short period after the removal of Bulatović from 1997 to 1998, before Djukanović was elected for this position. Bulatović established the Socialist People’s Party in 1997, from which he was dismissed in 2000.
- 6.
The highest governing body of the Liberal Alliance of Montenegro in 2005 decided to “freeze” the work, which later resulted in shutting down of the party that at that point had five MPs in the national as well as councillors in a number of the country’s municipalities. In the nineties, LSCG was the leading independent party until the DPS officially changed its programme in the Congress in 2000 and made a transition from the unionist to the independent party. Liberals, sharp opponents of the DPS, could not support the movement for independence led by Djukanović. Although the party shut down, part of the former leadership formed the Liberal Party of Montenegro, which cherishes the idea but does not enjoy significant support from voters.
- 7.
The New Serbian Democracy primarily represents a transformed Serbian People’s Party, which in 2009 unified with the National Socialist Party, a split from the SNP, which was once led by former SNP leader Momir Bulatović. The People’s Socialist Party had a parliamentary status, thanks to belonging to a coalition Serbian list led by the Serbian People’s Party. By creating a new party, its founders tried to get closer to the political centre, which caused resistance within the party and resulted in the creation of a new party led by Dobrilo Dedejić, one of the leaders of the Serbian People’s Party (Vujović 2012: 79).
- 8.
Movement for Changes is a full member of the International Democratic Union, the world association of conservatives known as ACRE Europe.
- 9.
Statutes, rulebooks and other acts of DPS, SDP, BS, NOVA, PzP and SNP were analysed.
- 10.
The study of statutory powers and responsibilities of the party President are very important for understanding the level of intra-party democracy. Whilst studying the degree of intra-party democracy of political parties in Montenegro, many authors used the statutory powers of the presidents as one of the important elements of the dimensions of involvement which refer to the horizontal aspects of the political parties and indicate the number of members of the political parties involved in the decision-making process, and refer to the difference in the scope of the powers given to the wider party bodies in relation to the powers enjoyed by the inner circle of the leadership of the party. On the other hand, the dimensions of autonomy refer to the rights and protection of party members, the autonomy of the local levels of the party and the direct influence of local authorities in the decision-making process at the national level of the party. With respect to these two dimensions, each of which has a series of indicators, and depending on the combination of the values, four types of parties can be distinguished: the low level of democracy party (low autonomy and low inclusion level); democratic centralism party (low level of autonomy and high level of inclusion); individualist-elitist type of party (high level of autonomy and low level of inclusion) and parties of full democracy (high level of autonomy and high level of inclusion). See more in Čular (2004: 35) and Vujović and Tomović (2015: 153–182).
- 11.
Statute of Social Democratic Party.
- 12.
Ibidem.
- 13.
Statute of Social Democratic Party.
- 14.
Statute of Democratic Party of Socialists.
- 15.
Statute of Social Democratic Party.
- 16.
Statute of Democratic Party of Socialist.
- 17.
Statute of Social Democratic Party.
- 18.
Statute of the Socialist People’s Party.
- 19.
Statutes of the Movement for Changes, Bosniak Party and New Serbian Democracy.
- 20.
Statutes of the Movement for Changes and New Serbian Democracy.
- 21.
Statute of the Bosniak Party.
- 22.
Ibidem.
- 23.
Statutes of the Movement for Changes and Bosniak Party.
- 24.
Statute of the Bosniak Party.
- 25.
Statutes of the Democratic Party of Socialists, Social Democratic parties and Socialist People’s Party.
- 26.
Statute of the Democratic Party of Socialists.
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Vujović, Z., Tomović, N. (2019). The Presidentialisation of Political Parties in Montenegro: A Limited Semi-presidentialism. In: Passarelli, G. (eds) The Presidentialisation of Political Parties in the Western Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97352-4_6
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