PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

186 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
■ Reform initiators. These might be key individuals such as a particularly
active Speaker or President, or a parliamentary group, or a reform-oriented
procedure committee or secretariat. The institutionalisation of the reform
process as an ongoing element of parliamentary practice through a
permanent committee is a feature mentioned by many parliaments.
■ Support mobilisers and implementers. The need to mobilise wider
parliamentary support for reforms can itself influence their scope and
content, as can also the process of their implementation.
How these different influences interact in any particular parliament and at
any particular juncture is of course enormously variable, but many of them
will be present in any successful reform process. Of special significance is
what might be termed the dynamic of democratisation, which merits a section
to itself.
The dynamic of democratisation
The submissions from parliaments for this study show that all are subject to
the influence of a strong democratising current, whether flowing from the
logic of their own democratic evolution, or from the global environment, or a
combination of the two. However, the character and scope of their reforms is
dependent on the particular stage reached in the democratising process, and
their particular trajectory in doing so. Some countries are only in the early
stages of a transition towards democracy; some are in the process of consolidating
a recently effected democratic transition, in a manner that is in some
respects influenced by the character of the former regime; others where
democracy has been long established are under an impetus to deepen their
democracy, or else to resist a process of creeping sclerosis. Although different
countries will be facing different challenges, however, common to them all
is the centrality of parliament to the process of democratic reform, as the
following examples from our returns will show, and as has been particularly
underlined in the return from Gabon.
In Viet Nam the National Assembly, while subject to dominant-party rule,
reports an increased professionalisation of parliament and a greater pluralism
and representativeness of views within it, as evidence of a democratic current
at work:
The increase in the number of deputies in general and full-time members
in particular has clearly shown the view of the Viet Nam Party and