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To this day, no adequate solution has been found for measuring the strength of executives in political science. Despite the widespread use of several methods for measuring presidential powers, critical investigation of these methods still needs to be conducted. The author analyzes methods that have been established by Shugart and Carey, by Frye, McGregor, Hellman, Krouwel, Siaroff, Johannsen and Nørgaard among others. When discussing mistakes in the measurement of presidential powers (e.g., where authors fail to consider the informal powers of presidents, where measurements are based on a constitution and not on political practice, and where authors do not differentiate between significant and insignificant powers), the author tries to remove some of the problems of measurement. He modifies Krouwel's method based on measuring the presidential score and parliamentary score that allows us to "weigh" the presidential and parliamentary components of any form of government, whether presidential, parliamentary, or semi-presidential. He suggests a method of measuring based on the calculation of the index of the form of government (IFG), which is calculated by subtracting the parliamentary score from the presidential score. A positive IFG indicates the attraction of a system to presidentialism, and negative its shift to parliamentarism. This methodology is sensitive to post-communist realities and countries with informal politics. On calculating the IFG for the post-communist states, the author specifies clusters of such systems (presidentialized, balanced, parliamentarized) and shows the importance of measuring forms of government in contemporary political studies. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n1s1p443

Ethnic conflict management includes a set of institutional and noninstitutional features for preventing and resolving ethnic conflicts. Among the large number of measures of national states and other political actors, one can especially figure out – the optimal organization of government system, which can calm ethnically colored conflicts, up to violence, armed warfare and civil wars. This article discusses the problem of the relationship between forms of government, on the one hand, and ethnic conflicts, on the other. That causation received small attention in political science. The authors answer the question of which form of government – presidential or parliamentary – creates risks of ethnic conflict. The purpose of the article is to identify institutional elements that pose a threat to ethnic peace and harmony, as well as show the positive features of presidentialism and parliamentarism that to calm ethnic conflicts. The authors chose neoinstitutionalism as the main methodological approach, which determines the central place of political institutions in explaining the nature of ethnic conflicts. The authors' conclusions are based on a comparative analysis of the theoretical and empirical results of studies of ethnic conflicts. The authors conclude that the presidential system creates more favorable conditions for calming ethnic conflicts that the parliamentary system do. In order to "smooth out" the negative consequences of the presidential and parliamentary systems, national governments conduct institutional "experiments" to modernize classical institutional models. The article discusses atypical systems and atypical elements of systems that help solve problems inherent in a "pure" presidential and "pure" parliamentary system. The article also assesses empirical studies that providing research on causation between government and ethnic conflicts.

Prevention and ethnic conflicts resolution is an urgent task both at the level of theory and political practice. To solve it, institutional measures are used, including the design of a form of government. The purpose of the article is to determine the state of study of the problem of the relationship between forms of government and ethnic conflicts, mainly in contemporary foreign political science. The author proceeds from the idea that the form of government as an institutional structure affects the emergence, flow, and termination of ethnic conflicts, but at the same time it should be considered as one of the variables along with the electoral system and form of government. The article notes the contradictory nature of the theoretical positions of supporters of different approaches - consociationalism centripetalism and power-dividing approach. The most common point of view that a parliamentary system is more suitable for a multi-ethnic society is criticized. The author emphasizes the importance of conscious design of forms of government, aimed at abandoning the "pure" presidential and parliamentary systems and the creation of atypical institutions, which are given some attention in the article. Empirical studies using statistical methods have been carried out in recent years to identify the relationship between forms of government and ethnic conflicts. The author evaluates them and introduces the reader to the results of his own research using correlation and regression analysis. He concludes that the hypothesis about the influence of the form of government on ethnic conflicts requires further empirical testing on a large array of cases over a long period of time. At the end of the article, an analysis is given of the main methodological problems that researchers face when conducting a comparative study of ethnic conflicts and their relationship with political institutions. The author concludes that the problem of the relationship between forms of government and ethnic conflicts has not yet been resolved in political science.