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This Article seeks to improve our understanding of the institutional conditions of parliamentary control. The effectiveness of control is a key concern of contemporary democratic politics. The challenges legislatures are facing are similar in different political systems: most involve oversight of executive decision making at the international and supranational level and the control of domestic and international security policies. Constitutional scholarship often responds to alleged deficiencies of parliamentary control by claiming a general principle of transparency, including broad powers of the legislature to request information from the executive. This Article argues that the political strength of legislative control depends less upon some overarching normative principle but on the institutional and procedural framework in which it operates. In particular, the constitutional separation of three independent branches of government yields an utterly different notion of control compared to parliamentary systems. Parliamentary constitutions understand control not only as a check upon the executive branch, but also as an instrument which secures the steady confrontation of the government with both majority and minority in the parliament. Effectiveness and scope of parliamentary control are, hence, defined by the institutional idea of the cabinet. A comparative analysis of American, French, German, and EU parliamentary law shows that procedural rules mirror to a large extent the respective constitutional relationship between the legislature and the executive. The Article argues that parliamentary control can only be strengthened by a reinforcement of the peculiar institutional features a constitution provides for this purpose. Insofar as a constitution follows the parliamentary type, this implies a reinforcement of the personal character of legislative control.
