Parliament Research Articles

Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany?

The French and the German national parliaments are dominated by highly educated, older, and mostly male politicians. There are growing calls for a more balanced political representation of different social groups. This paper seeks to inform this debate by conceptualizing and measuring representation gaps for women, people of immigrant origin, the working class, and younger age groups in France and Germany and by assessing the potential of deliberative participatory fora to ameliorate underrepresentation. Based on theories of deliberative and participatory democracy, it suggests three criteria these fora must fulfill to potentially balance underrepresentation (descriptive representation in composition, deliberative quality, and coupling to politics) and explores them empirically in four recent cases of deliberative participatory fora: the Grand Débat National and the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat in France and the Bürgerrat Deutschlands Rolle in der Welt and the Bürgerrat Klima in Germany. We show that significant representation gaps exist for all groups studied. They have been narrowing for women and people of immigrant origin and remain most pronounced for class. Regarding institutional features, our cases fare relatively well in terms of balanced composition and deliberative quality, but the potential to balance representation gaps is seriously limited by a lack of coupling to the political system.

Women Leading the Opposition: Gender and Rhetoric in the European Parliament

The European Parliament (EP) is an intriguing arena to study the nexus between gender, speech-making, and leadership performance, as it simultaneously challenges and confirms gender-based hierarchies in legislative contexts. While the EP has a higher level of women’s representation than national parliaments, women’s access to top-level positions nonetheless remains limited. Yet the EP is a special case of a legislature. Lacking a right of initiative, it often acts collectively as an inter-institutional opposition to the EU core institutions. In this article, through a software-assisted analysis of EP debates following the president’s State of the Union Address, we investigate party group leaders’ evaluations of the Commission’s proposals and their charismatic rhetoric from a gender angle. Focusing on the three most recent legislatures (2009–2021), our analysis shows that while collective inter-institutional opposition is present in the EP, women leaders generally show higher levels of rhetorical skillfulness and voice either approval or opposition toward the Commission more emphatically than their male counterparts.

“Send a Soldier to Parliament”: Ex-servicemen, Masculinity, and the Legacies of the Great War in Liberal Electoral and Parliamentary Politics

AbstractThe spectacular collapse of the Liberal Party in Britain has often been regarded as the result of a crisis in Liberal values, supposedly provoked by the unprecedented militarization of British society during the Great War. However, this interpretation typically fails to recognize the extent to which the most important and visible legacies of that process of militarization were accommodated within the Liberal Party itself. Between 1918 and 1929, more than a hundred ex-servicemen were elected to Parliament as Liberal MPs, and scores more stood as Liberal candidates. This article examines how these men negotiated, presented, and performed their military identities within the framework of postwar electoral politics; analyzes how they operated in Parliament; and traces the longer-term trajectories of their political careers. It challenges the assumption that Liberals were temperamentally or ideologically incapable of engaging with the war's legacies, demonstrating the ability of Liberal candidates to exploit the iconography and rhetorical tropes of military service when appealing to an electorate that had been profoundly shaped by the experience of war and military mobilization. Liberals sought to contest Conservative Party attempts to monopolize the politics of patriotism after 1918 by constructing gendered electoral appeals that acknowledged the unstable meanings of the Great War and the ambiguous status of the men who had fought in it. However, the inability of Liberal politicians to unite around a shared understanding of what the war had meant ultimately prevented them from exploiting the memory of the conflict as effectively as their Conservative and Labour rivals.

Delayed cooperation: political systems, elections, and the outcomes of trade negotiations

Why do some trade negotiations conclude with preferential trade agreements, while others drag on indefinitely? Departing from prior focuses on established cooperation, this study emphasizes the trade negotiation process and accounts for the unconcluded talks. I argue that domestic uncertainties induced by political systems and elections will influence negotiation lengths and outcomes. On the one hand, political systems’ cohesion and efficiency in decision-making may affect the progress of trade negotiations. On the other hand, the unpredictability of electoral outcomes and calendars may prolong trade negotiations. To have a complete picture of trade negotiations, I collected an original Trade Bargaining Dataset, which contains information on both concluded and unconcluded talks. To test the hypotheses, I use a sample of 157 negotiations from 1980 to 2016, in which at least one negotiating country is from the Indo-Pacific region. The results from the Cox proportional hazard models show that parliamentary systems make negotiations smoother than presidential systems. Additionally, negotiating governments are not likely to sign agreements in election years, particularly in the elections of parliamentary and democratic countries. This study contributes to the trade cooperation literature by highlighting the variations in negotiation outcomes and offering a novel approach to investigating the negotiation process.

