Month: October 2021

Categories
Events

PSA Parliaments at #PSA22

We are delighted to confirm our panels for the Political Studies Association annual conference (PSA22), taking place in York and digitally in April 2022. We have five excellent panels, plus a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. Full details of the timings and rooms can be found here.

How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

  • David C.W. Parker, Jeffrey L. Lazarus (Montana State University-Bozeman, Georgia State University): Bringing the Bacon Back to Bassetlaw: Distributive Politics and the UK Parliament
  • Caroline Bhattacharya, Stephen Holden Bates, Stephen McKay (University of Helsinki, University of Birmingham, University of Lincoln): Backbench MPs’ roles, 1979-2019: a latent class analysis
  • Luai Allarakia (University of Richmond): Dimensions of Conflict in the Absence of Programmatic Parties: The Case of Kuwait’s National Assembly
  • Omomayowa Olawale Abati (Stellenbosch University): Is Lowering the Minimum Age of Candidacy Enough? The Politics of Youth Representation in Nigeria’s Lower National Legislature

Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future

  • Farrah Bhatti (Principal Clerk of Select Committees, House of Commons)
  • Simon Burton (Clerk of the Parliaments, House of Lords)
  • Sarah Childs (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  • Jack Sheldon (Cambridge University)

How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?

  • Donald Keya Manyala, Benson Inzofu Mwale (Parliament of Kenya): Participation of Minority Legislators in Legislative Business at the National Assembly of Kenya
  • Alia Middleton, Louise Thompson (University of Surrey, University of Manchester): The awkward squad? The parliamentary lives of former Prime Ministers
  • Wang Leung Ting (London School of Economics and Political Science): Can you hear me? An analysis on how virtual proceeding affected the content and influence of legislative speeches
  • Joel Martinsson (Linnaeus University / Swedish Parliament): Access Granted, Access Denied: When and why Swedish parliamentarians submit motions on behalf of special interest organizations

How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs

  • James Weinberg (University of Sheffield): “I’ve had to teach myself to laugh at people calling me a liar and ugly and fat and all the rest of it. And try to remember it’s not really about me, even the death threats.” Feelings of distrust, emotional labour and mental health in political office
  • Tevfik Murat Yildirim, Gunnar Thesen (University of Stavanger, Norway): The Media Coverage and Public Visibility of Members of Parliament in the UK
  • Sebastian Ludwicki-Ziegler (University of Stirling): Parliamentarians’ Communication Strategies: The Choice between being in Control and outsourcing Control to Parliamentary Assistants

Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement

  • Felix Wiebrecht (The Chinese University of Hong Kong): (Mis)Using Parliament: Why Do Legislatures Become Stronger in Authoritarian Regimes?
  • James Strong (Queen Mary University of London): Did the UK War Powers Convention fundamentally change the House of Commons’ influence over the use of force?
  • Temitayo Odeyemi, Cristina Leston-Bandeira, Alexander Beresford (University of Leeds): From space invasion, to value mediation, and everything in-between: Situating non-state actors and Nigeria’s national-subnational legislative public engagement
  • Alexandra Meakin (University of Leeds): Rebuilding the People’s Parliament – public engagement and the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster

Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis

  • Margaret Arnott (University of the West of Scotland): Constitutional Governance and Common Frameworks: Interparliamentary Relations in the Devolved UK
  • André Vella (University of Birmingham): Parliamentary Privilege in Commonwealth Legislatures
  • Franklin De Vrieze (Westminster Foundation for Democracy): Measuring the oversight role of parliaments in public debt management
  • Sebastian Ludwicki-Ziegler, Mark Shephard (University of Stirling, University of Strathclyde): Hostile or Consensual?: A Comparative Study of Personal Attacks and Positive Self-Reference in Exchanges between the Conservatives and SNP in PMQs and FMQs

Details of how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a paper proposal – we were very impressed with the high standard and look forward to seeing you in York!

Categories
News

October 2021 Newsletter

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:

  1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
  2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
  3. Call for Papers: Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody Workshop
  4. New Overview of the Austrian Parliament
  5. Welcome to our new Communications Officer, Chris Monaghan!
  6. Call for Posters for Study of Parliament Group Oxford Weekend
  7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
  8. 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 2021 Conference

We are delighted to announce an excellent line-up of panels and papers for our 2021 Annual Conference, Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

The conference this year is a one-day virtual event on Friday 12th November 2021.

We have three panels on the themes of:

  1. Representatives and representation;
  2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
  3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

To register (for free) and for full details of the conference and each of the panels, please see here.

