The Role of Legislative Assemblies in the Policy Making Process: Towards a Theoretical Model

Legislative assemblies are one of the institutions involved in the policy making process. The range of their intervention varies from determining policies to formally influencing policies. This variation is affected by two categories of factors: structural factors and actors. The structures include the internal organizations of the Parliament and its jurisdiction, power distribution in the political system as well as external structures. The actors include the speaker of the Parliament, the head of the executive branch, representatives and interest groups. With regard to policy making, three types of assemblies are detectable on the basis of the relationship between these structures and actors: decisive assemblies, influential assemblies and weak assemblies.