“To Watch and Control the Government”. ‘Rediscovering’ Parliaments’ Oversight Function
The chapter argues that the best answer to the challenges for representative democracy is based on strengthening parliamentary oversight powers of executive activities. In the last two decades, two threats have been putting into question the role and functions of parliaments. First, executives that are expanding well beyond the boundaries fixed by the constitution to the expense of parliaments’ prerogatives. Second, populism, which disregards any constraint on the will of the majority embodied in the charismatic leader. To counter these two threats, both tending to the creation of powerful and unaccountable executives, parliaments need to fully recover their capacity to hold the executive to account. By analysing the Italian and Spanish parliaments’ activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, the chapter shows that the implementation of more instruments for ensuring executive accountability and guaranteeing the involvement of parliaments in governmental decision-making may well compensate the loss of legislative functions. Thus, injecting in constitutional democracy another, but not less important, input of democratic legitimacy.