Parliamentary Studies: Studying Parliaments, Improving Parliaments

The diverse and fascinating articles in this issue provide an opportunity to ponder on the field of parliamentary studies and the nature and characteristics of scholarship in this field.What are the major common characteristics of this scholarship?At first blush, the answer seems obvious -it is actually stated in the name of the field and of this journal: they all study parliaments.Yet, the answer is not so trivial, because this field and this journal, by their very nature, bring together authors from diverse backgrounds and approaches.These include researchers from diverse disciplines -most prominently from political science and law, but also from a range of other disciplines, each with its own research focus and own perception of how to conduct research.These also include practitioners from various positions -legislators and other parliamentarians and parliamentary officials; with both groups of researchers and practitioners coming from various countries, each with its own political and legal culture and scientific and academic culture (Benoît & Rozenberg, 2020;Szabó, 2021).Yet, I still believe that there are common characteristics for the scholarship by these diverse set of scholars, notwithstanding their diverse set of approaches, views and methodologies.In this brief essay, I will focus on one fundamental characteristic: the underlying belief that parliaments matter; that legislatures are important.Again, at first blush, this may also seem obvious and even trivial.One can assume (and hope!) that all scholars in all fields believe that their object of study is interesting and worth studying, and that their work is important, whether they spend their days developing a cure for cancer; doing basic research in a lab; studying frogs in the amazons; or analyzing the works of a poet who died 500 years ago.I argue, however, that the difference