Author: Cindy Skach | Journal of Democracy

Cindy Skach, associate professor of government at Harvard, is author of Borrowing Constitutional Designs: Constitutional Law in Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic (2005).

July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3

A Fresh Look at Semipresidentialism: The Russian Predicament

Timothy J. Colton
Cindy Skach

At the end of the Cold War, semipresidentialism became the modal constitution of the postcommunist world. In Russia and other post-Soviet states, however, this system of government has impeded consolidation.