Conclusion. Questioning the ‘mezey question’: An interrogatory framework for the comparative study of legislatures

The Conclusion broadens the notion of ‘legislative performance’ from various measures of legislative output to an analysis of the performance of legislatures in the totality of the legislative process. The shift is from the ‘how much policy power?’ question of Mezey to a broad-gauge ‘how?’ question, with the emphasis on process and the overall anatomy of legislative influence. The question is: ‘how do legislators, both severally and collectively, work to perform their legislative roles in the three phases of the legislative process – that is, in the formulation and deliberation of public policy and oversight of the executive?’ Fifteen subsidiary questions are then devised, which, taken together, constitute a framework for the comparative study of legislative performance in the macro-sense of the term.