"True democracy requires an active parliament."

The fact that a country has a parliament does not mean it has a democracy. We can all think of many past and even present sham parliaments that have upheld bogus democracies. But we also know that while the existence of a parliament is no guarantee of democracy, there can be no democracy without parliament - and the freer and more active the parliament, the more genuine and vibrant the democracy will be. This is not merely begging the question. We can take it as a given that democracy is predicated on the existence of a body in which the proposals put to the community are openly debated, which has the means to oversee the work of the executive branch, and which lays down the main principles underpinning life in the community.

At least three conditions have to be met for a parliament to be truly democratic:

• it must be constituted in such a way as to be genuinely representative;
• it must be allowed to function without impediment;
• it must have substantive powers enabling it to discharge its three objectives: to legislate (in particular in terms of finance, by adopting the budget), to debate and to oversee.

These three conditions have been met in a wide variety of ways in systems that we continue to hold as equally democratic. The question is whether they still provide valid responses – and the question must be asked because the relevance of the solutions we endeavour to outline depends on what form democracy takes in the future. Parliaments are pondering their role and their methods, but it is in fact democracy itself that is in crisis – a crisis that in and of itself does not suffice to explain the shortcomings of parliaments, but one that more modern parliaments could probably help to shake off and overcome. Clearly the future of parliamentarianism in the 21st century cannot be taken for granted, or why would the question arise? In fact, even though democracy has theoretically made inroads everywhere, at the same time as the past 15 years have witnessed the emergence of new parliaments or seen parliaments believe they have gained prerogatives previously denied them, the crisis affects not just the longstanding democracies: it is just as real among their younger relatives.

Of course, the legislative frenzy accompanying the introduction of radically new legislation can buoy young parliaments. And yet, the same causes having the same effects, they are already visibly in the throes of a crisis. Why? There are three main reasons, their intensity varying depending on the country and the system.

A perceptible crisis

The first explanation for the crisis lies in the fact that the growing complexity of the decisions to be made, the steadily increasing internationalization of the problems to be solved and the swift action required in response have led to the apparently inevitable rise of the executive – the very same executive, ironically, that is itself often thwarted, dominated and manipulated, for the same reasons, by a new competitor for power, the technocracy, a technical authority whose claim to power is based on constraints it believes it alone can assess and knowledge of technical realities it deems it alone has.

This transfer of authority usually follows a well-known path: real power passes from the legislative authorities to the government – this has long been the case – then, at least in part, from each minister to his cabinet – this is relatively new – and from all cabinets to the prime minister's office, which tends to become an executive all its own – a more recent development.

In some cases, however, the legislative and the executive themselves together deliberately waive their prerogatives and transfer decisionmaking responsibility to committees of experts or people presumed to be independent. The legislative and the executive may, without so deciding expressly, tolerate the rise, to their detriment, of competing authorities. In many countries it is the judicial authorities who encroach on other jurisdictions; no longer content to apply and interpret the law, they supplement and ultimately make it.

Some chambers have become what are often mere antechambers, most of the elected representatives being reduced to ensuring voter loyalty. At the most, the chamber selects several from among its members to move on to higher callings. And real dialogue in the chamber, in many cases a pipedream, is limited to head-to-head discussions between the government and the majority, whereas the general public is generally admitted only to the often artificial and even sham spectacle of the majority and the opposition going through the motions of debate. This is why, in many countries, most members of parliament are asked to look first to their constituency or to the party's well-being (if they have been elected by a system of proportional representation), while the others experience parliament as a kind of purgatory, a training centre or reform school – in any event an obligatory first step on the way up the ladder to the exalted rank of member of the executive or to another career. That is to say, many parliamentarians have the feeling that what is expected of them is basically patience, resignation and a degree of complacency…

Another reason for the crisis is the frequently ambiguous relationship between the executive and legislative branches. In some countries, parliament still all too often stubbornly tries to compete with the government in areas that are inevitably the latter's prerogative, instead of seeking to define an area of its own in which its influence can be fully and effectively exercised.

The role of parliament is to debate the orientations into which the government's initiatives will have to be incorporated, and ultimately to ensure the latter are true to the former. Indeed, deadlock is the result when parliament goes head to head with the government in the same field.

Is the classic parliamentary system bad for parliament?

The reverse - the scenario in which the legislative branch is almost totally under the thumb of the executive - is not much better. In that respect, one wonders whether the classic parliamentary system is not, paradoxically, becoming parliament's own worst enemy: when the head of the executive is also the majority leader, the majority's room for manoeuvre is sharply reduced. Where the government is supposed to emerge from and be accountable to parliament, an almost hierarchical relationship develops between the government and the majority. The corollary is uniformity of views and expression. Another, parallel outcome is a Manichean, almost caricatural elationship between majority and opposition, one in which genuine debate is replaced by easily predicted form and automatic reflexes. There are those who will be shocked by these comments, especially in countries with the Westminster system of parliament. Forgive me, but in the course of my duties I have visited and studied a good forty parliaments. Those whose members expressed the least frustration were part of presidential systems with strict separation of powers.

The situation is all the more regrettable in that parliament, parliaments have distinguished themselves in recent decades above all by their inability to change their methods and forms. This is the third reason for the crisis. The dilemma facing parliaments may have inherent explanations, but it is also part of a broader, unprecedented crisis whose roots can be traced to the advent of an almost exclusively procedural concept of democracy. In the past, democracy was preserved, enhanced and promoted essentially by regulating the balance of power. Today, the biggest problem may well be how to counteract the reduced scope of political power. The point is no longer to referee between the rule of the people and national sovereignty, but rather to prevent, as much as possible, the steady erosion of sovereignty, to halt those who continue to use any means to divide, limit and corral the exercise of sovereign power.

The goal of democracy was once to establish principles of legitimacy and responsibility, to give precedence to the rule of law over the use of force; in short, democracy was inseparable from a system of values... It amounted to a form of politics, or rather to a certain concept of politics that did not encompass all things political and that varied from one country to another, but that did give universal expression to something essential about the role, place and nature of politics. Thanks to universal suffrage, democracy had placed politics above all else, while making sure everything did not boil down to politics. For the hallmark of democracy is not so much the separation of power as it is the distinction made between State and society, respect for an invisible dividing line between the will of the people and the will of individuals, between the public and the private spheres. Democracy is not so much a political system in which "power curbs power" as it is one in which the omnipotence of the will of the people is limited by pluralism, freedom of expression and thought, equality and the right to own property. Democracy is more than just government of the people by the people and for the people, or the establishment of institutional counterweights to power.

There can be no true democracy without a culture of democracy, without a broadly shared attachment to the inviolable and sacred principles guaranteeing respect for a certain concept of man.