PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

Executive summary
Executive summary I xi
What is the parliamentary contribution to democracy? What makes a parliament
or legislature itself democratic? How might it become more so? These
are the questions which this Guide seeks to answer. It provides a comprehensive
and systematic account of the central role that parliament plays in a
democracy, and explains what it means for a parliament to be truly representative,
transparent, accessible, accountable and effective in its many functions.
The Guide does this, not through a catalogue of externally generated prescriptions,
but through examples of good practice contributed by parliaments from
every region of the world, to illustrate distinctive aspects of their own activity.
From these examples the Guide shows the diversity of ways in which the
key elements of a democratic parliament can be realised in practice.
The core of the Guide is a two-page outline framework in tabular form,
which identifies each of the key values of democracy in turn, and itemises the
typical institutional forms or practices through which a contemporary parliament
can realise them. In this way, what otherwise might seem like purely
abstract ideas of democracy become grounded in real-life parliamentary practices.
For a summary of the Guide, readers could do no better than turn directly
to this framework (pp. 10 and 11).
The main body of the Guide follows the order of this framework, and illustrates
each of its components with examples mainly chosen by the contributing
parliaments themselves. These examples show that, despite the relatively
low esteem in which parliaments are held in many regions of the world, many
parliaments have recently become more open and responsive to their electorates,
and more relevant to meeting their needs in a rapidly changing world.
In particular, these examples show that parliaments are working hard:
■ to be more inclusive in their composition and manner of working, especially
in relation to women and minority and marginal communities;
■ to be more effective public communicators, through opening more of their
work to the media, and through the development of their own websites and
broadcasting channels;
■ to experiment with new ways of engaging with the public, including civil
society, and enabling them to contribute to the legislative process;
■ to recover public confidence in the integrity of parliamentarians, through
enforceable codes of conduct and reforms in party funding;
■ to streamline the legislative process without limiting the proper scrutiny
of bills;