1 A First Phase: Legal and Historical–Institutional Foundations

For a long period, stretching from the late nineteenth century to the early 2000s, parliamentary studies were largely dominated by approaches rooted in constitutional law, public law, parliamentary law, and political history. This disciplinary orientation can be explained primarily by the European historical context, marked by the gradual consolidation of representative democracy and the need to understand the legal and institutional mechanisms that made this possible.

The central objective was to analyze the processes of institutionalization, formation, and functioning of parliamentarism around three fundamental principles. The first addressed the legal foundations and procedural guarantees of the parliamentary institution: constitutional rules, the status of elected representatives, legislative procedures, and the rights of parliamentary minorities. The second focused on deliberation and legislative autonomy, particularly in relation to the internal organization of assemblies, their committees, their rules of procedure, and their capacity to produce legislation independently of the executive. The third principle was that of political responsibility, namely the analysis of mechanisms of oversight, questioning, sanctioning, and accountability in parliamentary or semi-parliamentary systems.

This first phase made it possible to build a robust analytical framework – historical, normative, and comparative – that remains indispensable for understanding constitutions, parliamentary functions, and relations between the executive and the legislature. It continues to provide an essential foundation of parliamentary studies today.

2 A Second Phase: The Sociology of Actors and the Neo-Institutionalist Turn

A second phase emerged more clearly from the 2000s onward, marked by a gradual shift in focus toward the sociology of parliamentary actors: their trajectories, motivations, and strategies. The various strands of neo-institutionalism – sociological, rational choice, and narrative – complemented, and at times competed with, historical neo-institutionalism by emphasizing interactions between formal rules, informal norms, and individual behavior.

This evolution enabled a more fine-grained analysis of relationships between parliamentarians and political parties, interest groups, administrations, the media, and civil society. It also responded to the growing complexity of law-making processes, which have become less legible to citizens, particularly in contexts of multilevel parliamentarism and the multilateralization of decision-making, such as within the European Union or certain federal systems.

This phase also sought to understand the mechanisms of political representation and to analyze the conditions under which the representation of previously marginalized groups might be improved, whether of women, or of social, religious, or philosophical minorities, or of linguistic minorities.

Attention further turned to individuals and their motivations for occupying key parliamentary positions, notably within standing committees and committees of inquiry; to the logic governing the composition of these bodies; and to the modalities through which internal arbitration occurs among members of the same parliamentary group, within the broader framework of relations between majorities and oppositions.

This approach also led to analyses of interactions between parliamentarians, interest groups, the media, and lobbying activities, as well as their relationships with parliamentary administrations. Finally, it focused on the internal organization of parliaments in terms of human resources, financial and technical means, and the nature of the status of parliamentary staff, parliamentary groups, assistants, and the foundations that gravitate around parliamentary assemblies.

From this perspective, scholars sought to understand coalition-building processes within parliaments and with external actors, whether in the exercise of government oversight, the drafting and adoption of legislation, budgetary preparation and adoption, arbitration over appointments within other state institutions, or discussions of international cooperation and public policy evaluation.

3 A Third Phase: Crisis of Representation and Democratic Innovations

A third phase corresponds to the crisis of representative democracy, widely documented since the 2010s. Declining trust in political institutions, parties, parliaments, and the media has led scholars to question the traditional functions of Parliament and to explore its possible articulations with deliberative and participatory democracy.

Experiences of constitutional and institutional reform in Iceland, Ireland, and Chile illustrate this reconfiguration of parliamentary roles, at the intersection of electoral representation, citizen participation, and procedural innovation. Parliament is no longer analyzed solely as the exclusive locus of decision-making, but as a node within a broader democratic ecosystem.

Parliamentarians themselves have seen their role profoundly redefined, not only within the institutional system but also in their relationship with society. They are now recurrently confronted with debates and uncertainty concerning the very principles of representative democracy, particularly in a context marked by a crisis of political mediation and heightened distrust toward traditional actors of representation.

In response, parliaments have experimented with new instruments aimed at redefining the relationship between representatives and represented citizens. The use of electronic petitions, public consultations, or mechanisms for direct citizen participation in law-making – applied to a deliberately limited number of texts and within carefully framed procedural settings – illustrates this adaptive effort. These mechanisms do not merely seek to associate citizens with the legislative process; they also require parliamentarians and parliamentary administrations to learn from the experiences, expectations, and lay knowledge conveyed by civil society.

Such innovative procedures thus contribute to a dual learning process. On the one hand, they familiarize citizens with the constraints, temporalities, and trade-offs inherent in legislative production. On the other, they encourage elected representatives and parliamentary services to better understand social realities, concrete concerns, and contemporary forms of citizen mobilization. Parliament thus appears as an institution in constant transformation, engaged in a continuous process of adjusting its democratic practices.

