Month: April 2023

News

April 2023 Newsletter

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date April 12, 2023

We hope you’re well. We have some updates for you:

PSA Parliaments at PSA23!
PSA Parliaments Book Launch: Henry J. Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners
PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022: Extra Online Panel
PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition
PSA Trustee Elections
ALCS Membership: Public Service Announcement
Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to our group, please let us know.

Best wishes

Stephen, Seán, Caroline, Chris and Ruxandra.

1. PSA Parliaments at PSA23!

We had a great time in Liverpool for the Annual PSA Conference.

We convened four panels on parliamentary processes and procedures, comparative analysis of legislatures, scrutiny and legislation, and rhetoric and representation, which were all very well attended and which all contained some very interesting and important papers.

We believe all panels were recorded by the conference organisers so, if you missed the conference or just want to relive the experience, you’ll hopefully have access to all presentations soon.

2. PSA Parliaments Book Launch: Henry J. Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be hosting a book launch for Henry J. Miller’s new book, A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

The event will take place via Zoom on Wednesday 3rd May at 2pm BST.

Full details, including how to book your free ticket, can be found here.

The book launch is part of our Online Brown Bag Seminar Series. If you have an article or book that has been accepted for publication and you would like to present it as part of our series, then please get in contact with Stephen.

3. PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022: Extra Online Panel

We have not forgotten about our postponed online panel Parliaments & Parliamentarians in Context.

We will be rearranging this panel very soon and will hopefully announce a new date and time next month.

Details of the panel can be found here.

4. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition

Our undergraduate essay competition is running again this year!

Many of you have probably been busy marking over the last few weeks. If one of your undergraduate students has produced an exceptional piece of work, then please consider submitting it on their behalf (no self-nominations allowed).

Every year we want to reward the best assignments written by UK-based undergraduate students on any aspect of parliamentary and legislative studies. The entries which display the most originality, analytical rigour and significant contributions to the field will be awarded a prize of £100 for the winner and £50 for the runner-up.

The closing date is 12th June 2023.

Full details of the competition, including how to submit nominations, can be found here. For any questions, please get in touch with Caroline.

5. PSA Trustee Elections

Two of our members, Nicholas Allen and Matthew Hepplewhite, are standing to become trustees of the PSA.

You can read their pitches and details of how to vote here.

6. ALCS Membership: Public Service Announcement

If you publish books and in journals that are based in the UK and you are not yet a member, then please consider joining the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Societyso you can receive payment for secondary uses of your work.

One of our convenors hadn’t even heard of it until this time last year and doesn’t know why this isn’t the first thing you are told when you start your PhD.

Anyway, it can earn you hundreds and even thousands of pounds each year!

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Orly Siow has recently published two articles: Needles in a haystack: an intersectional analysis of the descriptive, constitutive and substantive representation of minoritised women in the European Journal of Politics and Gender and What Constitutes Substantive Representation, and Where Should We Evaluate It? in Political Studies Review.

Nic Cheeseman and Marie-Eve Desrosiers have published How (not) to engage with authoritarian states and Douglas Thorkell has published Futureproofing democracy: Principles of foresight-based policy analysis and stress-testing for national parliaments and governments, both with the Westminster Fotw-text-wideundation for Democracy.

Franklin De Vrieze has published Advancing parliamentary innovation through Post-Legislative Scrutiny in The Parliamentarian.

Jelena Lončar has published Evoking the resemblance: Descriptive representation of ethnic minorities in Ethnicities.

Meg Russell has published a working paper House of Lords reform: navigating the obstacles with the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

And new issues of the Journal of Legislative Studies and the International Journal of Parliamentary 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 didn’t publish anything this past month because we were too busy on the picket lines winning back our pensions and trying to get better pay and conditions.

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

News

March 2023 Newsletter

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date April 12, 2023

We hope you’re well. We have some updates for you:

PSA Annual Conference 2023 in Liverpool & Online
PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022: Extra Online Panel
PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition Launch!
Urgent Questions with David Parker
PSA Parliaments Book Launch: Henry J. Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners
PSA Trustees Wanted!
Job: British Politics Lecturer, University of Leeds
Other Events: Book Launch of The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit
Other Events: 100 more by 2030! How to Create a More Gender-balanced Democracy
Other Events: Austrian Day of Parliamentary Research
Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to our prizewinning group, please let us know.

Best wishes

Stephen, Seán, Caroline, Chris and Ruxandra.

