From the onset one should praise the remarks that this study has concluded, though they respond to the cases under study, do not equally apply to all in the same degree or the same way. In other words, they do not apply in all cases.

Remarks can be grouped as follows:

1- That the study of constitutional documents in the cases under study reveal that the constitutional framework in them consecrates in one way or the other the hegemony of the executive power over the legislative power. Even though constitutional documents stipulate a cooperative condition between powers, interpreting actual practice reveal that this hegemony, which in the Kuwaiti case has reached to the prince’s resort to the dismissing the parliament more than once (the fourth parliament of 1976, the sixth parliament of 1986, the eighth parliament of 1996) when he was certain of the impossibility of cooperation between the government and parliament. Some analyses have attributed the uncertainty condition in the relationship between the legislative and executive powers to the overlap that some Arab constitutions included by in actuality combining the strong privileges of the executive power in both the parliamentary and presidential systems while it simultaneously combined the weak points of the legislative institution in those two systems

2- This remark has to do with the loss of political balance in some Arab legislative councils under study. This imbalance can be attributed to the political composition of these councils whereby a particular party has the majority of seats, which expresses the government’s will as the ultimate influence on the legislative process. We find a clear application of this pattern in the situation of the National Party in the Egyptian parliament, the current Congress Party in Yemen. The same, however, does not apply to the Lebanese parliament or the Kuwaiti one.

3- That the representational foundation from which legislative councils are elected is lacking in certain cases due to the electoral laws that deprive entire groups—such as women in the Kuwaiti case—from participating in the electoral process as candidates or voters. If some of the other cases under study do not include these restrictions, other case not covered by this study do suffer these restrictions. It may be added that the restrictions imposed by some laws on the formation of political parties lead to similar results.

4- That there are circumstances outside the legislative institution that have influenced the experiences under study. These circumstances led to the complete absence of this institution from the political arena (as was the case with the Lebanese parliament). Another example is what happened in Yemen, where the civil war and the violent fluctuations that accompanied and followed it led to the distancing of a large political force such as the Socialist Party from participation in the elections and membership in the parliament, which led to changing the balance inside the parliament to the interest of the governing Yemeni Party and deprived the council of the opposition’s participation which would have led—undoubtedly—to positive reactions on the council’s legislative and supervisory role.

5- That it is assumed that the elections are the natural mechanism for representing the existing different political forces in society. But a look at what happens in practice reveals that elections may lead to the ascent to power of reserved forces that adopt some of the behaviors opposed to the essence of democracy and that are considered a natural product of political upbringing, cultural environment, and prevailing societal conditions. This matter raises a noteworthy divergence between the form and substance of democratic practice. The Kuwaiti parliament’s opposition to the domanial decree granting women their political rights is democratic practice in terms of form in as much as it represents the parliament’s rejection of the government’s encroachment on its rights. Yet in terms of substance it is considered an act opposed to democracy in that it deprives an important sector of society—women—from practicing their political rights. This case raises an important issue worth discussing further because it is not limited to the Kuwaiti case only.

6- The study has revealed that with regard to the legislative performance of the councils under study, there has been a predominance of draft laws submitted by the government over draft law proposals submitted by members (the legislative initiative). This remark—as many analyses have revealed—is not limited to Arab legislative councils or legislative councils in developing countries but rather extends to the legislative councils of developed countries even if to a lesser degree. Related tot his fact is that the opposition in Arab legislative councils addressed by this study effectively contributes in many cases in proposing draft laws or discussing the draft laws submitted by the government or demanding changes or complete rejection of some draft laws. Yet its stances do not translate into final legislative behavior for the councils under study due to the dominance of the majority party. The yield of this process in its entirety is that the returns of the opposition’s stances is limited to an enlightening effect on public opinion in being reserved toward or rejecting laws that maybe restrictive to liberties or characterized by being almost non-constitutional or those that do not attend to the larger sectors of the masses.

The above means that the process of pumping effectiveness in Arab legislative councils and of reforming parliamentary life in the Arab World is an intricate and multi-dimensional process. It has a constitutional dimension necessary for achieving the lost balance between the legislative and executive powers, a political dimension related to strengthening the party structure and proving guarantees for free elections and the participation of the civic society—that is, guarantee of the availability of peaceful democratic practice in general—and a technical dimension related to the availability of the components of competent performance in the legislative institution (from the presence of qualification in that institution’s members that enable them to competently understand their supervisory and legislative functions, and the existence of a strong administrative technical body and one that is qualified to provide appropriate consultation to parliament members.