Author: psaparliaments

Blog

Our Survey Says (Part 2): A Few Interesting Nuggets about Committee Prestige

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date August 22, 2023

By Stephen Holden Bates, Caroline Bhattacharya and Stephen McKay

Just like in Family Fortunes[i] but by chance rather than by design, 100 people responded to our survey[ii] about the prestige of different select committees (SCs) in the UK House of Commons (HoC).[iii]

From a score of one to five (with five being the most important), respondents were asked to rate the prestige of UK HoC SCs, permanent oversight committees of three main types: (i) Departmental, which scrutinise corresponding government departments; Domestic/Administrative, which are concerned with various aspects of the internal workings of Parliament; and Other Scrutiny, which focus on issues that cut across government departments.

The average committee received a prestige score of 3.03 with Departmental SCs receiving an average of 3.21, Domestic/Administrative 2.96, and Other Scrutiny 2.74. The highest ranked committee was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Treasury SC (4.48) with the lowest being the punctuationally-anachronistic Consolidation &c. Bills Joint Committee (1.94), which considers Bills that “bring together a number of existing Acts of Parliament on the same subject into one Act without amending the law”.

Figure 1 ranks SCs from most to least prestigious according to the results of the survey. There are perhaps some results which deserve greater attention than others. For example, we may wonder whether the Standards and Privileges SCs would be ranked so highly if the survey hadn’t taken place in the aftermath, or at the same time, as their high-profile inquiries into the behaviour and probity of various MPs, such as Chris Pincher, Matt Hancock, Margaret Ferrier and the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. We may also be a little surprised at the lowly rankings of the Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh Affairs SCs, perhaps not in relation to other Departmental SCs but maybe in relation to some of the Other Scrutiny and Domestic/Administrative SCs. Finally, those of us who are concerned about the climate crisis (which, let’s face it, should be all of us) may be perturbed by the fact that the three environment-related committees all appear in the bottom half of the table.

Table 1 shows the difference between a committee’s overall ranking and the ranking by different types of respondents. Results with a green font colour indicate a committee which is at the top of the list of those ranked higher by that type of respondent than the overall rankings; those with a red font colour indicate a committee which is the top of the list of those ranked lower. As can be seen, when it comes to departmental and other scrutiny SCs, MPs and their staff who answered the survey think that the International Trade, International Development, Scottish Affairs and, especially, the Levelling Up, Housing & Communities SCs are more prestigious than the average respondent, whereas Work & Pensions, Women & Equalities and the Human Rights Joint Committee are less prestigious. In addition, the Exiting/Future Relationship with the EU Committee is considered more prestigious by parliamentary staff and less prestigious by academics. Some interesting results can also be observed with Domestic/Administrative SCs. Both academic and parliamentary staff respondents believe the Procedure and Petitions SCs are more prestigious than MPs and their staff do, whereas the situation is reversed when it comes to Backbench Business.

