were often parliamentarians themselves,
preferring a central and powerful representative
assembly to a system of checks and balances
(Plassart, 2021).
For centuries, parliament has been the central
European political institution for expressing
dissent and holding debates between citizens'
representatives in a spirit of fair play, while the
modern parliament controls the government and
bureaucracy, and claims the right to make
unquestioned sovereign decisions (Ihalainen et
al., 2016). The role of the parliament in the state
system of the Republic of Azerbaijan is assessed
from various historical, legal, and political
perspectives, and in general, it is assigned a
special role in the process of state-building.
However, in order to fully understand the place
of the Azerbaijani parliament in society and its
role in public administration, it is necessary to
consider the development of the country's
parliamentarism.
Azerbaijan's parliamentarism is not limited to a
single constitutional provision. The history of
real parliamentarism in the Republic of
Azerbaijan is much broader than the
parliamentarism defined by constitutional norms.
The history of parliamentarism in Azerbaijan
does not go back several centuries, as in a number
of European countries, but has been enriched by
its national characteristics and political diversity
during the twentieth century. At the present
stage, European countries are experiencing the
following processes of interaction between the
legislative and executive branches of
government: the executive takes on a dominant
role in lawmaking, which is why parliaments are
increasingly marginalised (Griglio, 2020).
The emergence of the tradition of national
parliamentarism and its comprehensive
formation, such as statehood and patriotism, can
be traced back to the early twentieth century.
Parliaments operating in European countries are
the epicentres of European democracies, where
policies are discussed and potentially shaped
(Kiss & Sebők, 2022; Palieieva et al., 2022). The
parliaments that were elected and established in
Azerbaijan have gone through a somewhat
different path of formation compared to other
countries and have managed to occupy a special
place among Muslim states. Having formed and
benefited from its historical experience, the
Azerbaijani parliament was able to strengthen its
influence in terms of integration with the
parliaments of other countries.Despite the fact
that Azerbaijani parliamentarism emerged in the
historical dimension, it would be wrong to
assume that it was created without a well-
thought-out strategy. Certainly, it is not worth
talking about the real independence of the
legislative and representative body that existed in
the Soviet period, during which the country's
party-state elite resolved all important issues,
“bourgeois parliamentarism” was rejected, and
such values as Western democracy and the theory
of the separation of powers were denied. At the
same time, the principles of the modern state and
law, especially the principle of historicity, direct
the study of any problem in the period of its
development.
After the end of the Civil War and the transition
to a new economic policy, a new stage in Soviet
state-building began. During the Civil War,
relations between the Soviet republics took the
form of a military alliance, which was later
supplemented by an economic union, bringing
them closer together and leading to the need to
create a single state. On 30 December 1922, a
congress of representatives of the Soviet
republics - the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus, and the
Transcaucasian Federation (consisting of
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Abkhazia) -
approved the Declaration and Treaty on the
Establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. The main provisions of the
Constitution of the RSFSR were based on the
Constitution of the Union State of 1924. The
Congress of Soviets of the USSR, which
convened once a year, and from 1927 - once
every two years, was proclaimed the supreme
authority; in the period between the congresses,
the Central Executive Committee of the USSR
met three times a year.
Delegates to the Congresses of Soviets of the
USSR regularly listened to reports from the
government and People's Commissariats and
made decisions on issues of socialist
construction, such as industrialisation,
collectivisation, tasks from the five-year plans,
and the development of Soviet legislation. From
the early 1930s, a specific procedure was
established at the sessions of the Central
Executive Committee: the deputies approved
resolutions adopted by the Presidium without
discussion. The composition of the delegates to
the congresses was systematically renewed,
which allowed for the involvement of workers'
representatives in the activities of the highest
authorities (Rahimli, 2021). However, this
practice also had a downside - weak continuity.
The Congresses of soviets were short-term
representative institutions, and each Congress of
soviets adopted its own rules of procedure. The
work of the congresses was open and widely