The Green Papers Worldwide
Legislative Branches

This tabulation of the Legislatures of the Countries of the World lists those legislative bodies which are inherently part and parcel of the most recent Constitution (written or unwritten) of a given country. This table, however, does not at all deal with cases in which the constitutional forms have been done away with (either permanently- that is, without impending replacement- or temporarily- that is, with anticipation of eventual restoration or replacement) or where a given Legislative Assembly (or both houses, or either house, in the case of a bicameral Legislative Assembly) may have been suspended or is otherwise not functioning. In some cases (most notably, 1990s into early 21st Century SOMALIA), the constitutional forms found herein may currently be so dysfunctional as to have the given country in a veritable state of anarchy: nevertheless, the constitutional legislative bodies of such a country are still listed herein.

For purposes of this table, it has generally been the policy of 'The Green Papers' to translate the names of legislative bodies into English directly from languages other than English (where having to do so is, of course, applicable); in more than a few cases, our translation might result in a name for a given legislative body that is different from the English title a given country might itself prefer be used to denote that body: thus, wherever possible, any such "official" version of the name of a legislative body appears directly underneath that arrived at by the Staff of 'The Green Papers' via more or less direct translation.

There are, of course, those situations where the English translation of the name of a legislative body might yield a title that is actually more unfamiliar than the name of that legislative body in its original language (because, to take a couple noteworthy examples, news reports in English speak more usually of the 'Knesset' [not the 'Assembly'] of Israel or the 'Bundestag' [not the 'Federal Diet'] in Germany): in such cases where 'The Green Papers' feels that the non-English name of a given legislative body is much more familiar to the general English-speaking user of our site, the name of that legislative body in the original language appears underneath our English rendering. In at least one case (that of RUSSIA), the Staff of 'The Green Papers' has even had to coin a new English word (at least one that could not be found in any leading dictionary of the English Language available to us)- this being 'Deliberature' (hence its appearance within single quotation marks)- to best translate the term Duma (which is, in fact, derived from a Russian verb meaning "to think about, to meditate on"- hence, "to deliberate"). Please note, however, that- in at least some cases- we may not provide the name of legislative bodies in the original language where said language is not English: if so, this would primarily only be where the name of a given legislative body is relatively cognative to that of the body in English (in such cases, one will not find, say, non-English Assembleia Nacional or Assemblee Nationale underneath a listing in this table for a "National Assembly").