2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

We are delighted to launch our call for papers for the PSA Parliaments panels within the 2022 PSA Annual Conference (#PSA22). The conference is currently planned to be a blend of a physical and digital event taking place online and in York, between 10-13th April 2022 with the theme: “Politics from the Margins”. Full details of the conference, including the current plans for digital-only attendees can be found here.

If you would like to present a paper or organise a panel under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments group, then please submit the relevant form(s), which can be found on our website, to Alexandra and Stephen by Monday 4th October.

We welcome papers from PhD students through to professors and we are fully committed to avoiding manels. We are also seeking to increase the proportion of papers on our panels from people from an ethnic minority background so please get in touch with Alexandra or Stephen if you come from an ethnic minority background and would like to discuss how your research could be highlighted on our panels.

3. Call for Papers: Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody Workshop

Inspired by the recent textbook, Political Science is for Everybody, the Parliaments, Race, Migration & Intersectionality, and Women & Politics specialist groups of the UK Political Studies Association are organising a workshop entitled Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody.

The aim of the workshop is to explore parliaments (and legislatures) at the intersections: how different groups of people engage with, access, navigate and experience parliaments; how parliaments and particular parliamentary institutions might be biased towards certain groups; and how this context might influence parliamentary activity, legislative outcomes and the broader policy-making process.

The workshop will be held via Zoom on Friday 28 January 2022.Full details, including how to submit an abstract, can be found here.

We welcome applications from PhD students to professors, and we do not have any preference in terms of theory and method, or on which parliament(s) and/or legislature(s) you study. We particularly welcome applications from people who are from underrepresented groups in political science and academia more broadly.

4. New Overview of the Austrian Parliament

A new overview of the Austrian Parliament has been added to our map.

Many thanks to Christoph Clar for writing an excellent addition to our collection.

If you would like to write an overview of a parliament or legislature not yet covered on our maps (it is to our collective shame that there is not yet an overview of the UK Parliament), then please get in contact with Stephen or Alexandra.

5. Welcome to our new Communications Officer, Chris Monaghan!

We are really pleased that Chris Monaghan has joined us as our Communications Officer.

Chris is a Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of Worcester. He has a keen interest in constitutional law, accountability and legal history, and his current research projects include the Chagos litigation and impeachment as an accountability mechanism.

Chris is the co-editor of the Routledge Frontiers in the Study of Accountability book series, and is currently organising the Questions of Accountability conference.

His twitter handle is @Chris_JMonaghan.

6. Call for Posters for Study of Parliament Group Oxford Weekend

There will be a new poster session at the SPG’s Oxford Weekend on the 7-8th January 2022 which is open to all members of the SPG, including PhD students, early career researchers and officials. Please consider submitting a poster to display findings from current research projects, to disseminate information about new projects, or to put forward case studies of best practice.

If you’d like to take part in the session, please email Louise Thompson with the following information: Poster Title; Author/(s); Affiliation/(s); Short Summary (150 words) of what the poster will cover.

The deadline for submissions of interest is Friday 8th October 2021. Final posters and short videos would need to be completed by Monday 6th December 2021. Support will be given with the printing and display of posters.

Some financial support (up to £100) towards attending the conference is available for PhDs / ECRs who present a poster. For further details contact Richard Kelly. If you are not a member of the SPG but are interested in joining, please get in touch with Louise.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

The South Africa-based Parliamentary Monitoring Group has published a report by Rebecca Sibanda on Assessing the Effectiveness of Written Questions and Replies as an Oversight Mechanism in the South African Parliament.

Rainbow Murray has published It’s a rich man’s world: How class and glass ceilings intersect for UK parliamentary candidates in International Political Science Review.

Fotios Fitsilis has published a research note in the Journal of Legislative Studies entitled Artificial Intelligence (AI) in parliaments – preliminary analysis of the Eduskunta experiment.

Rod Rhodes, Matthew Flinders, Adrian Vatter and David Judge have written a response to Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban’s recent article on the Westminster Model in Government and Opposition: Stretched but not snapped: A response to Russell & Serban on Retiring the ‘Westminster Model.

John Connolly, Matthew Flinders and David Judge have published Reviewing the review: a three-dimensional approach to analysing the 2017–2020 review of the House of Lords investigative and scrutiny committees in the Journal of Legislative Studies, available on early view.

And, finally, new issues of Legislative Studies Quarterly, Parliamentary Affairs and the Journal of Legislative Studies have been published.

If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.

8. Recently on the Blog

We have recently published one great blog:

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer, Chris.