Figure 1: Ranking of Select Committees by Prestige

Overall Ranking	Committee	Difference between overall ranking & ranking by
Overall Ranking	Committee	Academics	MPs & their Staff	Parl. Staff
1	Treasury	0	-1	0
2	Foreign Affairs	-2	1	0
3	Public Accounts	1	-2	0
4	Home Affairs	1	1	0
5	Defence	-1	1	0
6	Liaison	1	0	-1
7	Health & Social Care	0	-1	1
8	Privileges	0	1	0
9	Standards	-4	-4	0
10	Public Administration & Constitutional Affairs	-1	0	-1
11	Education	2	-4	-4
12	Business & Trade	0	1	-1
13	Exiting/Future Relationship with the European Union	-6	1	3
14	Human Rights Joint Committee	4	-11	2
15	Justice	0	-2	-1
16	National Security Strategy Joint Committee	0	7	-2
17	Work & Pensions	0	-6	0
18	Procedure	4	-8	4
19	Culture, Media & Sport	1	3	0
20	Backbench Business	-2	2	-3
21	Energy Security & Net Zero	1	0	-1
22	Transport	1	2	-4
23	International Trade	-4	4	2
24	Levelling Up, Housing & Communities	0	10	-1
25	Environment, Food & Rural Affairs	-3	3	1
26	Petitions	3	-5	6
27	Science, Innovation & Technology	2	0	-1
28	International Development	2	4	-3
29	Women & Equalities	0	-8	0
30	Environmental Audit	0	-6	3
31	Administration	-7	3	1
32	Finance	-2	3	-1
33	Selection	2	1	-4
34	European Scrutiny	2	4	-1
35	Northern Ireland Affairs	2	-3	3
36	Statutory Instruments Joint Committee	-4	2	2
37	Statutory Instruments	-4	4	1
38	Arms Export Controls	3	-2	0
39	Scottish Affairs	4	5	0
40	Regulatory Reform	-4	0	0
41	Welsh Affairs	2	-1	0
42	European Statutory Instruments	5	-1	0
43	Consolidation &c. Bills Joint Committee	1	2	0

Table 1: Difference between overall ranking and rankings by different types of respondents

Table 2 compares the rankings and scores of female and male respondents. A positive number indicates that female respondents scored/ranked that committee higher than male respondents and a negative number that they scored/ranked that committee lower. As can be seen from the lists, all committees which scrutinise policy areas stereotypically seen as feminine are ranked/scored higher by female respondents than male correspondents – Women & Equalities most notably – and only two committees which scrutinise policy areas stereotypically seen as masculine (Business & Trade and Environment, Food & Rural Affairs). Although, of course, no firm conclusions can be drawn from our survey results, they do contribute in a small way to important debates about who gets to define which committees are prestigious. For example, Franchesca Nestor is currently undertaking interesting work about whether influential measures of committee prestige used to rank US congressional committees fail to take into account the fact that different groups of legislators may have systematic differences in their views of which committees are prestigious and that, consequently, prestige is understood in relation to what the majority group (i.e. white, middleclass, male representatives) do and think. It would be intriguing to delve into this issue more deeply this side of the pond…

Committee	Difference between Female & Male Ranking	Difference between Female & Male Scores
Women & Equalities	8	0.87
Energy Security & Net Zero	6	0.61
Northern Ireland Affairs	6	0.6
Human Rights Joint Committee	4	0.58
Levelling Up, Housing & Communities	4	0.56
International Trade	4	0.53
Regulatory Reform	4	0.5
Culture, Media & Sport	4	0.45
Welsh Affairs	3	0.51
Scottish Affairs	3	0.44
Finance	2	0.47
Business & Trade	2	0.42
Privileges	2	0.38
Health & Social Care	2	0.36
Education	2	0.36
Arms Export Controls	2	0.32
Petitions	1	0.48
Environment, Food & Rural Affairs	1	0.43
Public Accounts	1	0.12
International Development	0	0.53
Science, Innovation & Technology	0	0.5
Selection	0	0.32
European Statutory Instruments	0	0.31
Work & Pensions	0	0.27
Consolidation &c. Bills Joint Committee	0	0.24
Standards	0	0.2
Home Affairs	0	0.09
Treasury	0	-0.04
Environmental Audit	-1	0.48
Exiting/Future Relationship with the EU	-1	0.17
Foreign Affairs	-1	-0.06
Liaison	-1	-0.07
European Scrutiny	-2	0.26
National Security Strategy Joint Committee	-2	0.19
Defence	-3	-0.15
Statutory Instruments Joint Committee	-4	0.17
Transport	-5	0.18
Public Admin. & Constitutional Affairs	-5	-0.08
Justice	-6	0.07
Statutory Instruments	-6	0.05
Procedure	-7	0.07
Administration	-8	-0.01
Backbench Business	-9	0.14

Table 2: Comparison between the scores and rankings of female and male survey respondents

[i] Or Family Feuds in the US, or Familien-Duell in Germany.

[ii] The survey was run as part of Stephen Holden Bates’ 2021-22 Parliamentary Academic Fellowship, which was funded by the UKRI/ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, and is part of on-going work looking at the impact of membership patterns on the work and outputs of select committees.

[iii] 100 people answered our online survey between 22nd May and 18th July 2023. The survey was aimed at experts, although we allowed anyone to answer, and was distributed via Twitter, the newsletter of the UK Political Studies Association’s Parliaments Specialist Group and through email contacts. Of the 100 respondents, 30 were parliamentary staff in the House of Commons, 15 were academics, 13 were MPs, 12 worked for MPs, and 10 were parliamentary staff beyond the HoC, with the other 20 compromising members of the public, journalists, people who work for think tanks, and ‘other’. Overall, 30 respondents were female, 63 were male and seven preferred not to say; no respondent said their gender was not the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. Seven respondents said they belonged to a group which was considered an ethnic minority in the country in which they worked, 86 said they did not belong to such a group and seven preferred not to say. Four respondents were removed for the analysis presented in this blog, as there were problems with their answers and/or they did not complete the survey properly.

Tags House of Commons, parliament, select committees, UK Parliament

Blog

Our Survey Says (Part 1): No Real Surprises about the Importance of Parliamentary Work

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date August 22, 2023

By Stephen Holden Bates, Caroline Bhattacharya and Stephen McKay

Just like in Family Fortunes[i] but by chance rather than by design, 100 people responded to our survey[ii] about the importance of different elements of MPs’ work in the UK Parliament.[iii]

From a score of one to five (with five being the most important), respondents were asked to rate the importance of a non-exhaustive list of parliamentary activities. As can be seen in Table 1, contributing to the work of Select Committees is considered the most important aspect of MPs’ work by quite a distance. Next, bunched together quite closely, are, in order, debating in the Chamber, Public Bill Committee (PBC) work and tabling Written Questions (WQs). There is then a bit of a gap to tabling Private Members’ Bills (PMBs) and then another to introducing and to signing Early Day Motions (EDMs).

Rank	Activity	Average Score (max = 5; min = 1)
1	Contributing to the work of Select Committees	4.12
2	Debating in the Chamber (including Westminster Hall)	3.81
3	Contributing to the work of Public Bill Committees	3.60
4	Tabling Written Questions	3.54
5	Tabling Private Members’ Bills	2.73
6	Introducing Early Day Motions	1.70
7	Signing Early Day Motions introduced by another MP	1.43

Table 1: The Importance of MPs’ Parliamentary Work

None of this is perhaps particularly surprising. Select committees are often considered both to be Parliament ‘at its best’ and to overshadow Public Bill Committees, and the House of Commons has traditionally been seen as a deliberating parliament par excellence.

Although we don’t, of course, have enough respondents to draw robust conclusions, what may be considered more intriguing results come when we look at the rankings of different types of respondents. For example, female and male respondents both ranked the activities in the same order as in Table 1 but, interestingly, female respondents ranked each activity at least 0.29 and as much as 0.67 higher than male correspondents. Furthermore, as shown in Table 2, while academics, MPs and their staff, and parliamentary staff agree that tabling PMBs and introducing and signing EDMs are the 5^th, 6^th and 7^th most important activities respectively, there is disagreement at the top of the rankings. MPs and their staff appear to place greater importance on the talking elements of Parliament, ranking debating in the Chamber first. Academics, on the other hand, rank debating in the Chamber fourth, seemingly placing greater importance on the working elements of Parliament and, in particular, committee work and WQs.

Activity	Rank
Activity	Academics	MPs & their Staff	Parl. Staff
Contributing to the work of Select Committees	1	2	1
Debating in the Chamber (inc. Westminster Hall)	4	1	2
Contributing to the work of PBCs	2	=3	4
Tabling Written Questions	3	=3	3
Tabling PMBs	5	5	5
Introducing EDMs	6	6	6
Signing EDMS introduced by another MP	7	7	7

Table 2: The Importance of MPs’ Parliamentary Work by Different Groups of Respondents

These results might raise questions about how different groups of people who variously engage with Parliament understand its importance[iv] and place different emphases on the functions that it fulfils – and should fulfil – in our political life. Such differences might perhaps be fruitfully explored in future qualitative work.

