Parliamentary speakership: from individual speakership to the collective direction of parliamentary work

Abstract

The article explains the evolution of the parliamentary speakership in different countries of continental Europe in the XIX and XX centuries. The text focuses on three questions in order to define how the speakership was shaped in the parliaments that emerged from the liberal revolution: the procedure by which the speaker was elected, the duration of his mandate and his functions. Starting from the definition of the initial model, it analyzes how after the II World War the direction of parliamentary work evolved towards a shared model involving three bodies. These were the speakership itself, the bureau of the chamber and the conference of presidents of the parliamentary groups, with functions delimited among the three bodies and the speakership maintaining those competencies that had necessarily to be performed by a unipersonal body.