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The position of the head of state in Croatia on a 'roller coaster': From a member of federation and collective presidency to semi-presidential and parliamentary system of the independent state

The former socialist countries as new democracies in Europe after the end of the Cold War were without exception the areas in which the whole political system changed in a short time, and not on a one-time basis but multiple times. In this matter, a part of these countries changed not only the earlier autocratic system of government, but also the public law framework such as the successor states of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In these processes, the position of the head of state was particularly important, and it was considered a stabilising political institution in the context of fundamental changes. In this process, Croatia experienced even the third dramatic change, because in it, as well as in the neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, political and public law changes proceeded in the middle of the war after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. In such circumstances, the directly elected president of the state imposed themselves not only as a central institution of the semi-presidential system, but also as a kind of a guarantor of the fight for state independence and territorial integrity. Their constitutional position and political importance was emphasized exactly by the independence of Croatia from the rest of Yugoslavia and the war which followed. Several years after the end of the war, the new government also changed the existing semi-presidential system into the parliamentary one, but kept the direct election of the state president all the same. By comparing the position of the head of state in Croatia immediately before the beginning of democratic transition and the collapse of Yugoslavia, during the gaining of independence and war and after constitutional changes, the article analyses in what way political circumstances dictate constitutional decisions and – how much they are sustainable in different circumstances.

Croatia ; president ; head of state ; political system ; presidential elections

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