A quick report on the PSA Parliaments group’s activities at the Political Studies Association International Annual Conference 2019.
Author: psaparliaments
Professor Sarah Childs discusses the implications of the parliamentary politics of Brexit, and prospects for future reforms at Westminster.
Alexandra Anderson and Alexandra Meakin discuss the flood in the Commons and the need for public engagement with the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster, in a blog originally posted on The Conversation.
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April 2019 newsletter
In this month’s newsletter, we have the following announcements/information:
- PSA Conference – 15-17 April
- Informal social at PSA Conference
- Methods Workshop – sign-up open!
- Event: The Brexit Shock
- News from our members
- Job alert from UNC
- Essay competition reminder
- Recently on our blog
If you have any notices / messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.
Best wishes,
Marc (@marcgeddes), Louise (@LouiseVThompson) Alex (@A_Meakin) and Seán (@S_Haughey)
The link between the Expenses Scandal and Brexit suggested by a new BBC documentary is not so convincing, writes Nick Dickinson, but the desire to connect the two reveals a lot about the tendency of sophisticated political observers to refuse to take certain events at face value.
As the Brexit chaos continues, Professor Margaret Arnott discusses the constitutional issues it has posed for inter-parliamentary relations in the UK.
This week marks forty years since Conservative MP Airey Neave was killed as he left the Palace of Westminster. Emmeline Ledgerwood explores his little-known work to promote science in Parliament.
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Trust, parliaments, and stability
In a new post based on a paper from our Making Sense of Parliaments conference, Aileen Walker, Associate at Global Partners Governance, discusses how to build public trust in parliaments.
The official, substantially verbatim report of what is said in both houses of Parliament is an essential tool for ensuring democratic accountability. This record, Hansard, contains a wealth of data, but it is not always fully accessible and easy to search. Lesley Jeffries and Fransina de Jager explain how a new project, Hansard at Huddersfield, aims to improve access to the Hansard records and contribute new ways of searching the data.
For more than half a century (1921-72), the existence of a devolved parliament in Northern Ireland created a contradiction at the heart of Unionist thought: while proponents of ‘the Union’ championed legislative autonomy in one part of the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland), they simultaneously denigrated moves towards devolution in Scotland and Wales on the basis that it might constitute a ‘slippery slope’ towards full ‘separation’. In a new blog from our Making Sense of Parliaments conference Dr David Torrance sheds light on a neglected aspect of broader debates about parliamentary devolution in the UK.