№ 4 - 2004
Streltzina M.M.
Institutional Conditions of Setting Up Governmental Departments in Russia and in the USA (With Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry and the U.S. Homeland Security Department as Example)

Using the example of the emergence of the two respective new “emergency” departments adequate to new threats to national security — Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defence, Emergency Situations and Elimination of the Aftermath of Natural Calamities (Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations) and the Department of Homeland Security of the USA, — the author analyzes the distinction of Russian presidentialism from the classical American model. She convincingly demonstrates that the democratic parliamentary control of the work of the U.S. Administration, as well as the American President’s not disposing a legislative possibility to set up “privileged” presidential departments, are the fundamental institutional restrictions for the formation of governmental departments in the USA. Within the framework of the presidential model of post-Soviet Russia, there are no such restrictions, and for that reason Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations was raised by the executive power and joined the “presidential block” of strength structures directly subordinated to the President. This enables the author to affirm that in Russia, there has de facto formed a superpresidential system.