1. PSA Annual Conference 2023 in Liverpool & Online

Registration has opened for the 2023 PSA Annual Conference being held in Liverpool and virtually in April 2023. Early bird registration ends on 4 February 2023, and accepted paper-givers must register by then to guarantee their place. Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA23 website.

PSA Parliaments are running four panels on the Monday and Tuesday, as can be seen from the conference programme here.

The PSA offers support to UK based PhD students and early career researchers as well as scholars from the Global South. See the website for more information.

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022: Extra Online Panel

Due to the on-going UCU industrial action, we postponed our online panel Parliaments & Parliamentarians in Context on Wednesday 15th February 2023.

We will rearrange the panel once it is clear what is happening with the industrial action (and/or employers have given staff in UK higher education a decent pay rise, restored lost pension benefits and addressed casualisation, workload and the gender, disability and ethnicity pay gaps).

Details of the panel can be found here.

3. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition Launch!

We are very pleased to announce the launch of our 2023 undergraduate essay competition!

Full details of the competition, including how to submit nominations, can be found here. For any questions, please get in touch with Caroline.

4. Urgent Questions with David Parker

This month’s interviewee is Prof. David Parker (Montana State University)!

Head over to Urgent Questions to read about soaking and poking, Red Sox, Star Trek and lots, lots more!

5. PSA Parliaments Book Launch: Henry J. Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners

The event will take place via Zoom on Wednesday 3rd May at 2pm BST.

Full details, including how to book your free ticket, can be found here.

6. PSA Trustees Wanted!

The PSA are currently calling for nominations from their membership for three trustees to ensure the PSA continues its journey to excellence, sustainability, diversity, and growth.

These positions are open to all Academic Members and the PSA would very much welcome nominations from women and scholars from groups generally under-represented in the discipline.

The deadline for nominations closes on Wednesday 8th March.

You can find out more about governance of the PSA and the role of the trustees here, and there is information about how to apply here.

7. Job: British Politics Lecturer, University of Leeds

The University of Leeds are advertising for a Lecturer in British Politics (Grade 8). More details can be found here.

8. Other Events: Book Launch of The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit

The Constitution Unit at UCL are holding an online book launch for Meg Russelland Lisa James’s new book The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit (OUP) on Thursday 23rd March 2023. Other speakers include David Gauke, Joanna Cherry and Robert Saunders.

More details, including how to book your free ticket, can be found here.

9. Other Events: 100 more by 2030! How to Create a More Gender-balanced Democracy

The Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London are holding an event on how to create a more gender-balanced democracy on Thursday 23rd March 2023. Speakers include Frances Scott and Rainbow Murray.

The event is on later than the book launch above so you can go to both!

More details, including how to book your free ticket, can be found here.

10. Other Events: Austrian Day of Parliamentary Research

The Legal, Legislative and Research Services (RLW) of the Austrian Parliamentary Administration, in cooperation with the International Journal of Parliamentary Studies, is holding the first “Austrian Day of Parliamentary Research” on 26th June 2023.

This one-day conference in the premises of the Austrian Parliament will bring together scholars from various disciplines to discuss current developments in parliamentary research, as well as their reception in and potential contribution to parliamentary practice.

More details, including how to submit a paper proposal, can be found here.

11. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Silje Hermansen and Andreja Pegan have published Blurred lines between electoral and parliamentary representation: The use of constituency staff among Members of the European Parliament in European Union Politics.

The Hansard Society has published a new working paper Proposals for a New System for Delegated Legislation.

Matthew Smith and Jack Newman have published MPS, Outside Interests, and Corporate Boards: Too Busy to Serve? in Parliamentary Affairs.

Erica Rayment and Elizabeth McCallion have published Contexts and Constraints: The Substantive Representation of Women in the Canadian House of Commons and Senate in Representation.

Punam Yadav has published Do political quotas work? Gender quotas and women’s political participation in Nepal in the European Journal of Politics and Gender.

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

12. Recently on the Blog

We published one blog last month:

Love in the Legislature: From Proposal to “Aye Do” by Charlie Feldman

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

News

February 2023 Newsletter

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date April 12, 2023

We hope you’re well. We have some updates for you:

PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022: Extra Online Panels!
PSA Annual Conference 2023 in Liverpool & Online
Urgent Questions with Mark Bennister
PSA Parliaments Book Launch: Henry J. Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners
New Overview of the US Congress!
IPSA RCLS Online Seminars on Legislative & Parliamentary Committees
Call for Papers: ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments Conference
Gen+ParlNet Online Seminar: Designing for Listening in Feminist Democratic Representation
Gendering Multi-Level Parliamentary Democracy Workshop
Tribute to Jean Blondel
Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to our prizewinning group, please let us know.

