This book explores the history, current relevance, and future implementation of the monumental idea of an elected global parliament. The second edition brings the book up to date and incorporates extensive revisions and additions.
First published in 1997, this book provides an assessment of the main issues and deliberations of the Wilton Park Conference, based largely on the theme of standards in public life and consideration of measures which may be taken to allay public concern of their erosion. The book is a paraphrased report of the deliberations, together with evaluation and commentary. The conference attended by parliamentarians (including presiding officers in ministerial positions), senior civil servants, parliamentary staff, journalists and others from a wide range of countries, most but not all being Commonwealth members.
Traditional comparative studies of parliaments have focused on constitutional and organizational characteristics of parliaments, or differences in the historical contexts, in which legislative assemblies have developed. The motivations of individual Members of Parliament have been neglected. This volume provides empirical work on legislative role orientations and behaviour in six West European parliaments: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. All contributions present a wealth of empirical findings on parliamentarians' role orientations in different institutional contexts.
Undersøgelse af parlamentsmandatet baseret på svar på IPU-spørgeskema fra 134 parlamenter. Svarene er sammenlignet systematisk med de respektive forfatninger, lovgivning og parlamentsforretningsordener.
This book uses Sweden as a test case to analyze how parliament and elected representatives function in a representative democracy. Despite the status of Scandinavian countries as perhaps the world’s most egalitarian societies, the book argues that the best summary characterization of Swedish representative democracy is an elitist system run from above. The book also argues that an individualist representational model is relevant to the Swedish setting and most likely, to other settings as well. Representative democracy is not just party-based democracy - not even in a country with strong and disciplined parties. The book takes a broad approach to the study of political representation. It integrates into a single analytical framework concepts and theories from neighbouring traditions such as legislative behaviour, opinion formation and interest organizations. The study is based on a comprehensive set of data, including three surveys of the Members of the Swedish Parliament, corresponding voter surveys and content analysis of mass media and parliamentary records.
Based on interviews with members of over 70 parliamentary assemblies Representing the People explores how members of parliament perceive their role as representatives, and shows that the way in which they represent depends very much on the party to which they belong.