The country's policy is led and directed by the President of the Republic, although according to the Constitution that role belongs to the Prime Minister, and the ministers, almost like in the time of Prince Miloš, sit like staff scribes and write down his orders
Ten days after the Feast of the Assumption, the day when the Government, an important institution of the State of Serbia, was founded 221 years ago, its supreme executive body that leads and directs the country's policy, current Prime Minister Đuro Matsut proposed the dissolution of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. Of course, one has nothing to do with the other, the dissolution of the Government is a consequence of other imposed circumstances and happened to coincide with a great date in the history of Serbia, which, by the way, was not even mentioned this year.
So, on the Feast of Our Lady, August 28, 1805 (according to the Gregorian calendar), the first government of the modern Serbian state was formed, headed by Proto Matej Nenadović. It was only a year after the First Serbian Uprising broke out. Thus, practically from the beginning of its existence, the Serbian state, along with the National Assembly, which sat permanently as the highest authority, along with the "supreme leader" and military commander Karađorđ Petrović, also received the executive body of the supreme authority, the Government, which was called the Praviteljstvujušći soviet (state council) with its ministers, the "trustees".
It was founded in the Voljavči monastery, under Rudnik. Due to the circumstances of the war, the seat of the Government was moved to the Bogovađa monastery, then in the same year to the liberated Smederevo, and two years later to the liberated Belgrade. Later, during the reign of Prince Miloš, it sat in Kragujevac, and at the end of his reign, it returned to Belgrade.
During the time of the defenders of the constitution, according to the constitution of 1838, it became part of the State Council, a somewhat broader body that prevented the emergence of absolutism as it was during the time of Prince Miloš. Karađorđe's son Aleksandar was brought as the prince, who guaranteed constitutional rule. After the return of Obrenović to the throne in 1859, absolutism also returned, and Prince Mihailo in 1861, in addition to abolishing the constitution, separated the Government and the State Council into two separate bodies. Then, for the first time, he officially called the members of the Government ministers, and the Government - the Council of Ministers. The Government will keep that name until 1945.
A certain interesting thing is related to the change of the title of the members of the Government to ministers. According to the memory of Dimitrije Marinković, the previous name "papecitelji" was changed to minister when it was discovered that in Russia, "papecitelji" does not mean a minister, but a pedagogical advisor. From that moment, says Marinković in his Memories and experiences, when the members of the Government were officially called ministers, somehow they "felt more elegant and European".
From the establishment until Đura Macuta, 177 cabinets were changed, which lasted less than 13 months on average. Nikola Pašić was the head of the government for the longest time, but with several interruptions, for 22 years, and the shortest was Jovan Ristić in his first term, only 17 days, when he resented Prince Mihail for personal reasons. The leader of the defenders of the constitution, Avram Petronijević, had the longest mandate (without interruption), for a little more than eight years, after whose sudden death the entire regime, as well as the throne of Karađorđević, began to weaken. The most famous Prime Ministers of Serbia, in addition to those already mentioned, were Ilija Garašanin, Milan Piroćanac, Stojan Novaković and Vladan Đorđević; during the federative (and federal) Yugoslavia, Blagoje Nešković, Slobodan Penezić, Marko Nikezić and Zoran Đinđić, and the first Prime Minister of the newly independent Serbia was Vojislav Koštunica.
If under the legal continuity of the Serbian state the era of the Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia (as a state with an address in Belgrade) would be counted, then the Prime Ministers Milan Stojadinović, former Minister of Finance from the time of the Kingdom of Serbia, Dušan Simović and Slobodan Jovanović should certainly be mentioned for their notable role. It is a little more difficult to make a shortlist of notable ministers, but you should definitely start with Dositej Obradović and Jakov Nenadović, and after them you should list Atanasi Nikolić, František Zaha, Stevan Petrović Knićanin, Jevrem Grujić, Stevča Mihalović, Milivoje Petrović Blaznavac, Rajko Lešjanin, Jovan Belimarković, Čedomil Mijatović, Milutin Garašanin, Đorđe Simić, Stepa Stepanović, Stojan Protić, Lazar Paču, Ljubomir Stojanović, Ljubomir Davidović, Milan Grol, Jaša Prodanović, Latinka Perović or, for example, Dragoslav Avramović.
