First: Remarks Regarding the Experiences of Institutional Development in Contemporary Parliaments

1 - The Scopes and Methods of Institutional Development of Parliaments

The most important scopes and methods of institutional development in the parliaments of the contemporary world are as follows:

In the parliaments of what is called new democracies (particularly in Central and East Europe) the processes of institutional development of parliaments are linked to one major issue: "How to make parliament a strong political institution". The issue was exemplified in number of matters more important of which is the nature of electoral arrangements, the relation between the legislative power and government and effect of political elites in power and political parties and influential groups on the efficiency of parliament and the nature of parliamentary committees, the type of rules and listed regulations of parliament's action as well as the extent of information provided to the MPs and the way it affects the role of parliament in its move towards democracy. (i)

There isn't one particular mode which is better than others in the organization of the technical support apparatus for MPs, where the general secretariat is linked to the parliamentary structure which in turn falls within the framework of the existing published system.

The methods of appointing the secretary general of a parliament, differ from one country to another. It lies in the hands of the Prime Minister in the Canadian Parliament, and in that of the President with the approval of Congress in the United States…, but, in any case, the secretary general is the sole top administrator to all those working in the parliamentary apparatuses and enjoys absolute administrative and financial powers to deal with them. On the other hand, there isn't one architypal mode for organizing, dividing or specifying the number of technical apparatuses in the general secretariat of a parliament.

The number of parliamentary committees (permanent ones) in itself differs according to the political and national concerns in each country. It increases and decreases on the basis of these interests. The common ground, however, is represented by the coordination between these apparatuses, on the one hand, and between them and supervisory apparatuses in the other houses of parliament, on the other. Some of these technical apparatuses serve both houses of parliament equally following their laws and procedures, such as the Congress Research Committee (CRS) in the United States and the parliamentary library in Canada.

Most employees of the general secretariat of these parliaments tend to be technically specialized and the proportion of those specialized in law, political sciences and economics exceeds 75 percent, in addition to a proportion whose major fields are History and Sociology. The preparation of non-specialized employees is so low that it is practically not noticeable, as in the parliaments of Poland and the Czech Republic. In the parliament of Canada, even non-specialized services staff who worked within the halls of parliament were replaced by university students and temporary volunteers.

The common ground is the existence of a minimum-shared base between the workers of the parliaments of these countries reflected in their ability to use the computer and modern systems of information ( in spite of the existence of centers specialized in computers) and their obvious ability to handle the sources of fast and modern information gathering like the specialized periodicals and encyclopedias. In addition to this the Canadian parliament is characterized by its common use of Lap Top computers by MPs during parliamentary sessions.

These are divided its into many types, first and foremost are the studies undertaken by the parliamentary committees, which are the central nerve ending of legislative action. The permanent and temporary committees of parliament possess essential research abilities in the fields of law, economics and politics which supply the cadres necessary for legislative action. Second, the directorates of research which could form part of the administrative structure of the parliamentary library (as in Canada) and the national library (as in the Library of Congress in the U.S) or are specialized administration existing in themselves as in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The third type is represented by the research centers linked to parties (Party Carecus) as in Canada. The fourth type are the non-government research centers that act as centers of experience and are self financed or financed through the government itself, as in the US, Czech Republic and Canada.

In any case, the common ground of these research services generally is the commitment to objectivity and the provision of facts and figures and different supportive positions of various points of view regarding the issues being questioned without favouring one political view and without party bias.

These Services are witnessing enormous developments in parliaments in general, whether from the point of view of the increase of acquisition of the libraries of recent up to date material or material in general (which in Canada reached over half a million documents, and also increased in the library of Congress) or in terms of modern indexing methods, thus making the extraction of material and the use of library documents easier.

This in addition to developing a network system between libraries whereby sources and other information can be exchanged with other local and international libraries. However, these libraries in most instances (with the exception of the Library of Congress, which is essentially a national library) are primarily parliamentary libraries subject to organizational regulations - however limited - regarding their use by non-parliamentarians.

What characterized these parliaments, in principle, particularly in the Czech Republic, where parliament opens its doors to the public, is not just the ability to watch, but also to attend the parliamentary services (providing they are not secret ones). Some radio and T.V stations have arranged to cover parliamentary sessions and transmit this to the public via, the mass media. There are specialized bodies in parliamentary information and guidance aimed at accompanying students and other visitors while other agencies answer the questions of all interested parties through the telephone as in the Canadian information agency "Reference Canada".