The institutional development of Legislative Supporting Agencies (LSAs) focusing on the differences among parliamentary-system countries

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Legislative Supporting Agencies (LSAs) as agencies supporting the activities of the legislature. It elucidates the relationship between the institutional development of LSAs’ and other political factors, paying attention to the characteristics of the parliamentary system. The main factors that influenced the development of LSAs’ are presented. These factors are the classification of legislatures as arena-type or transformative-type and the actors that have a legislative supporting function other than LSAs in parliamentary countries (bureaucrats and parliamentary group staff). An important suggestion for the causation between these factors and the development of LSA's can be made as a result of statistical analyses.