To mark the 2011 International Day of Democracy the IPU is highlighting the theme What do citizens expect from their parliament? The theme derives from the preparation of the first Global Parliamentary Report, which examines the changing relations between citizens and parliaments around the world and is due to be published in early 2012.

Worldwide, it appears that parliamentarians are struggling to meet the ever growing expectations of citizens. Data suggests that citizens hold parliamentarians to account principally for the services that they are able to deliver outside parliament, not for their law-making role or their ability to oversee the Executive.

"Constituency service" is the general term for what parliamentarians do to serve and represent the interests of their constituents. Constituency service exists in many different forms, both in constituency-based electoral systems and also in list-based systems. Discussions with parliamentarians show the extent to which their capacity to deliver is being stretched to the limit, and might be taking them away from their parliamentary duties.

The forthcoming Global Parliamentary Report, which has surveyed over 600 parliamentarians, suggests that working on citizens' issues is the single most time-consuming aspect of a parliamentarian's work.

How many hours per week do you spend working with citizens? Over 50 per cent of parliamentarians spend more than 20 hours per week working with citizens.

It is clear that constituency service is important both to citizens and politicians – indeed; it is an accepted and expected part of the job. Numerous opinion polls in different regions suggest that the public believes that some form or the other of constituency service is the most important part of an MP's role, while MPs themselves no doubt see the benefit of meeting voters' needs for various reasons, not least to improve their chances of re-election.

A survey conducted for the Global Parliamentary Report indicated that parliamentarians consider law-making to be their most important role (52.3% of respondents), followed by holding government to account (17.2%) and solving constituents' problems (12.5%).

When asked what they think citizens see as their most important role, however, the story is very different. Parliamentarians believe that, in the eyes of the citizen, solving citizens' problems is the parliamentarian's most important role (36.4%), followed by law-making (20.3%), holding government to account (16.2%) and promoting the interests and economy of their constituency (13.1%).