[i] Or Family Feuds in the US, or Familien-Duell in Germany.

[iii] 100 people answered our online survey between 22nd May and 18th July 2023. The survey was aimed at experts, although we allowed anyone to answer, and was distributed via Twitter, the newsletter of the UK Political Studies Association’s Parliaments Specialist Group and through email contacts. Of the 100 respondents, 30 were parliamentary staff in the House of Commons, 15 were academics, 13 were MPs, 12 worked for MPs, and 10 were parliamentary staff beyond the HoC, with the other 20 compromising members of the public, journalists, people who work for think tanks, and ‘other’. Overall, 30 respondents were female, 63 were male and seven preferred not to say; no respondent said their gender was not the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. Seven respondents said they belonged to a group which was considered an ethnic minority in the country in which they worked, 86 said they did not belong to such a group and seven preferred not to say. Two respondents were removed for the analysis presented in this blog, as there were problems with their answers and/or they did not complete the survey properly.

[iv] Left deliberately undefined in the survey because we didn’t want to impose our understanding of what activities were/should be considered important within the UK Parliament on the respondents.

Tags House of Commons, parliament, UK Parliament

Events

PSA Parliaments at #PSA24

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date July 18, 2023

PSA Parliaments will be convening a number of panels at PSA24. The 74th Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association will be held in Glasgow between 25-27 March 2024 (full details can be found here).

The submission process is the same as last year. All specialist groups have an exclusive timeframe until the 8th September for them to receive papers and propose panels ahead of the open call later in the autumn..

If you would like to propose a paper or a panel to be held under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments group, then please fill out this form.

As always, we do not have any preferences in terms of theory, method or empirical focus and we welcome papers from PhD students through to professors, as well as from practitioners. We are fully committed to avoiding all-male panels. 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 Seán if you come from an ethnic minority background and would like to discuss how your research could be highlighted on our panels.

We hope to see as many of you there as possible for what promises to be another great conference!

Tags #PSA23, conference, Glasgow, PSA Parliaments

News

June 2023 Newsletter

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date July 6, 2023

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

PSA Parliaments Conference 2023: Call for Papers
PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition
Parliamentary Studies Module: Call for Applications
POST Fellowship (UK Parliament): Mapping Public Engagement in Parliaments across the World
Survey on the Importance & Prestige of Parliamentary Work in the House of Commons
Hanna Pitkin & David Olson
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.

This is our last newsletter of the academic year. We’ll see you all again in September!

Best wishes

Stephen, Seán, Caroline, Diana, Chris and Ruxandra.

1. PSA Parliaments Conference 2023: Call for Papers

We are very pleased to announce that our annual conference will take place at the LSE and online on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd November!

As usual, we will be holding the conference on the Friday and a drinks reception on the Thursday evening. However, in an exciting new development, we will also be holding a working papers workshop, co-hosted by the PSA Early Career Network, for early career researchers during Thursday daytime.

Full details about the conference and workshop, including how to apply and/or volunteer as a workshop discussant, can be found here.

We are very grateful to Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey for helping us to organise the conference and to the Department of Government at LSE for co-sponsoring the event.

2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition

There’s still time to submit an entry for our undergraduate essay competition! In fact, due to the UCU marking and allocation boycott, we’ve decided to extend the closing date to the 15th September 2023.

If, once you’ve done your marking, 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.

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

3. Parliamentary Studies Module: Call for Applications

Applications will open next week for Higher Education institutions to deliver the Parliamentary Studies module for academic years 2024/5 – 2029/30.

This will be the third time that the UK Parliament has sought collaborators to teach the Parliamentary Studies module. For this five year cycle we have made provision for 20 universities or other higher education institutions to deliver the Parliamentary Studies module in partnership with Parliament, and those currently delivering the module are welcome to apply again.