Best wishes

Stephen, Seán, Caroline, Chris and Ruxandra.

1. PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022: Extra Online Panel!

After a very successful annual conference in Birmingham at the start of November, PSA Parliaments will be holding another extra online panel.

At the moment, Parliaments & Parliamentarians in Context will be held on Wednesday 15th February 2023 at 2pm (GMT). Full details of the panel, including how to book tickets (for free) can be found here.

However, this date is currently a strike day for the on-going UCU industrial action. If employers have not given staff in UK higher education a decent pay rise, restored lost pension benefits and addressed casualisation, workload and the gender and ethnicity pay gaps by then, and the strike day goes ahead, we will need to move the seminar. We will send round an update on this at some point before the 15th.

2. PSA Annual Conference 2023 in Liverpool & Online

The PSA offers support to UK based PhD students and early career researchers as well as scholars from the Global South. See the website for more information.

We are running at least four panels. More information will follow soon.

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

3. Urgent Questions with Mark Bennister

This month’s interviewee is Dr Mark Bennister (University of Lincoln)!

Head over to Urgent Questions to read about record shops, frozen rabbits, synchronised swimming and lots, lots more!

4. PSA Parliaments Book Launch: Henry J. Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners

The event will take place via Zoom on Wednesday 3rd May at 2pm BST.

Full details, including how to book your free ticket, can be found here.

5. New Overview of the US Congress!

Many thanks to Caroline Leicht for writing an overview of the US Congress for our website!

You can read Caroline’s overview, as well as many others, here.

If you would like to write an overview of a parliament or legislature not yet coloured red on one of our maps (and the UK is notable for still being grey!), then please let Chris know.

6. IPSA RCLS Online Seminars on Legislative & Parliamentary Committees

Our very good friends on IPSA’s Research Committee of Legislative Specialists are holding another online seminars on legislative committees.

The book launch of Maya Kornberg‘s Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in the Legislative Process (Columbia University Press) will take place on Monday 13th February 2023, 14:00–15:30 UTC.

Full details of the event, including how to book your free tickets, can be found here.

If you are not yet a member of RCLS, you can join (for free) here.

7. Call for Papers: ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments

The ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments will host its 8th conference in Vienna from Thursday July 6th to Saturday July 8th, 2023. There is no regional or methodological restriction.

Please see here for more details, including how to submit a proposal.

8. Gen+ParlNet Online Seminar: Designing for Listening in Feminist Democratic Representation

Gen+ParlNet are holding on online seminar on Thursday, 2nd February at 15:30 (Brussels time). The title of the seminar is Designing for Listening in Feminist Democratic Representation. The presenters are Karen Celis and Sarah Childs and the discussant is Mette Marie Stæhr Harder.

To sign up, please email Mette Marie Stæhr Harder or Cherry Miller.

9. Gendering Multi-Level Parliamentary Democracy Workshop

Cherry Miller is organising a hybrid international workshop to explore parliaments as both gendered workplaces and gendered sites of policy-making at multiple state levels.

Full details of the workshop, including how to book your free ticket, can be found here.

10. Tribute to Jean Blondel

PSA Parliaments were very sad to hear the news that Jean Blondel, who made such a contribution to parliamentary and legislative studies, as well as political science more broadly, had died on Christmas Day.

You can read a tribute to him written by his colleague and friend, David Sanders, here.

11. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Ville Aula and Tapio Raunio have published The conditions of committee importance – drawing lessons from a qualitative case study of Finland in the Journal of Legislative Studies.

Xuhong Su and Wenbo Chen has published Pathways to women’s electoral representation: the global effectiveness of legislative gender quotas over time also in the Journal of Legislative Studies.

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

12. Recently on the Blog

We published two great blogs last month:

Evidence use by parliamentary committees: what is it good for? by Mark Geddes; and
Information Literacy for Scrutiny: Equality and Diversity in Research by Anne-Lise Harding

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

Blog

The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit: The Story in Brief

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date April 4, 2023

Our new book, The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit, was published on 23 March. It focuses on the disputed role of parliament in the Brexit process, exploring how this most central UK democratic institution became embroiled in such controversy, and what the Brexit period demonstrates about the wider state of politics.

