PSA ParliamentsThank you to everyone that attended and participated in our first one-day conference (we hope the first of many!). It was a fantastic event with a range of academic panels, a practitioner roundtable, a poster exhibition, and our annual lecture from the Clerk of the House of Commons, David Natzler. You can see a full summary by following the Twitter hashtag: #ParlConf. We also have a summary of the paper and poster abstracts available 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.
The 2017 PSA Annual Conference will be held in Glasgow on 10th – 12th April 2017 and we hope to be able to put forward some specialist group panels for this.
If you would be interested in presenting an individual paper as part of our specialist group panel, please complete a Paper Proposal Form with an abstract of no more than 250 words by Friday 7th October 2016. If you would be interested in putting together a panel for the conference please complete a Panel Proposal Form by the same date. We will be in touch during the week of 10th October to let you know if your paper has been successful.
This call is open to all members of the group. There are, as yet, no panel themes so all pape and panel proposals are welcome. Postgraduate students are also encouraged to apply (particularly as there is no early career conference this year). Those who wish to present would be eligible to apply to the PSA Postgraduate Access Fund for financial support to attend the conference.
We had a really successful 2016 conference, with more papers and panels than we’ve ever had before. So we look forward to hearing from you!
For our Panel Proposal Form, please click here (opens Word Document).
For our Paper Proposal Form, please click here (opens Word Document).
This spring, the Parliaments and Legislatures SG held the first essay competition open to all undergraduate students. This essay competition was open, where students were asked to write about a parliament, legislature, or a specific matter concerning legislative studies.
The members of the judging panel were Michael Rush (Exeter), Lynn Gardner (House of Commons) and Richard Whitaker (Leicester). They judged the essays on four criteria (originality, rigour, strength of analysis and quality of presentation/style). The essays were anonymised and so the panel did not know which university each essay represented.
We are very pleased to announce that the winning essay was by UCL University student Sam Holcroft (nominated by Meg Russell), for the essay on “How much control should political parties have over their members in parliament? And how much do they have in practice?”. Sam will receive a prize of £150. You can read his essay here.
The runner-up was Matthew Robinson (Surrey University, nominated by Louise Thompson) for an essay on “Does the Liaison Committee scrutinise the Prime Minister more effectively than MPs at Prime Minister’s Question Time?”. You can read his essay here.
Thank you to all that took part in the competition. We very much hope to continue the competition in future years to help promote our knowledge of parliaments and legislatures and encourage people to learn more about them.
Hello everyone,
A quick newsletter today – there’s plenty of excitement going on in politics already! Please see information below on the following:
If you have any notices / messages you would like us to circulate to the group, let us know – it could be about disseminating an event, new research, new publication etc. Please avoid sending attachments; where possible, we would prefer circulating more substantive information through web links instead
Best wishes,
Cristina (@estrangeirada), Louise (@louiseVThompson) and Marc (@marcgeddes)
Newsletter sent out to all members – copied here in case you missed it. You can also view it through MailChimp here.
–
Hello everyone,
A packed newsletter today – lots happening. Please see information below on the following:
If you have any notices / messages you would like us to circulate to the group, let us know – it could be about disseminating an event, new research, new publication etc. Please avoid sending attachments; where possible, we would prefer circulating more substantive information through web links instead.
Best wishes,
Cristina (@estrangeirada), Louise (@louiseVThompson) and Marc (@marcgeddes)
Following several months of working on this idea on behalf of the group, we’re very pleased to announce the House of Commons, in partnership with the Political Studies Association (PSA), are implementing the House of Commons Academic Fellowship Scheme.
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.
This one-day conference of the PSA Parliaments & Legislatures Specialist Group, co-hosted by the University of Birmingham, seeks to concentrate on the evidence – whether qualitative and/or quantitative and from a range of theoretical and analytical traditions – of parliamentary and legislative effectiveness and the effectiveness of parliamentary and legislative reform.
The conference, to be held at the Institute for Government in central London on 28th October 2016, will be followed by the PSA Parliaments & Legislatures Annual Lecture.
To register an interest in presenting a paper, please contact Stephen Bates (s[dot]r[dot]bates[at]bham[dot]ac[dot]uk) with initial ideas before August 31st 2016. We welcome contributions beyond the UK Parliament, namely on the devolved legislatures and/or with a comparative dimension. Registration will open in early September.
Time: 11.00-15.00 (with lunch provided)
Date: Friday, 16 September 2016
Venue: University of Birmingham (Room TBC)
This workshop is aimed at those with little or no previous experience of quantitative statistics but who believe it may be useful for them in their current or future research.
The workshop will be based around the conveners’ current British Academy-funded research project on select committees. Each stage of the project – from initial inspiration through data collection and analysis to finished article – will be outlined and discussed in terms of both methodological and practical considerations so that participants have an idea of what the research process entails and what hazards and opportunities to look out for along the way. It will cover such things as finding out about available data, the different software that may be useful, and working with external stakeholders and experts.
The workshop will be run by Stephen Bates and Mark Goodwin (who are relative novices when it comes to quantitative statistics) and Steve McKay (who is an old-hand at this kind of thing).
Attendance and lunch are free but participants will have to cover their travel costs.
To register for the workshop, please email Stephen Bates (s.r.bates[at]bham[dot]ac[dot]uk).