We hope that you are safe and well. We have some updates for you:
- Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
- PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
- Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
- PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
- Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with David Judge
- Launch of the 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition
- New Overview of the New Zealand Parliament Added to Our Website
- Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Opportunity
- Events: Bingham Lecture by Dr Hannah White & Talk by Philip Norton on Governing Britain
- 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. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
We have already received over 200 responses to our survey on research in parliamentary and legislative studies.
The purpose of the survey is to map the sub-discipline and to identify any trends and absences.
If you haven’t filled it in yet, there is still plenty of time. The survey will remain open until the end of May.
We will be presenting the initial findings at 2pm on Wednesday 9th June 2021 as part of our roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary studies. Book your ticket now!
2. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
Our online panel is back after a well earned rest on Wednesday May 12th at 2pm.
For our penultimate panel of the year, we’ll be focusing on innovations in theory and method in parliamentary studies and our speakers are:
- James Strong on “Studying parliament’s past to understand its future”;
- Stephen Holden Bates on “Re-structuring parliamentary roles”;
- Caroline Bhattacharya on “New methodological approaches to party unity and discursive contestation”; and
- Felicity Matthews on “The Democratic Ecology of Parliamentary e-Petitions: A Case Study of the UK Petitions Committee Online Abuse Inquiry”
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.
3. Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
We are pleased to announce that our next annual Conference will be held on 11-12 November 2021. Our theme will be Parliament at a Critical Juncture.
Full details of the conference and how to submit papers will be included in next month’s newsletter but, for the time being, please make a note of the dates in your diaries.
4. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
This year’s PSA annual conference may have been held virtually but, as in previous years, we were delighted to host a fantastic programme of PSA Parliament panels, featuring exceptional research on parliaments and legislatures. With all four of our panels scheduled for Monday 29 March, we enjoyed a jam-packed day of parliamentary delights.
The day started with three fascinating papers covering Questions, content, and language in parliamentary proceedings. The paper givers (Mia McGraith Burns, Mark Shephard, Sebastian Ludwicki-Ziegler, Daniel Braby and Sylvia Shaw) shared their research on the Scottish and UK Parliaments, covering issues including the topic of questions at PMQs and FMQs and the impact of the hybrid Parliament in Westminster.
Our second panel Representation and diversity in the legislature featured four excellent papers exploring topics including baby leave in the House of Commons, inductions for new MPs in Westminster and Ottawa, use of Twitter by MPs, and the backgrounds of members of the House of Lords. Thanks to our paper-givers on this panel: Sarah Childs, Louise Cockram, Daniel Braby, Marius Sältzer, David Parker, Allison Reinhardt and Sheridan Johnson.
Next we explored the impact of Covid-19 with a panel on Parliaments and the Pandemic, featuring two papers exploring how the move to the hybrid House of Commons affected participation among older MPs (Wang Ling Teung) and those from smaller parties (Louise Thompson, Alexandra Meakin).
Our final panel of the day included a bumper five papers examining Parliamentary relations and powers. Inter-parliamentary relations, the relationship between parliaments and anti-corruption agencies, parliamentary impact on legislation and minority government were all explored by Margaret Arnott, Andrew Jones, Steven MacGregor, Tom Fleming, and Franklin De Vrieze.
We’re very grateful to all of our paper-givers for taking the time to share their research (we especially appreciated the Montana contingent joining us at 4.15am!). Thank you all so much.
Huge thanks also go to everyone who attended each panel and asked great questions to the panels. While the online conference platform had some challenges, it is a tribute to everyone involved that each panel still featured a stimulating conversation.
We can’t wait to get back to the great atmosphere of our PSA conference panels in person in York next year. We hope to see you then!
5. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with David Judge
We are very pleased to announce that Professor David Judge is the fifth 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.
Please visit our website now to find out about his achievements in eating biscuits, why he thought (and hoped) he might get sacked as Head of Department, and who his musical guilty pleasure is!
If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.
6. Launch of the 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition
We’re delighted to launch our 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition!
Given the extraordinary circumstances of this academic year, we are extending our entry criteria to include any essay or assignment related to parliaments or legislatures (with a maximum word count of 4,000 words) and pushing our deadline back to 5pm, Wednesday 30th June 2021.
The winner will receive a prize of £100 and the runner-up £50, with both prizes being awarded at our 2021 PSA Parliaments conference this autumn.
Do you have a student who has produced an excellent piece of work on parliaments this year? Please submit your entry to Alexandra (all entrants must be nominated by a lecturer or seminar tutor (i.e. no self-nominations) and all entries must be made by a PSA Parliaments member).
7. New Overview of New Zealand Parliament Added to Our Website
We have recently added a new overview to our website.
Many thanks to William Horncastle for his overview of the New Zealand Parliament!
If you would like to write an overview for one of the countries or jurisdictions not covered on our maps, then please get in touch.
8. Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Opportunity
The Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology is looking for a Parliamentary Academic Fellow to undertake a global landscape analysis of organisations around the world providing science advice to parliaments.
Full details of the fellowship and how to apply can be found here.
9.Events: Bingham Lecture by Dr Hannah White & Talk by Philip Norton on Governing Britain
This year’s Bingham lecture will be given by Dr Hannah White, Deputy Director at the Institute of Government.
The lecture is entitled Against the clock: Brexit, COVID-19 and the constitution and will take place at 5pm on May 18th 2021.
Full details of the lecture can be found here.
Hosted by the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull, Lord Norton of Louth (Philip Norton) will be talking to Dr Elizabeth Monaghan about his new book Governing Britain on Wednesday 5th May at 2pm.
Full details of the talk can be found here.
10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
The Parliamentary Monitoring Group, an information service, was established in South Africa in 1995 with the aim of providing a type of Hansard for the proceedings of the more than fifty South African Parliamentary Committees. Full details of its research outputs can be found here.
Stephen Elstub and colleagues have published a series of reports on some mini-publics either run, or commissioned, by the UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament.
- Elstub, S. & Carrick, J. (2020) Comparing Mini-Publics in the Scottish Parliament, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
- Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019) Evaluation of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizens’ Jury on Land Management and the Natural Environment, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
- Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019) Evaluation of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizens’ Panels on Primary Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
- Elstub, S. and Carrick, J. (2019) Evaluation of the Citizens’ Assembly on the Inquiry of Long-Term Funding of Adult Social Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
The first issue of the new International Journal of Parliamentary Studies has been published, including this cheeky little number on parliamentary roles.
A new issue of Representation has been published.
If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.
11. Recently on the Blog
Our blog is back and this month we’ve published:
- Calmed waters by a missed boat by Ray Snoddy.
- The Public Engagement Journey by Cristina Leston-Bandeira
- Parliaments’ Power in Authoritarian Regimes by Felix Wiebrecht
If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer, Gavin Hart.