Thesupreme executive and administrative organ, also known as the executive and administrative organ of thesupreme state organ of power, is, inliberal democratic parlance, the executive organ ofcommunist states. It is also synonymous with the termgovernment, which in communist terminology does not mean the state at large but only its executive and administrative functions. TheCouncil of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the world's first executive and administrative organ of a communist state. Except forCuba, the other existing communist states ofChina,Laos,North Korea, andVietnam designate the supreme executive and administrative organ as an internal organ of the supreme state organ of power. The Cuban state follows theSoviet tradition, and describes the government as a constitutive organ of theunified state apparatus.
The supreme executive and administrative organs are most commonly given the name "Council of Ministers". Albeit, in Czechoslovakia it was known as the government, while it was designated as theFederal Executive Council in Yugoslavia.[1] In the existing communist states, the executive organ has a plethora of designations: as theState Council in China, as government in Laos and Vietnam, as theCouncil of Ministers in Cuba, and as theCabinet in North Korea.[1] The head of the organ is the equivalent of aprime minister in non-communist states.
Perunified power, the executive organ is subordinate to the supreme state organ of power. Most accountability work is transferred to thepermanent organ of the supreme state organ of power.[2] However, in reality, since the establishment of the first communist state in Russia, the executive organ has been more powerful than the supreme state organ of power, according to scholar Georg Brunner.[3] Across most communist states, the most powerful state organ is the executive organ. In cases where it is not, the permanent organ most often acts as the most powerful state organ. The reason for its preeminent position is that the executive organ is responsible for the state administrative structures, meaning ministries, departments, and other administrative units. In certain cases, the executive organ developed from being a mere administrative decision coordinator to its prime instigator.[4]
All minister-level officials are members of the executive organ, which is a collective decision-making organ.[5] In between sessions of the full executive organ, powers are delegated to a standing board, either known as the presidium, as in the Soviet Union, or theexecutive meeting, as in China. The standing board is composed of the head of government and other senior members of the executive organ, most commonly the deputy heads of government. The standing board, like the executive organ as a whole, is formally a collective organ. Members officially make decisions collegially, but the head of government presumably dominates these organs.[6]
There have been cases in communist history in which the party leader concurrently served as thehead of government.Vladimir Lenin served as both the party's informal leader and the executive organ's head. After his death,Alexey Rykov served as head of government untilJoseph Stalin's protege,Vyacheslav Molotov, took power.[7] At the height of his powers, Stalin concurrently served as party general secretary and head of the executive organ. Having the party leader serve concurrently as head of government was common in the late 1940s and early 1950s in communist Europe. However, this norm was eventually discarded since it was believed to centralize too much power in one person.[8] Ever since, the norm has been that the party leader and the head of the executive organ are two distinct individuals.[9]
Thecommunist parties of communist states use their powers to control the state, either formally through thesupreme state organ of power or informally, by colonizing[vague] theunified state apparatus. That means that the highest organs of these parties, thepolitburo and thesecretariat, usually only intervene in special cases, and let the state's executive organ mostly handle administrative affairs without interference.[10]
