A parliamentary delegation (or congressional delegation, also CODEL or codel, in the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
) is an official visit abroad by a
member
Member may refer to:
* Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon
* Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set
* In object-oriented programming, a member of a class
** Field (computer science), entries in ...
or members of a
legislature
A legislature (, ) is a deliberative assembly with the legal authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country, nation or city on behalf of the people therein. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial power ...
.
To schedule a parliamentary delegation, a member must apply to the relevant
committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...
chair, who will contact the appropriate
agency to request funds and support for the trip. Various parliaments and legislatures maintain formal or informal groupings, such as
congressional caucuses and
all-party parliamentary groups, which maintain regular delegations to and from select countries; the European Parliament also maintains a formal delegation system for regular meetings with national and multinational parliaments.
Parliamentary delegations are formed for purposes of solidarity, negotiations, research, and investigation, but they are sometimes a source of controversy and criticism, when seen as ''junkets''.
[Scott Wong]
Junket? Maybe not, but Dems attack GOP trips
(January 13, 2012). ''Politico''.
In the United States
A congressional delegation ''abroad'' is not the same as the congressional delegation ''of a state'' (or a legislative delegation from a county to a state legislature), which is the entire body of current members elected to both houses of Congress from a specific state.
See also
*
Paradiplomacy
Paradiplomacy is the involvement of non-central governments in international relations. The phenomenon includes a variety of practices, from town twinning to transnational networking, decentralized cooperation, and advocacy in international summits ...
References
External links
Entryin
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American Cable television in the United States, cable and Satellite television in the United States, satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a Non ...
Congressional Glossary
International relations
Terminology of the United States Congress
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