Dirasat, Human and Social Sciences, Volume 42, No 1, 2015 - 269 - © 2015 DAR Publishers/The University of Jordan. All Rights Reserved. The Jordanian Parliamentary Institution: A Study in Political Representation Khalid Issa Aladwan, Khaled Mufadi Aldabbas* ABSTRACT This study aimed at identifying the scope of political representation of the Jordanian Parliament from the perspective of studying the minorities and the indigenous people. To achieve the objectives of the study, legal, analytical and statistical approaches were used. The study concluded that the representation of the minorities and the indigenous people in the Jordanian parliament depend on the quota system and it has been characterized by steady and permanent presence in the parliament since the establishment of the state. Finally, the study provided specific recommendations including: the need to review mechanisms of election for the minorities to strengthen the national identity, and other related technical and substantive matters of the elections' law. It is necessary to reconsider the quota system for the Bedouin, and the minorities according to their weight within the population. Keywords: Political Representation, The Minorities, The Indigenous Peoples, Electoral Law, Electoral System. INTRODACTION The realization of popular representation is considered one of the most important functions of the parliament. As contemporary parliaments have passed many stages of development, both in terms of form and institutional structure, or in terms of the social base and the extent of their representation of the total individuals, and character of public. Inform or structure the parliament has gone from being a mere "forum" appointed by a king, at his leisure, to a permanent institution and a cornerstone of the modern state to the extent that it has become rare today to find a country without a parliament. With the development in the formation of parliament and competence, it has socially moved from a council of the elite to that of the masses. (Betham, 2006:8-11). The main features of a democratic parliament can be summed up as to be representative of all segments of society, and represents a spectrum of people, socially and politically, through the development of a system and an electoral process that is free and fair by following means that ensure the representation of all sectors of the society and their participation in ways that reflect national diversity. (Al-Sawi, 2002: 63) Different political systems seek to represent minorities and nomads in their multiple and different political institutions in improving their level of participation in the political process; therefore, these political systems have set aside a place in the parliamentary institution for them, and as an attempt to reduce exclusion and marginalization. Hence, the idea of the study has emerged in order to deepen the understanding of the status of minorities and nomads in the framework of the Jordanian political system with regards to parliamentary representation. Research Goals This study aimed to achieve the following purposes: 1. Showing the limits and extent of the representative function of the parliamentary institution in Jordan. 2. Assessing the social weight of minorities in comparison with their political representation in the parliament. 3. To distinguish the extent of quantitative and qualitative representation of the minorities. Importance of the study The scientific and practical importance to the issue of our study is as follows: a) Scientific importance Firstly, the scientific importance of the research is that the talk about minorities is necessarily a talk about the representative nature of the parliament, which constitutes * Department of Political Science, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan. Received on 11/1//2014 and Accepted for Publication on 2/2/2014.