The Ideal of Parliament Since 1800 An Introduction

This introduction to the volume The Ideal of Parliament in Europe Since 1800 first discusses the recent historiography on the study of parliament as an institution and aspects of parliamentary culture. Next, it presents a brief outline of the rise and the success of parliamentary politics as a model and an ideal in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A section on parliamentary architecture highlights the ascent of this transnational ideal. Two further sections deal with the ‘crisis of expectations’ that occurred in the later nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century and the remarkable ‘resilience’ of the ideal of parliament, after the Second World War and after 1989. A concluding section points at the intricate nature of parliament, struggling to balance the often-conflicting functions of the political arena, the marketplace and the House as an institution.