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Understanding Parliamentary Systems

This quiz tests your knowledge of various parliamentary systems around the world, including their structures, members, and historical contexts.

#Parliament #Government #Political Systems #Civics #International Politics

1 The members of the Bundesrat, elected by the provincial diets (Landtage) of the nine federal ________, are known as Mitglieder des Bundesrats.

2 ________ continues to elect MPs to the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom.

3 Before 1951, New Zealand had a ________ (or two-chamber) parliament, and there were two designations: Member of the House of Representatives, abbreviated MHR, the body which survives today, and Member of the Legislative Council, abbreviated MLC.

4 They sit either for life, in the case of the Lords Temporal, or so long as they continue to occupy their ecclesiastical positions in the case of the ________.

5 The 16 federal ________ (Länder) are represented by the Bundesrat at the former Prussian House of Lords, whose members are representatives of the respective Länder's governments and not directly elected by the people.

6 Both chambers are in The Hague which is the seat of parliament but not the official capital of the Netherlands, which is ________.

7 The present ________'s members are known as Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA).

8 In many countries the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a unique title, such as ________, and thus also have unique titles for its members, such as senators.

9 In ________, Members of Parliament refers to elected members of the Parliament of Sri Lanka and National List Member of Parliament, who are nominated by the contending parties (and independent groups) in proportion to their share of the national vote.

