A parliament is in general a consultative assembly whose permission may or may not constitutionally be required for the formal passage of binding legislation. The word itself is mainly of English usage, where other languages are liable to use a version of the word simply meaning assembly. Most parliaments are nowadays elected assemblies with the duty of checking, controlling and sometimes electing the executive power. Their structures canvary, the essential choice being either bicameral or unicameral. A bicameral parliament (the norm in the Anglo-American world) will often have a separate basis for selection for the two ‘houses’ or chambers of parliament, and will usually have somewhat different powers for the two. A very common difference, for example, is the sole right of the ‘lower’ house to initiate bills that result in taxation.
The selection procedure for the lower house (in the United Kingdom the House of Commons, in the USA the House of Representatives, in Germany the Bundestag) is usually the more clearly democratic. Thus the upper house in the UK, beginning a process of reform at the start of the 21st century, is the House of Lords, entirely unelected. The US Senate is elected on a basis of equal representation for each state, rather than of equally populated electoral districts, and Canadian senators are appointed by the governor-general on the recommendation of the prime minister (see second chambers).
Historically in Europe the development of democracy over the centuries has been largely the growth of power of parliament over the monarchy, and of the lower house over the upper. One can still see similar processes at work in other institutional contexts, an obvious one being the striving for power of the European Parliament over other institutions of the European Union. When the Eastern European countries started the process of democratic transition after the collapse of communism, they all opted for powerful parliaments rather than strong presidencies.
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