Categories
Blog

Parliaments are watching to make sure climate legislation has an impact

How have parliaments responded to the Paris Agreement during the past five years? In which way are parliaments making sure that climate legislation does have an impact? These were some of the questions guiding the new report “Parliaments and the Paris Agreement”, published by Westminster Foundation for Democracy, ParlAmericas, INTER PARES, and GLOBE International. Based on this report, we put forward five golden rules for conducting climate-proof Post-Legislative Scrutiny.

By Rafael Jimenez Aybar and Franklin De Vrieze.

With only a few of weeks until the start of COP-26 in Glasgow, the role of parliaments in advancing international climate commitments deserves a spotlight. Parliament’s critical role in the development, implementation, and monitoring of their country’s climate objectives is often underestimated. 

The recent report “Parliaments and the Paris Agreement” shows that, to date, action on climate by parliaments has gone beyond adopting climate policies and legislation. The report also notes how parliaments focus on implementation and impact, thus contributing to promoting environmental democracy by upholding the environmental rule of law. 

While legislation is of critical importance to achieve national climate commitments, it is equally vital to ensure that the legislation is implemented and has the intended outcomes. This process is often referred to as Post-legislative Scrutiny (PLS) or ex-post impact assessment of legislation. 

PLS can help identify implementation shortcomings, areas of improvement and good practices. While PLS can provide oversight of the implementation gap, the gap between ambitions legislated for and those delivered, PLS can also provide a window for increasing legislative ambitions in line with what the science demands. 

PLS can be applied to climate-specific legislation as well as to general legislation which is not specifically environment- or climate-focused. In case of the latter, one speaks of a climate and environmental “lens” over PLS. 

Based on the new report, we outline five golden rules for conducting climate-proof PLS. The five golden rules capture the do’s and don’ts for parliaments willing to engage on PLS of environment and climate legislation and PLS of general legislation with an environment and climate lens.

1. Make the work of parliament climate-proof. Climate-proof PLS is not the job of the Environmental Committee only. All committees need to be engaged. This means that parliaments need to organise their internal processes to ensure that environmental oversight spans the entirety of its work, including through inter-committee communication and environmental and climate mainstreaming in committees’ work. This requires that all MPs and staff have been informed of the national targets related to mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and the strategy on adaptation.

For instance, the Scottish Parliament applies its sustainable development Impact Assessment Tool to all its legislation. It helps parliamentarians moving beyond simply asking ‘what is the economic cost or benefit of this law’ to asking, ‘what is the carbon cost?’. The UK Parliament Environmental Audit Committee has a cross-government mandate to consider the extent to which government departments and public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development.

2. Make all PLS inquiries climate-inclusive. For PLS of general legislation, it is important that environmental impact is explicitly included in the PLS guidance, calls for evidence, and questions used in data collection. The PLS report needs to include a section on findings and recommendations relevant to the environment and climate; going beyond findings and recommendations related to the thematic remit of that law. This is similar to the approach that says that any legislative impact report must have a section relevant to gender equality.

An example is the Indonesian Parliament which has started PLS of the ‘Law on Job Creation’ with specific attention to the risks of driving environmental degradation.

3. Employ environmental treaties as entry-point for environmental PLS. Parliaments have a key role in ratifying international environmental and climate treaties. PLS can provide a window of analysis to check on the government’s commitments and adherence to such treaties as reflected in the national law. Furthermore, delivery against international treaties takes place at national, regional, and sub-regional level. Parliaments are critical to ensure that this happens.

4. Look at the role of implementing agencies of legislation. Each law designates an institution, department or ministry for its implementation. In many countries, the piecemeal development of environmental legislation risks regulatory overlap. Through PLS, MPs can review the role of implementing agencies of environmental laws, in order to consider whether compliance and enforcement regimes exist, and what is their effectiveness, legality, and coherence.

For example, the National Assembly of Nigeria is currently assessing the Environmental Impact Assessment Act and the Act on the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.

5. Review the legislative targets. It is important that legislative targets for climate and environment are adequate, timely and achievable. Setting targets alone does not in itself improve environmental outcomes. PLS of climate and environment legislation should therefore focus its assessment not only on targets, but also performance against those targets – asking if the targets and actions to meet them are doing enough.

For example, the Canadian Parliament enacted a review clause in the Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act to ensure a parliamentary review after 5 years of it coming into force with the aim to sharpen the targets.

Rafael Jimenez Aybar is Environmental Democracy Adviser and Franklin De Vrieze is Senior Governance Adviser at Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD).