Author: psaparliaments

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Urgent Questions

Professor Richard Whitaker

RICK WHITAKER

Rick Whitaker is a Professor of Politics at the University of Leicester. He is currently a Parliamentary Academic Fellow, working with staff in the Commons Library, select committees and Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. From January 2023 until September 2024, he was the Thematic Research Lead for Parliament, Public Administration and the Constitution in the UK Parliament.

Please tell us a little bit about how you entered academia and your academic career

I did an undergraduate degree in Politics and Contemporary History having never studied politics before. I immediately got higher marks in politics than in history modules and found the subject deeply fascinating, (not that I don’t love history too!). When I came to the end of my undergraduate degree I felt like I still needed to learn more and was, by that point, really interested in comparative European politics. So I took an MA (Econ) degree in European Politics and Policy and part-way through the year, started working up a PhD proposal under the guidance of Professor David Farrell who became my PhD supervisor. After failing at the last stage in the process of getting on the NHS management training scheme, I started a PhD after my MA. Towards the end of my doctoral study, I was lucky enough to get a temporary job as a lecturer at the University of Salford, where I had studied as an undergraduates.

Which five books/articles (written by someone else) have been most important to you in your academic career?

These are all books that were really important to me in the early stages of figuring out how to be a political scientist in the world of legislative studies.

Richard Corbett, Francis Jacobs and Michael Shackleton, The European Parliament (various editions). This for me was the Bible of the European Parliament, central to understanding how it works.

Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins (1993) Legislative Leviathan. The centrality of party to their understanding of how the US Congress operates and how it is organised internally drew me into the world of understanding committees in legislatures.

Arend Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries. This is a classic comparative politics book and important, for me, for understanding how to situate legislatures and executives in a comparative context.

Keith Krehbiel, Information and Legislative Organisation. The combination of rational choice theory with interview material and empirics make this a fascinating study of legislative organisation.

Amie Kreppel, The European Parliament and Supranational Party System: A Study in Institutional Development. This was crucial for understanding how the European Parliament could be studied in a theoretically and methodologically sophisticated way.

Which people have been most influential and important to you in your academic career?

All those who taught me as an undergrad at the University of Salford and on my MA at the University of Manchester. They developed and nurtured my fascination with politics and political science. Beyond that I’d say (in alphabetical order of surnames): Phil Cowley for teaching me how to write (I’m still learning though), my PhD supervisor David Farrell for encouraging and mentoring me and showing me how to be a political scientist, Simon Hix for showing how the EU can be analysed through the lens of comparative politics, Philip Lynch for his astonishing grasp of detail and huge knowledge of British politics (and willingness to work with me early in my career), and Shane Martin for his work on legislatures in a comparative context and wonderful research questions.

Which of your own pieces of research are you most proud of?

My book on the European Parliament’s committees brought together a lot of research from over quite a time period. I need to write another one!

What has been your greatest achievement in academia?

Having the chance to work in one of the institutions I study (the UK Parliament) for nearly two years has been a wonderful experience for which I will be ever thankful.

What is the first or most important thing you tell your students about parliaments?

That they vary hugely beyond the minimal definition that they give assent to laws.

Where were you born, where did you grow up, and where do you live now?

I was born in Stockport and I grew up in Bramhall. I now live in Nottingham.

What was your first job?

Apart from a paper round and some gardening work, my first job was working in the carpets and rugs department (on a Sunday) in Lewis’s – now long gone – department store in Manchester.

What would your ideal job be, if not an academic?

Working as a parliament specialist in the Commons Library or being a professional musician. 

What are your hobbies?

Music. I play piano and keyboards and I am the accompanist for a choir in Beeston where I live. I used to play in bands during my PhD and when at school. A good friend gave me the chance to do this again as part of a wedding band this year, which was so much fun. I could really do with an excuse to keep doing this!

What are your favourite music albums?

I have quite varied musical tastes from progressive rock, through jazz, classical and including dance and pop music. In short, I love music. It is hard to pick one favourite album but among those I could not do without are Tears for Fears’ album The Seeds of Love, Going for the One by Yes, Oscar Peterson’s Mellow Mood and Jacob Collier’s Djesse series. 

What is your favourite artwork?

I don’t claim to have a good knowledge of art but I love Salvador Dali’s paintings for the way he bends reality and juxtaposes objects in bizarre ways.

What is your favourite sport?

I am a lifelong Formula 1 fan. I love the cars and the speed and the overtaking, when it happens.

Hybrid proceedings in Parliament: yes please or no thanks?

Yes please.

Appointed or elected upper chamber?

Elected but in a way that creates differences with the Commons (such as representing different parts of the UK in a quasi-federal system).

Restoration or Renewal?

Renewal.

Cat or Dog?

Both.

Trains, planes or automobiles?

Trains, when they are working properly.

Fish and chips or Curry?

I can’t choose, I love them both!

Scones: Cornish or Devonshire method?

Cream first, whichever method that is!

And, finally, a question asked by 6-year old Viveka: What was your favourite toy as a child?

The earliest favourite toy I can remember is a Fisher Price garage. Beyond that, it is hard to choose between the Scalextric set we had and my first (sort of) ‘keyboard’, a Casio VL-Tone.

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News

November 2024 Newsletter

Hello, everyone! Our Annual Conference is fast approaching, so please remember to register. We also have, as per usual, lots of news for you this month.

