In order to portray the roles of legislatures more dynamically than in prior literature, this
13 Longley and Taylor M. Hoffman, “Parliamentary Members and Leaders as Agents of Reform: Parliamentary and Regime Change Revisited”, in Longley, Agh, and Zajc, eds., Parliamentary Members and Leaders, 135-182.
14 Ibid, 171.
15 Some crucial ones are: Liao Ta-chi, “An Authoritarian Regime Legislature’s Role in Promoting Democracy: An Examination of the Extra-Institutional Strategies of Taiwan Legislators”, in Longley, ed., “The Role of Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and Newly Democratic Regimes”, 203-226. Mercedes Alda and Lourdes L. Nieto,
“Parliament in the Transition and in the Consolidation Process: The Case of Spain”, also in Longley ed., ibid, 179-202. David Olson, “The Parliaments of New Democracies: The Experience of Central Europe”, in George Kurian, ed., World Encyclopedia of Parliaments and Legislatures (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books, 1998), 838-48. Drago Zajc, “From Systemic Change to Consolidation: The Slovenian Parliament in a Process of Transition”, in Longley and Zajc, eds., The New Democratic Parliaments, 333-350.
16 David Olson, “The Parliaments of New Democracies”, 847.
section first lays out three metaphors for the different roles that might be played by the legislature in a democratization process. This section then defines the meaning of democratization, since it seemingly involves a long process with different stages that also inextricably ties in with the role change of the legislature. Thirdly, this section will offer the theoretical propositions of the paper for explicating the dynamic and interconnected relationship between the role of the legislature and the democratization of the system in which the legislature resides.
A. Three Metaphors
Sleeping lion: Here it is assumed that the legislature was a seed already buried in the soil of a given constitutional system. Legally, it has functions such as regularly scrutinizing budgets and legislative bills, even though an authoritarian party may be in de facto control. As mentioned before, the legislature in an authoritarian system usually is labeled a “rubber stamp”. However, using the metaphor of a “sleeping lion” instead of a “rubber stamp” for the legislature aims to convey the sense of its potential power. Even though it may look quite submissive to the party or the cabinet, and often too quiet in doing its job, it is still alive. It may even “growl” once in a while, which could bother the party or the cabinet a little bit, though that kind of sound may not be able to substantially push forward
democratic progress in the system at the moment.
The problem for a sleeping lion legislature is that it cannot be very alert to the noise of the environment. However, the environment a lion sleeps in is also more peaceful and quiet than that in other situations.
Awakening lion: When the environment has been changing more quickly or more dramatically (e.g. becomes too noisy), the sleeping lion-like legislature should be awakening. It will yawn and growl so as to warm itself up. However, at this stage, this kind of legislature may mainly reflect on the demands or the voices from the environment. It is not yet ready to actively pursue its own goals, which may directly relate to democratic reform and therefore be able to enhance its legally assigned functions.
Roaring lion: ”A lion that is roaring” signifies a legislature that is not only awakening but also is articulating something. This kind of legislature not only echoes environmental changes, but also tries to play a significant role in the environment. What it articulates may have an impact on the furtherance of democracy as well as the improvement of its functions in the system. In other words, this kind of legislature would be able to roar out certain democratic changes which the environment may not realize clearly, or may be controversial.
B. The Meaning of Democratization
The above three metaphors try to portray the role change of the legislature at the different stages of democratic development in a given system. Then what the meaning of democratization is and the plausible stages it may involve need to be defined and discussed.
The paper mainly adheres to the definition of democracy of Diamond, Linz, and Lipset:17 [A] system of government that meets three essential conditions: meaningful and extensive
17 Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988), xvi.
competition among individuals and organized groups (especially political parties) for all effective positions of government power, at regular intervals and excluding the use of force; a highly inclusive level of political participation in the selection of leaders and policies, at least through regular and fair elections such that no major (adult) social group is excluded; and a level of civil and political liberties.