10 The ________ contains members of three different parliaments:

💡 Interesting Facts

  • Sir William Edge, a Liberal MP, once raced against a flock of homing pigeons from London to Leicestershire by car and train, but lost the race by two minutes because the train was delayed.
  • Vote-OK, a pro-fox hunting group, claimed to have helped defeat 29 Members of Parliament at the 2005 British general election.
  • Thomas Scott (pictured), a member of the Canadian House of Commons, organized the 95th Manitoba Grenadiers in thirteen days to put down the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
  • Daily Mail journalist Rodney Hallworth was questioned during the 1956 police investigation of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams for leaking information to two MPs.
  • Brigadier Sir Otho Prior-Palmer, a British Conservative Member of Parliament, accused a Labour MP of "never [having] done a damned day's work in his life", and claimed that Labour sent someone to stop Spitfire construction.
  • British MP Ronnie Campbell accidentally supported National Fetish Day due to his thinking that the word "fetish" meant "worry".
  • British Labour Party Member of Parliament J. H. Hall worked in the trade union movement for over 40 years.
  • British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) John Gordon Drummond Campbell had been an educational adviser to King Chulalongkorn of Siam.
  • Henry Seymour King, Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull Central for 25 years, was the first climber to reach the summits of Mont Maudit and Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey.
  • Richard Baker Wingfield-Baker served as High Sheriff of Essex, Deputy Lieutenant of Essex, and Member of Parliament for South Essex.
  • Sir John Gilmour Bt emulated his father by also winning the Distinguished Service Order, becoming a Conservative Member of Parliament, and twice serving as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
  • Lord Simon of Glaisdale ended his career as a Law Lord and cross-bench life peer, but was earlier a Conservative MP who held three ministerial positions.
  • Hector Monro, Conservative and Unionist Party Member of Parliament for Dumfries for 33 years, was described by a Labour Party opponent as "the last of the decent Tories".
  • Leo Abse (born 1917) was a Labour Member of Parliament largely responsible for legalising male homosexual relations in the United Kingdom.
  • Margaret Ballinger, an M.P. for native South Africans, was hailed as the "Queen of the Blacks" in 1944.
  • Sir Richard Glass, who was knighted for his part in creating the first transatlantic telegraph cable, lasted only a few months as an MP.
  • Sir Ralph Howell, farmer and Conservative MP for North Norfolk for 27 years, argued for the adoption of a "workfare" system of unemployment benefits in the UK.
  • Sir Norman Hulbert claimed that That Was The Week That Was infringed Parliamentary privilege in 1963 when it named 13 MPs who had not spoken in the chamber of the House of Commons since they were elected in 1959.
  • British MP Peter Thomas was the first Conservative politician to serve as Secretary of State for Wales and the first Welshman to become party chairman.
  • Egyptian officer Rawya Ateya (pictured) was the first woman to serve as a Member of Parliament in the Arab world.
  • the British Member of Parliament Dr Donald Johnson was interested by the connotations of the Macmillan government's 69-vote win over the Profumo sex scandal.
  • the 101 female Members of Parliament elected in the United Kingdom in Labour's landslide general election victory in 1997 were popularly known as Blair Babes.
  • in May 1982, the British Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) Michael Welsh was one of 69 MPs who called for an immediate halt to hostilities in the Falklands War.
  • the British Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Edgar Keatinge was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India.
  • the Hungarian-born Jew Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln was successively a Presbyterian missionary in Canada, a British Member of Parliament, an international double agent, a German right-wing politician, and a Buddhist abbot in China.
  • when a rival took over an estate belonging to Sir Walter Clarges, Clarges used his position as a Member of Parliament to send the interloper to jail.
  • when M.P. and Lord Mayor, Sir James Sanderson, bart. died, his widow helped make a rich prophet of William Huntington S.S..
  • though Alfred Balfour was a British MP for 14 years, he made only a single speech in the House of Commons.
  • in 1982, a Canadian Member of Parliament accused the CIA of infiltrating the RCMP and funneling political contributions to favoured politicians in provincial elections.
  • former British Member of Parliament Walter Scott-Elliot was murdered by "Monster Butler" Archibald Hall.
  • an Edinburgh judge and Member of Parliament had his wife, Lady Grange (pictured), kidnapped and effectively imprisoned for 13 years in remote parts of western Scotland.
  • Sir Richard Garth was a barrister, MP, Privy Counsellor and Chief Justice of Bengal as well as Lord of the Manor of Morden.
  • Scottish socialist John McGovern was the treasurer of the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation, but later became an Independent Labour Party Member of Parliament.
  • at the 1895 United Kingdom General Election, Tankerville Chamberlayne's election as a Member of Parliament was declared void because of electoral fraud.
  • despite British Conservative MP Denis Keegan winning a marginal constituency by over 7,000 votes, he ended his political career after one term, preferring to work for the trade association for television shops.
  • former Ghana MP Eric Amoateng was arrested in the United States and has pled guilty to drug trafficking-related charges.
  • despite being Member of Parliament for Chippenham, Wiltshire, for nearly 24 years, Joseph Neeld never spoke in the House of Commons.
  • despite a history of identifying Communist intrigues, British Parliamentarian Percy Daines demanded that Marcus Lipton name his sources or withdraw the claim that Kim Philby was a Soviet spy.
  • Harry Pursey started his career as a boy seaman in the Royal Navy, retired with the rank of Commander, and served as a Member of Parliament for twenty-five years.