  1. Reminder: PSA Parliaments Annual Conference, Cardiff
  2. Opportunities
  3. Calls for papers
  4. Events
  5. Recent Publications and Resources
  6. On the Blog
  7. Overview of Parliaments Map

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

Best wishes,

Caroline, Diana, Ruxandra, Jack and Lauren

1. Reminder: PSA Parliaments Annual Conference, Cardiff

Our Annual Conference is fast approaching! We have a great line up of panels and an exciting schedule. If you are planning to attend, please register by 11 November, to help us plan attendance and catering. We look forward to seeing you in Cardiff!

Timetable

Thursday, 21 November 2024

Friday, 22 November 2024

  • 9 am–3.30 pm: Conference in the Pierhead Building
  • 4–4.30 pm: Tour of the Senedd

For more details, updates and the full conference programme, please visit our website.

2. Opportunities

Call by Modernisation Committee

The new Modernisation Committee has launched a call for written submissions to hear from different groups, including academics, about ideas how to:

  • drive up standards; 
  • improve culture and working practices; and 
  • reform Parliamentary procedures to make the House of Commons more effective. 

The deadline is 16 December 2024 and all the details can be found here.

The UCL Public Policy team has provided useful tips about giving written and oral evidence to select committees here.

Call by the Electoral Matters Committee of the Parliament of Victoria (Australia) 

The Electoral Matters Committee of the Parliament of Victoria (Australia) is calling for written submissions on possible changes to the electoral structure for the Victoria’s Upper House. Submissions can address any of the following questions:

  1. Should Victoria be divided into regions to elect members of the Upper House, or should all members be elected by the state as a whole?
  2. If there should be regions, how many regions should there be and how many members should each region elect?
  3. How many members of the Upper House should there be in total?
  4. Are there other changes to the way that members are elected to the Upper House that should be considered?

Submissions are due by 3 February 2025.

For more information or to make a submission, please visit the Committee’s webpage or contact the Secretariat at emc@parliament.vic.gov.au.

3. Call for papers

ECPR Joint Sessions Workshop: Beyond Parliamentary Recruitment: Gender and pathways to Power and Influence”, Charles University, 20-23 may, 2025

The workshop “Beyond Parliamentary Recruitment: Gender and Pathways to Power and Influence” is sponsored by the Standing Group on Parliaments and welcomes submissions that focus the complex interplay between gendered structures and resistances to greater diversity and inclusion. 

Deadline for abstract submissions is November, 21. 

Global Political Marketing and Management Conference 5-7 August 2025

The 2025 conference will be the first event for the Global Political Marketing and Political Management network and will be held at the University of Dundee – see the conference website:  The call for paper/presentation proposals and registrations are now open. Contributions are welcome from academics and practitioners from any discipline, organisation and role as long as it is relevant to Political Marketing and Political Management, including discussion of the parliamentary workplace including MPs staff and HR as well as well being, so will be of interest to your members. 

Please send your proposal to gpmmnetwork@dundee.ac.uk by 1 December to be in the first round of those considered for the conference.

4. Events

The Study of Parliament Group’s 60th Anniversary Conference – Westminster, 5 and 6 December 2024

Registrations are now open for the 60’s Anniversary Conference of the Study of Parliament Group. The Conference programme has been published on the SPG website and is attached to this email. Tickets are £25 for two days or £20 per day for SPG Members. Included in the ticket price is lunch and refreshments (including coffee and tea). All tickets are available through Event Brite.

Save the date! – 9th Conference of the ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments: 2-4 July 2025, University of Barcelona

The conference will bring together senior and junior scholars of the field. The academic program will be complemented by a social program including a visit to the Catalan parliament! The conference conveners will soon be inviting proposals for individual papers and entire panels consisting of preferably four (or five) papers.

5. Recent Publications and Resources

Publications

Book

Other Publications and Resources

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

6. On the Blog

We would love to have more contributions on our blog. If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer Jack.

7. Overview of Parliaments Map

We do not have any new contributions for our Overview of Parliaments Map this month but we are really looking forward for more.

For anybody who wishes to cover any of the countries not yet covered in our map, contact our communications officer Jack.

Categories
News

October 2024 Newsletter

Hello, everyone, happy beginning of the academic year! Exciting times for us at the PSA Parliaments group as we are finalising arrangements for our Annual Conference in November. We have, as per usual, lots of news for you this month.

  1. Registration is now open for our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference
  2. PSA Annual Conference: Call for papers closing soon
  3. Opportunity: Parliament for Researchers session with the House of Lords
  4. Calls for papers
  5. Events
  6. Recent Publications and Resources
  7. On the Blog
  8. Overview of Parliaments Map

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

Best wishes,

Caroline, Diana, Ruxandra, Jack and Lauren

1. Registration is now open for our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference

We have now opened the registration for our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference, which will take place between 21and 22 of November 2024.

We are extremely grateful to the Welsh Parliament | Senedd Cymru, who are hosting and co-sponsoring our full day Conference on Friday 22 November at  the iconic  Pierhead Building, and have also kindly provided the Senedd Foyer for our annual Drinks Reception on Thursday 21 November in the evening. We are also very grateful to Cardiff University and WISERD for hosting our Early Career Researchers Workshop at Sbark|Spark – Cardiff University’s state of the art Social Science Research Park. 

Registration

You can now register here until 11 November: Registration form

We are very excited that the Senedd will host our annual conference on 21-22 November in Cardiff.

Timetable

Thursday, 21 November 2024

Friday, 22 November 2024

  • 9 am–3.30 pm: Conference in the Pierhead Building
  • 4–4.30 pm: Tour of the Senedd

More details, updates and the full conference programme, please visit our website.

