The article is devoted to the characteristics of the ‘hung parliament’ in the Westminster System and its influence on government formation. Some interesting aspects has been chosen to illustrate the problem of minority government existence in Great Britain. Author explains normative and non-normative systemic factors that influenced the formation of the government cabinets without a sufficient majority in the parliament. The main thesis is that creation of minority governments is closely associated with the evolution of the party system and can be a kind of political barometer that predict or confirm appropriate changes at the party scene.

In recent years, the United Kingdom has seen a growing doctrinal discourse around competing models of legal and political constitutionalism. The situation has been exacerbated by ongoing changes in both theory and practice, which have engendered a strong conviction that the UK is now departing from the political constitutionalism associated with the traditional model of parliamentary sovereignty, in which Parliament’s legislative power is unlimited by law and the courts have no right to question the validity of laws on substantive grounds. From a theoretical point of view, legal constitutionalists contributed to provoking this change while desiring to continue to promote it by moving almost completely and exclusively towards legal constitutionalism, thus supplanting its political formula. From a practical point of view, however, one should bear in mind that the events that led to a specific change in thinking about British constitutionalism encompass, in particular, the legal consequences resulting from the UK’s membership in the European Union, including the phenomenon of the so-called judicial activism. Nevertheless, these events were also induced by the expansion and strengthening of judicial review of administrative actions, judicial shaping of the principle of legality, as well as by the enactment and application of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Government, Cohabitation, Opposition. Poland’s Case against the Background of other States’ Experiences

The systemic transformation in Poland – initiated in 1989 – was full of events that constituted challenges for the ongoing political and systemic changes. The intensity of those current since autumn 2023 is particularly high. They refer to the functioning of the government and the opposition, as well as the head of state who participates in it. This article examines not only the models of relations between the government and the opposition, but also the cognitively intriguing phenomenon of cohabitation, but not only in Poland. The other states mentioned in the article, namely France, Great Britain, Sweden and Norway, also become a points of reference for considerations hereby. These considerations lead to the conclusion that the Polish model of cohabitation is conflict-oriented, and the relations between the government and the opposition are not so much Westminster-like, but quasi-Westminster-like.