What Are the Core Functions of Legislatures and What Factors Determine the Effectiveness of Legislatures in Carrying These Out? Discuss Drawing Upon Examples from at Least Three Different Nations.

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The legislature has a wide array of responsibilities and functions, consequently there are many factors and considerations which affect the effectiveness of such a body. One could summarise that legislature has three core functions in representation, legislation and parliamentary control. Conversely, the legislatures ability to achieve its core functions is often curtailed by issues such as the loss of sovereignty and dominant political parties. Legislature can be thought of as a deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend and repeal laws. Mezey termed legislature as “a predominantly elected body of people that acts collectively and has at least the formal but not necessarily the exclusive power to enact laws binding on all members of a geopolitical entity”. However, when analysing the function of the legislature more thoroughly one finds that the role of this assembly of people is of far greater breadth than this. The legislature, in parliamentary system of government has total command over almost all aspects of governmental action. The legislature, in a unitary government; a state governed as one single unit in which the central government is supreme, has both legislative and constituent functions. The scope of authority and functions of the legislature, therefore, depend upon the form of government. With the recent growth of democracy in the twenty-first century, the legislature has taken on a role of great and ever increasing importance. Perhaps the most salient function the legislature achieves, is the ability to make, amend and repeal laws. The content of these laws, depends on the needs of society. It is society that the legislature represents and as a result of this these new bills and laws spawn form the ever evolving needs of society. Henceforth, applying the same logic, old laws which are anachronistic and out of touch are amended,

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