Category: News

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For the second year in a row, we’ve had to break out the emojis to celebrate a very successful night for PSA Parliaments and its members at the PSA Annual Awards!

🥳 PSA Parliaments won the Specialist Group of the Year Prize for the second time in four years!

🥳 Philip Norton won the Sir Isaiah Berlin Lifetime Achievement Prize!

🥳 Louise Thompson won the Richard Rose Prize for a distinctive contribution to the study of British Politics!

🥳 Sarah Childs won the WJM Mackenzie Prize for the best book published in political science for her co-authored book with Karen Celis Feminist Democratic Representation!

🥳 Steven MacGregor won the Walter Bagehot Prize for the best dissertation in the field of government and public administration for his thesis Does government dominate the legislative process?

🥳 The Institute for Government won the Political Communicator of the Year Prize!

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to our members for making PSA Parliaments such a now-officially-recognised brilliant group!

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you (a little later than normal because of the UCU strikes over pensions, pay and conditions):

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022
3. Urgent Questions with Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey
4. Book Launch: Held in contempt: What’s wrong with the House of Commons?
5. Book Launch: Accountability, Impeachment, and the Constitution
6. PSA Trustee Elections: PSA Parliament’s Member, James Strong, is Standing
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

Registration remains open for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference in York and online, 11th-13th April 2022. Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As detailed below, the PSA Parliaments panels and roundtable are being held on the Monday and Tuesday.

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022

We are pleased to announce the launch of our 2022 Undergraduate Essay Competition! The winner will be presented with a prize of £100 and a runner-up prize of £50 at our annual conference in November 2022.

The competition is open to all undergraduate students who have submitted a piece of assessed work which contributes to our understanding of parliaments or legislatures.

Full details of the competition can be found here.

3. Urgent Questions with Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey

This month’s interviewee is Prof. Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, author of the recently published Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees.

Head over to Urgent Questions to read about Idaho, romance novels and how long it’s been since Cheryl ate a curry

4. Book Launch: Held in contempt: What’s wrong with the House of Commons?

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be hosting a book launch of Hannah White’s forthcoming book Held in contempt: What’s wrong with the House of Commons? (Manchester University Press).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 25th May 2022 between 11:00am and 12:30pm BST. The speakers include:

• Hannah White
• Alexandra Meakin
• Baroness Morgan of Cotes
• And another TBC!

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

5. Book Launch: Accountability, Impeachment, and the Constitution

We are similarly delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of our very own Chris Monaghan’s forthcoming monograph Accountability, Impeachment, and the Constitution (Routledge).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 8th June 2022 at 2pm BST.

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

6. PSA Trustee Elections: PSA Parliament’s Member, James Strong, is Standing

One of our members, James Strong, is standing for election to become a PSA Trustee.

If you have a vote, please check your inbox for details of how to vote.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Kristen Heim has published Beyond stereotypes: the evolution of five Southern African legislatures in the budget process in the Journal of Legislative Studies.

Jennifer Piscopo and Susan Franceschet have published Policymaking, Constituency Service, and the Pandemic: How Working Remotely Transformed U.S. State Legislators’ Representative Roles in Representation.

Finally, new issues of Government and Opposition, International Journal of Parliamentary Studies, Journal of Legislative Studies, and Representation have all been recently 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 published two great blogs in February:

• New visual cues in the UK Parliament by Alex Prior
• Held in contempt: what’s wrong with the House of Commons? by Hannah White

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

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you (a little later than normal because of the UCU strikes over pensions, pay and conditions):

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022
3. Urgent Questions with Meg Russell
4. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees
5. Book Launch: Accountability, Impeachment, and the Constitution
6. New Overview of Mexico’s Congress of the Union
7. Call for Applications: Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Scheme
8. EUGenDem virtual workshop: Gender and Leadership in the European Parliament at Midterm
9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
10. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

Registration is open for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022. Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the timetable for the conference has not been released. We will send details of timings for our five panels and roundtable once they are available.

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022

We are pleased to announce the launch of our 2022 Undergraduate Essay Competition! The winner will be presented with a prize of £100 and a runner-up prize of £50 at our annual conference in November 2022.

The competition is open to all undergraduate students who have submitted a piece of assessed work which contributes to our understanding of parliaments or legislatures.

Full details of the competition can be found here.

3. Urgent Questions with Meg Russell

This month’s interviewee is the Director of the Constitution Unit, Prof. Meg Russell.

Head over to Urgent Questions to read about Turin, Camden Market, the Thin White Duke, and roofing!

4. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of Cheryl Schonhardt Bailey’s forthcoming monograph Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (Oxford University Press).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 9th March 2022 between 3:00pm and 4:30pm GMT.

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

5. Book Launch: Accountability, Impeachment, and the Constitution

We are similarly delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of our very own Chris Monaghan’s forthcoming monograph Accountability, Impeachment, and the Constitution (Routledge).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 8th June 2022 at 2pm BST.