The first and most basic question answered by the book is what actually happened in these troubled years. This is a long and complex story. Different narratives developed, often fed by competing players, which were frequently partial and sometimes downright misleading. The book seeks to provide an objective account, based on the public record and interviews with insiders. What follows is only a very brief summary (adapted from part of the closing chapter), drawing out some important themes.

The need to restore sovereignty to parliament was a long-time argument of Eurosceptics. While the institution’s own role in Brexit rose to prominence after the referendum, it also served (as discussed in Chapter 2) as a key forum for helping to bring this vote about. Backbench MPs—assisted on occasion by Speaker John Bercow’s unconventional interpretation of the rules—generated significant pressure for a referendum. Notably, not all of them favoured exiting the EU. Some, in a similar way to Prime Minister David Cameron, saw the referendum as a way to make an awkward question go away. Based on polling, there was little expectation of a Leave victory, and this prospect was not taken particularly seriously. Parliament held no major debate on the merits of Brexit to air the arguments; the Leave campaign set out no detailed prospectus to voters; and the civil service was forbidden from preparing. Consequently, the dilemmas and trade-offs that dominated subsequent debates were barely mentioned before the referendum. As an interviewee from the strongly pro-Brexit European Research Group of MPs (ERG) acknowledged, ‘it was only [after the referendum] that different types of Brexit started coming to the fore. Soft Brexit and hard Brexit had never been canvassed before the referendum; the expressions were coined afterwards.’ This lack of definition greatly stoked the bitterness of the following years.

The unexpected Leave result triggered the Prime Minister’s resignation, and Conservative MPs elected Theresa May in his place (Chapter 3). She was, in the words of one interviewee, ‘blood and bone a party woman’, with her deep commitment to public service if anything surpassed by her commitment to the Conservative Party. But that party was severely divided over Brexit. Labour, too, was now internally split, with some party heartlands having voted strongly for Remain and others for Leave. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was already unpopular in his parliamentary party, and it tried but failed to remove him after his lacklustre performance in the referendum campaign. This left both party leaders significantly compromised.

The uncertain question of how to implement Brexit now passed over to parliament. Many feared that a Remainer-dominated House of Commons would seek to undermine the referendum result, and May’s instinct was to rely as far as possible on pursuing Brexit using prerogative powers. But the enormity of the question understandably led parliamentarians to seek oversight of the next steps (Chapter 4). This provoked an institutional conflict between government and parliament. The courts were also drawn in, via Gina Miller’s first legal case arguing for parliament’s role in the triggering of Article 50. This resulted in defeat for the government and the infamous Daily Mail headline labelling the judges ‘enemies of the people’. Rather than cooling down the conflict, May’s government sought to exploit it, in order to appear the people’s defender.

Shortly afterwards, the Prime Minister justified her calling of a snap election in 2017 (Chapter 5), by arguing—on shaky empirical grounds—that parliament was standing in the way of Brexit. But the election weakened her position, resulting in a minority government, dependent on a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Northern Ireland DUP. The closeness of the result raised hopes among former Remainers that Brexit might be blocked, which further fuelled polarization and discouraged the spirit of compromise required to navigate the subsequent stages.

May’s early positioning (her initial ‘red lines’) incorporated the demands of her party’s hardliners—including that the UK should leave the Single Market and Customs Union. But when formal negotiations with the EU began (Chapter 6), her team came to recognize the trade-offs, particularly concerning the protection of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Avoidance of a hard border on the island of Ireland would require continued close alignment with the EU, which was unacceptable to hardline Brexiteers, while a ‘border down the Irish Sea’ between Great Britain and Northern Ireland was unacceptable to unionists, and in particular the DUP.

These difficulties, and May’s rhetoric that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, raised concerns about failure to reach an agreement with the EU, and a possible no-deal Brexit. That would imply a hard border for Northern Ireland, and likely severe economic consequences. Partly to avoid it, a small number of moderate Conservative rebel MPs backed demands for a ‘meaningful vote’ in parliament on the final Brexit plan (Chapter 7). The extent of Conservative splits became very apparent when David Davis and Boris Johnson resigned from May’s Cabinet over her ‘Chequers’ proposals in July 2018, and further ministers departed in November over her final Brexit deal. The primary sticking point was the ‘backstop’—a compromise arrangement to avoid the border problem, demanding significant future all-UK alignment with EU rules (plus some special arrangements for Northern Ireland). When MPs voted on this deal in January 2019 it was overwhelmingly defeated, by 432 votes to 202. More than a third of the parliamentary Conservative Party—118 MPs—opposed it, 90 of whom were former Leave supporters. Most former Conservative Remain supporters, in contrast, voted for the deal.