The Rise of the Right-Wing Good Party (İYİP) in Turkey: Authoritarian Turn, Anomie, and Regulatory Nostalgia

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the rise of a newly established nationalist right-wing political party in Turkey—namely the Good Party (İYİP)—with respect to the concept of anomie. In contrast to the mainstream literature, which exclusively concentrates on the concept of populism in its analysis of the rise of right-wing political parties, this study explains the İYİP’s advancement using Institutional Anomie Theory, along with the fall of the ‘Turkish Dream’, wherein the democratic and economic aspirations of the 2000s were hindered in the 2010s by the authoritarian turn and the entrenchment of the neoliberal economic order. In other words, a contradiction between historically embedded goals (democratization and wealth) and the political means exercised (authoritarian turn and neoliberalism) led to anomie in Turkey, which created a window of opportunity to be exploited by a right-wing political party. The article concludes, based on İYİP rhetoric, that the backlash against the authoritarian turn may surface in the form of regulatory nostalgia for the parliamentary system and exclusionary attitudes towards Syrians living in Turkey.

Applicability of the right to free elections clause of the ECHR to presidential elections: the case of Turkey's new presidential system

ABSTRACT Although Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR, which guarantees the rights of individuals to vote or to stand in free elections, is provided only for elections in which the legislature is chosen, the term legislature has not been interpreted by the ECtHR in a manner that excludes all bodies other than national parliaments. Whether various elections fall within the scope of P1-3 has been determined by examining the nature of the rulemaking power of the body at stake. In various applications regarding presidential elections, the Court has examined the influence of the President on the Parliament and his/her power to issue decrees, but it has not applied P1-3 in any presidential election so far. While the parliamentary and semi-presidential systems that most European countries adopt justify that conclusion, Turkey, which switched from a parliamentary system to a presidential system that favours the President over legislative and judicial branches, presents a significant exception. In this regard, this Article analyzes the presidential system that Turkey adopted along with the 2017 constitutional amendments within the Court's case-law and shows why presidential elections held under this system should be and probably will be considered to be within the scope of P1-3.

The Authoritarian Institution

Else Frenkel was associated with the University of Vienna for more than five years in total. She was studying eight semesters, from 1926 to 1930 at Austria’s biggest university, reached the position of a research assistant in the study year 1931/32 and worked a second time as temporary employee in 1936. The political climate in these years was characterized by racist Antisemitism and attacks against the parliamentarian democracy, by violence against “Jewish” and left-wing students and discrimination against scientists who did not fit into the “Aryan” and German national template. Fascism and National Socialism had a huge backing especially in the student body, many years before Austria became a part of Nazi Germany. This article wants to draw an atmospheric picture of the University of Vienna in these years, especially from 1926 to 1932, when Frenkel was almost continuously connected with the institution.

Comparative Study between the Presidential & Parliamentary Democratic Election Process in Afghanistan and its Socio-Economic Impact

Comparative Study between the Presidential & Parliamentary Democratic Election Process in Afghanistan and its Socio-Economic Impact

THE ROLE OF THE COURTS IN THE PUBLIC POLICY DOMAIN IN SOUTH AFRICA

During the pre-democratic constitutional dispensation, South African public law was marked by the pre-eminence of the executive and the legislature in a parliamentary system of government. The courts were generally loath to review matters related to policy. The adoption of the interim and subsequently the final constitutions changed the position by making the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 the supreme law of the country, with separation of powers between the three branches of government. The approach of the courts has changed noticeably from restraint to activism. Their role in reviewing policies has been steadily growing. They are now thrust into the formulation of government or public policy, which traditionally fell within the ambit of the executive branch of government. This new-found role of the courts has led to concerns that the judiciary’s constant interference in the policy domain borders on violating the hallowed principle of separation of powers. The central argument of this article is that the courts’ intervention in the public policy domain, if not handled with caution, has the potential to undermine the principle of separation of powers implicit in the South African Constitution.