2. PSA Annual Conference: Call for papers closing soon

The 75th PSA Annual Conference, “What Next?”, convened by the University of Birmingham and Aston University, will take place from 14-16 April 2025. Abstracts should be submitted to the Ex-Ordo website by 18 October. Detailed instructions can be found here.

If you would like to present in one of our panels, please select “Parliaments” in the ‘Topics’ section, when submitting your abstract.

For our PSA Parliaments panels, we are open to papers on any aspect of parliamentary and legislative studies. We particularly encourage papers on the UK Parliament, the 2024 General Election as a critical juncture for the UK Parliament, 25 years of devolved parliaments, comparative parliamentary studies, representation, scrutiny and accountability.

More information can be found on our website.

3. Opportunity: Parliament for Researchers sessions with the House of Lords

Two new Parliament for Researchers training sessions, in collaboration with Members of the House of Lords, will take place in October 2024. Every session will include an introduction to engaging with Parliament for researchers of all academic backgrounds, and a chance to hear from a Member of the House of Lords on the value of academic research in Parliament. Each session will also explore a specific theme related to the participating member’s expertise and may be of particular interest to researchers working in related disciplines. 

These training events are suitable for early career researchers, PhD students, researchers who are new to engaging with the UK Parliament as well as those who would benefit from a refresher.

Register for the next upcoming session:

Details for future sessions will be shared here.

4. Calls for papers

IPSA Annual Conference 2025, Seoul, South Korea

The Call for Papers for the 28th IPSA World Congress of Political Science, to be held in Seoul, South Korea from 12-16 July 2025, is now open! Paper and closed panel proposals on any political science-related subject are welcome.

Please note the Research Committee Track on Legislative Specialist (RC08), which might be highly relevant for parliamentary scholars. View all Tracks Open to Submissions.

Paper and Closed Panel Submission Deadline: 5 November 2024 

Global Political Marketing and Management Conference 5-7 August 2025

The 2025 conference will be the first event for the Global Political Marketing and Political Management network and will be held at the University of Dundee – see the conference website:  The call for paper/presentation proposals and registrations are now open. Contributions are welcome from academics and practitioners from any discipline, organisation and role as long as it is relevant to Political Marketing and Political Management, including discussion of the parliamentary workplace including MPs staff and HR as well as well being, so will be of interest to your members. 

Please send your proposal to gpmmnetwork@dundee.ac.uk by 1 December to be in the first round of those considered for the conference.

5. Events

Please note the following UCL Constitution Unit events:

6. Recent Publications and Resources

Publications

Open access book

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

7. On the Blog

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

8. Overview of Parliaments Map

We do not have any new contributions for our Overview of Parliaments Map this month but we are really looking forward for more. Our last entry was:

For anybody who wishes to cover any of the countries not yet covered in our map, contact our communications officer Jack.

Categories
Blog

The real cost of MPs’ security to constituency representation

By Neil Matthews and Sean Haughey.

The abuse of MPs, both online and offline, is becoming a more prevalent feature of British political life. In the most egregious cases, abuse has escalated into violent and even fatal attacks on MPs. In response, MPs are adopting new security measures at the constituency level to protect themselves from harm. These measures range from the subtle (e.g. no longer advertising the details of surgeries) to the not-so-subtle (such as the wearing of stab vests). We know how these developments are impacting MPs personally, not least in terms of their mental health. We also know about the associated financial ramifications, with the costs of MPs’ security skyrocketing in recent years. But what about the implications for representation and democracy? Are MPs able to perform their representative role just as well amid stricter security protocols? Or are costs incurred to representative democracy when constituency service is securitised?

The security-accessibility trade-off

All security systems come with costs attached. When MPs tighten constituency service security the most obvious cost incurred pertains to accessibility. This security-accessibility trade-off manifests in one of two ways: either through a reduction in opportunities for constituents to meet with their MP, or through the adoption of security protocols which complicate access pathways. In terms of reduced opportunities for constituent-MP engagement, take for instance those MPs who have stopped holding surgeries in public venues (e.g. shopping malls) because of security concerns. Consider also the MP who, after repeated incidents of verbal abuse, admits that he no longer socialises in his own constituency. These examples of retreat from the public square are problematic, because it is through even the most innocuous and impromptu interactions – in the local pub or supermarket for instance – that MPs develop their constituency antennae, learning about the issues which matter to their constituents:

‘We try to be, as constituency MPs, recognisable, available, accessible to all. A successful constituency MP is the person who people feel they can go to in the pub or, as frustrating as that sometimes is, come up to you when you’re doing your shopping.‘

Access to MPs can be complicated by security in a number of ways. Some MPs, for example, have replaced “drop-in” surgeries with appointment-only meetings, a formality which likely results in some constituents being turned away. We also know that, on the advice of police, some MPs have discontinued in-person surgery appointments, instead offering online meetings only. Whilst this might expedite access to MPs for the digitally confident citizen, it will disincentivise engagement for those without the requisite skills. What is more, the value and quality of online meetings – relative to in-person meetings – is open to question. The social scientific evidence underlines the therapeutic value of in-person meetings between MPs and constituents. These in-person meetings are key to the development of “co-presence”, and help build a “human bridge” through which constituents feel listened to. These benefits could be much harder to attain when the interaction occurs through a screen. Similarly, with face-to-face meetings, that personal touch and sense of intimacy is likely compromised by the presence of security guards.

