Featured Photo: Map owned by Google from Google Maps. Flag of Andorra edited on by me is in Public Domain.
Andorra is a tiny country tucked away in the Pyrenees mountains in Europe, completely landlocked by both Spain and France. As of 2017 it had a small population of just under 77,000, a drop in the ocean compared to most other countries, many cities even dwarf the population of little old Andorra. The country is known for its ski resorts, breathtaking mountain views and also its status as a tax-haven. Its capital city is Andorra La Vella, which means “Andorra the Town” located in the south-west of the country, the literal fact that their capital is referred to as a town just goes to show you how small things are over there. Andorra adopted the Euro in 2002, before that it didn’t have an official currency and instead used both French franc and Spanish Peseta, a trait of its strange history with the two countries and its unique monarch get-up which I will explain more on next.
Government Type
Andorra has a very unique political system, known as a parliamentary constitutional diarchy, what this means is that the country is ruled by a shared monarchy position, being called the Co-Princes of Andorra, both act as the countries monarchs, sharing the power between them, by this they are both also the Head of State of Andorra. The monarchy is a constitutional one and therefore they are not absolute and are constrained and exercised in their positions by a constitution, Andorra’s constitution only being ratified in 1993.
The country has an electable parliamentary system that debates on and passes legislation, which is passed on to the Executive government, headed by the countries Prime Minister, who acts as Head of Government, the legislation is also signed off by the Co-Princes.
The Executive Government and the Co-Monarchs
The Executive government involves the Prime Minister as Head of Government who is actually elected by the country’s parliament itself, rather than being appointed straight from the party with the largest majority after legislative elections. After the Head of Government is elected by parliament, he/she will then choose their seven ministers to serve on the Executive Council that they head, which acts as a cabinet. The Executive Council is charged with numerous decisions, such as implementation of legislation passed by parliament as well as meeting on various issues related to their ministerial positions.
The two monarchs of Andorra, the Co-Princes come from two different countries, one comes from France, whoever the current President of France is, will be who one of the Co-Princes are, so that means one Co-Prince technically has a 5-year term, except that France elects him, not Andorra, a bit weird but that is how it works, previously the role had been held by actual French royal family positions. The other Co-Prince hails from Spain, not the leader of Spain but instead the current Roman Catholic bishop from the Catalan city of La Seu d’Urgell, therefore not being electable. Since both monarchists have busy schedules in their own countries, they appoint a representative to Andorra to act in their place.
Basically, this strange co-principality get-up arose a very, very long time ago, due to a dispute between the bishop of Urgell from Spain and the Count of Foix from France, during this time Andorra was actually already under a co-principality, but it was two monarchs both from Spain, the Bishop of Urgell and Lord of Caboet, Andorra at this point had got its charter, in tradition, from Charlemagne, for fighting against the Moors, just if you was wondering why the land was prominent to begin with. Anyways, what happened was that the Lord’s daughter married the Count of Foix, so when the dispute arose, this made things more troublesome. Long story short the dispute was mediated by the Kingdom of Aragorn, a kingdom in Spain and to settle the dispute led to the signing of a treaty that led to a co-principality between France and the Spanish Bishop of Urgell, the sharing of powers and the small territory.
Anyways, the Co-Princes, or should I say, their representatives as well, have a number of executive powers they can utilize in Andorra, this includes things from appointing judges, signing off passed legislation, granting consent to treaties before they are ratified, appointing other office-positions in government, the ability to dissolve government and call for elections when needed, the ability to call for a referendum and the ability to pardon among a number of other powers, keep in mind though that some of these powers, such as dissolving government and calling elections, are limited by a constitution, making it hard to abuse the powers they have.
The Legislative Government
Andorra has a Unicameral Parliament, meaning it is just one equal house of elected members, it is called The General Council of Andorra or The General Council of the Valleys and its currently 28 members are elected every 4-years in legislative elections. Political parties are allowed in the country and so the parliament is made up of these said parties.
The parliament is charged with debating on and passing legislation on to the executive government and is also charged with electing the Prime Minister every 4-years after Legislative elections have taken place. The parliament is presided over by what is called a Sindic General and also his deputy subsindic, both being elected by the parliament every 3-years.
The Electoral Process
Legislative/Parliamentary elections happen every 4-years in Andorra and all citizens get two different votes to elect the current 28-member General Council. The first vote is to elect the first 14 members, 2 members being elected from each of the seven parishes, also called two-member constituencies, they are directly elected by popular vote from open-lists, they also get to vote for more than one candidate, they get to vote for two different candidates in this election, therefore proportional representation in this instance is eliminated.
The other 14 members are in-directly elected in a closed list system, meaning people vote for the party they want and the members are chosen by that party, it goes by proportional representation meaning the percentage each party gets is the percentage they make up from this specific way. These 14 other members represent Andorra as a whole and not individual parishes/constituencies, the way seats are allocated from this 2nd election uses the largest remainder method with the Hare quota formula.
Thank you for reading this post and I hope you learned something from it. Next up we will be heading back to Africa to see how Angola’s government system works.
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