Use of research evidence in legislatures: a systematic review

Background:Although lawmakers play an essential role in policymaking, there is no systematic review on the use of research evidence in legislatures. Aims and objectives:To examine types of research use and factors facilitating and hindering use in legislatures. Methods:We conducted a systematic review of studies in legislatures, regardless of geographical region or year of publication. We included empirical studies irrespective of the methodology employed. Thematic synthesis was used to synthesise the type of use and the facilitating and hindering factors to using research evidence in parliaments. We included 21 studies. Findings:The most frequently observed type of utilisation was the use for symbolic or tactical purposes. Forms of use specific to legislatures were also identified, such as to prepare questions and debates and to help build consensus. Four categories of factors seen as facilitators or barriers were found: institution and organisation, research characteristics, policy and political context, and individual characteristics. Some factors had already been identified in previous reviews, while others seem to apply exclusively to legislatures. Discussion and conclusions:The review identified types of use of research evidence observed in legislatures and developed a new categorisation of factors that may promote or hinder evidence use in this institutional setting. It highlighted a need for more research beyond the US, in unicameral legislatures and in countries with a parliamentary form of government. Content analysis of parliamentary debates in legislative assembly or committee to examine the use of research evidence seems to be underused.

Drivers of parliamentary opposition in European Union politics: institutional factors or party characteristics?

ABSTRACT A vital political opposition is one of the cornerstones of democracy, yet we know surprisingly little about the conditions that shape it. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive assessment of the drivers of parliamentary opposition in European Union (EU) politics in five countries: Denmark; Germany; Ireland; Sweden; and the United Kingdom. Based on an extensive hand-coded data set of 7,520 statements made by members of parliament (MPs) during both plenary sessions and deliberations during European Affairs Committee (EAC) meetings, we examine how institutions and party characteristics shape two types of oppositional behaviour: the expression of critique and the presentation of alternatives. We find that both factors are important for understanding to what extent, and how, opposition is voiced in national parliaments. Oversight institutions’ strength and a party’s degree of Euroscepticism jointly function as significant determinants of the likelihood that MPs will express opposition in the form of critique. However, when it comes to the likelihood of offering alternatives, oversight institutions’ strength fails to explain variations in the share of alternatives, while degree of Euroscepticism remains a significant predictor.

An overviews of Nepal’s parliamentary finance committee

This paper presents an overview of the parliamentary Finance committee (PFCN) of Nepal. Typically, a democratic country's regime includes three types of systems. Parliamentary system, presidential system, and semi-presidential model. Nepal has adopted a parliamentary system and the West Ministry model of government. The position of head of state, the president, in Nepal's parliamentary form of government is ceremonial and has no real powers. In this form of government, the head of the government is the Prime Minister, who has all the real powers. The executive branch of government is exercised by a group of legislators who hold a majority in the House of Representatives (HoRs) under Nepal's parliamentary system, which unites the legislative and executive branches of government. It is assumed that all the perspectives and shades of the opinion of the parliament are reflected through the parliamentary committees because they are representative organs of the legislature in terms of both composition and membership. The finance committee has a vital role in HoRs. In this paper characteristics and working outcomes of PFCN during the Parliamentary period of 2017 to 2022 have been shown.

FORMS OF GOVERNMENT AND ETHNIC CONFLICTS: THE PROBLEM OF INTERCONNECTION AND ITS SOLUTION IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

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.

Porównawcze studium przedmiotu prac komisji śledczych: co leży w interesie publicznym?

