What do parliamentarians do? They make laws. What besides that? They provide checks and balances. What should they be doing more? We’ll see.
The overarching question that one should be asking in the 21st century is that if the primary functions of legislative apparatuses are devising, proposing and passing legislation and putting a check on domestic executive apparatuses, what good does it serve to establish solidarity with other parliaments across different countries that have vastly disparate interests and cultural/political nuances? The answer is that such interactions significantly bolster both functions that would play out less effectively in isolation.
Foreign policy carried out by the executive branch more often than not deal with immediate issues at hand; the term for the presidency (or for prime ministers) is limited, and the competency of the regime is measured and weighed by how much they bring back in a given period of time. If the executive branch is excessively fixated on diplomatic moves that would crystalize into concrete benefits only in the far distant future, such regime would invite attacks on all sides of political spectra and have their institutional credibility and political accountability gravely undermined. Such deficits in diplomacy and foreign policy can be partly, if not wholly, supplemented by parliamentarians’ interactions across different countries.
Plurality of political spectra across different countries in their respective parliaments and their periodic interactions will enable parliamentarians to set agendas that outlive the transience of incumbency in executive office; since democratic parliaments, in theory and in salient examples of practice, have plurality of political parties that would each last as long as they are sufficiently supported en masse, interactions will provide collective momenta that would draw in perspectives from various political settings, with less pressure to undesirably produce immediate results at nascent and premature stages of political discussion. Converged opinions can be shared domestically with fellow parliamentarians and with the public, with the knowledge that what is being discussed can be formulated into legislative bills or secure adequate potency for future office in the executive branch. Such multifaceted discussion is entirely absent when the executive is the sole actor playing out diplomatic moves; fickleness of public opinion will not allow for a deviation from what is expected to be achieved in limited terms of office.
Another uniquely beneficial element of lawmakers’ diplomatic interactions with long-term agendas is that political trajectories can be set with reference to what other countries are striving towards; the public, with the knowledge that parliamentarians are interacting globally, can be convinced that the domestic political parties are not conniving ill-fit policies for partisan political benefits but rather securing ways in which the constituencies can be addressed without regards to irrelevant particularities within specific borders. Parliamentarians will be pressured to draw from remarks and statements of other parliamentarians overseas, and prolonged efforts to do so will wither away skepticism for partisan interests and buttress support for the legislative branch in general.
Furthermore, domestic legislative apparatuses are bound to induce disproportional influence and representation due to differences in size and power in a plural set of political parties. Congressional or parliamentary hearings and investigations offer a way for the legislative branch to check the powers of the executive and the flaws of the current policies and practices; while domestic oppositional parties get opportunities to have a say in the procedure, their impact and ramification differ according to which political and ideological spectra holds sway in the each specific political/cultural setting.
In other words, political power is overly circumscribed by particularities of sociocultural conditions endemic in each country. Whereas the legislative branch can provide checks against the executive branch, some get vastly superior chances compared to others. Diplomatic relations among parliamentarians would make a difference. For instance, when the green party of country A has very limited political influence with little support from constituencies, country B might have a far-reaching concern for environmental policies and have a wide scope of support for green parties, and vice versa for the labor parties in each country.
Mutual exchange of parliamentarians in each political spectra would even out the disproportionalities in each country; for instance, country B’s green party parliamentarians might give a speech in country A to garner support for environmentally friendly policy measures, which might in turn influence the thickness of constituencies that would expand the influence of the green party in country A. Such expansion of influence for underrepresented parties is crucial in plurality-based liberal democratic societies, and in the long run, this would lead to the executive branch being checked from many more directions.
Now back to the question: What should parliamentarians be doing more? They should interact and engage in diplomacy with those overseas. They enlarge and make more effective the traditional roles played out by the legislative branch by enabling more long-term policy trajectories, bolstering support for the legislative branch in general, and evening out disproportional influence in modern-day party politics.
Sam Seung-Hwan Hong is a graduate student of Political Science with a concentration in Political Theory at the University of Chicago. When not philosophizing about politics, Sam likes to listen to classical music and play the piano. He can be reached at hwanhong91@gmail.com. |
