The Inter-Parliamentary Union is launching today a publication entitled Parliament and democracy in the twenty-first century: A Guide to good practice, which provides a comprehensive and systematic account of the central role that parliament plays in a democracy.
The IPU Guide identifies the five key objectives for a parliament: to be representative, transparent, accessible, accountable and effective. It gives examples of how parliaments, in very concrete terms, are seeking to fulfil those objectives. Based on parliaments' submissions to the Guide, the sense of the common challenges facing parliaments around the world is striking.
In IPU President Pier Ferdinando Casini's words, "These challenges include the changing relationships that parliament maintains with the public, the media, the executive branch and the international organizations, where an increasing number of fundamental decisions are taken that escape national scrutiny".
The Guide draws on examples provided by more than 75 national parliaments and offers clear evidence that democratic change is possible. It provides some very practical illustrations of how it might be brought about.
An example of the many different ways in which parliaments are responding to evolving challenges is the action taken by the South African Parliament to facilitate the participation of women in its work. It conducts women's workshops in rural areas to train leaders of local communities in the understanding of parliament and the law-making process. These sessions can also be used to obtain submissions on legislation currently before parliament, and on the implementation of existing legislation, as was done on the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act of 1998 and on possible amendments to the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act of the same year.
In Europe, the Finnish Parliament's Committee for the Future was established in 1992, in a bid by that Parliament to be more adequately informed on Government policies as well as long-term developments and options for the country. The Committee seeks to correct what it regards as a significant deficit – that "in all parliaments the identification of long-term structural challenges and their values-base has been left behind in the course of traditional legislative work". As well as being an innovative political body, the Committee "has demonstrated that parliamentary measures can still be used to take the initiative within democracy". Parliaments in several other countries, including Latvia and Israel, have established similar committees.
The IPU Guide does not rank national parliaments or attempt to measure the quality of their democracy. It is, however, an invitation to all to participate in an open debate on what it means to be a democratic parliament, and how each parliament can put into practice the democratic values described in the Guide. [Read or order the Guide ... ]
Other press releases