Launch of Exploring Parliament textbook at the House of Commons
Category: Events
The PSA Parliaments Group is pleased to share a Call for Papers from the Birmingham-Illinois Partnership for Discovery, Engagement and Education (BRIDGE).
The PSA Parliaments and Study of the Scottish Parliament Group co-hosted their annual conference Legislatures in Uncertain Times on Friday 17 November at Holyrood.
We are delighted to announce our panels for the Political Studies Association 2018 Conference. We have a great line up, with six panels and 24 papers covering everything from enhancing parliamentary democracy to organising and managing parliaments.
On Wednesday 19th July 2017 we are holding a qualitative methods workshop at Liverpool University. The workshop will explore a wide range of research in this area including the use of parliamentary debates, elite interviews and focus groups, legislative texts and computer aided analysis. It is a great opportunity to learn more about using these techniques as well as some top tips if you are working on this type of research yourself. As always, there will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.
Legislatures in Uncertain Times
Friday 17 November 2017, Edinburgh
To catch up on our events from the Political Studies Association Annual Conference, take a look at our Storify recap: https://storify.com/psaparliaments/psa-parliaments-at-psa17
We are pleased to announce the details of our panels at the PSA Conference, which will take place in Glasgow on 10-12 April 2017. Details about the conference can be found on the PSA website (click here).
The PSA Parliaments & Legislatures Specialist Group, in conjunction with the British Politics Research Group at the University of Birmingham, held a methods workshop on the statistical analysis of parliaments and legislatures on the 16th September 2016. Aimed at ‘dabblers’, the workshop was organized by Stephen Bates (Birmingham), Mark Goodwin (Birmingham) and Steve McKay (Lincoln) and, using their British Academy-funded project on Select Committees as a focal point, guided participants through the research process from initial ideas through data collection, management, modelling and analysis to completed paper.
The workshop was attended by 12 post-doctoral students and researchers from across academia and the third sector and was generally well received with one participant saying “Many thanks to Stephen, Mark and Steve for an excellent workshop. I’ll be recommending it, should you decide to hold another in the future”.
Politicians, the public, think-tanks, journalists and academics alike have increasingly focused in recent times on how parliaments and legislatures work and how to make them work better in terms of policy-making, representation, scrutiny and accountability. Yet, despite this focus, the evidence base for making judgments about the effectiveness of parliaments and legislatures is arguably not as extensive as it could be, perhaps partly because of methodological difficulties in assessing the influence, impact and power of these institutions.