I was assigned two months ago to perform a comparison study, which was officially confirmed in written in about a month.

The two main reasons, for taking it more than two months for performing this comparison study on the parliaments of the Arab countries, may be concluded in:
1- Difficulties in the collection of data related to the Arab parliaments.
2- Time shortage for reading & analyzing the available data.

The absence of a unified center that provides data on Arab parliaments makes it difficult on researchers performing studies related to the above-mentioned subject.

Theoretically, these data should have been available at one of the following centers:
- League of Arab states
- Union of Arab parliamentarians
- Arab legal study centers

The references of this study are to be:
1- The constitutions of Arab countries
2- The bylaws of Arab parliaments
3- Election rules, on which basis the parliaments are formed

The texts found at the league of Arab states concerning the above mentioned study are insufficient.
Whereas the Union of Arab Parliamentarians were able to provide us with some important documentation. On the other hand, we weren’t able to get, except for the texts of constitutions of Arab countries, from the Arab legal study center, that’s connected to Saint Joseph University of Beirut. And, finally the Lebanese study center was able to grant us a number of the needed texts.

For us to be able to continue this study & to gather all the needed information, we turned to the information bank of Madamek, which successfully was able to provide us with the necessary data on which our study is bases.

We should mention here that Madamek is a Lebanese institution specialized in the fields of establishing legal databases in Arab countries & producing information resources concerning the Arab Parliaments. Despite these difficulties, we succeeded in collecting information on the various Arab countries constitutions & their relative bylaws. But due to the tight time period we weren’t able to gather enough information on election laws, which are considered to be an integral part in performing a complete study, because they provide the necessary texts that on the basis of which the parliament members are elected and they state their number, their election criteria and the terms for their success. We should note here that some constitutions in some Arab countries do partially include the basis of election laws.

Out of the 22 Arab countries, only 17 were included in this study. Among the excluded were Libya, Mauritania, Djibouti, Moon Islands and Somalia, of which texts we weren’t able to gather.

But the main reason beyond excluding Libya from this study was the considerable small amount of articles related to our subject. We should note here that the case in Sudan is different, whereas its constitution is complete however the legislative authority is suspended.

We’ve performed our study on the legislative councils of the Arab States. We’ve dealt with 41 texts, consisting of 1150 pages and 4650 articles. This study was performed in several intervals:

Interval 1:
The indices put by the lawmakers possess general titles with a little elaboration on the main idea, leading to the inability of adopting them as a basis for comparison. For this reason, we kept the main indices of the legislators as a general framework but added detailed titles to embrace all the concerning articles, moreover we extracted detailed indices & included them in a general index covering the whole 41 texts. This index includes 1243 titles, without any single article out of the 4650 being kept out.

Interval 2:
We constructed comparison tables for the 17 countries involved in our study against the index titles. We have come across 22212 intersections of which some did not include any information. Since the country in question didn’t possess material related to the topic, whereas the rest or some of the rest did to some extend.

Interval 3:
Our previous works have allowed us to construct a general picture concerning the legislative situation of the involved Arab countries, on the basis of which we were able to perform our comparison studies & analysis.

We were satisfied by producing 30 comparison tables although we could have produced a lot more, however we thought that the ones we have produced are the main axis which form the core of our study & this comparison.

Any intersection between a country and a title will instantly provide us with useful data on that country’s legal status.

Please note the following:
1- An empty square has a negative meaning; i.e. the country concerned doesn’t have material dealing with the subject.
2- Columns containing an orange semi-circle marked ? stand for participation and ? partial-competence.
3- Empty columns marked ? mean negativity or unavailability ? or unavailability of credible materials or ? we lacking related materials.

The above mentioned points are projected in our coming comparison tables.

Therefore, this study will be dealing with the following:
1- A detailed analysis concerning the main data found in the comparison tables.
2- A presentation of some necessary structural and linguistic remarks.
3- We conclude by presenting visualization realized by Madamek for establishing a network of legal databases in each Arab country connected to a centralized database, possibly supervised by the Union of Arab Parliamentarians.