We hope that you are keeping safe and well and that 2021 is going to be, in general, better than 2020. We have a lot of updates for you:
- PSA Parliaments Panel on the Impact of Digital Technologies and Social Media on Parliaments
- PSA Parliaments Panels at PSA Annual Conference, Belfast
- Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Philip Norton
- Women in Legislative Studies Initiative
- Request for Help on Research Project about MPs and Parliamentary Party Groups
- Volunteers Needed for Prospective Parliamentary Studies PhD Students Webinar
- Call for Papers: ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck
- Nominations Wanted for PSA Prizes
- PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel
- 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 the Impact of Digital Technologies and Social Media on Parliaments
What better way can there be to start 2021 than by attending the third panel of our Online Annual Conference at 2pm on Wednesday 13th January?
We’ll be focusing on the impact of digital technologies and social media on parliaments and our speakers are:
- Ben Worthy and Stefani Langehennig on “Who is monitoring Parliament?”;
- John Bryden on “How does Facebook influence parliament?”;
- Sue Griffiths, Greg Power and Emily Death on “International approaches to virtual parliaments”; and
- Abel François, Benjamin Monnery and Olivier Rozenberg on “Members of Parliament go back to school: A natural experiment of relative performance feedback and parliamentary activities in the French Parliament”.
All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.
2. PSA Parliaments Panels at PSA Annual Conference, Belfast
We are very pleased to announce details of our five panels at the PSA Annual Conference.
This year the conference is taking place online between the 29th and 31st March.
Registration is now open. We look forward to seeing you virtually!
3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Philip Norton
We are very pleased to announce that Professor Philip Lord Norton of Louth is the very first 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 who the most important people have been in Philip’s career, in which country he had a four-man bodyguard, and whether he prefers trains, planes or automobiles!
If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.
4. Women in Legislative Studies Initiative
A new initiative has been launched called Women in Legislative Studies.
The group is for women and non-binary scholars who have or are pursuing a PhD in political science (or related field) who research legislative politics broadly defined. Their mission statement is: “To engage, support, and promote women who study legislative politics”.
More details about the group and how to join can be found at their website.
5. Request for Help on Research Project about MPs and Parliamentary Party Groups
Prof. Gidi Rahat (Hebrew University) and Dr Chen Friedberg (Israel Democracy Institute) are undertaking some research on the roles of MPs and parliamentary party groups. As part of this project, they are running a questionnaire and are seeking a country expert to complete it on the UK.
If you are knowledgeable about parliamentary party groups in the UK Parliament and are interested in taking part in the research project, then please contact Chen directly.
6. Volunteers Needed for Prospective Parliamentary Studies PhD Students Webinar
PSA Parliaments are hoping to run one or two webinars during 2021 aimed at prospective PhD students who are interested in studying parliamentary studies at doctoral level.
If you would like to be on the panel offering advice and answering questions, please email Stephen.
We are particularly interested in recruiting current PhD students as panel volunteers, especially those who come from backgrounds under-represented in both the sub-discipline and political science more broadly. All volunteers who are PhD students will be paid for their time.
7. Call for Papers: ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck
The call for panels and papers for the next ECPR General Conference in Innsbruck (31 August-3 September 2021) is now online.
The ECPR Standing Group of Parliaments is happy to endorse the section “Parliaments under Pressure: Advances and Challenges in Parliamentary Research”. Please see here for more information.
If you would like to organise a panel or present a paper, please submit proposals through the webpage. The deadline for panel & paper proposals is February 10th 2021.
8. Nominations Wanted for PSA Prizes
The PSA are seeking nominations for their various prizes. Please consider nominating someone by the deadline of January 18th.
We are not going to nominate ourselves for best specialist group because of the comparative lull in activity during the pandemic. However, we are going to go all out to win it in 2022!
9. PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel
PSA Parliaments now has its own YouTube Channel where you can catch up with all the presentations from our online conference, including from last month’s excellent panel on analysing PMQs.
10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
Following on from theme of our second on-line conference panel, two articles have recently been published on PMQs and holding Prime Ministers to account.
Ruxandra Serban’s article “How are prime ministers held to account? Exploring procedures and practices in 31 parliamentary democracies” has been published in the Journal of Legislative Studies, as has Alan Convery, Pavielle Haines, James Mitchell and David Parker’s article “Questioning scrutiny: the effect of Prime Minister’s Questions on citizen efficacy and trust in parliament”.
An interesting new dataset can be discovered via the pages of Government and Opposition. Tobias Remschel and Corinna Kroeber have published “Every Single Word: A New Data Set Including All Parliamentary Materials Published in Germany”.
And finally for this month, Michelle Caplan, Nicole McMahon and Christopher Alcantara have published “Representing the Constituency: Institutional Design and Legislative Behaviour”.
If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.
11. 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:
Parliaments and COVID-19: principles and practice; challenges and opportunities by Meg Russell
Parliaments and Peacebuilding by Rosie Frost
If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer, Gavin Hart.