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5 - Do parliaments have a future?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
David Beetham
Edited by
Sonia Alonso ,
John Keane  and
Wolfgang Merkel
David Beetham
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
Sonia Alonso
Affiliation:
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
John Keane
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Wolfgang Merkel
Affiliation:
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
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Summary

Parliaments and legislatures are supposedly the central institution of representative democracy. Yet across all continents they come near the bottom of the list of institutions, public or private, in their level of citizen confidence or esteem. By way of illustration, here is what the Clerk to the Australian House of Representatives told colleagues in the Association of Secretaries General of Parliament in 2000:

During the last year the advertising industry, the news journalists and the used car salesmen of Australia had cause for rejoicing. Previously, they had been at the bottom of a list of professions ranked according to the public's perception of their trustworthiness. Members of Parliament were ranked just above them. However, a survey was released in July, altering the ranking … the survey placed the nation's legislators last in perception of trustworthiness in a list of professional groups.

(Beetham 2006a: 98–9)

Or, to take an example from Europe, I read in a recent number of the Journal of Democracy that ‘only a fifth of Poles think that their parliament is useful’ (Rupnik 2007: 20). Such views are not isolated, but typical of consistent survey data across all continents. Is this anything new? Does it matter?

Let me begin by addressing the first question. There are perfectly understandable reasons why parliaments collectively as institutions have rarely enjoyed a particularly high or positive public profile. Let me mention just two.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Future of Representative Democracy , pp. 124 - 143
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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References

Baer, D. and Bryan, S. (2005) Money in politics. Washington DC: National Democratic Institute.Google Scholar
Beetham, D. (2005) Democracy: A beginner's guide. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.Google Scholar
Beetham, D. (2006a) Parliament and democracy in the twenty-first century: A guide to good practice. Geneva: Inter-Parliamentary Union.Google Scholar
Beetham, D. (2006b) ‘Weber and Anglo-American democracy’, in Ay, K.-L. and Borchardt, K. (eds.) Das Faszinosum Max Weber. Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, pp. 343–51.Google Scholar
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