Parliament

A parliament is a formal legislative body, generally composed of elected or otherwise selected representatives, vested with authority to debate public matters, enact laws and, in many systems, oversee or select the executive government, deriving its name from the Old French parlement, a speaking or discussion. The institution's development is most closely associated with medieval and early modern England, where the English Parliament evolved from the king's Great Council of feudal barons and clergy into a body divided by the fourteenth century into a House of Lords, representing the nobility and higher clergy, and a House of Commons, representing knights of the shire and burgesses of towns, gradually asserting rights over taxation and legislation that constrained royal authority. The Westminster parliamentary model, in which the executive government is drawn from and remains accountable to the elected legislature, spread widely through British colonial influence and subsequent adoption, and today parliamentary or parliament-like legislative bodies, sometimes called by other names such as congress, assembly, diet or duma, exist as the primary lawmaking institution across the great majority of the world's states, structured as either a single chamber, unicameral, or two chambers, bicameral. Parliamentary systems are commonly distinguished from presidential systems by the closer, and typically more direct, accountability of the executive to the legislature, most notably the ability of many parliaments to remove a sitting government through a vote of no confidence.