Welcome to the September edition of our newsletter, which includes:
- PSA’s International Annual Conference – call for papers
- Representation – call for special issues
- New EVEL website
- News from our members
- Recently on the blog
If you have any notices / messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know (including events, new research projects, grants, publications, etc.). Or other ideas for the group and feedback for us, they’re welcome too!
Best wishes,
Marc (@marcgeddes), Louise (@LouiseVThompson), Alex (@A_Meakin) and Leanne (@LeanneMarieC)
2. PSA International Annual Conference
The PSA has announced details of the 2018 Annual Conference, which will take place between 26 and 28 March in Cardiff (City Hall). As always, we hope to put panels forward from our group to build on the great success of last year’s conference in Glasgow.
If you would be interested in presenting an individual paper as part of one of our group panels, please complete a Paper Proposal Form, with an abstract of not more than 250 words by Friday, 13 October. If you would like to put together a panel for the conference, please complete a Panel Proposal Form by the same date. We will be in touch within two weeks of this deadline to notify you if your paper / panel proposal has been successful.
The call is open to all members of the group. There are no panel themes, so all paper and panel proposals are welcome. Postgraduate students are encouraged to apply. Those who wish to present would be eligible to apply to the PSA Postgraduate Access Fund for financial support to attend the conference. Last year we also had a number of practitioner papers – we want to continue this trend.
We had a really successful 2017 conference, with more papers and panels than we’ve ever had before. So we look forward to hearing from you!
2. Representation – Call for special issues
Representation, an International peer-reviewed Journal of representative democracy is planning to publish a number of Special Issues.
They are inviting proposals for Special Issues from academics working on any aspect of political representation. In particular, the editors are interested in Special Issues covering topical issues such as a) the 2016/17 Elections e.g. USA, France, UK, and Germany and b) Referendums.
For further information please see a more detailed call for papers here.
3. Project EVEL: new website
A new website has been launched to provide monitoring and analysis of the ‘English Votes for English Laws’ (or EVEL) procedures that operate in the House of Commons. Project EVEL is a collaboration between researchers at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Cambridge. As well as offering commentary and analysis, the website also features a new publicly-accessible and regularly-updated database of every occasion on which legislation has been ‘certified’ under the EVEL procedures.
The website can be accessed at www.evel.uk. You can follow the project on twitter for regular updates at @ProjectEVEL If you would like any further information, please contact Daniel Gover at d.p.gover@qmul.ac.uk
4. News from our members
We would like to dedicate a small section of our newsletter each time to new publications, grant announcements or other news from our members to showcase the success of our group. If you have any news that you would like to share, please get in touch with us and we’ll be sure to include it in our next newsletter.
- New book: Legislation at Westminster: Parliamentary Actors and Influence in the Making of British Law by Meg Russell and Daniel Gover. This book reports the final results of a major research project conducted at the Constitution Unit at UCL, and represents the most detailed study of the legislative process in the British parliament for over 40 years. The book is structured around different parliamentary actors and will be useful for teaching about parliament, public law, and the place of legislatures in public policy processes, as well as those interested in the specific actors discussed. For further information about the book, as well the 30% discount code (valid until 31 December 2017), see here. For a summary of the book’s findings on the PSA Parliaments blog, see here.
5. Recently on our blog
- Legislation at Westminster – and how parliament matters more than many people think (Meg Russell, Constitution Unit, Daniel Gover, QMUL)
- A tale of two Houses? Post-legislative Scrutiny in the House of Commons and House of Lords (Tom Caygill, Newcastle)