The above three conditions embody certain legal and institutional arrangements that should appear and be formalized. They not only render certain political powers and civil rights to
citizens who did not have these in the past, but also establish the rules of the game for a fairer and more inclusive competition among different groups (or parties) than that in the past in a given polity. However, could how these legal arrangements have come into being? There should be a long process in which issues related to the three democratic conditions might have been raised, debated, and pushed forward. The institutional constraints on the three conditions then were fixed either in an incremental manner or a dramatic way.18
The paper conceives of this process of regime democratization as one involving four stages.
The first one is period of hard authoritarianism in which a given government often dominated by one party firmly blocks the coming about of the three conditions. It does not “permit effective competition for political power, nor meaningful and widespread popular participation in the formulation of public policies, through elections or other means. Nor does it allow substantial levels of civil liberties.19 The second one then is a period of soft authoritarianism in which the given government has gradually relaxed some constraints on the three conditions.20 For instance, the given government enlarges its structure of participation in such a way that the structure
includes more and more major social groups. The third one is a period of rapid democratization in which the given government has been undergoing its transformation by rapidly lifting almost every constraint on the three conditions. The fourth stage then is a period of democratic consolidation in which the given government has to learn how to substantially bring about the three conditions by debating, modifying and working out the details of these three conditions.21
In this long democratization process,the effort being made to articulate democratic issues by legislators might not be able to show its direct impact upon the given polity in which the legislature resides. Neither should it be counted as useless in terms of promoting democratization.
Thus every articulation made by legislators trying to remind the authorities of what is, how to be, and why we are not a democracy, should be counted as making an effort in making progress
18 Longley & Hoffman, “Parliamentary Members and Leaders as Agents of Reform” in Longley, Agh, and Zajc, eds., Parliamentary Members and Leaders, 135.
19 The foregoing description mainly copes with a traditional definition for authoritarianism. See L. Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries, 14.
20 Dividing the concept of authoritarianism into hard and soft categories may have been started by Edwin A.
Winckler. See E. A. Winckler, “Institutionalization and Participation on Taiwan: From Hard to Soft Authoritarianism”, China Quarterly (No.99, 1984), 481-99.
21 Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 3-15.
forward democracy. This paper thus particularly focuses on the changes in the articulations function on democratic issues made by legislatures in the four different stages of the long democratization process.
C. Propositions
(A) The first proposition----A sleeping-lion legislature during the stage of hard authoritarianism
A legislature even in a very “hard’ authoritarian regime does not lose its functions entirely so as to be a “rubber stamp” only. It is a sleeping lion, and may sometimes even growl. This means that a small portion of its members once a while might raise issues related to promoting democracy or make the executive unhappy.
Reason: As Roundquist argued, a legislature once set up within a modern constitutional framework should have the potential to function.22 Take the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Mainland China, for example. It was formally established in the constitution of People’s Republic of China (P.R.C), and has the power to scrutinize bills and budgets, functions which quite parallel those in any modern constitutionalist country. However, since the NPC’s members are nearly 100% recruited from the Communist Party and are elected indirectly, it has long been viewed as a “rubber stamp”.23 But O’Brien’s study of its role during the 1980’s, does not agree with this stereotyped image of a legislature in a very hard authoritarian regime, one which limited any institutional reforms only to economic areas.24 He pointed out that the NPC had played an active role in lawmaking oversight, representation, and regime support.25 The NPC might appear conservative, sometimes, by way of questioning the unforeseen consequences of reform. On the other hand, the NPC also displayed its ability to scrutinize and prevent
unrevised passages of initiatives.26 In other words, it did once in a while obstruct the
executive’s proposals by highlighting negative public opinions and by insisting on procedural regularity.27
By the same token, it should be reasonable to expect that a legislature in a hard authoritarian regime, which may bring about even little democratic reform, would not be as static as a rubber stamp. It may better be portrayed as a sleeping lion who is alive and able to be awakened at the right time.
(B) The Second Proposition----The political environment’s playing a key role in understanding the role change of the Legislature
22 Paul S. Rundquist, “Legislative Assemblies: The Seed of Democratic Reform”, 1.
23 Yu Keping, “The People’s Congress System in Reform China”, paper presented at the 17th World Congress, IPSA, July 17-21, 1997.