The symbolic costs

Public spaces articulate political and cultural messages. What messages, then, are conveyed to the public when MPs adopt airport-style (or even prison-style) security at their constituency offices? Think bulletproof glass, CCTV, reinforced doors, panic buttons and so on. Whilst these measures may reassure MPs and their staff, the effect on constituents could be quite the opposite, perhaps marking the space as somehow unsafe, where visitors need to be on their guard. Research into other sites that have been securitised suggests as much, whereby defensive urban architecture (designed to mitigate terrorist attacks) has had a chilling effect on public democratic culture, eliciting a range of subjective emotional responses from pedestrians: fearfulness, suspicion, paranoia, and exclusion. Some of the security measures at constituency offices could be eliciting a similar response from constituents. Take, for instance, the MP who tells his constituents they should “be prepared to be searched” when they arrive at his surgery:

‘We are following security guidance, as a result Security Operatives and/or the Police will be screening constituents attending face to face surgery appointments. Please bring along photo ID, leave bags and coats at home where possible, as they will not be permitted in the meeting toom and will need to remain outside the meeting space and be prepared to be searched.‘

(Guidance provided on Julian Smith MP’s website for constituents)

For the architect, Stephen Flusty, places and spaces bearing the features of security – searches of person or property, say – warrant being labelled as “jittery”. They are marked, in other words, by a tense and nervous atmosphere. We might ask then: how many of the constituency offices in the UK are showing signs of the jitters?

Security and trust: a Catch-22?

Security measures at the constituency level could, then, be counter-productive, in that MPs may be undermining the very representative connections they seek to protect. Up until now, the linkage between MPs and constituents at the local level has been held up as a positive exception to what has otherwise been a story of increasing political disengagement across western democracies. But what if new security measures at the local level are making engagement more difficult, placing distance (figuratively and literally) between MPs and constituents?

Amid a general crisis of representation, in which people in the UK typically feel unrepresented by Westminster, there is a risk that the mitigating power of constituency service will be diminished if MPs become (or are perceived to be) harder to reach – or are less present – at the local level. Moreover, if perceptions of disconnect between politicians and the public is a driver of political distrust, and that distrust in turn fuels abuse of politicians, the security steps MPs are taking to mitigate this threat could in fact be exacerbating it.

Importantly, the securitising trend affecting British political life appears set to deepen. The Speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle – a long-time advocate for greater protections for MPs – has called for a transformation in parliament’s “security culture”. To a similar end, the outgoing Conservative government signed-off on a £31m package to bolster the constituency-level security of MPs; while the recently published Walney review recommends even greater bolstering. Understanding how such enhanced security shapes  the character and delivery of representative democracy in the UK – and the myriad costs it brings to bear on both politicians and the public – warrants greater attention.

This blog post was first posted by LSE blogs. It draws on research by the authors published in Parliamentary Affairs. All views expressed are the authors’ own.

About the authors

Neil Matthews is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol.

Sean Haughey is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool.

Categories
News

September 2024 Newsletter

Hello, everyone! The newsletter is finally here and we have lots of news for you.

  1. Our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference: Call for papers closing soon!
  2. PSA Annual Conference 2025: Call for papers
  3. Opportunity: UKRI policy internship with POST
  4. UCL Constitution Unit event: Prospects for the House of Commons Modernisation Committee
  5. New open access book: Liber Amicorum: Making Europe Happen
  6. Recent Publications and Resources
  7. On the Blog
  8. Overview of Parliaments Map

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

Best wishes,

Caroline, Diana, Ruxandra, Jack and Lauren

1. Our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference: Call for papers closing soon!

We are very excited that the Senedd will host our annual conference on 21-22 November in Cardiff.

This is our preliminary timetable:

Thursday, 21 November 2024

  • Daytime: Early-career workshop (Time and venue will be confirmed soon)
  • 6–8 pm: Drinks reception in the Senedd foyer

Friday, 22 November 2024

  • 9 am–4 pm: Conference in the Pierhead Building

The calls for papers for the conference and pre-conference early-career workshop are now open, and the deadline is 16 September. We welcome papers on all aspects of parliaments and legislatures around the world and from different disciplines! In light of the Senedd’s 25th anniversary, we are also keen to receive submissions that focus on the devolved parliaments. 

For the main conference, we also encourage papers by researchers working in parliaments and collaborations between practitioners and academics. Please note that we will ask you to write a blog piece for our blog after the conference. The form to propose a paper for the main conference is available here.

If you are a PhD student, postdoctoral researcher or an early-career academic not in a permanent position, please consider applying for our early-career workshop where you get the opportunity to receive more in-depth feedback on a draft paper. You can find the form here.

More details and updates on our website.

2. PSA Annual Conference 2025: Call for papers

The 75th PSA Annual Conference, “What Next?”, convened by the University of Birmingham and Aston University, will take place from 14-16 April 2025. Abstracts should be submitted to the Ex-Ordo website by 18 October. Detailed instructions can be found here.

If you would like to present in one of our panels, please select our Specialist Group’s name in the ‘Topics’ section, when submitting your abstract.

For our PSA Parliaments panels, we are open to papers on any aspect of parliamentary and legislative studies. We particularly encourage papers on the UK Parliament, the 2024 General Election as a critical juncture for the UK Parliament, 25 years of devolved parliaments, comparative parliamentary studies, representation, scrutiny and accountability.

More information can be found on our website.

