This institutional history charts the development and evolution of parliament from the Scottish and Irish parliaments, through the post-Act of Union parliament and into the devolved assemblies of the 1990s. It considers all aspects of parliament as an institution, including membership, parties, constituencies and elections.

Excerpt from A Short History of Parliament The idea of writing a short history of Parliament was first suggested to me by Mr. F. S. Pulling, of Exeter, who at one time I thought would have shared in the work. Circumstances, however, prevented this, and the book ultimately assumed a somewhat different form from that projected at first. The object with which it was written was the hope of imparting a certain amount of life to the dry bones which are strewn in the way of the constitutional student, and of combining instruction with a certain amount of amusement. Whether the effort has been successful or not the reader must judge for himself. I must here take the opportunity to render my acknowledgments to Mr. F. York Powell, Mr. C. H. Carmichael, and Mr. A. B. Beaven for the kind assistance which they have rendered me - especially the latter, who undertook the laborious task of revising the whole of the MS. dealing with the period after 1660. I am indebted to the kindness of Sir George Sitwell for a very early illustration of parliamentary corruption - an isolated evidence but sufficiently pregnant of meaning. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A Short History of Parliament was first published in 1953. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Parliamentary theory, practices, discourses, and institutions constitute a distinctively European contribution to modern politics. Taking a broad historical perspective, this cross-disciplinary, innovative, and rigorous collection locates the essence of parliamentarism in four key aspects—deliberation, representation, responsibility, and sovereignty—and explores the different ways in which they have been contested, reshaped, and implemented in a series of representative national and regional case studies. As one of the first comparative studies in conceptual history, this volume focuses on debates about the nature of parliament and parliamentarism within and across different European countries, representative institutions, and genres of political discourse.