"Parliamentary Democracy": some preliminary findings. JMWP No. 48.02, November 2002

There has been a significant growth in the number of transnational parliamentary bodies recently. National parliaments have also become more active in international relations. This phenomenon, which remains under-researched at the academic level, has been conveniently dubbed ‘parliamentary diplomacy’. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of what parliamentary diplomacy actually means, based on a number of recent research on Euro-Mediterranean issues. It concludes that parliamentary diplomacy is not the same as parliamentary accountability in foreign and defence policy, although the two are connected. It argues that there are many realities of parliamentary diplomacy. Finally, it also calls for more academic research on the subject