24 Kevin J. O’Brien, “Is China’s National People’s Congress A ‘Conservative’ Legislature?” Asian Survey (Vol. xxx, No. 8, 1990), 782-794.
25 Ibid., 785-86.
26 Ibid., 793.
27 Ibid., 794.
There should be a corresponding relationship between change in the political environment and change in the role of the legislature. That is, the legislature may behave like a sleeping lion in a period of hard authoritarianism; an awakening lion in a period of soft authoritarianism; a roaring lion in a period of rapid democratization; and then still a roaring lion, though it might not sound as loud as before, in a period of democratic consolidation.
The political environment may be conceived of as two layers.28 One is the inner environment of the legislature, which mainly involves the structure of the legislature
encompassing, such factors as the background of its members (e.g. old/new proportion), the configuration of parliamentary parties, etc. The other is the outer environment of the legislature, including such factors as institutional arrangements, public opinion, mass media attention, and international trends. A look at the transformation of the role a legislature should thus take both its inner and outer environments into account.
Reason: Prior literature seems to all agree that democratic reforms come from elsewhere other than the legislature.29 Furthermore, many legislative specialists also seem to admit that legislatures are “direct and immediate beneficiaries” of a democratization process.30 Thirdly, organizational theorists who study legislatures from an organizational or institutional
perspective also claim that “institutional context” or “institutional time” should be taken into account in understanding any institutional development in a broad sense; on the development of legislative institutions in new regimes in a narrow sense.31
Thus change in the environment that surrounds the legislature should be crucial to our understanding of the role change of the legislature in the democratization process. An environment defined as having two layers, mainly follows Easton’s theory of political systems.32
(C) The third proposition----A dialectical relationship existing between the role change of legislatures and systemic democratic change
The dialectical relationship encompasses two things here. One is that the relationship between the role change of the legislature and regime change is not a linear one, but a cyclical and cumulative one. It would be difficult to pinpoint a direct cause-effect relationship between the two, but every effort made by either side in terms of promoting change, no matter how
28 David Easton, “An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems,” World Politics (No. 9, 1957), 383-400.
29 The literature regarding democratization is tremendous. However little of it has considered that parliaments can play a critical role in promoting democratization. A detailed review of the literature in this regard can be found in Liao Ta-chi, “Parliaments and Democratization----A Theoretical Framework Consideration”, paper presented at the 18th World Congress, IPSA, August 1-5, 2000, 2-5.
30 Drago Zajc, “From Systemic Change to Consolidation”, 333.
31 Randall Strahan, “Leadership and Institutional Development in the Early Nineteenth Century US House of Representatives”, in Longley, ed., The Role of Legislatures and Parliaments in Democratizing and Newly
Democratic Regimes, 311-320. Also see Joseph Cooper and David W. Brady, “Institutional Context and Leadership Style: The House from Cannon to Rayburn”, American Political Science Review (June, 1981), 411-25.
32 See note 24.
minute it would have seemed at a given moment, should not be ignored.33
Furthermore, the dialectical relationship also means that both qualitative and quantitative change should be taken into account in understanding the changing relationship between the legislature and the system.
Sometimes, the qualitative change may play a more important role in producing the wave of reform than the quantitative one. For instance, only counting the number of new members added to the legislature may not be able to shed light on our understanding of the role change of the legislature. When the backgrounds of these new legislators or their individual characteristics have been taken into account, the changing relationship between the legislature and the system then can be made sense of.
Reason: The connection between legislative change and regime change has been fully accepted by legislative specialists. However, the legislature as a whole might not be a very active one in terms of pushing forward systemic reform. It has even been considered
conservative----in resisting and being relatively resistant to change.34 Longley and Hoffman then proposed that individual parliamentary members and leaders may serve as agents of reform, and the “influx of large numbers of new and different members” may serve as a transformative force in the legislature and therefore the system.35 Moreover, the legislative changes, as described by Longley and Hoffman, sometimes come about through sweeping reconstitution and transformation of character and purpose.36
Putting all these factors together, the third proposition then was laid out as above.