2 - Parliaments

Summary

This chapter deals with the lower houses, which, with the exception of the Russian Duma and the British House of Commons, were elected by universal suffrage. It describes the existing parliamentary institutions, which had different historical traditions. The Progressive Bloc, which emerged from the ranks of the Duma, was an important force in the domestic clashes in wartime and in the revolutionary upheaval of 1917. The chapter examines the parliaments of the United States and Japan by way of comparison. The US Congress was certainly involved in decisions about war aims and wartime policy. In all the victorious countries, with the exception of Italy, parliamentary government was strengthened by the war. In the defeated countries, the post-war parliamentary system remained weak, and proved incapable of mediating the increasingly bitter economic and social conflicts which emerged out of the war.