3. Opportunity: UKRI Policy Internship with UK Parliament POST

The UK Parliament POST has restructured its individual Fellowship schemes and substituted them with an overarching opportunity called the Policy Internships Scheme. The scheme provides the opportunity for doctoral students funded by the research councils of UKRI to work for three months in a policy organisation.

This scheme is open to doctoral students funded by the Research Councils of UK Research and Innovation (AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC and STFC). Internships will take place during 2024 and students must be able to start their internship before the end of their funded period of study.

More information, including on how to apply, is available on POST’s website. Applications are open until 2 October 2024, 4:00 pm.

4. UCL Constitution Unit event: Prospects for the House of Commons Modernisation Committee

The UCL Constitution Unit is hosting a free, online event on 13 September at 1 pm about the prospects for the House of Commons Modernisation Committee.

As the Committee gets up and running this autumn, it faces a number of important questions. How should it approach its work, what issues might it address and what lessons can it learn from past efforts to reform the Commons?

Greg Power (former special adviser to two Leaders of the House of Commons), Dr Sue Griffiths (former Clerk to the House of Commons Modernisation Committee) and Dr Tom Fleming (Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics at UCL), with Prof Meg Russell (Director of the Constitution Unit) as chair, will discuss these questions and more.

Register here.

5. New open access book: Liber Amicorum: Making Europe Happen

Klaus Welle was Secretary-General of the European Parliament from March 2009 to December 2022. In this set of essays in Klaus’s honour, published to mark his 60th birthday, friends and former colleagues in the EU institutions write about the impact he made on the Brussels scene, and notably on the development of the European Parliament, during his tenure at the administrative helm of the Union’s only directly-elected institution.

You can access this open pdf book here.

6. Recent Publications and Resources

Publications

New resources

  • The Institute for Government has made publicly available its Ministers Database, which holds information about all government ministers since 1979 – who served as a minister, in which roles, and their dates in office. The database might be a useful resource for academics and other researchers interested in exploring ministerial churn, gender balance and plenty of other topics. There is also a webinar recording explaining what information the database holds and answering some questions about how to use it.

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

7. On the Blog

We would love to have more contributions ib our blog. If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer Jack.

Here is a previous blog entry that we thought interesting and relevant in the context of a new parliament:

8. Overview of Parliaments Map

We do not have any new contributions for our Overview of Parliaments Map this month but we are really looking forward for more. Our last entry was:

For anybody who wishes to cover any of the countries not yet covered in our map, contact our communications officer Jack.

Categories
Events News

#PSA25: Call for Papers

The 75th PSA Annual Conference, “What Next?”, co-convened by the University of Birmingham and Aston University, will take place from 14–16 April 2025. The call for papers has opened!

Call for Papers

After careful deliberation, the PSA team have agreed a more streamlined approach to the call for papers, and panels formation for PSA25, which means we are doing things a little differently this year! As opposed to submitting your abstracts directly to our Specialist Group, please log-in to Ex-Ordo via this link and upload your abstract which you intend for review by our Specialist Group by 18 October.

If you don’t already have an Ex-Ordo account, you can create one via the link above. 

  • Once you are logged into the PSA25 Ex Ordo website, click the ‘Dashboard’ link in the top bar. On the dashboard home page, you will see a card that says, ‘SUBMIT ABSTRACT’ and a button labelled ‘Submit Your Abstract Now’ which will take you to the My Submission Portal. 
  • In the My Submission portal, you will find an easy step-by-step process to follow and successfully submit your abstract.
  • When submitting your abstract, please select our Specialist Group’s name in the ‘Topics’ section, which will identify us as the intended recipient and ensure your abstract is sent to us by the PSA team. 

Please note that where there is more than one author per paper, you should also ensure that the ‘Lead Author’ includes the details of the co-authors.

For our Specialist Group panels, we are open to any papers on national, sub-national and supra-national parliaments and legislatures. We particularly encourage papers on the UK Parliament, the 2024 General Election as a critical juncture for the UK Parliament, 25 years of devolved parliaments, comparative parliamentary studies, representation, scrutiny and accountability.

What happens next?

#PSA25 timeline

Please note that you will find out about the status of your abstract in November.

As this is a different approach to submitting your abstract to us, the PSA team has created these step-by-step guidelines to help. If you have any queries regarding this, please don’t hesitate to contact the PSA team via email.

We hope to see many of you in Birmingham next year!

Categories
Events News

Annual Conference 2024: Call for Papers

Save the Date

We are very excited to share that our conference will be held 21-22 November 2024 in Cardiff, Wales.

25 years ago, the Senedd Cymru was first created as the National Assembly for Wales as part of the devolution process. The red-brick Pierhead Building of 1897 in Cardiff Bay is now at the doorstep of the modern glass-fronted Senedd building and has served as the Senedd’s visitor and education centre since 2010. We are very grateful to be able to hold our Annual Conference in this setting, especially since we have such fond memories from our 2019 conference at the Senedd.

After positive feedback from last year, we will again organise a workshop for early-career researchers on Thursday, 21 November 2024. Our traditional pre-conference drinks reception will be on Thursday evening. The venues for the workshop and drinks reception will be confirmed soon.

Calls for Papers

Main conference (22 November)

We invite you to propose papers featuring original research on any parliaments or legislatures around the world. In light of the Senedd’s anniversary, we are keen to receive submissions that focus on the devolved parliaments. We also encourage papers by researchers working in parliaments and collaborations between practitioners and academics.

