PARLIAMENTARY DIPLOMACY IN CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Аннотация

This article aims to cover the rising importance of parliamentary diplomacy in realizing foreign policy and international agendas of national states. In so doing, the author attempts to explain the specifics of parliaments as actors of foreign policy, their unique approaches to addressing major issues as well as the impact of parliamentary diplomacy as the alternative form of diplomacy. Author also touched upon the growing parliamentary dimension ofinternational relations and thespread ofthe ideals ofparliamentarism over therecent decades. Key words: Parliamentary diplomacy, foreign policy, parliamentarism, political dialogue, parliamentary assemblies, international organizations. Among major hallmarks of contemporary international relations one can certainly add the growing involvement of parliaments in foreign policy and international affairs. Apart from their traditional responsibilities, modern parliaments are closely participating in addressing so called “democratic gap” in international politics thus trying to create more representative, transparent and democratic global governance. It is therefore the parliamentary factor is more visible in the works of international and regional organizations. These organizations are keenly aware of the rising parliamentary impact and acknowledge the global parliamentary balances and checks of their activities. Considering the phenomenal rise of parliament as an international actor some scholars even referred to 20th century as a period of ‘parliamentarization of international relations1’. Currently, we cannot imagine any single area of national or international politics without parliamentary participation. The parliament formed through free and fair elections is not only vital for the representation of peoples’ interests domestically but also a key asset in promoting national interests abroad thus improving international image of the country. Growing parliamentary dialogue has significantly enhancing the dynamics of modern international affairs, its forms and substance. Moreover, professional contacts between parliamentarians can potentially be instrumental in mitigating conflict situations and building more favorable environment for mutual cooperation. These contacts will further support parliamentary diplomacy and help to buildtrust as well as bridgedifferences in positions. Nowadays, the expansion of parliamentary authorities over foreign and international affairs led to the creation of an entirely new field called ‘parliamentary diplomacy’. Given the fact that parliament has traditionally been an internal political actor with essentially legislative and representative authorities, the respectively new role of parliament as a foreign policy instrument is yet to be properly analyzed. A clear-cut definition of what exactly consists of parliamentary diplomacy is also missing. That’s why we do not have a universally accepted definition properly explaining ever-increasing tendency offoreign parliamentary activities. 1SabicZlatko,BuildingDemocraticandResponsibleGlobalGovernance:TheRoleofInternationalParliamentary Institutions//ParliamentaryAffairs,Vol.61№2.OxfordUniversityPress,2008,p.260. https://ijmri.de/index.php/jmsi volume 4,issue2,2025 435 Nevertheless, the academic interest to the phenomenon of parliamentary diplomacy is growing over the last years. For example, as for Dutch legislative scholars, the term of parliamentary diplomacy is used ‘to describe the wide range of international activities undertaken by members of parliament in order to increase mutual understanding between countries, to better conduct government scrutiny, to democratically represent their people abroad and to increase the democratic legitimacy of inter-governmental institutions2’. On the other hand, the Portal for Parliamentary Development defines parliamentary diplomacy as ‘the means by which two or more parliaments conduct an ongoing dialogue with regard to key international issues through institutionally or individually3’. While accepting the elusiveness of a standard definition, R. Cutler argues that ‘parliamentary diplomacy represents an important middle ground between the traditional level of interstate diplomacy and the new level of transnational co-operation amongst grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs)4’. By summarizing many of its imperfect definitions G. Hamilton laconically referred to parliamentary diplomacy as‘diplomacy with a democraticmandate5’. However, we can argue that the existing definitional confusions will disappear over time once the role of parliament as a foreign and international actor becomes more evident. Arguably, this problem can also be attributed to distinctively evolving features of parliamentary diplomacy as a newfield of political disciplineas well as itsvague authorities. Regarded as a world organization of parliaments, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is at the forefront of global efforts to promote representative democracy and parliamen