PSA ParliamentsPlease note that this blog piece was originally published on the Crick Centre blog on 21 January 2015, and is available here.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s suggested this week that prime minister’s questions should be abolished. Today we follow up our blogs on BBC Democracy Day by responding to Clegg’s comments. Marc Geddes, Associate Fellow of the Crick Centre disagrees with Clegg, arguing that he misunderstands how the drama of PMQs helps the public understand how politics works.
By Hilmar Rommetvedt
In his seminal article on ‘numerical democracy and corporate pluralism’ published in the 1960s, Stein Rokkan claimed that ‘votes count, but resources decide’. Important political decisions were not made in the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, but at the negotiating table where civil servants met with representatives of organized interests. For decades to come, most Norwegian observers subscribed to the ‘decline of legislatures’ put forward by Lord Bryce. However, today we may speak of a revival of the Norwegian Parliament. For since the 1970s, the Storting has become a more active, less predictable and more influential political institution.
By Muiris MacCarthaigh and Shane Martin
In a referendum held in October 2013, voters in the Irish Republic were given the opportunity to abolish the Irish Senate (Seanad Éireann). What was meant to have been a populist centrepiece of political reform for the governing coalition ultimately produced a surprising outcome: Irish voters, despite being heavily disillusioned with the political system and political elites, voted to retain bicameralism, albeit on a turnout of just under 40 percent and by a thin margin (51.7 voted to retain the Seanad).
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The current Czech Parliament arose from its predecessor established after 1968 when reforms towards federalization were undertaken in former Czechoslovakia. The Chamber of Deputies, the lower chamber of the Czech Parliament, has existed since 1993. In 1996, senators of the upper chamber gathered for the first time. Institutionally speaking, the emergence of the Czech Parliament was much more complex since the members of the Chamber of Deputies in the first electoral period (1993 onwards) had been elected in the general elections in 1992. The 1992 general elections were held to elect members of the Czech National Council – a state-level parliament of the Czech Republic, which was a part of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, a predecessor of the current Czech Republic – and members of the Federal Assembly. With the split of the former federation, only the state-level deputies retained their mandates. The Czech parliament therefore started as an “unimportant” state-level chamber of second-order deputies because many party leaders were present in the Federal Assembly which was seen to be much more important.
By Dr Sue Griffiths and Sameer Kassam
Parliaments in the Arab world were dismissed prior to 2011 as rubber-stamps for their regimes, and afterwards as too dysfunctional to warrant serious consideration, but their stories since have reflected broader trends in those countries.
The group organised a re-launch reception in the Palace of Westminster on the 25 November 2014, with guest speaker Angela Eagle MP (pictured below). With new convenors for the group and plenty of activity planned and implemented, we wanted to mark the re-launch of the group and, as a result, place the study of Parliament at the centre of political research.
By Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Louise Thompson
About eight months ago, we got together to come up with an idea for Parliament Week. We’d recently taken over as the new Co-Convenors of the Political Studies Association’s specialist group for Parliaments and Legislatures, and we thought the group should be involved with this initiative. It fit right in with our strategy of promoting the study and understanding of parliament and, most importantly, it went beyond the academic community. Eight months later we were sitting in Portcullis House in one of Parliament Week’s prime slots, waiting for The Political Studies Association (our co-organisers) to arrive, along with over 100 sixth form students!
By Barry Winetrobe
The recent fiasco over the appointment of a House of Commons Clerk/Chief Executive has led to the appointment of a select committee on House governance chaired by Jack Straw. It is tasked with reviewing this complex topic, especially allocation of the most senior responsibilities currently held by the Clerk/Chief Executive, and reporting to the House by 12 January 2015.
The “Hardcopy or #Hashtag?” event takes place during Parliament Week, the theme of which is youth engagement. This event has been organised jointly by the Parliaments and Legislatures Specialist Group and the Political Studies Association. This is the culmination of a series of workshops which have been held around the country in which sixth form students have worked with 11 participating universities and politics undergraduate students to come up with innovative ideas to increase youth engagement with Parliament through digital means.
A version of this piece was published on The Conversation on 11 November 2014.
By Louise Thompson
It’s not often that parliamentary procedure hits the headlines. And it’s even less often that delegated legislation does. So the debate (if you can call it that) in the House of Commons about whether the UK would opt in to various parts of European legislation was a rarity indeed.Those watching the House of Commons on Monday evening were treated to a truly confusing spectacle that may have left many disheartened with Parliament – and with democracy.