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This paper aims to scrutinize some determinants that affect the functions and roles of contemporary parliaments. In particular, such parliaments attempt to involve in new areas that were not represented in parliamentary study and to play new roles in the areas of development, diplomacy, the establishment of post-conflict peace rules and achieving the objectives of the sustainable development. The study found that the most important determinants affecting the new roles of contemporary parliaments are the constitutional and legal frameworks.

This paper adopts three basic methodologies so as to reach some applicable scientific findings that can be generalized. The researcher has used the descriptive methodology, to shed light on the parliament’s various activities and new roles and to take note of the many surrounding factors and available dimensions that enable parliaments to perform such roles. The researcher has also used the comparative methodology, to study parliaments with a view to identifying their roles in a way that includes their similarities and dissimilarities and the possibility of generalizing the outputs.

The paper has reached many findings, the most important of which are: first, the need to present appropriate amendments to the constitutions to give space to parliaments to play more effective and influential roles. Second, the internal regulations of parliaments must be in line with the attitudes and aspirations of the parliament and its members, giving appropriate cover for playing new roles in various areas.

This study has found that contemporary parliaments can play new roles in various fields, whether internal or external and in different sectors as well, as a result of the great developments and complexities introduced around the world. Such developments and complexities have cast a shadow on governments and affected their abilities in dealing with the issues immediately because of the enormous challenges in addition to the ongoing developments occurring to the legislative systems in the world, at the technical level of the departments and secretariats of contemporary parliaments or for members of Parliament and the institution as a whole.

The new roles of contemporary parliaments have been affected by the determinants of the research, which are the constitutional framework, the legislative framework, the relationship between Parliament and civil society and the relationship between Parliament and the government. These factors cast a shadow over the expansion or contraction of the attempts of modern parliaments to play new roles.

This study has found that contemporary parliaments can play social roles in various fields of a social nature, which is find solutions to the problems experienced by societies emerging from civil wars, which need national reconciliation, for example, the reconciliation of the ethnic tribes carried out by the Iraqi council of representatives between the local tribes to resolve the internal problems, in addition the role of Borondian council by it is trying end the conflict between the tribes of Hotsi and Tutsi.

The importance of the study stems from the fact that it focuses on the most important determinants of the new roles of contemporary parliaments that may be conducted outside the traditional framework of the parliament's study of legislation and supervision. Such contemporary parliaments have played new roles that take the form of political, economic, social, humanitarian, diplomatic and environmental works and other works concerned with the climate and their attempts to end internal and external conflicts and disputes.

Parliaments, as representative institutions, serve as communication channels between the public and the process of governance. The purpose of this paper is to consider the way in which this relationship has been conceptualised and various predictions about how it might change in the age of digital interactivity.

Findings from a survey of officials from 44 European parliamentary chambers are presented, together with findings from surveys of participants in several UK online parliamentary consultations.

The survey of European parliamentary officials suggests that digital information/communication technologies are being used widely, but that there is limited use of interactive features which allow citizens to comment and deliberate on policy issues. The surveys of participants in online consultations run by the British Parliament suggest that they might increase citizens' efficacy, although this might only be a short‐term effect.

The European parliamentary survey was conducted in 2003, since when some parliamentary web sites and information systems have been developed.

The paper considers the consequences of digital interactivity for parliamentary representation, combining conceptual and empirical perspectives.

The survey of European parliamentary officials gathered data from 44 parliamentary chambers, making it one of the most extensive European surveys of its kind. The surveys conducted before and after participants took part in UK parliamentary consultations were the first ever to explore the experience and attitudes of such a group.

Singapore is perceived to be the least corrupt country in Asia according to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from 1995 to 2010. In 2010, Singapore was ranked joint first with Denmark and New Zealand among 178 countries on the CPI with a score of 9.3. However, this does not mean that corruption does not exist in Singapore, which has its share of corruption scandals too. Indeed, the scandal involving Teh Cheang Wan attracted a great deal of attention because he was the Minister for National Development in Singapore from 1979 to 1986.

In Poetic Justice, Martha Nussbaum (1996) offers one version of an argument frequently repeated in the history of law-and-literature scholarship; to wit, that the literary imagination performs a salutary function with regard to many domains of modern public life. While law and economics are governed by logics of bureaucratic rationality and utilitarian calculus, literature, in particular the novel, presents a counterdiscourse, inviting us to empathize with others, expanding our moral sense, emphasizing the importance of affect and imagination in the making of a just, humane, and democratic society. Nussbaum's broad goal is a commendable one; concerned that “cruder forms of economic utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis that are…used in many areas of public policy-making and are frequently recommended as normative for others” are, in effect, dehumanizing, she argues for the importance to public life of “the sort of feeling and imagining called into being” by the experience of reading literary texts (1996, p. 3). This sort of feeling and imagining, Nussbaum explains, fosters sympathetic understanding of others who may be quite different from us and a deepened awareness of human suffering.