The article presents a outline of the tasks performed by committees of inquiry in three countries with a parliamentary system of government and a well-established model of functioning of executive control instruments: Italy, Germany and Poland, also taking into account the context of other European countries. The research concerns the functioning of the commission, and the practice, as well as the effects of its activities. In particular authors analyze subject matters of committees of inquiry in selected countries, regulated in very general way in constitutional law. The conclusions drawn from this comparison can become a contribution to the analysis of the changing functions of parliament and accountability relations.

Socio-Political Status of Women in Egypt during President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s Rule

Egypt is considered to be the birthplace of the feminist movement in the Arab East, because the first women's activists began their activities in this country, and later the first women's organizations were founded. The events of the Arab Spring of 2011 had a significant impact on the entire region of the Arab East: some Arab countries embarked on the path of democratization, including in the field of solving the “women’s issue”. After the political changes of 2011 2014 Egyptian women have also faced numerous difficulties and obstacles in various spheres of life. In this paper, the author examined the socio-political status of women in Egypt under the current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The paper analyzes the legal foundations of women's participation in the activities of state bodies and political parties, namely international documents and articles of the Egyptian Constitution of 2014 related to this topic. Moreover, comparative statistics on the number of women in the national Parliament are provided. The article also described the activities of gender-oriented institutions in the context of the political empowerment of Egyptian women, including the goals and directions of the “National Strategy for the Empowerment of Egyptian Women 2030: Vision and Pillars”, additional annex to the country's strategy “Egypt Vision 2030”. The author drew conclusions about the role of the Egyptian women, the degree of their participation in the socio-political life of modern Egypt, as well as about the main difficulties, among which, first of all, in society stood out the problems of low awareness of the population about gender issues and insufficient funding of programs. In conclusion, suggestions were made about the prospects for expanding the female presence in the political sphere of the country.

ЖІНОЧЕ ЛІДЕРСТВО ЯК ІНДИКАТОР ЗМІН ПОЛІТИКО-ГЕОГРАФІЧНОГО СЕРЕДОВИЩА У КРАЇНАХ ЛАТИНСЬКОЇ АМЕРИКИ

In this article we address the phenomenon of the spreading female leadership in Latin American politics. Stressing the overall importance of gender studies in geography, we pay special attention to theories and methodological approaches in regional and country studies with the focus on gender issues. Based on the data from international organizations, including the World Bank we discuss the general trends in gender balance in Latin America against the average background of the world and other macro-regions, and then we analyze differences among individual Latin American countries. We compare women’s representation in national parliaments, specifically focusing on the women’s proportion growth rate. Then we discuss individual biography and political course cases of the female presidents of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Costa-Rica as those countries can shed more light onto the overall social and political context, in which women take the highest political positions in Latin American region. Those cases demonstrate that women in all four countries have opportunities to develop a full-fledged political career and their ascendance to power is not accidental. The cases of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Laura Chinchilla in Costa-Rica contradict patrimonial stereotypes common for Latin America’s countries in regard to women in politics being protégés of powerful male politicians. We come to the conclusion that growing women’s representation in national level legislative bodies and presidential posts reveal more profound changes in social structure and values in Latin American societies. In particular, we believe that the culture of “machismo” or masculinity gives way to the changes caused by modernization and shifts in social and economic development of Latin American countries, shifting towards semi-periphery of the world-system.

Differenzierte Integration – (k)ein Thema im politischen Diskurs der Mitgliedstaaten?

Recent political science research has shown the increasing differentiation of the European Union (EU) and it has worked out the associated opportunities and risks for effective and legitimate politics in the EU. This raises the question to what extent politicians in the member states pay attention to differentiated integration. Based on an analysis of official government documents and parliamentary minutes from 25 member states, this article shows that this form of integration was rarely politicized in national politics between 2004 and 2020. In national parliaments, it was mainly discussed around EU-treaty changes (around 2008), the euro crisis (around 2012) or during the debate on the future of Europe (around 2017). The final part of the paper shows that differentiated integration is discussed more frequently and more positively in French politics than in German politics.

