The German Parliament

ABSTRACT

In the words of Louis Marie de La Haye Cormenin (1788-1864), the French lawyer, politician and pamphleteer, in the Livre des orateurs (1843), ‘Four people know the secret of the weakness of the parliamentary orator: his doctor, his confessor, his lover and his stenographer’. Stenographers worked for the first time in 1840 in the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament. The Bureau of Stenographers as a permanent office was established in 1868. For the Upper House and the House of Representatives, a joint Bureau of Stenographers was organized with two superiors, four auditors, twelve ordinary stenographers and two rotation guides. The stenographers worked at five-minute intervals with no backlog of work. The stenographic report of each session was published half an hour later after the last word had been spoken in the session room. The parliamentary stenographer was required to have a university degree and to take a shorthand exam. Journalists, lawyers, professors and also engineers were employed as stenographers. Reproductive intelligence, quick comprehension, responsiveness, and craftsmanship were some of the qualities that were required to be a qualified parliamentary stenographer.     

Il n’y a pas de question idiote? Les questions des députés européens à la Commission européenne et au Conseil depuis 1979

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes questions from the European parliament (EP) to the Commission and Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU). The exponential increase in the number of questions since the first direct election of the EP in 1979 is testimony to the changing pattern of inter-institutional relations in the EU and to the growing involvement of the EP in a variety of policy areas. At the individual level, the members of the EP strategically use questions either for the purposes of specialization or in order to connect with their voters. Analyzing parliamentary questions is therefore relevant for a better understanding of representation in a supranational setting.     

The role of parliament in South Africacs foreign policy development process: lessons from the United States' Congress

For most democracies across the world, legislative engagement in foreign policy development has traditionally been limited to ratification of international agreements and oversight of the executive. While the Parliament of South Africa tends to adhere to this traditional approach, deferring to the executive on matters of foreign policy, this paper argues that a collaborative approach between the legislative and executive branches as articulated in the South African constitution must rather form the basis of South Africa's foreign policy development process. Moreover, by comparing the parliament of South Africa, a legislature with limited policy influence, to the United States’ Congress, a policy making legislature, it becomes clear from Congress that political will in employing constitutional power is the most important factor in ensuring legislative engagement in foreign policy decision making.     

The Impact of Post-Enactment Review on Anti-Terrorism Laws: Four Jurisdictions Compared

This paper examines a significant legislative challenge in many jurisdictions around the world a decade on from the events of 11 September 2001. Using Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as case studies, it aims to assess the relative effectiveness of regular and extraordinary review mechanisms at the national level in leading to the improvement of anti-terrorism laws. That such mechanisms often appear to meet with only muted success says something about their institutional weakness and also the tension that inheres in legislatures as simultaneously legal and political institutions. Further, it reflects the authority and legitimacy to which national security law quickly lays claim in a political culture. This makes it resistant to reform, even when aspects of it can be said to be part of the terrorist problem rather than its solution.     

French MPs and Law-making: Deputies' Activities and Citizens' Perceptions

Legislative studies research often insists on the weakness of the French Parliament compared with the executive. Yet very little qualitative and quantitative empirical research has been done into the work of deputies in the French National Assembly, or into the institution's role in policy and law-making. This article addresses these research gaps by first analysing the characteristics and drivers of French MPs' involvement in law-making rather than in other parliamentary activities, either in the Parliament or in their constituency. Second, it takes an original approach by comparing MPs' perceptions of their activities with those of their electorate through the use of mixed-method analyses (open and closed questionnaires with 230 MPs; 13 focus groups with ordinary citizens). This is indeed a crucial issue in order to better understand the causes fuelling citizens' criticism of their representatives.     

The French Constitutional Law of 23 July 2008 as seen by MPs: Working or Talking Parliament?

The French constitutional law of 2008 is, with the modification of 47 articles, the most important revision of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, at least in quantitative terms. Surprisingly, there have been few attempts to evaluate the effects of the reform, whose official aim was to improve the status of the role of the (traditionally weak) French parliament. The purpose of this contribution is to analyse how MPs themselves judge this reform and its effects, especially on the role of the parliament and its everyday work. To do so we make use of the data of the LEGIPAR research project (September 2009–January 2011): 227 MPs answered closed and open questions about their perception of parliamentary work in face-to-face interviews. The data of the project DEPASTRA (2005–6) allow for a comparison with MPs' positions before the vote of the constitutional revision of 2008.     

Candidate Selection and a Crowded Parliament: The Israeli Knesset, 1988–2006

Candidate selection reform has its consequences. This article examines Israel as a case study in order to understand the changes in parliamentary activity (legislation, parliamentary questions and motions for the agenda) that resulted from the adoption of primaries as a candidate selection reform by the Labour Party in 1992 and later by three more parties: Likud, Meretz and Tzomet. The findings show that there has been a significant increase in parliamentary activity since the 13th Knesset (the first Knesset with Members of Knesset elected through primaries). The research hypothesises that posited reasons for the difference in parliamentary activities in the Knesset terms before and after the introduction of primaries were strongly supported.     

Who Gives Evidence to Parliamentary Committees? A Comparative Investigation of Parliamentary Committees and their Constituencies

This article focuses on the interaction between parliamentary committees and external actors. How is the interaction organised, and how does it influence which interests are voiced? The authors show that institutional variation in procedures for calling witnesses and variation in committee agendas influence both the composition of actors and the concentration of evidence. By composition of actors, they refer to the set of different actor types involved. By evidence concentration, they refer to the extent to which evidence is provided by a relatively small share of active actors. The study is based on a new data set of all contacts between parliamentary committees and external actors in one year across three countries: the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands. Interestingly, the findings show that procedures of invitation rather than open calls increase the diversity of actor composition and decrease the concentration of actor evidence. This, however, comes at a cost, since the overall volume of contacts is reduced.     

Towards an organisational perspective on party funding: Explaining financial transfers from MEPs to their national parties

Which parties represented in the European Parliament (EP) are able to extract regular donations from their MEPs' salaries and, if they extract donations, how great are they? In the literature on party finances, there has been a lack of attention paid to the use of salaries of elected representatives as a source of funding. This is surprising given that the national headquarters of many parties in Europe regularly collect ‘party taxes’: a fixed (and often significant) share of their elected representatives' salaries. In filling this gap, this article theoretically specifies two sets of party characteristics that account for the presence of a taxing rule and the level of the tax, respectively. The presence of a tax depends on the basic ‘acceptability’ of such an internal obligation that rests on a mutually beneficial financial exchange between parties' campaign finance contributions to their MEPs and MEPs' salary donations to their parties. The level of the tax, in contrast, depends on the level of intra‐organisational compliance costs and parties' capacity to cope with these costs. Three factors are relevant to this second stage: MEPs' ideological position, the size of the parliamentary group and party control over candidate nomination. The framework is tested through a selection model applied to a unique dataset covering the taxing practices in parties across the European Union Member States.     

中国传统政治的现实批判：专制统治与民主政治的背离与困境

改革开放以来,我国通过政治体制改革破除高度集权,使长期困扰我国的政治全能主义受到了一定抑制,激发了整个社会的活力。但同时,这也带来了严重的"权威危机"现象。为此,进一步厘清专制统治与民主政治的深层关系对于我们坚定不移、积极稳妥地推进政治民主化进程具有重要的理论意义和现实意义。