The deadline for proposing abstracts is 16 September 2024. Please fill in this form. Please note that if accepted, we will ask you to submit a blog post to be published on our blog in the aftermath of the conference.

ECR workshop (21 November)

If you are a PhD student, postdoctoral researcher or an early-career academic not in a permanent position, please consider applying for our pre-conference early-career workshop where you get the opportunity to receive in-depth feedback on a draft paper. We welcome papers on any aspect of parliamentary and legislative studies that you seek to get published. (If you are collaborating with senior colleagues, you should be the main author of the paper.)

The deadline for the workshop proposals is also 16 September 2024, and the application form can be found here. If accepted, we will ask you to share your paper with the other participants and expert discussants two weeks before the event.

If you would like to volunteer to act as a discussant, please let Caroline know. We would be very grateful.

Further details can be found here.

We hope to see you in the Welsh capital in November!

Categories
News

July 2024 Newsletter

Hello, everyone! We are a bit late with the newsletter this month, but all for good reasons! A lot of us will have been busy following the 4th of July General Election and will still be busy with post-election analysis. Our next newsletter will be out on the 2nd of September. Meanwhile, we have lots of news for you this month.

  1. Our Annual Conference: Save the Date!
  2. Our Annual Conference: Call for Papers!
  3. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition: Last call
  4. 25th Anniversary of the Devolved Legislatures in Scotland and Wales
  5. General Election Insights
  6. Recent Publications
  7. Recently on the Blog
  8. Overview of Parliaments Map

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

Best wishes,

Caroline, Diana, Ruxandra, Jack and Lauren

1. Our Annual Conference: Save the Date!

We are very excited to share that we have a date and location for our Annual Conference. The conference will be held 21-22 November 2024 in Cardiff, Wales.

25 years ago, the Senedd Cymru was first created as the National Assembly for Wales as part of the devolution process. The red-brick Pierhead Building of 1897 in Cardiff Bay is now at the doorstep of the modern glass-fronted Senedd building and has served as the Senedd’s visitor and education centre since 2010. We are very grateful to be able to hold our Annual Conference in this setting, especially since we have such fond memories from our 2019 conference at the Senedd.

After positive feedback from last year, we will again organise a workshop for early-career researchers on Thursday, 21 November 2024. Our traditional pre-conference drinks reception will be on Thursday evening. The venues for the workshop and drinks reception will be confirmed soon.

Further details and the call for papers can be found on our website.

2. Our Annual Conference: Call for Papers!

Main conference (22 November) – We invite you to propose papers featuring original research on any parliaments or legislatures around the world. In light of the Senedd’s anniversary, we are keen to receive submissions that focus on the devolved parliaments. We also encourage papers by researchers working in parliaments and collaborations between practitioners and academics.

The deadline for proposing abstracts is 16 September 2024. Please fill in this form. Please note that if accepted, we will ask you to submit a blog post to be published on our blog in the aftermath of the conference.

ECR workshop (21 November) – If you are a PhD student, postdoctoral researcher or an early-career academic not in a permanent position, please consider applying for our pre-conference early-career workshop where you get the opportunity to receive in-depth feedback on a draft paper. We welcome papers on any aspect of parliamentary and legislative studies that you seek to get published. (If you are collaborating with senior colleagues, you should be the main author of the paper.)

The deadline for the workshop proposals is also 16 September 2024, and the application form can be found here. If accepted, we will ask you to share your paper with the other participants and expert discussants two weeks before the event.

If you would like to volunteer to act as a discussant, please let Caroline know. We would be very grateful.

Further details and the call for papers can be found on our website.

We hope to see you in the Welsh capital in November!

3. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition: Last call

The deadline for our undergraduate essay competition is approaching fast. If you are teaching at a UK university and have marked an excellent piece of work by a student, please consider nominating them.

The deadline is 12 July at 5pm BST. You can find all the details here.

4. The 25th Anniversary of the Devolved Legislatures in Scotland and Wales

The Festival of Politics (Monday 19 August to Friday 23 August 2024)

The Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics (In partnership with Scotland’s Futures Forum) is happening in August, with a five-day programme of over 30 events, in the home of Scottish politics at Holyrood. More info

25 years of Welsh law-making

To mark the Senedd’s 25th anniversary, Senedd Research has published a special series on 25 years of Welsh law-making. Welsh law-making is still young and has adapted to its changing context, whether initiated from within Wales or externally. The series looks at how the legislative process in the Senedd has changed, the role external bodies and events have played in its evolution and considers the impact of Senedd reforms.

5. General Election Insights

PSA website General Election resources

The PSA has set up a special section on their website to feature resources about the General Election. There is also information about how you can contribute and share your insights. Please see here.

Call for contributions on the PSA Parliaments blog

Over the next few months we are welcoming timely contributions discussing the implications of the General Election for the UK Parliament and the devolved legislatures so please get in touch with our communications officer, Jack.

6. Recent Publications

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

7. Recently on the Blog

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

8. Overview of Parliaments Map

We have one new contribution to our Overview of Parliaments Map:

For anybody who wishes to cover any of the countries not yet covered in our map, contact our communications officer Jack.

Categories
Blog

Parliaments need to ensure democratic accountability for public debt

By Franklin De Vrieze.

On the occasion of the International Day of Parliamentarism (30 June), this article highlights the challenging task for many parliaments around the globe in ensuring accountability for the rapidly increasing public debt of their nation. It analyses questions of debt transparency, legislative and oversight practices on public debt and the challenge of executive dominance.

