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October 2018 newsletter

The October 2018 newsletter from the Political Studies Association Specialist Group on Parliaments

A little hello from the PSA Parliaments Group team! A short edition of our newsletter this time around, including:

  1. Our Conference – REGISTRATION OPEN
  2. Reminder: #PSA19 – general call for papers OPEN
  3. Reminder: #PSA19 – specific calls for papers: e-petitions and party competition
  4. Recently on our 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 Seán (@S_Haughey)

1. Our Conference – Registration Open

We are very pleased to announce that registration for our conference, “Making Sense of Parliaments”, is now open!

Our conference features a range of panels on: legislative influences; the relationship between parliaments and the public; developments from subnational and devolved parliaments; and MPs and how they interpret their roles. We have academic and practitioner participants from across the UK and far, far beyond, cutting across political science, history, law, psychology and more! A full list of papers/panels is available on our website/registration site (see link below).

We will also have a special panel composed of NI Assembly members to discuss a range of issues regarding devolution in Northern Ireland.

Remember – attendance is FREE! We’re very excited for this conference and we hope you can join us in Belfast on 08-09 November! Please follow this link to register – this is important for security and catering purposes.

For full information about our conference, please visit our website.

Any questions, please get in touch with Marc (marc.geddes@ed.ac.uk) and Louise (louise.thompson-4@manchester.ac.uk).

2. REMINDER: #PSA19 – Call for Papers now OPEN

The PSA has announced details of the 2019 Annual Conference, which will take place between 15 and 17 April in Nottingham (Nottingham Conference Centre, Nottingham Trent University). As always, we hope to put panels forward from our group to build on the great success of last year’s conference in Cardiff!

If you are 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 Monday, 15 October. If you would like to put together a panel for the conference, please complete a Panel Proposal Form by the same deadline. We will be in touch within a week of this deadline to notify you if your paper/panel 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 panels – we welcome and want to continue this trend!

We had a really successful 2018 conference, with more papers and panels than before. So we look forward to hearing from you to make 2019 even bigger and better!

3. REMINDER: #PSA19 – Specific Call for Papers

We have received TWO requests from members for interest in joint panels, which we are happy to advertise here:

1. E-Petitions and New Forms of Engagement

Driven by a desire to increase participation and improve trust in the institutions of representative democracy, parliaments throughout the world are experimenting with new ways of engaging the public.  One such innovation is public petition, which – to varying degrees – enable members of the public to directly influence the legislative agenda.  This themed session seeks to bring colleagues together to explore the intentions, effects and (sometimes unintended) consequences of petitioning in terms of public engagement, legislative influence and policy impact.  If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit a short abstract of no more than 200 words to Felicity Matthews at the University of Sheffield (f.m.matthews@sheffield.ac.uk) by 08 October 2018. The proposal for the themed session will then be submitted to the convenors of the Parliaments Group for full consideration.

2. New Dynamics of National and Transnational Party Competition in Europe

This JOINT CfP is organised by Greek Politics, Nordic Politics, Italian Politics, French Politics, German Politics, and Parliaments Specialist Groups to explore the changing dynamics of party competition and consequences for institutions (including parliaments). If interested, please see the full CfP HERE.

4. Recently on the blog