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In my post on Thursday I commented briefly on the appearance by the Governor and his Chief Economist at Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee. They tried to suggest to the Committee that to the extent there had been inflation forecast errors over the last year – responding to a question from Nicola Willis – that … Continue reading Misleading Parliament

AFTER 70 YEARS AS A ONE-PARTY STATE WITH A SOVIET-STYLE LEGISLATURE, MONGOLIA HELD ITS FIRST EVER MULTI-PARTY ELECTIONS IN 1990. HOWEVER, THE GENERAL ELECTIONS IN 1992 WERE WON BY THE EX-COMMUNIST MONGOLIAN PEOPLE'S REVOLUTIONARY PARTY AND THE REFORM DRIVE SLACKENED. IN THE 1996 ELECTIONS THE DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE WON 50 SEATS IN THE GREAT KHURAL AND THE REFORM DRIVE WAS RESTARTED, BUT AFTER A MID-TERM CABINET CHANGE IN APRIL 1998 THE DA LOST THE INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ROLES OF THE GOVERNMENT AND PRESIDENT, AND THE SECOND DA CABINET WAS DEFEATED ON A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE IN JULY. FOUR MONTHS LATER THE ISSUES WERE STILL UNRESOLVED.

"500 copies of the book have been printed from type on Dutch Hand Made paper for private distribution. No copies are for sale."-t.p. verso. ; Rubricated. Red marginal headings. "Printed for the committee by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, at The Lakeside Press."-[p. 46]. ; Mode of access: Internet.

"April 1986." ; Shipping list no.: 86-365-P. ; Caption title. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Parliaments are—or should at least be—the central rule‐making institutions in democratic countries. If people do not have faith in the institution making the rules, it is less likely that people live by them. Consequently, it is beneficiary if trust in parliament is high. But it is also a normative good in itself. If the people do not trust the key institution whereby they can exercise "rule by the people over itself," democracy itself is endangered. Secondly, trust levels should be reasonably even spread among relevant social and political groups in a society because parliament should ideally be a nonpartisan level playing field. However, because the majority in parliament typically chooses and sustains the acting government, one could say that legislatures in parliamentary democracies should not be level playing fields. According to this argument, there should be differences in trust in parliament between groups of individuals with varying political affiliations. Supporters of the majority in parliament should be expected to have higher trust in the legislature compared to citizens who voted for the opposition.We test our three hypotheses on data from some 80 countries participating in World Value Survey, either in Waves 5 or 6. We find that people in both new and established democracies harbor lower levels of trust than an intuitive interpretation of normative theory would lead us to expect. We also find that the attitudes of tens of thousands of citizens garnered from across 42 new and old democracies suggest that levels of average trust in groups of these societies are not as equally distributed, as a simple reading of democratic theory would have us to believe. In particular, individuals with a stronger interest in politics, and who are winners by the account of the last election, have statistically substantively relevant higher average levels of trust in parliament as an institution than do other citizens. The latter seems to us especially potentially problematic in particular for some of the new democracies where majority‐dominant parties manage to cling on to power over several election cycles. If what we find here were generally applicable also over several election cycles, we would expect the gap between winners and losers to widen and sediment and potentially sow the seeds of anti‐system movements opposed to democracy. Parliament is obviously a partisan creature in the eyes of most citizens in democracies. The level playing field idea does not fly.

Originally these "Debates" were written by William Guthrie and edited by Johnson for the Gentleman's magazine in 1738, and were given fictitious names as "Debates in the Senate of Lilliputs." Johnson was never at the gallery himself, but had assistance from persons employed: some were the mere coinage of his imagination.--cf Dictionary of national biography, v. 10, p. 922. ; Edited by J. Stockdale. ; v.1. Nov. 19, 1740-April 16, 1741.--v. 2. Dec. 1,1741-Feb. 23, 1743. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In an era of citizens' discontentment on democratic institutions, parliaments as a democratic cornerstone, are constantly striving to create alluring services taking, at the same time, into account the difficulty of achieving accessibility and transparency in citizens' e-participation. At the same time, the evolution of ICT tools presents opportunities to revamp the traditional character, functions and services of parliaments worldwide, giving rise to new capabilities and opportunities that can transform their political and social role. An e-enabled parliament can not only offer flexibility in parliamentary proceedings and facilitate the work of its members, but also strive for the inclusion of citizens, without annulling the representative character of the institution. In this paper, we present an initial overview of the characteristics of modern parliaments, recording existing service offerings and proposing a stakeholder-based categorization, with specific categories that can best accommodate explicit and active citizen participation within parliamentary functions. A number of existing citizen deliberation applications and research projects are highlighted as potential candidates for deploying novel extrovert parliament-to-citizen services, focused directly on citizen involvement. Moreover, the focus area based on the procedure from inclusion to feedback will give good evidence for all those factors that are necessary for a successful adoption of novel e-parliament services.