De Bibliotheek van de Tweede Kamer

The library of the Dutch House of Representatives is a collection of thirty thousand books in the fields of constitutional law and Dutch politics. The collection is rooted in the nineteenth century and has seen the various stages of expansion and decline typical to a library of use. In recent years, the historical book collection has been brought together in a single location for the first time in its history. The books are placed in a four-stories high nineteenth century library that is known as the ‘Handelingenkamer’. Bringing the collection together in one place has created a visual reflection of two centuries of Dutch parliamentary history. This article explores the history of the collection as a whole, not only as a library for the support of the work of parliamentarians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also as a collection and library space that has representative value which can be employed for temporary exhibitions and educational purposes.

Rupture or Continuity? Revisiting the Basic Themes of the Historiography of the 21 April Dictatorship

What did the 1967–1974 dictatorship represent for Greece? A violent and illegal episode, a mere parenthesis in the course of its parliamentary history, or an event with deep roots in Greek society and politics? These two basic, albeit contradictory views require us to consider how the last dictatorship in Greece was conceived in public and academic discourse as well as how these two discourses interacted. The main argument of this article is that even the most self-evident concepts about the character of the 1967 dictatorship, so trivial that we hardly perceive them as concepts, emerged through complex cultural processes. More specifically, it examines a series of well-known academic texts or texts produced in academic settings, dating from the junta era to the late 1980s. Although the research on the dictatorship has progressed greatly since then, this article seeks to show that in the first two decades after its collapse, there was a rich production of perceptions regarding the dictatorship that continue to shape our understanding of the period, which is why it is essential to reflect on them.

MOROCCAN PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY 1963-2016: A STUDY OF THE STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS OF PARLIAMENT

This study attempts to provide a legal reading in the composition of the Moroccan Parliament in light of the transformation of the contents of the constitutional history of the Kingdom of Morocco from 1963 to the year 2011, as it will focus on the organizational transformations that the first chamber of the Moroccan Parliament defined. Therefore, we will try to monitor the various elements of the development of the structure of the Moroccan House of Representatives, through a reading of the Moroccan constitutions and organizational laws, the development of power or the constitutional functions assigned to it, based on the constitutions and internal regulations of the House of Representatives. Thus, this study constitutes a reference basis for understanding the Moroccan parliamentary history, for the House of Representatives in terms of its structure and the constitutional powers assigned to it.