The crisis of political mediation, however, is not limited to issues of managing conflicts of interest or channeling social demands. It more profoundly questions the capacity of parliaments, in a climate of increasing political polarization, to remain guarantors of normative democracy, that is, of public freedoms, the rule of law, and fundamental rights. This protective function becomes particularly crucial when institutional balances are weakened, and democratic norms are subject to explicit or implicit contestation.

Consequently, parliamentary studies can no longer be confined to observing Parliament as a mere instance of procedural democracy focused on rules, procedures, and formal decision-making mechanisms. They are also compelled to analyze Parliament as a testing ground for normative democracy, where the fundamental principles underpinning contemporary democratic legitimacy are tested, redefined, and sometimes defended.

4 Parliament as an Institution of Regulation, Ethics, and Integrity

It must not be forgotten that Parliament is, above all, an institution of regulation. While it may analytically be approached as a site of political confrontation, it is fundamentally an organization designed to produce, frame, and enforce rules, including with regard to parliamentarians themselves. In societies marked by increasing political polarization, parliaments play a central role in channeling political and social tensions.

Through the instruments at their disposal, party discipline, organization of speaking time, procedural rules, and deliberative formats, parliaments structure the expression of political conflict and limit its excesses. They thus constitute arenas for the containment of violence, transforming social and ideological antagonisms into regulated, framed, and ritualized debates.

In a context of declining legitimacy for representative democratic institutions, a growing share of scholarly reflection and institutional regulation has also focused on transparency rules in political life and on parliamentary ethics and integrity frameworks. This dynamic cannot be reduced solely to the issue of individual behavior by parliamentarians in the face of solicitations, benefits, or gifts that may be offered by interest groups, lobbying activities, or more broadly by state or private actors, and that may lead to corrupt practices.

More broadly, it concerns the very conditions of law-making: the use of external expertise, the increasing reliance on consultancy firms, public affairs or research agencies, the gradual integration of digital tools and artificial intelligence into parliamentary work, as well as the management of post-parliamentary careers and the risks of conflicts of interest they may generate at the very moment norms are being elaborated.

This evolution has been accompanied by the establishment and structuring of national and international networks dedicated to reflection, oversight, and the dissemination of good practices in parliamentary ethics and integrity, such as the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) or the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.

Parliamentary ethics and integrity also refer to the adoption of professional, respectful, and dignified conduct in the exercise of the mandate, particularly in relations with parliamentary staff and with citizens. They encompass, in particular, the prevention and handling of situations of moral harassment, sexual harassment, and mobbing, which directly raise questions about forms of power, domination, and symbolic violence that may be exercised within parliamentary institutions themselves.

Nevertheless, this regulatory function must not reduce Parliament to a cold or purely procedural institution. Assemblies are also eminently human spaces, marked by rich debates, which are sometimes intense and often highly symbolic: the use of humor, memorable speeches, solemn declarations by heads of state or government, as well as memorial statements concerning past genocides or resolutions addressing contemporary conflicts. In this respect, parliaments appear as fully-fledged normative and symbolic actors.

5 A Fourth Phase: New Objects and New Analytical Horizons

A fourth, more recent phase further broadens the scope of parliamentary studies. It addresses parliamentary ethics and integrity, the relationship between parliaments and science, parliamentary diplomacy, the external relations of assemblies, institutional communication, and now also the integration of artificial intelligence into law-making and parliamentary work.

The articles that follow fully illustrate this diversification of objects and approaches. They successively address Parliament as an institution of lifelong learning, as a performative space of citizenship, as an actor of technological innovation, as a producer of democratic narratives, and as a diplomatic actor in its own right, including through non-engagement.

Far from being confined to an analytical structure dominated by law or political history, contemporary parliamentary studies are characterized by an openly embraced plurality of approaches, drawing jointly on law, political science, sociology, anthropology, communication studies, international relations, and science and technology studies.

This plurality is not merely a disciplinary expansion. It reflects a profound renewal of the questions posed to parliaments, now analyzed not only as decision-making institutions but also as sites of learning, symbolization, mediation, diplomacy, and democratic innovation. The new fields explored – parliamentary humor, narrative communication, artificial intelligence, diplomatic non-engagement – demonstrate that parliamentary studies today constitute a privileged observatory of contemporary transformations of democracy, in all their complexity, tensions, and possibilities.