The Government of Serbia changed its official name ten times. It is interesting that the concept of government itself, although colloquially it has always been called that, along with the synonym "governance", was rarely used under that official name - as political terminology implies. Before the aforementioned Ministerial Council, which lasted the longest - 84 years, the Government of Serbia had the official names: Governing Council, Guardianship Review Board, Law-Enforceable Part of the State Council and Central Government. After 1945, it was briefly called the People's Government of Serbia, from 1953 it became the Executive Council of Serbia, then the Republic Executive Council, the Executive Council of the Assembly of the SR of Serbia, and in January 1991 it was called the Government of the Republic of Serbia.
She changed a lot of addresses. It has already been said before that she moved from monastery lodgings in Uprising Serbia, via more elegant Turkish houses in liberated Smederevo or Belgrade, as well as that during the time of Prince Miloš, she stayed in Kragujevac Konak. At the time of the defenders of the constitution, in Belgrade, the ministers were already sitting in the Little Castle next to the prince's palace lower Terazije, and their main base from which they were delegated was in the new building of the State Council in Abadzijski Sokak, today's Kraljina Natalija Street. Prince Mihailo moved them from there to his new palace on the other side of the entrance in Terazijska Street (on the site of today's New Palace), which he did not move into himself. After the construction of the New Palace, the Government was finally moved in 1929 to its current address at number 11 Nemanjina Street.
During the time of Prince Miloš, the members of the government were not chosen by its president, but by Prince Miloš, and the prime minister did not receive a mandate after winning any elections, but by the will of the prince. In contrast to Karađorđe, who ignored the ministers, Prince Miloš treated the ministers as his staff scribes who write down his orders with pen and paper on the boxes around the prince's desk.
After the adoption of the 1888 constitution, Prime Ministers received their mandate after winning the parliamentary elections, and after the 1903 constitution, they have the sovereign right to choose the members of their cabinet. The king entrusted them with the mandate at the court ceremony only as a matter of protocol, without the right to object, according to the well-known Western European pattern called "Spanish protocol".
The communist revolution throughout Yugoslavia turned both Yugoslavia and Serbia into republics based on the Soviet model. The highest power, for a long time, was occupied by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the Communist Party of Serbia (later Unions of Communists of Yugoslavia and Serbia), the only permitted political party, through their central committees. All government officials at all levels, even MPs, were members of the KPS/SKS. Then the most stable governments were established, which usually lasted for four years since there were no opposing opinions or opposition.
After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991/1992. and the introduction of a multi-party system in Serbia, the Soviet-Russian model of the so-called facade democracy was again applied. The previous Union of Communists of Serbia changed its name and split into a large number of political parties, both positional and oppositional. This is how the ideological "monarchy" of the former Communist Party was established, and the parliamentary elections never became competitive for any kind of real opposition. Prime Ministers and their ministers are often appointed by the President of the Republic, who is also the leader of the ruling political party. The Prime Minister and ministers are in practice answerable to him, although according to the Constitution they are answerable to the National Assembly.
The country's politics is led and directed by the President of the Republic on behalf of his political party (although according to the Constitution that role belongs to the Prime Minister), the party to which he is allegedly the only one responsible for his actions, and the ministers, almost like in the time of Prince Miloš, sit, like staff scribes, with pen and paper on the boxes and write down his orders.
The key difference is in the source of power of Prince Miloš, who previously defeated the Turkish army in the Second Serbian Uprising, created a state, abolished feudalism and opened the first schools and a lyceum, while the source of power of almost every president of the Republic of Serbia is only in the political party created from the wing of the Communist Party in 1990 and the collapsed Yugoslav state.
After 1990, the Government of Serbia is mostly just a trope of the president of the republic whose ideological saint he is.
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