Abstract
Parliaments are a more complicated site of governance than may be first thought. Of course, it is generally naïve to imagine that parliamentarians are merely public representatives who logically deliberate on proposals and then pass laws or policies that directly benefit the whole nation. Indeed, parliaments may well be rubber-stamps for decisions already taken within a power elite, and many examples could be given from authoritarian regimes across the world. Yet, it is noteworthy that even dictatorships have a parliament. This shows that the idea of deliberative decision-making, embodied in a national parliament, is a widely acknowledged world-cultural principle to which even autocratic regimes pay insincere respect by putting on a show.
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Notes
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The USA and Russia are notable exceptions where explicit references are rare, albeit still evident. Partly this is because of the confederated nature of these very large states, which makes it more common to refer to relatively autonomous entities within the national borders. However, upon closer scrutiny, it is evident that national parliamentarians in both countries refer largely implicitly to the international community, and so are very much part of the same discursive tradition common to other parliaments. Both countries also often appeal to temporal change (that is, comparing with their nation at an earlier time) as a justification (Alasuutari, 2016, pp. 97–99; Tiaynen-Qadir, Qadir, & Alasuutari, 2018).
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Alasuutari, P., Qadir, A. (2019). Parliaments. In: Epistemic Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19150-4_6
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