Legislative communities. Conceptualising and mapping international parliamentary relations

Besides the increasing scope of transnational activities of civil society actors, international relations of national legislatures have long been expanding, yet without attracting substantial scholarly attention. We can observe that national Members of Parliament meet in various bi-and multilateral organisational forms within and beyond international organisations to fulfil parliamentary functions. We present a conceptual framework differentiating between two forms of international parliamentary relations: multilateral vs. bilateral organisation. We argue that multilateral participation is mostly driven by the supply of such organisations and can mainly be found in Europe and Africa. On the contrary, the capacity of chambers can explain the realisation of bilateral channels. We test our claims with data for the international relations of 144 national parliaments. Our explorative empirical study is the first to jointly analyse bi- and multilateral transnational parliamentary relations and shows that international parliamentary cooperation varies over legislatures and regions, generating genuine clusters of institutionalised communities. Our findings help to embed the existing research on international parliamentary institutions and diplomacy in a larger context of international relations. Furthermore, our global relational account of national parliaments speaks to research on diverse topics of domestic outcomes, such as democratisation, norm and legal diffusion, and governmental control.