Resumen de Making representative democracy work: the role of parliamentary administrations in the European Union

Thomas Christiansen, Elena Griglio, Nicola Lupo

• The article introduces the special issue on ‘Administering Representative Democracy. The European Experience of Parliamentary Administrations in Comparative Perspective’, explaining how it seeks to make a major addition to the study of parliaments as well as of public administration. It specifically aims at demonstrating that parliamentary bureaucracies are ‘silent’ organisations playing a fundamentally serving function, and yet they offer a crucial contribution to the well-functioning of representative assemblies. It explores the distinctive nature of this subject matter in Europe, and in this way ties into the wider debates about the functioning of representative democracy.