This fully revised new edition includes expanded coverage of Parliament's relationship with the courts, devolved assemblies and the European Union. Distinctively, the book goes beyond the usual focus of Parliament-Government relations to encompass policy-makers beyond Whitehall and Parliament's broader relationship with citizens.

To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, more than ever, urgently needed. -- Cover page 4.

Advocates of parliamentary rule have been highly critical of presidentialism for dividing powers and providing the opportunity for gridlock between branches. Fixed executive terms can saddle publics with ineffectual leaders who are not easily removed. Yet the great theorists of presidential rule, beginning with the Federalists, saw very different qualities in the same institutions: a desirable combination of strong leadership with checks on executive discretion. These diverse assessments arise because we have surprisingly little comparative work on how presidential democracies function. The introductory essays in this volume lay the theoretical groundwork for such comparative analysis. Drawing on detailed cases of economic policymaking in Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe, this book shows the diversity of presidential systems and isolates the effects of presidentialism from other factors that influence public policy, such as party systems. In doing so, it casts doubt on the critics of presidential rule and underscores the continuing vitality of this particular form of democratic rule.

A #1 New York Times bestseller: “An everyman’s guide to Washington” by the savagely funny political humorist and author of How the Hell Did This Happen? (The New York Times). P. J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores has become a classic in understanding the workings of the American political system. Originally written at the end of the Reagan era, this new edition includes an extensive foreword by renowned journalist Andrew Ferguson—showing us that although the names may change, the game stays the same . . . or, occasionally, gets worse. Parliament of Whores is a “gonzo civics book” that takes us through the ethical foibles, pork-barrel flimflam, and Beltway bureaucracy, leaving no sacred cow unskewered and no politically correct sensitivities unscorched (Chicago Tribune). “Insulting, inflammatory, profane, and absolutely great reading.” —The Washington Post Book World

Modern democracy is organized as a representative democracy in which those representing the people are elected to office. Political parties play a crucial role in this. They select the candidates, form or oppose governments, and organize the work of the representatives in parliament. This model of democracy is however being criticized. Parties are hardly trusted and voters have become volatile. How, then, do elected representatives of the people see and fulfil their role? To study this a survey was organized among the members of statewide and sub-state parliaments in fifteen countries. Members of seventy-three parliamentary assemblies were asked how they perceive their representative role, what they do to keep in touch with voters, how they behave and vote in parliament and how they will try to get re-elected. One of the ways in which candidates and elected members of parliament might react to the changing conditions in which they have to represent the people is by stressing more personal characteristics as opposed to the party label and party ideology. Representation might then become more a matter of personal choice. The results of the survey presented in this book do however confirm quite strongly that representation is very much shaped by the political institutions in which it is performed. Representation differs between countries, between different electoral systems, between statewide and regional parliaments, and depends strongly on the party to which a member of parliament belongs. Representation depends not as much on who the representatives are, as on where they are.

This book explores the history, current relevance, and future implementation of the monumental idea of an elected global parliament. The second edition brings the book up to date and incorporates extensive revisions and additions.

In analysing speeches made by legislators, this book provides theoretical and empirical answers to questions such as: Why do some Members of Parliament (MPs) take the parliamentary floor and speak more than others, and why do some MPs deviate more than others from the ideological position of their party? The authors evaluate their hypotheses on legislative speechmaking by considering parliamentary debates in seven European democracies: Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Assuming that MPs are concerned with policy-making, career advancement, and re-election, the book discusses various incentives to taking the floor, and elaborates on the role of gender and psychological incentives in speechmaking. The authors test our expectations on a novel dataset that covers information on the number of speeches held by MPs and on the ideological positions MPs adopted when delivering a speech.