Eclectic yet still new. The creation of the Belgian parliament in 1830-1831The Belgian Constitution of 1831 consisted mainly of clauses borrowed from older constitutions. Besides, most members of the Constituent Assembly were guided by the British parliamentary model, which was…

Parliaments in the NetherlandsParliamentary history was originally the domain of liberal members of parliaments, who were also interested in the meaning of parliamentary representation. It was only after the Second World War that it turned into a professional genre, concentrating…

In the beginning, there was the word. The early evolution of parliament in the mediaeval princedoms of the Netherlands‘Parliaments’ or representative political institutions in the princedoms of the Low Countries came about as a result of political practice rather than…

The Assembly of the States-General in the Dutch Republic before 1795 and the information that it released to the general publicThis paper examines the transparency of the meetings of the Dutch States-General during the early modern period. These meetings were…

The representative fiction. Political representation between old order and modernityIn this article some connections are explored in Dutch thinking on political representation between the old order of the Dutch Republic and post-revolutionary modernity. Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, the framer of…

The authority of ‘Mr. Speaker’ in nineteenth-century Dutch parliamentary cultureThe contemporary authority of the Speaker of the Second Chamber is obvious. His presence, for example, is repeatedly evoked with the enchanting mantra ‘Mister Speaker’ [‘Mijnheer de voorzitter’], even though the…

A red thread running through a blue story. The leftist-liberal result of mimetic representation and the views on democratic citizenship in Belgium, 1893- 1900.During the 1890s, Belgium was a laboratory for political innovations in the eyes of contemporary politicians and…

The language of anti-parliamentarianism. Poetry and politics in the Netherlands 1870-1940‘The language of anti-parliamentarianism’ discusses the intertwinement between Dutch political history during the late nineteenth century and the interwar period and experiments in poetry that were going on at the…

A harmful institution. Critique of the Belgian parliament during the interwar periodTwo key features that characterise the interwar period are the crisis within the parliamentary system and the rise of fascism. The wave of criticism directed at the Belgian parliament…

The establishment of a government by the States. An original Dutch idea or the fruit of Monarchomachist inspiration?Dutch historians generally take it for granted that, after Leicester’s departure from the Netherlands, Oldenbarnevelt and his fellow-regents decided in 1587 to commit…