Do international parliaments matter? An empirical analysis of influences on foreign policy and civil rights
| Author | Mathias Koenig-Archibugi,Luka Bareis |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221123026 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221123026
European Journal of
International Relations
2022, Vol. 28(4) 983 –1008
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221123026
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E
JR
I
Do international parliaments
matter? An empirical analysis
of influences on foreign policy
and civil rights
Mathias Koenig-Archibugi
and Luka Bareis
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract
International parliamentary institutions (IPIs), which give parliamentarians regular
opportunities to communicate with their foreign counterparts, have become a common
feature in global governance. Recent research has shed light on why IPIs are created,
on the similarities and differences in their institutional design, and on the reasons
that lead members of national parliaments to engage with them. By contrast, there
is little systematic empirical research on whether and how IPIs affect global politics.
This article addresses this question by assessing their ability to influence states in
relation to the position they take on issues of global concern and to how they treat
their own citizens. The study identifies several mechanisms of IPI influence, leading
to the hypothesis that more frequent opportunities for parliamentarians to interact
with their foreign counterparts within IPIs leads in time to greater similarity in the
foreign policy positions expressed by their governments and affects how those
governments protect the civil rights of their citizens. A statistical analysis spanning
multiple international organizations, member states, and decades indicates that IPIs
offer a distinct contribution to convergence in foreign policy. By contrast, participation
in IPIs is not robustly associated with civil rights protections. The finding that IPIs can
be consequential on which policies governments promote internationally even though
such institutions typically lack substantial authority may be encouraging for advocates
of further international parliamentarization and specifically the creation of a United
Nations parliamentary assembly.
Corresponding author:
Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Department of Government and Department of International Relations, London
School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: m.koenig-archibugi@lse.ac.uk
1123026EJT0010.1177/13540661221123026European Journal of International RelationsKoenig-Archibugi and Bareis
research-article2022
Article
984 European Journal of International Relations 28(4)
Keywords
International parliamentary institutions, global governance, socialization, foreign policy,
civil rights, international organizations
Introduction
Each year, thousands of parliamentarians and legislators from all parts of the world
meet and communicate with their foreign counterparts. When they do so, they occupy a
peculiar and underexplored space in world politics. Parliamentarians are distinct from
representatives of the executive branch, such as heads of government, foreign ministers
or diplomats, because typically only executive actors are entitled to formally represent
the state in international relations (IR). But, they are also distinct from the non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs) and transnational activists that have long attracted the
attention of IR scholars who emphasize that global politics is not limited to interactions
between states. This is because parliaments are public bodies with constitutionally
assigned functions in the national governance system, even if their ability to exercise
those functions is sometimes limited in practice. To use the language of English School
theory (Buzan, 2004), parliamentarians involved in cross-border activities roam the
grey zone between the ‘international society’ of states and the ‘world society’ of trans-
national actors.
The phenomenon of parliamentarians stepping out of their home state is not new. A
key rationale for it was stated already in 1789, by Jeremy Bentham (2002 [1789]: 250):
Were the French and English legislature to interchange a few Members, there could not be a
more powerful means of wearing away those national antipathies and jealousies which as far as
they prevail are so disgraceful and so detrimental to both countries.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1962 [1831]: 503) suggested that political and commercial
matters affecting any two people with constitutional governments should be decided by an
annual ‘Congress’ composed of an equal number of parliamentarians from each country,
‘amicably and justly to the satisfaction of both’, so that ‘profound peace and friendly feel-
ings might be preserved between them from generation to generation’. In 1889, 55 French,
28 British and 5 Italian members of parliament, and 1 representative each from the parlia-
ments of Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Liberia, Spain and the United States, met in Paris
and founded the Inter-Parliamentary Conference, which soon became the Inter-
Parliamentary Union (IPU). However, it is after World War II and especially after the end
of the Cold War that bodies bringing together parliamentarians from various countries
have proliferated: while only 3 such bodies existed in 1939, there were 40 by 1990, and
over 100 were created after that year, including sub-institutions (Kissling, 2014).
In recent years, scholars have greatly improved our understanding of three important
aspects of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs), that is, the regular and struc-
tured forums for interparliamentary dialogue that go beyond episodic meetings and
exchanges. First, much is now known about which IPIs exist and about the similarities
and differences in their institutional design (Alger and Kille, 2014; Cofelice, 2015, 2018;
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