Full details of the event, including how to register, will be announced soon so, in the meantime, please save the date.

6. New Overview of Mexico’s Congress of the Union

Many thanks to Emmanuel Sanchez for writing our latest Overview on the Mexican Legislature.

If you would like to write an overview of a parliament or legislature not yet covered on our maps, then please contact Chris.

7. Call for Applications: Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Scheme

The Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Scheme gives university-based researchers and staff working in knowledge exchange the opportunity to participate in a fellowship project with an office in UK Parliament. Each fellowship project in the Directed Call is proposed by a team at Parliament as a project on which academic input is needed.

There are 12 projects open for applications. You can read about the Call, including details on eligibility, funding, key dates, and the application process, here.

8. EUGenDem virtual workshop: Gender and Leadership in the European Parliament at Midterm

EUGenDem are holding a workshop to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 11th 2022 at 11:00-12:30 EET (10:00-11:30 CET).

The workshop draws together the findings of a new book edited by Henriette Müller (NYU Abu Dhabi) and Ingeborg Tömmel (University of Osnabrück): Women and Leadership in the European Union, published with Oxford University Press (2022).

Full details of the workshop can be found here.

9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Ruxandra Serban has published The practice of accountability in questioning prime ministers: Comparative evidence from Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom in the British Journal of Politics & International Relations.

Lotte Hargrave and Jack Blumenau have published No Longer Conforming to Stereotypes: Gender, Political Style and Parliamentary Debate in the UK? in the British Journal of Political Science.

David Judge has published ‘Would I Lie to You?’: Boris Johnson and Lying in the House of Commons in Political Quarterly.

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 two great blogs in February:

• The Speaker of the Lok Sabha: Performing and Consuming ‘Neutrality’ in the Indian Parliament by Mouli Banerjee
• A case of innovative parliamentary oversight? Faroese and Greenlandic MPs in the Danish Parliament by Mette Marie Staehr Harder and Hallbera West

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

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022
3. Urgent Questions with Jonathan Tonge
4. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees
5. Job Opportunity at the University of East Anglia
6. Other Events
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022. If you haven’t booked yet, early bird prices have been extended to 4th February 2022. Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced previously, we are running five panels and a roundtable on Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future.

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022

We are pleased to announce the launch of our 2022 Undergraduate Essay Competition! The winner will be presented with a prize of £100 and a runner-up prize of £50 at our annual conference in November 2022.

The competition is open to all undergraduate students who have submitted a piece of assessed work which contributes to our understanding of parliaments or legislatures.

Full details of the competition can be found here.

3. Urgent Questions with Jonathan Tonge

This month’s interviewee is the outgoing editor of Parliamentary Affairs, Prof. Jonathan Tonge.

Put on your Fred Perry, get yourself a suedehead and head on over to Urgent Questions to read about some great mod bands and – what is frankly – a shocking answer to a question about Star Wars.

4. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of Cheryl Schonhardt Bailey’s forthcoming monograph Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (Oxford University Press).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 9th March 2022 between 3:00pm and 4:30pm GMT.

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

5. Job Opportunity at the University of East Anglia

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the ESRC’s flagship Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) at the University of East Anglia as a Senior Research Associate in Policy, Politics and Climate Change (Fixed-term).

The post holder will join an international team of scholars to conduct research on politicians’ role in accelerating climate mitigation in upcoming decades, commensurate with limiting climate change to 1.5 or 2°C of warming.

Full details can be found here.

6. Other Events

ECPR General Conference, University of Innsbruck, 22–26 August 2022

The ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments have released a call for papers for their section of the 2022 ECPR General Conference.

Full details can be found here.

Global Conference on Parliamentary studies, Budapest, 12-13 May 2022

The University of Public Service, Ludovika, have released a call for papers for a forthcoming global conference on parliamentary studies.

Full details can be found here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Larissa Peixoto Vale Gomes has published an article called Bang for the Buck: Brazil’s Electoral and Political Financing Rules from a Gendered Perspective in E-Legis.

Brighton Msagalla and Marianna Visser have published an article called Agenda-setting through topic shift in Tanzanian parliamentary debate: The derailment of strategic manoeuvring in Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies.

Alexander Hemingway has published an article called Does Class Shape Legislators’ Approach to Inequality and Economic Policy? A Comparative View in Government & Opposition.

Louise Thompson and Mitya Pearson have published an article called ‘Enter parliament but never become part of it’: How have the Greens in the United Kingdom approached opposition? in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Peter Buisseret and Carlo Prato have published an article called Competing Principals? Legislative Representation in List Proportional Representation Systems in the American Journal of Political Science.

Mark Goodwin, Stephen Holden Bates and Stephen McKay have an article called Electing to Do Women’s Work? Gendered Divisions of Labor in U.K. Select Committees, 1979–2016 in the latest issue of Politics & Gender.

