The Сonstitutional Principle of Separation of Powers: the Risk of Imbalance with Institutional Dominance

The subject of this study is the constitutional principle of separation of powers and its practical implementation in the modern Russian Federation, in particular the interaction between the judicial and legislative branches of government and the executive branch. The focus is not so much on the formal enshrinement of this principle in the text of the Constitution as on the real mechanisms of influence of the executive branch on the processes of personnel and institutional formation of other branches. The methodological basis of the work is comparative legal analysis, an institutional approach, and elements of systems analysis, which allow us to trace not only the legal but also the political and legal consequences of the emerging situation. The scientific novelty of the study lies in its attempt to consider the appointment of representatives of the judiciary not as a private personnel issue, but as an indicator of a possible change in the balance of powers directly related to the legislative process. The article formulates a hypothesis that the gradual normalisation of the court's dependence on the executive branch could lead to greater control over legislative activity and, ultimately, to a reduction in the autonomy of parliament as an institution. The author concludes that while formal procedures for the separation of powers remain in place, their actual content is undergoing transformation. This creates the risk of replacing the principle of balance of powers with its imitation and paves the way for the institutional domination of the executive branch, which in the long run could significantly change the nature of Russian lawmaking.

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