This issue features four articles that each open up a distinct angle on contemporary parliamentary politics. In “How to Be(come) Themselves: Reframing Parliaments as Institutions of Lifelong Learning,” Kristen Alicia Heim proposes rethinking parliaments as organizations structurally dependent on continuous learning, given the absence of standardized job descriptions and the variability of MPs’ roles. She maps an extra-parliamentary learning ecosystem (professionalization, bilateral exchanges, transnational networks, and donor-led strengthening programs) and cautions that learning may remain superficial unless it is internalized and matched by supportive institutional conditions. In “LLMs in Parliaments: Fostering Technological Innovation, Cooperation and Democratic Principles,” Giuseppe Mobilio, Marco Lippi, Erik Longo, and Simone Marinai examine how large language models can be introduced into parliamentary work without undermining legitimacy, accountability, and democratic safeguards. Combining technical and legal perspectives, they emphasize tools such as retrieval-augmented generation and transparency-oriented design, and they illustrate a concrete use case for the Italian Parliament to support competence checks while preserving human oversight. In “Narratives about Democracy: Parliamentary Communication between Neutrality and Plurality,” Cláudia Lemos and Cristina Leston-Bandeira analyze how parliaments craft public narratives in times of democratic crisis, comparing the UK House of Commons and the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. They show two contrasting understandings of impartiality – narrative neutrality in the UK versus plurality in Brazil – highlighting how communication choices shape democratic legitimacy. Finally, in “Conceptualising Parliamentary Non-Engagement: Luxembourg’s Differentiated Parliamentary Diplomacy towards the Armenia–Azerbaijan Conflict,” Laura Gil-Besada conceptualizes deliberate non-engagement as a meaningful tool of parliamentary diplomacy rather than simple inaction or mere lack of capacity. Drawing on documents and interviews covering the period 2005–2025, she traces Luxembourg’s post-2020 shift toward visible alignment with Armenia alongside routinized non-engagement towards Azerbaijan, arguing that withdrawal can be a strategic resource for small-state parliaments.

6 A Fifth Phase: The Creation and Continuous Densification of Research Centers and Chairs in Parliamentary and Legislative Studies

In conclusion, parliamentary and legislative studies today constitute a globally institutionalized field of research, albeit one that remains deeply heterogeneous in its forms, disciplinary anchors, and thematic priorities. This state of the art is reflected in the diversity of specialized chairs, centers, and networks across all continents. Only a few examples can be mentioned here, without overlooking the profusion of research structures internal to parliaments themselves, such as the European Parliamentary Research Service of the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices of the French National Assembly and Senate, or the Congressional Research Service in the United States.

In Europe, the United Kingdom remains a central hub with the Centre for Legislative Studies at the University of Hull. Italy relies on the Centro di Studi sul Parlamento at LUISS, strongly anchored in parliamentary law and legislative drafting. Spain, for its part, draws on the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales and the Instituto de Derecho Parlamentario at the Complutense University of Madrid. Germany, Institut für Parlamentarismusforschung (Institute for Parliamentary Research). Conducts theoretical and empirical research on topics related to parliamentarism, representative democracy, political parties, and the legitimacy of democratic system. These are leading institutions in constitutional and parliamentary studies, located at the interface between academic research, expertise, and elite training.

In North America, Canada constitutes a major hub with, at the federal level, the Institute of Parliamentary and Political Law and, in Quebec, the Research Chair on Democracy and Parliamentary Institutions at Université Laval. Both develop a firmly interdisciplinary approach to parliaments, bringing together law, political science, political communication, and public policy.

In Latin America, Argentina stands out with the Centro Internacional de Estudios, Investigación y Prospectiva Parlamentarios at Universidad Austral, which combines research, training, and parliamentary foresight, closely linked to challenges of democratic governability, political polarization, and legislative professionalization.

In Africa and Asia, parliamentary studies have developed strongly around centers linked to parliaments themselves (Kenya, Nigeria, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin, etc.) or hybrid structures associating universities and international organizations, with a strong emphasis on capacity building, citizen participation, and institutional modernization. In Oceania, the Australian National University plays a key role in the comparative analysis of parliamentary institutions and constitutional reforms.

Within this international landscape, the Chair of Legislative Studies at the University of Luxembourg, with the support of the Chamber of Deputies of Luxembour, Asssemblée parlementaires de la Francophonie and European Parliament in Luxembourg, occupies a distinctive position. It stands out for its comparative and multilevel orientation, linking national, European, and international parliamentarism, as well as for its close integration of research, teaching, and institutional expertise. Its thematic areas cover legislative processes, electoral studies, parliamentary diplomacy, communication and democratic legitimation, as well as more recent fields such as the relationship between parliaments and science, public ethics, and artificial intelligence. Through the creation of its Master en études parlementaires / Master in Legislative Studies and its large international network, the Chair fully illustrates the contemporary renewal of parliamentary studies, now conceived as a privileged observatory of transformations in representative democracy in all its forms.

This dynamic is also reflected in the Global Conference on Parliamentary Studies, an annual interdisciplinary event held in different locations and hosted each year by different institutions. It brings together academics, researchers, and practitioners to exchange findings, compare approaches and cases, and advance shared research agendas in parliamentary and legislative studies. Organised in cooperation with the International Journal of Parliamentary Studies, it also serves as a key forum for connecting scholarly debate with institutional practice. The 2026 edition will take place in Luxembourg.

These developments – mirroring those of other centers and chairs worldwide – are reflected in the plurality and richness of this new issue of the International Journal of Parliamentary Studies, which we present with great interest and enthusiasm.