PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

An effective parliament (I): The national level I 147
systems. The submission from the South African Parliament describes the role
of its National Council of the Provinces (NCOP) in these terms:
As the second chamber of South Africa’s national Parliament, the
NCOP represents provincial (and to some extent local government)
interests in the national sphere. Its role must be seen within the context
of co-operative government, which means that national policy must be
sensitive to local and provincial needs and concerns. It also means that
municipalities and, particularly, provinces should not act alone or in
isolation; they must be deeply integrated into the national political
process.
The Indian Upper House or Rajya Sabha (Council of the States) is
composed of representatives elected by the elected members of the Legislative
Assembly of each State or Union Territory, and, like the South African NCOP,
has special responsibility for coordinating national policy and legislation
across the territory of the Union. A Conference of Presiding Officers of
Legislative Bodies at Centre and State levels is held annually to exchange
ideas and practices. ‘The object of the Conference is to see that the parliamentary
system of government grows on proper lines, that proper conventions and
traditions are developed in that direction and that, as far as possible,
uniformity is established in the practice and procedure in Parliament and
State Legislatures.’
This coordinating role is not confined to the second chamber in federal
systems. In France, the Senate has a similar role in relation to the other elected
bodies throughout the territory:
As the representative of local interests, i.e., citizens in their communes,
departments and regions, the Senate holds «Estates General of Local
Elected Officials». These events bring together all locally elected
officials with the President of the Senate to deal with the problems
faced by the decentralized collective bodies whose interests the upper
chamber represents. The last such event was devoted to intercommunal
relations.
In a similar manner, the Parliament of Ukraine has established an Advisory
Board on local self-government under the Chairman of the Parliament, in
order to ‘strengthen local self-government, to develop a society of self-governed
communities according to the European Charter of Local Self-government
and to act as a mediator on legislation between parliamentary commit-