Applications will be judged by a panel of staff from the Houses of Parliament and representatives from the Higher Education sector. The deadline for applications is Thursday 6 July 2023. We aim to inform successful institutions by the end of July/early August.

If you’re interested in further information and/or wish to request an application pack, please contact ppoe@parliament.uk

4. POST Fellowship (UK Parliament): Mapping Public Engagement in Parliaments across the World

Faced with rising populism and political disengagement, parliaments across the world are making efforts to connect with their citizens. What do these activities look like, who undertakes them, where do they take place? Help us answer these questions and create a map of public engagement activities happening in parliaments across the world (rather like this brilliant map showing parliaments’ access to academic research), to enable the International Parliament Engagement Network to foster lesson sharing, knowledge exchange and collaborations.

This opportunity is open to university-based researchers or knowledge exchange professionals. Ideally, you would be working with us 60% of your time for one year, but we can be flexible about these arrangements. You will be able to shape the project and have access to existing networks. More information is available here. Prof. Cristina Leston-Bandeira is also happy to give further details and/or discuss this opportunity further. You can contact her here.

5. Survey on the Importance & Prestige of Parliamentary Work in the House of Commons

Stephen Holden Bates, Caroline Bhattacharya and Stephen McKay are running a survey on the importance of different aspects of parliamentary work and the prestige of different select committees and they would like to hear your views. The survey should take less than 5 minutes to complete and can be found here.

If you have any questions about the survey, then please contact Stephen.

6. Hanna Pitkin & David Olson: In Memory

We were very sad to hear last month of the deaths of both Hanna Pitkin and David Olson.

You can read an obituary of Hanna Pitkin here and a tribute to David Olson here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Sebastian Dettman has published The Geographic Scope Of Opposition Challenges In Malaysia’s Parliament in Pacific Affairs.

Boydell & Brewerhave published the 9(!) volume The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1640-1660 edited by Stephen K. Roberts.

Christian D. Phillips has published Nevertheless, He Persisted: White Men and the Links Between Incumbency and Group Descriptive Representation in Political Research Quarterly.

Daniel Stockemer and Aksel Sundström have published Age Inequalities in Political Representation: A Review Article in Government & Opposition.

And new issues of Representation and Legislative Studies Quarterly are out.

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

8. Recently on the Blog

We published one great blog last month.

A Nation of Petitioners: people and Parliament in the nineteenth century United Kingdom by Henry Miller

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

Blog

A Nation of Petitioners: people and Parliament in the nineteenth century United Kingdom

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 1, 2023

Between 1780 and 1918 over 1 million public petitions were sent to the House of Commons from across the UK. These petitions contained a staggering 165 million signatures. While was part of a wider growth of mass, collective petitioning to national legislatures across North America and western Europe, the scale of petitions in the nineteenth-century UK was historically exceptional. In this blog, I discuss themes from my recent book A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2023) relevant to those working on parliamentary studies.

During the nineteenth century, petitioning was transformed in the UK and other polities, including the USA, into its modern form as a participatory practice linked to representative institutions. Older traditions of petitioning the monarch sought the redress of personal, local, or sectional grievances. By contrast, the new style of petitioning was used by citizens and subjects to raise topics of national importance, make claims for citizenship and political rights, and organise massive popular campaigns in a pre-democratic era, including for the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage.

Through examining the monumental scale of petitions in this period, A Nation of Petitioners has a number of themes relevant those interested in parliaments in general and the UK Parliament in particular.