Today’s debt crisis

The world is facing a new debt crisis. Twenty-five of the poorest countries spend more on debt repayments than on education, health, and social policy combined. Sixty percent of low- and middle-income countries are highly debt vulnerable. In its latest International Debt Report, the World Bank revealed the sharpest rise in global borrowing costs in four decades.

The origins of this dire situation are both historical and more recent. They include global power dynamics, international and regional barriers to trade and infrastructure development, national political histories and governance decisions around economic development, and the policies of multi-lateral lending institutions and the role of credit agencies. More recently, public debt of many countries has exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the environmental and climate emergency – and their economic and financial impacts – as well as sometimes dubious national borrowing decisions.

Breaking out of the current debt crisis and avoiding future ones will require a fundamental shift in oversight and accountability for the way that governments borrow and manage debt. In this context, there is increasing recognition of the unique roles for parliament in the governance of public debt.

Why parliaments need to get involved

In its submission to the UK House of Common’s International Development Committee’s inquiry, Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) suggested that there are six incentives as to why parliaments can play a more active role with regards to public debt: 1) It serves as a catalyst for greater debt transparency. 2) It helps to establish and implement a stronger legal framework on public debt management. 3) It strengthens oversight over government policies and spending. 4) It protects the national interest in emergency contexts and highlights the gendered effects of public debt. 5) It unearths the risks of State-Owned Enterprises becoming a major cause of debt accumulation and debt crises. 6) It contributes to delivering the requirements of successful Nature-for-Debt swaps, hence contributing to action on climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to climate change finance accountability.

Parliaments, as representatives of people’s interests, as well as lawmakers and agents of accountability, are critical fiscal policy institutions responsible for approving the annual budget and overseeing the government’s execution of its approved programme. Meanwhile, debt managers are responsible for ensuring the government’s financing needs are met at the lowest cost over the medium-to-long term, consistent with an acceptable level of risk, and other objectives such as supporting domestic debt market development.

How parliaments can get involved

How can parliaments play a meaningful role in public debt oversight?

Firstly, setting a legal framework for public debt management ensures that parliament provides strategic direction to borrowing decisions and clearly specifies the roles and responsibilities for the institutions involved in debt management. While most countries in the world have a financial administration act, public debt can also be regulated by more specific legislation.

Secondly, the budget cycle provides the main structure for financial decision-making in parliament, and there are opportunities to scrutinize public debt and public debt management throughout the four stages of the budget cycle: formulation, approval, execution and audit/oversight.

Thirdly, parliaments can incorporate debt management into their regular law-making and budgeting responsibilities in various ways, such as: reviewing and endorsing the Debt Management Strategy and monitoring ongoing implementation; reviewing and ratifying external loan and guarantee agreements in a timely manner; drawing on debt management compliance/ performance audit reports prepared by the Supreme Audit Institution to check the effectiveness of regulatory and systems arrangements; maintaining one or more permanent parliamentary oversight committees with overall responsibility for budget and debt management scrutiny.

Worldwide, parliaments fulfil their debt management roles to varying extents, as MPs often struggle to understand the availability and completeness of debt statistics and other debt management documents. Hence, some parliaments decided to create a dedicated Committee on public debt, bringing together those MPs with strongest knowledge and interest in the topic, as is the case in Kenya and Nigeria. Many parliaments lack staff with the specializedknowledge and skills to support stronger oversight of public debt. Hence, some parliaments have established a Parliamentary Budget Office (for instance in Kenya and Sierra Leone), which provides members with specialized analysis on fiscal and budget issues, including issues of public debt.

Transparency as precondition for parliamentary debt oversight

Transparency is one of the major anchors of debt sustainability, ensuring that all stakeholders, including policymakers, creditors and investors, can take optimal decisions on a country’s debt obligations, based on fully disclosed, reliable and timely information. The issue of debt transparency became more prominent following the discovery of hidden debts in some debtor countries (for instance in Mozambique). It’s the main preconditions for parliamentary involvement in public debt oversight.

There are clear advantages to greater debt transparency as it gives credibility to government policies and helps ensure debt and fiscal sustainability. It supports democratic systems and reduces the opportunity for corruption. However, some national governments might not be ready to provide timely, comprehensive, accurate, accessible, and intelligible debt data, policies and operations to their national parliament or the public at large. Parliament often only gets partial access to the relevant data, thus limiting their ability to exercise oversight on public debt.

Executive dominance

In addition, oversight of public debt largely depends on oversight of the political choices underpinning the proposed investment projects which are funded by new loans. However, parliamentary oversight of these political choices often faces the challenge of executive dominance. In some countries, it means that, for instance, the President might request MPs to adopt proposals, vote for proposed investment projects, or increase the debt ceiling while the MPs know that this is not a sound policy. I learned that, in those circumstances, MPs may sometimes feel that they have no choice but to approve requests by the executive, as their position in parliament or within their party – and in extremely worrying cases their personal security and the safety of their family – can depend on it.

This means that debt transparency is not sufficient. Based on a political economy analysis, there is need for a corruption and patronage lens to fiscal and debt policy. When the national budget is inflated by imprudent projects requiring large loans, it is indebting the country for generations to come. In these circumstances, public debt can be called “budgeted corruption”.

Civil society

Therefore, in addition to more rigorous oversight by parliaments, civil society also needs a more robust role. CSOs and academics, with expertise in fiscal and debt policies, can play a complementary monitoring role, reinforcing parliamentary scrutiny. The role of the Institute for Public Finance in Kenya is a commendable example.

