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The article discusses the changes in relations between religion and the society, associated with the rise of relations between church and state. It examines the influence of politics to the religion wherein the members of the Church hierarchy were offered political positions in parliament. It also cites the close alliance of the state and the Orthodox Church.

The article explores the role of the revolutionary council and parliament led by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, in the confirmation by King Henry III of the Magna Carta royal charter in 1265. Emphasis is given to topics such as the reform of central and local government, the political legitimacy of monarchy, and garnering public support and witnesses for royal proclamations.

The sudden collapse of Mali's democracy in 2012 revealed the fragility of the state's legitimacy and authority. This article argues that the decay of democracy was linked to the weakness of the country's legislature. Malian MPs collectively failed to scrutinize an increasingly discredited executive and parliamentarians typically operated in isolation from the vast majority of citizens. As a result, rising levels of popular discontent were rarely channelled into the formal political process, and the interests that did enter the political arena were largely restricted to the personal support networks and electoral constituencies of individual MPs. The prevalence of these particularistic interests undermined collective parliamentary scrutiny of matters of national interest. By demonstrating the link between these failures and the collapse of Mali's democracy, this article contributes to the expanding body of literature examining the limited role of African parliaments in processes of democratic consolidation. In doing so it confirms the challenges that executive dominance poses to democratization, while highlighting the importance of representative legislatures to Africa's democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we will examine the origin of policy ideas in a state legislature. Using data from a survey of Minnesota legislators and from a survey of staffers, we compare the sources of information used in each of three stages of the policy process: problem identification, policy formulation, and enactment. We compare the importance of traditional sources to the influence of think tanks, foundations, and newspaper editorials. We find that legislators rely primarily on their own experiences and those of their constituents. When they are compared to all other sources, the new "idea factories" have little influence in the policy process. There are few differences between policy stages in terms of the information that the legislators and staffers rely upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relationships between American colonial assemblies and their constituents, and the changes in those relationships over time, by focusing on three very dissimilar colonial legislatures. Virginia House of Burgesses; Massachusetts General Court; Pennsylvania Assembly; Different regions and types of colonies.