The Scottish Parliament was founded on principles of openness and accessibility and signalled the potential for a new style of politics after devolution. In the aftermath of allegations of political sleaze early in the life of the new institution, the Standards Committee of the Scottish Parliament conducted an inquiry into the registration of lobbyists. This process attracted much comment and criticism from public affairs practitioners and the Scottish media. Based on original empirical research, numerous interviews and first‐hand observation, the purpose of this paper is to offer a response to some of these criticisms.

The research reported here is based upon extended fieldwork and observation of the developing lobbying industry around the new Scottish Parliament, spanning the period from late 1998 until summer 2003. It involved some 73 interviews with various corporate and voluntary sector lobbyists, public servants and elected representatives. It also draws on participant observation at more than 70 official, public and private meetings for those involved in public affairs in Scotland. In addition, the paper monitored the popular and specialist media in Scotland for news and analyses of issues relating to lobbying at the new Parliament, undertook focus group research to test public opinion on the issue of registration, designed and administered an e‐mail survey of public servants in the USA and Canada charged with maintaining registers of lobbyists and conducted archival research at the Scottish Executive's library at Saughton House in Edinburgh.

The paper suggests the efforts by parliamentarians to regulate their relations with lobbyists need to be grounded in principles that apply to all outside interests seeking to influence the democratic process.

The paper challenges the assertions that lobbying is misunderstood by elected representatives and that the lobbying industry is entirely committed to increasing transparency.

The study focusses on explaining why advocates for reform to state audit in the United Kingdom (UK) in the early 1980s, focussed on improving the links between the new National Audit Office (NAO) and Parliament, rather than on traditional notions of audit independence. The study shows how this focus on the auditor's link to Parliament depends on a particular concept of liberty and relates this to the wider literature on the place of audit in democratic society.

Understanding the issue of independence of audit in protecting the liberties and rights of citizens needs addressed. In this article, the authors investigate the creation of audit independence in the UK in the National Audit Act (1983). To do so, the authors employ a neo-Roman concept of liberty to historical archives ranging from the late 1960s to 1983.

The study shows that advocates for audit reform in the UK from the 1960s to the 1980s were arguing for an extension to Parliament's power to hold the executive to account and that their focus was influential on the way that the new NAO was established. Using a neo-Roman concept of liberty, the authors show that they believed Parliamentary surveillance of the executive was necessary to secure liberty within the UK.

The neo-Roman republican concept of liberty extends previous studies in considering the importance of audit for public accountability, the preservation of liberty and democracy.

Public sector audit can be a fundamentally democratic activity. Auditors should be alert to the constitutional importance of their work and see parliamentary accountability as a key objective.

The neo-Roman concept of liberty extends previous studies in considering the importance of audit for public accountability, preservation of liberty and democracy.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the challenges, advantages and limits of ethnographical approaches to the study of parliament. Challenges in the study of political institutions emerge because they can be fast-changing, difficult to gain access to, have starkly contrasting public and private faces and, in the case of national parliaments, are intimately connected to rest of the nation.

Ethnography usually tends to be difficult to plan in advance, but especially so when parliament is the focus.

Research in parliament requires clear questions but an emergent approach for answering them – working out your assumptions, deciding on the most appropriate methods depending on what wish to find out, and continually reviewing progress. Its great strengths are flexibility, ability to encompass wider historical and cultural practices into the study, getting under the surface and achieving philosophical rigour. Rigour is partly achieved through reflexivity.

One implication of this is that not only will each study of parliament be different, because each is embedded in different histories, cultures, and politics, but the study of the same parliament will contain variations if a team is involved.

Ethnographical research is a social and political process of relating; interpreting texts, events and conversations; and representing the “other” as seen by observers.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.

This chapter examines the concepts of race and racism, critically reviewing their historical and contemporary applications in everyday life as well as in academic and policy debates. Racism has been extensively researched, with various theories and conceptualisations developed across social science. However, there is a great deal of disagreement regarding its nature, contemporary significance and empirical validation. This chapter examines these and attempts to synthesise some of the common definitions of racism provided in the literature. It explores related concepts and underlying themes pertaining to expressions of race and racism. Furthermore, it unpacks current knowledge about racial issues and discusses recent advances in the conceptual understanding of various forms of racism. It also elucidates the social, political and analytical applications of racism as a concept and the significance of racism in contemporary societies. The chapter concludes by highlighting how racism is a dynamic phenomenon, continuously evolving with the social, political and technological transformations in contemporary societies.