Unsustainable and opaque debt is a democratic deficit. It undermines the social contract which underpins a democratic system of governance. That is why Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) advocates for debt transparency, more rigorous debt accountability to parliaments and robust civil society monitoring.

About the author

Franklin De Vrieze is the Head of Practice Accountability at Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

Categories
Blog

Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America

By Henry Miller.

Over the last decade, parliaments across the world have adopted e-petition systems to promote citizen engagement with legislatures. While made possible by the internet and twenty-first century technology, the contemporary e-petition can also be understood as the latest version of an ancient political practice: the petition. As this blog will illustrate, petitions and petitioning have long been a popular way for people to engage with parliamentary institutions, both before and after the advent of modern democracy.

This blog summarises key findings from a major new edited book, Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America: From the Late Medieval Period to the Present published by Oxford University Press for the British Academy. Originating from an AHRC Network, the book brings together historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and sociologists to examine petitions and petitioning, that is the practices related to the drafting, signing, presentation and reception of petitions.

As the book shows, petitions have been ubiquitous across a many different geographical, chronological, and political contexts, including modern democracies and authoritarian regimes. The book is organised into three sections that: 1) define petitions with greater conceptual clarity than before; 2) examine changes and continuities in petitioning over long periods of time; and 3) offer case studies of why and when petitions have mattered in particular political contexts, ranging from late medieval England to the early Soviet Union. This blog will summarise findings in three areas that will be of particular interest to scholars of parliamentary studies.

First, a key theme of the book is the relationship between petitions and the evolution of parliamentary institutions. In his chapter, Gwilym Dodd shows that petitions were an important method for collectively asserting parliamentary authority against royal power in late medieval England. During the ‘age of revolutions’ (1789-1871) in Europe and North America, mass, collective petitioning on public issues, often based on newly codified rights to petition, was increasingly directed to legislatures. The value of petitions to parliaments was double-edged in an age of limited suffrage. Parliaments, including the UK House of Commons, used petitions to claim a degree of popular consent in the absence of democratic elections. Yet at the same time, petitioners invoking ideas of popular sovereignty frequently challenged parliamentary authority by claiming to represent a broader people than the limited electorate.

In the twentieth century, as Richard Huzzey and Henry Miller show, there was a shift away from petitioning legislatures to a broader range of authorities, including international bodies like the United Nations. Petitioning remained a ubiquitous form of political participation, but because petitions to non-parliamentary authorities (such as Number 10 Downing Street) were rarely recorded, its continued popularity remained largely invisible to scholars. This historical perspective allows us to see that one important implication of the growth of legislative e-petitions systems, documented by Cristina Leston-Bandeira in her chapter, is that it restores parliaments as the principal authorities for receiving petitions from citizens.

Second, petitions have been an important mechanism for representation across the centuries. As a series of studies have shown, petitions have enabled the ‘voice of the voteless’ to be heard in legislatures from groups lacking formal political rights, including Native Americans, women before universal suffrage, and colonised peoples in the British empire.  In their study of the US Congress over two centuries, Maggie Blackhawk and Daniel Carpenter persuasively argue that petitioning has been an important form of representation that exists independently of electoral and party politics. Examining Dutch petitions over three centuries, Maartje Janse et al, demonstrate that petitioning has been a significant practice for making representative claims to authority by individual citizens and groups. In his survey of petitions in colonial Jamaica during the era of slavery, the late Aaron Graham shows that petitioning was one of the few tools available to groups including Free People of Colour and Jewish subjects to  claim rights from a legislature dominated by slave-owners. Marta Gravela and Ismini Pells show that petitions were an important mechanism for claiming citizenship and welfare, respectively, from the state.

Third, the book reveals the essential duality of petitions and petitioning as both formal and informal political practices that is vital for understanding their ubiquity, longevity, and flexibility. While often studied in formal, institutional, official settings, notably parliaments, petitions have always taken informal, unofficial forms as well and have been directly to a range of authorities. As chapters by Mark Knights, Joris Oddens, and others show, there has been an enormous variety of petitions and related subscriptional (or name-signing) practices, including supplications, covenants, declarations, and gravamina to name but a few. In the nineteenth-century UK, petitions to the House of Commons were the most popular genre of petitioning, but these existed alongside addresses to the monarch, memorials to government, and requisitions and other petitions directed to every type of local authority.

Petitions have never been isolated from other forms of political participation. Indeed, in particular contexts they have underpinned and made possible other forms of collective action. While petitions today are often regarded by sociologists as a conventional form of collective action compared to more direct forms of protest, a historical perspective shows that petitioning has often been linked with revolts, rebellions, and revolutions. Petitioning has often been a fluid political practice that could mutate into other forms, including mass demonstrations or strikes, while the correlation between petitions and the formation of political organisation such as political parties or single-issue associations is well-established. Modern forms of participation and engagement have evolved from petitioning. The institutionalised forms of referendums and initiatives in Switzerland, Andreas Würgler shows, developed from a long tradition of petitioning. The practice of letter-writing to MPs and political leaders, which expanded dramatically in the twentieth-century, was an outgrowth of petitioning as Huzzey and Miller suggest.

The shape-shifting quality of petitions is one of the many reasons why they have been a widespread practice since the late medieval period, and a key means for interacting with parliamentary and representative institutions, even if now, they largely take digital form.  

About the authors

Dr. Henry Miller is Vice Chancellor’s Fellow in the Department of Humanities, Northumbria University.