This book describes and explains the development of international parliamentary institutions and asks why international organizations establish parliamentary institutions without, however, granting them relevant decision-making powers.

Saul, Follesdal and Ulfstein examine in detail the interplay between national parliaments and the international human rights judiciary.

Despite the curiosity it arouses in political circles, international parliamentarism has never yet been dealt with by academic researchers, probably because it is such a new field. This appraisal explores the era of globalization and the institutional frameworks to which it has given rise, with attention to how the geostrategic context is changing and outlining potential future developments. The key question about these new parliamentary structures is what their future function will be in a political process which is no longer restricted to the national sphere but now takes place on a global scale.--Publisher's description.

International parliaments are on the rise. An increasing number of international organizations establishes 'international parliamentary institutions' or IPIs, which bring together members of national parliaments or - in rare cases - elected representatives of member state citizens. Yet, IPIs have generally remained powerless institutions with at best a consultative role in the decision-making process of international organizations. Why do the member states of international organizations create IPIs but do not vest them with relevant institutional powers? This study argues that neither the functional benefits of delegation nor the internalization of democratic norms answer this question convincingly. Rather, IPIs are best understood as an instrument of strategic legitimation. By establishing institutions that mimic national parliaments, governments seek to ensure that audiences at home and in the wider international environment recognize their international organizations as democratically legitimate. At the same time, they seek to avoid being effectively constrained by IPIs in international governance. The Rise of International Parliaments provides a systematic study of the establishment and empowerment of IPIs based on a novel dataset. In a statistical analysis covering the world's most relevant international organizations and a series of case studies from all major world regions, we find two varieties of international parliamentarization. International organizations with general purpose and high authority create and empower IPIs to legitimate their region-building projects domestically. Alternatively, the establishment of IPIs is induced by the international diffusion of democratic norms and prominent templates, above all that of the European Parliament. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

This volume offers an original and theoretically grounded conceptualization and measurement of international parliamentary institutions and their role in ensuring the accountability of regional international organizations. Through a comparative analysis of the establishment, evolution, institutional organization, oversight and policymaking functions of 22 parliamentary institutions, mainly from European, African and Latin American regional international organizations, the book serves a twofold purpose. First, it allows assessment of the extent to which parliamentary institutions have (measurable) influence on the outcome of regional organizations’ decision-making processes. Second, drawing on the literature on new institutionalism and comparative regionalism, the volume investigates the conditions under which the influence of parliamentary institutions is expected to grow, thus advancing the understanding of the variation and development of this poorly explored type of international institution. The book is aimed at scholars of global governance, international organization and comparative regionalism, and will also be of interest to parliamentarians and parliamentary practitioners from national and international institutions.

This updated edition of Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers Handbook covers the ground of women's access to the legislature in three steps: It looks into the obstacles women confront when entering Parliament be they political, socio-economic or ideological and psychological. It presents solutions to overcome these obstacles, such as changing electoral systems and introducing quotas, and it details strategies for women to influence politics once they are elected to parliament, an institution which is traditionally male dominated. The first Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers handbook was produced as part of IDEA's work on women and political participation in 1998. Since its release in English in 1998, there has been an ongoing interest and demand for the handbook, and responding to the request for the translation of the handbook, IDEA has produced Spanish, French and Indonesian language versions and a Russian overview of the handbook during 2002-2003. Since the first handbook was published, the picture regarding women's political participation has slowly changed. Overall the past decade has seen gradual progress with regard to women's presence in national parliaments. This second edition incorporates relevant global changes in the past years presenting new and updated case studies.--