A parliamentary delegation (or congressional delegation, also CODEL or codel, in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
) is an official visit abroad by a
member or members of a
legislature
A legislature is an deliberative assembly, assembly with the authority to make laws for a Polity, political entity such as a Sovereign state, country or city. They are often contrasted with the Executive (government), executive and Judiciary, ...
.
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. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...
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 pratices, from town twinning to transational 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 and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United Stat ...
Congressional Glossary
Terminology of the United States Congress
International relations
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