First, petitions are crucial to understanding the authority and legitimacy of Parliament, particularly the House of Commons, during an era of democratisation but not democracy. Petitions institutionalised regular public engagement with Parliament on a colossal scale. Millions of British people interacted with Parliament and parliamentarians through petitions, and this remained the case even after the franchise was extended by the First and Second Reform Acts passed in 1832 and 1867. Indeed, it was not until the later 1880s, after the passing of the Third Reform Act (1885), that the registered electorate began to exceed the annual total of signatures on petitions to the House of Commons. The position of the aristocratic House of Lords was also strengthened by the tens of thousands of petitions it received. The massive waves of petitioners, even radical critics, submitting their requests to Parliament, confirmed the legislature’s authority and to an extent, legitimated, an assembly elected under limited suffrage.

At the same time, petitions could challenge the authority and legitimacy of Parliament when they claimed to represent a wider people than that which elected MPs. The three massive Chartist petitions of 1839, 1842, and 1848, calling for democratic reforms and signed by millions of working-class men and women presented just such a challenge. Recent studies of the post-2016 debates over Brexit have noted the tension between parliamentary sovereignty (based on an electoral mandate) and popular sovereignty (based on the majority in the referendum). The example of the nineteenth century suggests that the tension between parliamentary and popular sovereignty is a latent dynamic in parliamentary systems of government, albeit one that has been relatively well-contained in an era of universal suffrage when MPs could usually claim an unmatched democratic mandate.

Second, petitions were central to the evolving system of parliamentary representation. Like e-petitions today, nineteenth-century petitions provided a form of ‘linkage’ between citizens and Parliament, particularly outside elections. Petitions were an essential tool for making representative claims by both parliamentarians and petitioners. Through presenting petitions and interacting with petitioners, MPs and peers acted as representatives, even when they disagreed with petitioners. Presenting petitions enabled both geographic and issue-based representation. Petitioning also enabled the representation from different nations (Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as well as England) within the UK and also from groups, such as women, who were formally excluded from voting in elections or sitting in Parliament at this time. Petitions were also presented from settlers and colonised peoples from within the British empire who were not formally represented in Parliament.

MPs typically presented petitions from their constituencies or on issues that they were associated with. Peers usually presented petitions from areas they were associated with through landownership or had formerly represented when in the Commons; bishops, or spiritual peers, were often tasked with presenting petitions on religious or moral questions, including temperance. Presenting petitions allowed Victorian MPs who did not trouble Hansard reporters to represent their constituents. Henry Lowther, who sat as MP for Westmorland for 55 years was known as the ‘silent colonel’ due to his lack of contribution to debates; yet he still presented over 400 petitions. Presenting petitions and corresponding with petitioners was an important part of the hidden, largely unsung practice of representation that MPs like Lowther did, and emphasises the varied ways that parliamentarians represented the public outside elections.

Finally, petitions to the House of Commons declined in the early twentieth century. This was part of a trend also evident in other countries such as the USA or France. Petitioning did not decline as a form of political participation, but was rather displaced from national legislatures to a wider range of national and international authorities, including in the British case, Number 10 Downing Street. Unlike petitions to Parliament, these other types of petitions were rarely formally recorded which explains their invisibility in studies of twentieth-century British politics and history. The executive’s increasing control of the legislature in the twentieth century encouraged British citizens to appeal to other authorities, although Parliament did still receive large mass petitions on occasion, such as the three petitions about pensions during the Second World War. MPs and officials missed an opportunity to rethink petitioning tool for public engagement with Parliament in the 1970s; the unimaginative conventional wisdom of the time preferred to abolish the Petitions committee instead.

Given this historical context, the recent emergence of legislative e-petitions systems in the UK and in many other democracies is significant for reasserting parliaments as the primary institution for receiving petitions from citizens. There are some important differences of course. In an era of universal suffrage, petitioners do not perhaps pose the same challenge to representatives. In terms of representation, because citizens can usually upload their petitions to a parliamentary web platform rather than through the medium of an MP, they do not provide the same interaction between citizen and representative, although they do provide a form of public engagement with Parliament as an institution. Today, the UK Parliament’s Petitions Committee offers a wide range of actions that go far beyond the limited or ‘descriptive’ petitions system of the nineteenth century, where petitions were presented but no further action was taken. E-petitions then provide an opportunity for the UK Parliament and other legislatures to re-engage citizens, albeit in very different ways from the nineteenth century.

