The new model of the state – the constitutional position of the president in the April Constitution of 1935
- Institution: The Departament of Constitutional Law of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9037-2614
- Year of publication: 2018
- Source: Show
- Pages: 73-87
- DOI Address: https://doi.org/10.15804/ppk.2018.06.06
- PDF: ppk/46/ppk4606.pdf
The March Constitution of 1921, which was to set the framework of a democratic state, but turned out to be an act that would not fit into the balance of power in the state. As a result of the crisis of Polish parliamentarism and the political situation in Europe, the desire to change the system quickly increased. The effect of this was the adoption of the April Constitution April 23, 1935. It was supposed to constitute a kind of compromise between authoritarian and nationalistic tendencies – which in Polish society raised wider opposition and liberalism, which in Polish political conditions did not gain support. The April Constitution denied the classical principle of the division of powers. It was replaced by the principle of concentration of power in the person of the president. This was due to the need to adjust the authoritarian system to the new concept of power and to remodel a decision center that would concentrate the process of governance in all the most important state matters. Centralization of power in the person of the president was aimed at strengthening the state, especially in international relations, and was in line with trends visible in other European countries. In emerging concepts of political changes, the president was perceived as the only organ that implemented the legal order and the superior of the state. The article is to bring the problem of the functioning of the power structure under the April constitution.