Professional strengthening of the Ukrainian parliament: features, strategic orientations

The professional strengthening of the parliament is considered as a problem of ensuring the democratic choice of Ukraine in the bifurcation space of the 21st century. It has been found that the parliament and society are those components, the interaction of which decisively depends on the success of political modernization in Ukraine. The representative form of government serves both for parliamentary and professional activities as a means of realizing the potential of reason, honesty and justice that exist in the country. All actions of parliamentarians should be imbued, according to J. Stuart Mill, with «constitutional morality», that is, the unity of legal and ethical principles. In the context of the challenges of the 21st century, the tasks to be solved by the national parliament are significantly more complicated, the bar of requirements for parliamentarians is noticeably raised, the problem of humanizing the political dialogue both in the parliament and in society is acute. Realization of the country’s development potential requires the parliament to find such forms of its work that would take into account not only the positive experience of European countries, but also the important fact that the starting conditions and development paths of various societies to democracy are significantly different from each other. In Ukraine, in particular, mass consciousness is still far from the legal consciousness of citizens of developed countries. Ukrainian society must simultaneously make transitions from traditionality to modernity and from modernity to postmodernity. Accordingly, the dialogization of parliamentary communication is an important strategic guideline, because it is difficult to implement a constructive dialogue between the government and the opposition both in the parliament and in society as a whole. Intolerance, passion, uncriticalness – these signs of a bipolar stereotype – are being overcome in Ukraine extremely slowly, the usual «black and white» thinking, perception and assessment of others according to the formula: «ours and strangers», «we are democrats – they are anti-democrats» are preserved. Deafness to objections from real life is especially dangerous, considering that ahead is a long and difficult work to rebuild the country precisely together, by the whole society after the tragic consequences of wartime. The project of the future should mature precisely in the co-creation of the state and society on the path of democratic governance, with the recognition of the moral imperative and the leading role of the parliament, which in itself will mean effective parliamentarism, testifying to the level of the culture of parliamentarism. The ability and will to reach agreements, conscious rather than forced compromises, are essential elements of the culture of democracy, the culture of parliamentarism. Any reform of the political system must be based on the need to ensure a balance between presidential power and parliamentary control. The systematic and high quality of laws, verified not only in the legal and economic sense, but also in the psychological sense, is the way to restore trust in the Ukrainian parliament. Determining the nature of the interaction between the state and society as co-creation is of key importance, because it opens the way to understanding the importance of the culture of parliamentarism, high professionalism based on positive science, education, culture at every workplace in the process of democratic transformations in Ukraine.

Clustering the states of the world by political indicators

The article presents the experience of clustering the states of the world, based on political indicators. Ten indicators were selected for analysis, divided into foreign and domestic political ones and including: the institutional foundations of democracy, turnout in elections, the representation of women in national parliaments, the number of NGOs, the share of state votes in the IMF, the number of diplomatic missions; the strength of the passport, the index of perception of corruption, the conflict potential of the state and military spending. With the help of geographic and geopolitical matrices of the neighborhood, a spatial econometric analysis was carried out, and using the method of geographic average and the Geary index, clustering of the states of the world was carried out. Based on the results of the analysis, we can say that the geopolitical neighborhood matrix allows more accurate clustering of the states of the world according to political indicators by taking into account the context. As for the clustering method in general, with its help it was possible not only to visualize the various parameters displayed on the cartogram of the world, but also to fix the prerequisites for integration processes, cleavages between groups of states, development trends of a particular cluster of states, etc.

National digital health legislation: lessons and recommendations

Abstract All Member States of the United Nations have committed to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), but several policy and system challenges remain unaddressed. Technology innovation and digital health have the potential to find equitable, sustainable and rights-based solutions to many of these issues, but must be coupled with effective and appropriate national legislation. In the backdrop of today's global digital health landscape, this manuscript explores the urgent need for the national legislation on digital health and recommends a way forward for legislators to meaningfully address this need. It also presents direction for global and national stakeholders to coordinate their efforts towards supporting countries to enable meaningful digital health transformations. The recommendations below are informed by perspectives from international organizations, national parliaments, policy think tanks and civil society.