Legislatures and Parliaments in Comparative Context

The words “legislature” and “parliament” are often used interchangeably. The distinction between them, however, can be used to structure the analysis of legislatures and/or parliaments in a comparative context. Legislatures legislate; they pass laws. The notion of a “legislature” is thus located firmly in the classical view of a separation of powers between legislature, executive and judiciary. This distinguishes law-making both from the business of government and from the interpretation, adjudication and enforcement of any laws that are made. A “parliament”, on the other hand, does legislate but in contemporary politics is also something much more than a legislature. In the constitutional structure of “parliamentary government” that characterizes most European states, as well as “European-style” modern democracies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the executive is constitutionally responsible to the legislature. The matter of whether or not the executive is responsible to the law-making body lies at the heart of my distinction between a “legislature” and a “parliament”. Parliamentary elections are in essence about choosing governments, not law-makers. This in turn creates distinctive incentives for elected politicians, who must remain loyal to political parties if they want to get into government, while heads of government often have discretion over the strategic timing of parliamentary elections. Under a seperation-of-powers regime, legislative elections have no effect on the identity of the government, although they have an impact on what the government is able to do. This affects the incentive structure of politicians, whose loyalty to political parties, for example, becomes more of an open question. Thus I use the distinction between legislatures and parliaments, a distinction between two very different types of politics, to structure the discussions that follow. I begin in the next section by looking at parliamentary politics, before moving on to look at legislative politics in separation of powers regimes. I conclude by revisiting this distinction in the context of the different types of empirical technique we can use to measure the policy positions of elected politicians.