Henry Miller is Associate Professor (Research) at Durham University. This blog draws on his book A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918 published by Cambridge University Press in February 2023.

News

May 2023 Newsletter

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date May 12, 2023

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

PSA Parliaments Conference 2023: Call for Papers
PSA Parliaments Book Launch: Henry J. Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners
PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022: Extra Online Panel
Welcome to Diana Stirbu!
PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition
Parliamentary Studies Module: Call for Applications
Congratulations to Lotte Hargrave!
Other Events: ECPR Gender & Politics Seminar & PSA ECN Workshops
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, Ruxandra and, for the first time, Diana.

1. PSA Parliaments Conference 2023: Call for Papers

We are very pleased to announce that our annual conference will take place at the LSE and online on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd November!

As usual, we will be holding the conference on the Friday and a drinks reception on the Thursday evening. However, in an exciting new development, we will also be holding a working papers workshop for early career researchers during Thursday daytime.

Full details about the conference and workshop, including how to apply and/or volunteer as a workshop discussant, can be found here.

We are very grateful to Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey for helping us to organise the conference and to the Department of Government at LSE for co-sponsoring the event.

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

Our rescheduled panel on Parliaments in Context will take place on Wednesday 24th May at 2pm BST.

We have three great papers. Full details, including how to book your free ticket, can be found here.

4. Welcome to Diana Stirbu!

We are very pleased to announce that Diana Stirbu has become a co-convenor of PSA Parliaments.

Diana is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the London Metropolitan University and is probably best known for her work on the Welsh Senedd. You can read her Urgent Questions here.

Diana will be replacing Stephen who is stepping down as co-convenor in November after our annual conference.

5. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay

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).

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.

6. Parliamentary Studies Module: Call for Applications

Applications will open next week for Higher Education institutions to deliver the Parliamentary Studies module for academic years 2024/5 – 2029/30.

If you’re interested in further information and/or wish to request an application pack, please contact ppoe@parliament.uk

7. Congratulations to Lotte Hargrave!

Congratulations to Lotte Hargrave for winning the PSA’s 2023 McDougall Trust Prize for her dissertation which examines the impact of gender stereotypes on politicians’ behaviour and voter attitudes.

More details can be found here.

8. Other Events: ECPR Gender & Politics Seminar & PSA ECN Workshops

The ECPR Gender & Politics Standing Group are holding a series of online seminars on ‘feminist dialogues on the classics’. The first considers gender and sexuality representation in politics on Tuesday 30th May at 2pm (BST).

Full details can be found here.

The PSA’s Early Career Network are holding two online workshops on knowledge exchange. The first is on May 3rd and considers demonstrating knowledge exchange and impact in grant applications. The second is on June 7th and focuses on developing ethical knowledge exchange and impact.

Full details can be found here and here.

9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi, Damilola Temitope Olorunshola and Boluwatife Solomon Ajibolad have published Turning public engagement into standard practice: institutionalisation in the work of the South African Parliament in the Journal of Legislative Studies.

Mette Marie Staehr Harder has published Parting with ‘interests of women’: how feminist scholarship on substantive representation could replace ‘women’s interests’ with ‘gender equality interests’ in the European Journal of Politics and Gender.

Jonathan Malloy has published The Paradox of Parliament with the University of Toronto Press.

Mihail Chiru has published Seniority and Ideological Proximity? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Appointment of Party Group Coordinators in the European Parliament in the Journal of Common Market Studies.

Elizabeth Evans and Stefanie Reher have published Gender, disability and political representation: understanding the experiences of disabled women in the European Journal of Politics and Gender.

The Routledge Handbook of Parliamentary Administrations edited by Thomas Christiansen, Elena Griglio and Nicola Lupo has been published.

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

10. Recently on the Blog

We published one great blog last month.

The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit: The Story in Brief by Meg Russell and Lisa James

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

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

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.

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!

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