The Dominance of the Executive

The latest wave of globalization, which includes European integration processes, has brought about new challenges to the processes of democratization. Among the key problems is the evolving power of both governments and the supranational financial and economic power centers, including intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank, IMF and OECD. In this article, we will examine the trends in the relationships between the national executives and national legislatures in relation to the globalization/Europeanization processes. Since a core of post-communist countries have recently undergone a transition to democracy, a consolidation of democracy, as well as European integration, and since all these processes have been very much embedded in the latest wave of globalization, they make for a good example in terms of analyzing the interference of the processes and their outcome. Unlike the old EU member states, which originally initiated European integration processes for reasons of ecoDanica Fink-Hafner Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana