Transnational Elite Networks and the Dormancy of Parliaments: The Causes of Judiciary Empowerment in Central and Eastern Europe

The exceptional empowerment of the judiciary, in formal terms, throughout post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has followed an institutional design the uniformity of which is explained by its common origin in a network of transnational legal professionals who constitute both an epistemic community and a community of interest. This origin, however, does not adequately explain the success of their design template. An equally important but far less observable cause is the 'dormancy' of CEE parliaments; in particular, the puzzling lack of resistance by the majority of elected representatives to their own correlative disempowerment. This article makes a start at investigating parliamentary dormancy as a causal factor, three aspects of which are explored: dormancy of origination of judiciary design norms; of oversight of the designers; and of vetoing transfers of power from parliament to the judiciary.