The Coalition Agreement between the Political Parties: Foreign Experience and Russian Perspectives

This article analyzes the main approaches to theory and practice of the conclusion of the coalition agreements between political parties in foreign countries. According to the author, this experience can be useful in Russian practice. Separately, the author deals with the question of the justiciability of these agreements, thus he reflects Israeli and German legal doctrine on the matter which have not been studied in the Russian legal science yet. It is noted that there is also a problem of enshrining policy decisions in their legal form. For example, the political elite makes a decision according to which certain political forces should not be accepted for representation in Parliament. This political decision could be made in the form of specific legislative acts. Of course, it is rather a negative example, but it shows that the law, indeed, can act as a tool of legitimation of political decisions. Another example: the model of decision-making process, which is used inside a political party, can be transformed into a mechanism at the legislative level. The following components that are usually present in the coalition agreements can be found: fundamentals of the state policy in various spheres; the distribution of government posts, procedural matters, including the formation of a coalition of various bodies and decisionmaking rules. It is concluded that the subject of an agreement between the political parties in the State Duma may be perhaps the only joint actions, in particular, a vote on certain bills either for or against particular candidates (except the President of the Government), whose appointment falls under the authority of the Lower House, for example, when voting on the approval of the candidate of the Chairman of the Accounting Chamber of the Russian Federation. Another thing is that such agreements are likely to be a verbal agreement concluded ad hoc (despite the fact that the State Duma's legislative work plan shall be approved in advance), while the negotiating process will be very quick in nature.

political parties, elections, the coalition agreement, judicial protection, the foundations of state policy, the State Duma, the Russian Federation, Israel, Netherlands, mixed Republic, dominated by the President

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