International Parliamentary Institutions: Some Preliminary Findings and Setting a Research Agenda

This paper aims at exploring which factors may promote or inhibit the empowerment of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). Their origin dates back to the creation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in 1889, but they mushroomed after the Second World War, especially after 1989-1991, and today their presence is established almost everywhere in the world. However, they display sensibly different features in terms of institutional and organizational patterns, rules and procedures, legal status, membership, resources, functions and powers. In this sense, the study will mainly explore the formal and actual powers of IPIs, in particular consultative, budgetary, oversight and co-legislative, in order to analyse whether and how they develop over time. The question to be answered, then, is the following: what are the exogenous (structural) and endogenous factors that may account for the development of IPIs’ powers? In this paper, some preliminary findings will be presented.