  • George Clavering-Cowper (pictured) went on a Grand Tour and, despite becoming an earl and an M.P., he stayed in Florence and became a prince.
  • British Conservative Member of Parliament Cyril Banks was friendly with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and left his party over the Suez Crisis.
  • British Conservative MP Sir Ian Lloyd left his native South Africa in 1955 due to his opposition to apartheid, but was later called "Botha's mouthpiece" for his advocacy of closer links with South Africa to stimulate reform.
  • British Conservative MP Norman Miscampbell turned down a knighthood because he thought it would prevent him enjoying his retirement from politics.
  • British Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Percy Hurd used to go round villages in Wiltshire telling funny stories.
  • British Conservative politician Sir John Loveridge published poetry and exhibited paintings and sculpture after serving 13 years as a member of Parliament.
  • British Labour MP Harry Ewing was joint chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, formed in 1989 to plan for the devolution of Scotland.
  • British Labour Party Member of Parliament Martin Flannery was a Communist until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was crushed by the Soviet Union, but remained on the far left.
  • British Labour Party MP Roland Boyes continued in office after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1995, but his condition had deteriorated so much that, upon his retirement in 1997, he was unaware that his party had gained control after 18 years in opposition.
  • British Conservative MP Alan Gomme-Duncan, despite being strongly unionist, did not want the Stone of Scone returned to Westminster Abbey after Scottish nationalists stole it in 1951.
  • British Conservative MP Sir Adam Butler called in the receivers at the De Lorean Motor Company while serving as minister for economic development in Northern Ireland in 1982.
  • Elizabethan soldier and MP Sir Edward Hoby (pictured) of Queenborough Castle published Protestant theological works, one under the pseudonym "Nick-Groome of the Hobie-Stable Reginoburgi".
  • army officer and M.P. William Hacket Pain was involved in planning and organising the Larne Gun Running operation, which helped to arm the Ulster Volunteers during the Home Rule crisis of 1912.
  • British Conservative MP Richard Hornby unsuccessfully challenged former Prime Minister and Labour leader Clement Attlee before securing a safe seat.
  • Labour Member of Parliament Ellen Wilkinson organised the 1936 Jarrow March of 200 unemployed men and women from Tyneside to London to demand jobs.
  • Labour's Alfred Dobbs was the shortest-serving post-war British Member of Parliament – just one day, before his death in 1945.
  • Tejashwini Sreeramesh, an Indian Member of Parliament from the Kanakapura constituency of Karnataka, was previously an anchor of a talk show on Udaya TV.
  • New Zealand MP William Downie Stewart's son, William Downie Stewart, became Mayor of Dunedin—and his daughter Mary served as Lady Mayoress.
  • MP Sir Anthony Kershaw returned leaked documents about the sinking of the General Belgrano, resulting in the prosecution of Clive Ponting.
  • British Labour MP James Lamond was criticised in the 1980s as an apologist for the Soviet Union because he defended the invasion of Afghanistan.
  • British Labour politician Piara Singh Khabra was the fifth Asian MP, and was the oldest MP sitting in the House of Commons and the only sitting MP to have served in the armed forces during the Second World War at the time of his death.
  • Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Paget was also an MP for Carnarvon despite his active navy career.
  • Charles Leach was the only British Member of Parliament to have been disqualified under the Lunacy (Vacating of Seats) Act.
  • Wee Siew Kim, a Singaporean MP, had to apologise after scandal broke out involving an elitist blog entry made by his daughter.
  • David Penhaligon (1944–1986) was a promising Liberal Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom but was killed in a car crash at the age of 42.
  • Sir David Robertson initially agreed to mind the constituency of another British parliamentarian who was interned during the Second World War.
  • Gabriel Goldney, M.P. for Chippenham, is commemorated in a stained glass window of The Foundling Hospital.
  • Francis James Garrick and James Francis Garrick, MPs in New Zealand and Queensland respectively, were brothers.
  • Denzil Onslow was Member of Parliament for Guildford after his nephew Foot Onslow, and was then succeeded by another nephew, Richard Onslow, 1st Baron Onslow.
  • British politician Jock Stallard was expelled from the Labour Party in the 1950s for flying the red flag from St Pancras town hall, but later served as a Labour MP and life peer.
  • British banker, Conservative MP, and conservationist Sir John Lindsay Eric Smith founded the Landmark Trust in 1965.
  • British MP Arthur Allen became Sir Stafford Cripps' assistant right after defeating Cripps' nephew in an election.
  • British MP Anthony Courtney was blackmailed by the KGB using photographs of him with a tour guide.
  • British Labour politician Reg Freeson spent 23 years as an MP, including 14 years on the front bench, but was deselected in 1985 due to his "sensible left" views and replaced by Ken Livingstone.
  • British MP James Henderson Stewart was only one of four National Liberals to vote against Neville Chamberlain in the Norway Debate.
  • British MP Will Owen was nicknamed "greedy bastard" by the Czechoslovak intelligence agency to whom he sold secrets.
  • British teacher and MP Leah Manning organised the evacuation of almost 4,000 Basque children to Britain during the Spanish Civil War.
  • British Member of Parliament George Chetwynd seconded a Private Member's Bill to ban toy weapons because he believed they were an incentive to acquire a "gangster mentality".
  • British Member of Parliament Alfred Edwards, a Christian Scientist, campaigned to allow Christian Science Nurses to call themselves "Nurses" despite not being registered.
  • 17-year-old Emily Benn, granddaughter of veteran politician Tony Benn, is the youngest ever Labour Party parliamentary candidate, and would, if elected, become the youngest British MP since the Reform Act 1832.
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