PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

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8. Facing the future Facing the future I 183 Societies and their governments face enormous challenges as the twentyfirst century develops. While these may differ in character and intensity in different countries, all governments alike have to respond to new global pressures (on the economy, environment, health, human security) with policies and programmes which can enhance the wellbeing of their populations rather than diminish or compromise it. This constitutes a huge challenge to human creativity and to a society’s capacity for cooperation and common purpose. As has been shown by this study, parliaments, besides their necessary role in legislation, oversight, and so on, have distinctive attributes which enable them to play a crucial part in helping meet these challenges: ■ they are able to represent and speak for the whole people, in all their diversity; ■ they can make public the choices and dilemmas facing policy-makers, and help educate the public about them; ■ they provide the national forum for canvassing and debating alternative views and policy proposals; ■ their commitment to dialogue for resolving differences gives them a special role in conflict resolution at both a societal and political level; ■ they have a particular concern for the protection and promotion of human rights, economic and social as well as civil and political. These distinctive attributes of parliament constitute the essence of democracy: respect for diversity on the basis of the equal worth of each person, and the resolution of difference of views and interests by means of dialogue and debate, so that necessary common action can proceed with consent. In a rapidly changing world, among the key dialogues is one that runs through all policy and legislation: between a society’s past and its future - how to shape the future without destroying everything in a country’s traditions that makes it distinctive, by treating the past as a source for creative change rather than merely as an obstacle to progress. This means that for democracy itself, in the words of the 2005 UN World Summit outcome document, there will be ‘no single model’, but a series of variations around some core norms and practices, according to each country’s distinctive political tradition - a diversity to which the different examples in this volume attest.
184 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY The study also shows that parliaments take seriously the challenge to engage in an ongoing process of reform themselves, and to make their own practices more open, accountable and responsive. Democratisation is not a one-off event, but a continuing process, in both recent and long-established democracies. In the IPU survey for this Guide, parliaments were invited to report on some examples of recent reforms they had instituted. The main part of this chapter will consider their returns, not so much for the content of the reforms, but for what they tell us about the process and dynamics of parliamentary reform, and some of the potential difficulties experienced. A concluding section will consider how parliaments can contribute to society’s planning for the future. Sources of reform The reform process To judge from the submissions received, parliamentary reform has many different sources, which vary widely from one parliament to another. It might be useful, however, to offer a provisional map of the most typical sources of change reported, to help make sense of these different reform experiences. Naturally, these sources should be seen as often complementary and interactive, as the diagrammatic presentation suggests, rather than as isolated points of change. For convenience these sources can be divided into extra-parliamentary and intra-parliamentary ones. Among the chief extra-parliamentary reasons for reform are the following: ■ Changing societal needs. These can be as various as are the different types of society, and they constitute a typical source of new or revised legislation. But they can also lead to changes in the way parliament itself works. Example: the changing role of women in society leads to changes in political representation and in the way parliament conducts its business. ■ Pressures from the public. Again these are enormously variable, but a common element for many parliaments is the perception of a growing gulf between parliament and the electorate, especially young people, which leads to experimentation with new modes of public access to parliament. ■ Technological change. The most obvious example is the rapidly changing world of information technology, with its consequences for how parlia-
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