In The Paradox of Parliament, Jonathan Malloy offers a thorough analysis of the Canadian Parliament's rules, norms, and importantly, its operations. One of the book's strengths is its use of detailed examples from parliamentary history, but it remains deeply theory-driven, with chapters about Parliament's historical foundations, parties, Members of Parliament, the House of Commons, Diversity, the Senate, scrutiny in Parliament, and the future of the institution. The chapters have a common premise, which is that Parliament's purpose is a paradox: it operates on both a logic of governance and a logic of representation. The logic of governance emphasizes decision making and efficiency, with group organization in the institution producing outputs for Canadian society. The logic of representation stresses democratic values with a focus on individual legislators speaking up for particular interests. The two logics often come up against one another, and this is a prevailing theme throughout the book.
The book is notable as an up-to-date monograph focused on the Canadian Parliament as a whole; its comprehensiveness and depth of detail is remarkable in the area of Canadian parliamentary studies. In recent years, the field has seen many robust analyses about specific aspects of Parliament in Canada, such as parties, representation and modernization. Malloy's book ties together themes from across the literature, generously highlighting the empirical and theoretical work of scholars to tell a story about the Canadian Parliament's design, its evolution and its future.
Malloy makes deliberate efforts to discuss diversity in Parliament, which is of growing concern to parliamentary scholars (and to Canadians more broadly). The book includes information about sex and gender, race, sexuality and disability as they relate to parliamentarians and parliamentary rules and operations. The book not only dedicates a chapter to discussing diversity, but it weaves considerations of diversity throughout every chapter, thereby highlighting the ways in which Parliament was designed for a specific type of MP. Malloy discusses ongoing challenges and considers progress made toward a diversity-sensitive Parliament.
The Paradox of Parliament offers a new way to conceptualize Parliament for scholars and practitioners alike. Malloy posits that the evolution of Parliament has been the result of attempts to improve either the logic of governance or the logic of representation—over time, the pendulum swings between governance (and efficiency) and representation (and democracy) as efforts to improve one ultimately impair the other. For example, Chapter 3 shows that the development of party discipline improved the logic of governance, given that party cohesion allows for quick decision making in a clear competition of government and opposition. But at the same time, Malloy illustrates how party discipline whittles away at the logic of representation, as individual legislators are left with limited opportunities to represent their constituents (or any other interests that do not align with their parties’ preferences). Efforts to diminish party discipline and improve the logic of representation have led to the complications in the Senate that Malloy discusses in Chapter 7. As party discipline has been reduced in the Senate following a series of reforms in the mid-2010s, the logic of governance has suffered. Malloy shows how decision making in the Senate has become fragmented as members cannot be easily organized into parties. The logics of governance and representation come up against each other in this example, and Malloy offers a number of such illustrations in the book.
Moving forward, scholars of Canadian Parliament should bear Malloy's paradox in mind as they investigate various aspects of the institution related to the logics of governance or representation. An important question for the field is whether we can or should reconcile the two logics, or at the very least, balance them. One potential avenue for this is the parliamentary function of scrutiny, to which Malloy devotes the penultimate chapter of the book. Malloy argues that scrutiny is dominated by the logic of governance, and it is a classic struggle of government and opposition. He does not consider, however, the potential that scrutiny of government holds for legislators to represent interests. After all, the purpose of Parliament is not scrutiny for scrutiny's sake—somebody's interests are always being represented, and parties in government and opposition are meant to aggregate and articulate the interests of Canadians. But again, shifting the focus of scrutiny towards the representation of interests eats away at efficiency and governance outputs, and we return to Malloy's paradox of Parliament.
Malloy has made a meaningful theoretical contribution to studies of Parliament in Canada and abroad. The paradox highlights challenges in the modernization of Parliament, given the competing understandings of the institution. I expect that The Paradox of Parliament will become a valuable reference point for scholars and parliamentarians alike who wish to understand and improve the institution.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