There followed months of parliamentary wrangling, during which May’s deal was defeated twice more (Chapter 8). Crucially, hardline Conservative Brexiteers (dubbed the ‘Spartans’) repeatedly refused to accept it. May expressed strong frustrations with parliament, but never explicitly criticized her backbench opponents. Boris Johnson)—who had voted against the deal on the first two occasions—responded by arguing that it was ‘wrong in every sense to blame MPs for blocking Brexit’.

At this point, Conservative backbench moderates took further action to avoid a no-deal Brexit, including through backing temporary suspension of ministers’ control of the Commons agenda to facilitate ‘indicative’ votes on alternative Brexit options. But with near-universal Conservative opposition to every option, they were all defeated. Meanwhile, other parties continued to reject the deal. All that MPs could agree on was instructing Theresa May to negotiate extensions to the Article 50 period. The polarization and failure to compromise which characterized this period was painfully summed up by senior Conservative Brexiteer Charles Walker, who commented that ‘the losers do not know how to lose and the winners do not know how to win’.

It was in these circumstances that Boris Johnson—who had adopted a mantle as the authentic voice of Brexit, denouncing May and voting against her deal—was elected in her place (Chapter 9). Parliament entered its 2019 summer recess immediately afterwards, without any formal test of confidence in Johnson. Before its return, he requested a five-week prorogation, potentially to help facilitate a no-deal Brexit. This led to the second government defeat in the Supreme Court on a Brexit-related matter. Before the court case, Johnson had stripped the whip from 21 Conservative MPs (17 of whom had consistently voted for May’s deal), for facilitating what he dubbed the ‘Surrender Act’—a non-government bill requiring pursuit of a further Article 50 extension unless parliament voted for a Brexit plan.

This parliamentary blocking of a no-deal Brexit drove Johnson to agree an alternative deal with the EU, which was put to the House of Commons in October (Chapter 10). It was essentially a package previously rejected by Theresa May, which included close EU alignment for Northern Ireland only, thus requiring a ‘border down the Irish Sea’. Rather than subjecting the deal to parliamentary scrutiny, Johnson demanded a new general election, which was eventually conceded by MPs. He fought this on a slogan to ‘get Brexit done’, and a manifesto which—in direct contradiction to his own earlier comments—accused MPs of ‘refus[ing] to deliver Brexit’, and of ‘thwarting the democratic decision of the British people’. The Conservatives won an 80-seat majority, and the UK’s exit from the EU followed on 31 January 2020.

This story clearly contains many contradictions. In particular, Johnson’s rhetoric that parliament had failed to ‘get Brexit done’ was fundamentally inaccurate. He himself had voted with the hardliners against May’s deal on the basis that it wasn’t an authentic Brexit. They dismissed it instead as ‘BRINO’—Brexit in name only. But this group never had a detailed plan of its own. A ‘pure’ Brexit, eschewing all EU regulatory alignment, would have required a hard border on the island of Ireland, and presented major obstacles to an ambitious trade deal with the EU. May’s negotiated compromise sought to avoid these risks, while delivering on the Leave result. Johnson only ‘got Brexit done’ by returning to a version of the deal that May had rejected, due to the problems that it threatened for Northern Ireland. This central disagreement about what Brexit should mean was facilitated by the original lack of clarity in the referendum. But it took place between May’s government and Johnson’s supporters—not between the institution of government and the institution of parliament. The Conservative MPs who blocked May’s deal, including Johnson himself, believed that they were defending Brexit, rather than undermining it. This made it wholly misleading to blame parliament for ‘thwarting’ Brexit, when those involved had in fact used parliament to pursue an argument with May’s government. Yet this was the story that Johnson’s manifesto told, profiting from a growing anti-parliamentary rhetoric that had developed under her premiership.

Summing up, a saga that began with demands to enhance the sovereignty of parliament gradually developed into one where parliament was vilified. The central arguments over Brexit were always—and indeed remain—those inside the Conservative Party. However, it suited most of these internal protagonists for parliament to get the blame.

Meg Russell is Professor of British and Comparative Politics and Director of the Constitution Unit at UCL.

Adapted extract from The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit published by Oxford University Press in March 2023, available in paperback and eBook formats, £25.00

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-parliamentary-battle-over-brexit-9780192849717?q=parliamentary%20battle&lang=en&cc=gb