Talk:Legislator

I propose merging legislator, Member of Congress and Member of parliament.

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. These articles are essentially about the same topic (i.e. people who are members of legislatures) under different names, and could easily be covered in a single article. A suitable structure might be:

1. Lead (merger from all three articles)
2. Overview (from legislator)
3. Terminology (from legislator)
4. Substitute legislator (from legislator)
5. Overview of country-specifics (mainly from member of parliament, subsection on the United States from Member of Congress.

Note 1: There's an argument that a member of the United States Congress is the primary topic for the title Member of Congress (supported by the article as it stands having only one section, on the United States usage). In this case, legislator and member of parliament should be merged, and Member of Congress should probably be merged into and redirected to United States Congress.

Note 2: There's also an argument for member of parliament and Member of Congress being disambiguation pages, with a link to a generic legislator page alongside links to specific parliament articles. This might make the main legislator page a bit less of a long list of countries, but would mean some info might get lost.

Any thoughts?

Charlie A. (talk) 10:52, 3 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

I support merging Member of Congress into Member of Parliament (and then to rename Member of Parliament to Member of parliament as a common noun rather than proper noun), but a legislator does not necessarily have to be a member of parliament (cough cough dictatorships, US' executive orders etc). ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 05:53, 15 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Support - Splitting them up into chunks is totally unnecessary, and just takes up space. Although I do think that all countries should be included and expanded here, not just the US or Europe. PyroFloe (talk) 14:15, 7 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Comment: I am undecided for now about the proposal as stated, however, if a merging occurs, I suggest that Member of parliament and Member of Congress be merged into the more generically-named, the broader term, Legislator. The term Member of Parliament is most notably tied to the British parliament while Member of Congress is notably tied to the American parliament. These localised meanings are best included, if a merge is performed, within the more universal "Legislator". — O'Dea (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2021 (UTC)`Reply

• Support merge - They are three different words for the same topic. The approach in Note 1 makes the most sense to me. Levivich ^harass/_hound 01:46, 4 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose merger They are not three different words for the same topic.

First, "Legislator" is just too broad a term. It doesn't just mean someone who is a member of a legislature, but someone who has the power to enact legislation. "Legislator" includes much more than members of parliament and members of congress. A village councillor is a legislator. The Queen is a legislator (under the royal prerogative). In parliamentary systems, the cabinets can be legislators, enacting legislation under delegated legislative powers. In some systems, judges can be legislators, enacting procedural law that has the force of law. Creating an article of "legislator" and deleting the other two would create a single, unworkable article that would likely start forking out into sub-articles pretty quickly.

Second, members of parliament and members of congress have fundamentally different roles in the two systems. That's why there are articles on the parliamentary system and on the presidential-congressional systems. Members of congress and presidents are elected independently of each other, with each having clearly delineated powers under a strict separation of powers doctrine. Members of parliament are different: by their elections, they determine who will be the prime minister, which is not a separate elected position, but rather determined by the members of parliament collectively. Members of parliament can be members of the executive in some parliamentary systems.

Third, "Member of Parliament" is a standard, historical term in countries with the Westminster system, as a job title/position. That seems to be a much stronger terminology for a government position in those countries, than "member of Congress" seems to be in the US (and other congressional systems?), where "Congressman"/"Congressperson"/"Congresswoman" is normally used. Wikipedia has to respect the differences in language terminology in different countries, and eliminating the article for "Member of Parliament" would not do so, in my opinion.

Given these significant differences, I don't think they should be merged. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:33, 22 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

I think Member of Congress should become a United States subheading of Member of Parliament within the "Other systems" section. The title Member of Congress is equivalent to Member of Parliament, as it states in the lead section of the MP article. YttriumShrew (talk) 07:46, 1 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

I would oppose that suggestion. The roles of a Member of Parliament and a Member of Congress are fundamentally different, particularly in the matters of party discipline and the fact tht the executive holds office because of the Members of Parliament. Neither is a sub-set of the other, and each has roles in their system that go beyond being legislators. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 23:46, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose - as member of Congress can mean a US Senator and/or US Representative. Where's member of Parliament, can mean a member of the (for example) British House of Commons (commonly) or House of Lords (rarely). GoodDay (talk) 18:48, 16 October 2021 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose - This merger is proposed keeping United States in mind. Other (bigger) Democracies work differently. -Vijethnbharadwaj (talk) 12:36, 19 October 2021 (UTC)Reply