The IPU was invited to a session of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), held in Vienna in early November. On the agenda was the question of the empowerment of legislatures. The meeting debated the growing public distrust of parliaments and political parties in the OSCE area. It looked at the populist challenge to liberal democracies in Europe, and - in the words of one of the delegates - the growing conflict between democratic majoritarianism and liberal constitutionalism.
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Anti-liberal yet pro-election, populist parties and their increased presence were perceived as the symptom of a crisis of representation. One of the parliamentarians lamented the fact that none of the four main parties in her parliament was democratic; indeed the most extremist party had somehow managed to distort democracy to take on a pejorative meaning. Several delegates said that in their countries there was very little identification of political parties with policies. The citizen was barely aware what each stood for, if they stood for anything at all. One parliamentarian said that in his country, parties seemed to stand for the collective representation of sentiment, while more rational approaches were often discarded on the grounds that they were elitist.
For the IPU, which has tended to focus its capacity-building work on Africa and Asia, the meeting afforded an interesting insight into Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The IPU is paying increasing attention to the question of what makes a parliament democratic. Its conclusions, published in a landmark study, take the form of a set of basic requisites, epitomized in five adjectives: representative, transparent, accountable, accessible, and effective. These provide the underpinnings of a framework setting out the criteria for a democratic parliament.
The sheer diversity of parliaments around the world could imply that this exercise might serve little purpose. The basic values outlined in the framework do, nonetheless, give a clear sense of direction and establish a set of norms to enable us to recognize what characterizes a democratic parliament. As such, it is a very useful guide for any institution working to enhance the democratic attributes of parliaments.
