National Parliaments As Deliberative Bodies

Abstract

According to Blondel (1973, p. 2), ‘Legislatures pose perhaps the most fascinating problem of all structures of government, for they have been and continue to be both the most decried and the most revered, the most hoped for and often the least successful institution in contemporary governments.’ In the contemporary European Union, this statement is still up to date: parliaments are widely recognized as important institutions responsible for the quality of representation and deliberation in modern democratic states. Yet, the very performance of parliaments is often critically perceived. Against that background, this chapter targets two questions: (i) how do national parliaments discuss legislation? (ii) how to analyse parliamentary discourse comparatively. The first part of the chapter discusses functions of national parliaments and their formal modes of communication and discussion; the second part gives an overview of the methodological approach of this study regarding comparative legislative and parliamentary discourse analysis.