Month: December 2016

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2016 in Parliament

Please note that this blog piece was originally published on the Crick Centre blog, and has been re-posted here with the author’s permission.

As 2016 comes to an end, we await the Supreme Court’s verdict on whether the Government can invoke Article 50 without the authority of Parliament. Having the UK’s highest court consider the constitutional role of Parliament has been one consequence of a referendum which hadn’t even been scheduled at the start of 2016, but dominated a turbulent year in the Palace of Westminster.

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What Makes Parliaments Effective? The case of the States of Jersey

By Mark Egan

What makes a parliament effective? What are the factors which make parliaments better at making laws or representing the people? These issues were discussed during the PSA Parliaments and Legislatures annual conference in October 2016. I spoke from the perspective of a parliamentary practitioner with experience of the UK and Jersey about the additional challenges faced by small parliamentary bodies in achieving the Holy Grail of effectiveness.

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Why do we blog, anyway?

By Marc Geddes

I have been Communications Officer for the PSA Specialist Group on Parliaments for almost two years, and I have loved it. It has allowed me to engage with a range of academics, researchers, students and practitioners to help disseminate their research whilst also promoting the study of parliaments and legislatures across the UK. The main way that I have sought to do this is through our website, and especially through our blogs, which cover topical issues or overviews of legislatures. But why does this even matter? Why should parliamentary and legislative scholars be blogging? There are at least three reasons, and each relates to the audience that we are trying to engage: the public, practitioners, and academics.

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