As the years go by in this 19th century, and after the legacy of the Enlightenment that extolled the end of secrecy in the political sphere, and thus the publicity (to be understood as making information public, and not as a commercial promotion) of politics, Parliamentary debates have become more and more transparent to the people.
→ Secrecy and transparency laws
As François Guizot notes in Histoire des origines du gouvernement représentatif et des institutions politiques de l’Europe, in 1851:
We can reduce to three these necessary conditions, these essential forms of the principle of the representative regime (…) and we are authorized to consider them as fundamental. These forms are the division of powers, elections, and publicity. Publicity constitutes the bond of society and of its government.
→ Quotes on Secrecy
Nowadays, we can think, of course, of the broadcasting on the public television channel France 3 of parliamentary sessions. The minutes are published in the Official Journal. And in the 21st century, they are also published on the internet.
Since the 19th century, the majority of constitutions have recalled this principle of publicity. This is the case of our constitution of 1958, in article 33: “The meetings of the two assemblies are public. The full report of the debates is published in the Official Journal.
