We hope that you are safe and well. We have some updates for you:
- PSA Parliaments Panel on Analysing Legislative Scrutiny & Behaviour
- Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Cristina Leston-Bandeira
- New Constitution Unit Report on Control of Parliamentary Time
- UK Study of Parliament Group Publication on Parliaments and the Pandemic
- Book Launch: Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny
- Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
- Recently on the Blog
If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.
1. PSA Parliaments Panel on Analysing Legislative Scrutiny & Behaviour
Acting as an intellectual beacon in the desolation and darkness of pandemic-ridden UK academia, this month’s PSA Parliaments panel is at 2pm on Wednesday 10th February.
We’ll be focusing on the impact of legislative scrutiny and behaviour and our speakers are:
- Nokwazi Makanya on “Progress in parliamentary ‘power over the purse’: the case of South Africa”;
- Andrew Jones on “Managing coalition government in an upper house: testing the ‘keeping tabs’ theory in the House of Lords 2010-15”;
- Jack Sheldon on “Standing up for the nations and regions? Patterns of sub-state territorial representation in the UK House of Commons, 1992-2019”; and
- Margaret Arnott on “Interparliamentary Relations in the Devolved UK – Democratic Scrutiny & Accountability”.
All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.
Recordings of past presentations, including from last month’s excellent panel on parliaments and social media, can be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.
2. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Cristina Leston-Bandeira
We are very pleased to announce that Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira is the second interviewee for our new feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.
Hurry over to our website now to find out what she looked like as a small child, what style of ballroom dancing she prefers, and the reason she left Portugal for Hull!
If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.
3. New Constitution Unit Report on Control of Parliamentary Time
The Constitution Unit have published a new report by Meg Russell and Daniel Gover called Taking Back Control. The report argues that the House of Commons should govern its own time, and makes proposals for wresting such control from government.
More details, and the full report, can be found here.
4. UK Study of Parliament Group Publication on Parliaments and the Pandemic
The UK Study of Parliament Group (SPG) has published a collection of essays reflecting on the experience of parliaments in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020. The essays examine how parliaments innovated and adapted their working practices to cope with the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, and also consider the impact of COVID-19 on their ability to fulfil their roles of legislating, facilitating debate and holding government to account.
The essays focus mainly on Westminster and the UK’s devolved legislatures but also document the experience of the Crown dependencies and the New Zealand and Bahrain legislatures.
More details, and the collection of essays, can be found here.
5. Book Launch: Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny
The Westminster Foundation for Democracy are hosting a panel discussion on Post-Legislative Scrutiny to help launch the book Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny, published by Routledge, and edited by Franklin De Vrieze and Lord Norton.
Panellists will discuss the key principles and practices of this innovative practice, sharing lessons from their own experience.
The event is co-hosted by Agora, the University of Hull, and your very own friendly neighbourhood PSA specialist group, PSA Parliaments.
More details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.
6. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
Andrew Gamble has published an intellectual memoir of Michael Moran, who died in 2018 and whose work will be familiar to many of us.
New issues of both Parliamentary Affairs and Government and Opposition have been published.
And finally for this month, Lucy Kinski has published a new book European Representation in EU National Parliaments as part of the Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics book series.
If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.
7. Recently on the Blog
Thanks, once again, for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:
PMQs: quieter and more civilised but not more accountable by Stephane Revillet
Why it’s difficult to interview MPs – and how best to do it anyway by Philip Cowley
If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer, Gavin Hart.