Lotte Hargrave and Tone Langengen have published an article called The Gendered Debate: Do Men and Women Communicate Differently in the House of Commons? also in the latest issue of Politics & Gender.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy have recently released three new publications:

• Post-legislative scrutiny in the UK Parliament by Tom Caygill;
• Comparative analysis of the UK Bribery Act 2010 and anti-bribery legislation in Ukraine, Indonesia, and Kenya by Rob McCusker;
• An introduction to deliberative democracy for members of parliament by Julia Keutgen.

Kevin Orr and Sabina Siebert have published a Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) Briefing called The Scottish Parliament: how the Parliament building shapes the workings of the institution.

A new issue of Parliamentary Affairs has been published, featuring a special collection on Parliaments as Workplaces: Gendered Approaches to the Study of Legislatures edited by Josefina Erikson and Tània Verge.

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 8 (eight) great blogs in January!

• “Tread carefully” – the UK Parliament as a human rights “defender” within the Northern Ireland devolution framework by Leah Rea
• Exposing the hidden wiring of the Parliament by Ben Yong
• Does being watched make MPs behave better? by Ben Worthy and Cat Morgan
• A committee is an organisation, not an institution – but what is an organisation? A response mainly to myself by Stephen Holden Bates
• Reimagining impeachment: A new blueprint for our challenging times by Chris Monaghan
• What does petitioning in the 20th century show us about the relationship between people and parliament? by Anna Bocking-Welch, Richard Huzzey, Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Henry Miller
• Intersectional representation of Arab legislators in the Israeli parliament: The first decade 1949-1959 by Osnat Akirav
• What ever happened to impeachment in the United Kingdom? Accountability, history and the decline of parliamentary impeachment by Chris Monaghan

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

Happy New Year! We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you in this shorter than usual newsletter:

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees
3. Parliamentary Engagement Opportunities for Researchers
4. Membership & Funding of PSA Parliaments
5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series
6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
7. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022 (early bird prices end on 24 January 2022). Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced previously, we are running five panels, on the below themes (the full list of papers and panels can be found on our website):

• Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
• How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
• How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
• Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
• How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

We will also be hosting a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The line-up for the roundtable has now been confirmed and promises to provide a fantastic conversation:

• Dr Farrah Bhatti (Principal Clerk of Select Committees, House of Commons)
• Simon Burton (Clerk of the Parliaments, House of Lords)
• Professor Sarah Childs (University of Edinburgh)
• Jack Sheldon (Cambridge University)

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of Cheryl Schonhardt Bailey’s forthcoming monograph Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (Oxford University Press).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 9th March 2022 between 3:00pm and 4:30pm GMT.

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

3. Parliamentary Engagement Opportunities for Researchers

Did you know you can subscribe to UK Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit weekly round up to stay up to date with opportunities for researchers and experts to engage with the UK Parliament?

Please see here for details about how to receive information about calls for evidence from parliamentary select committees, academic fellowship opportunities, requests for expertise and more.

4. Membership & Funding of PSA Parliaments

Did you know that PSA Parliaments receive funding from the PSA based on our number of members?

So, if you are a member of the PSA but not yet an official member of PSA Parliaments, please sign up here so that we can maximise our funding and support the sub-discipline to an even greater extent.

5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series

As announced last month, we are now accepting expressions of interest to contribute to our working paper series, which publishes working papers across the sub-discipline of parliamentary and legislative studies.

You can read our first two working papers here and here.

If you are interested in publishing a working paper, please consult our submission guidelines.

6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Siim Trumm and Andrew Barclay have published an article in Political Studies called Parliamentary Representation: Should MPs Prioritise Their Own Views or Those of Their Voters?

David Froomkin and Ian Shaprio have published an article in Political Studies called The New Authoritarianism in Public Choice.

Peter Allen has an article in Politics & Gender called Experience, Knowledge, and Political Representation.

And, finally, a new issue of The International Journal of Parliamentary Studies has also been published.

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

7. Recently on the Blog

Our blog took a break during December while we were making mince pies and getting boosted. We’ll be back in January!

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

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture
3. Winners announced of our Undergraduate Essay Competition!
4. New Overview of the Australian Parliament Published
5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series
6. Call for Applications: Leverhulme PhD studentships at the University of East Anglia
7. Call for Papers: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700: Concepts, Methods, Approaches
8. Other Events: Study of Parliament Group Annual Conference
9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
10. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022 (early bird prices end on 24 January 2022). Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced last month, we are running five panels, plus a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The themes of our panels are:

• Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
• How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
• How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
• Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
• How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture

Our annual conference, which was held online last month, was a roaring success, even if we do say so ourselves!

We had an excellent line-up of panels on the themes of:

1. Representatives and representation;
2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

If you missed it, you can catch up on all the papers on our YouTube channel.

The five papers on the first panel are already available and the others will be added in the next couple of weeks.

3. Winners of our Undergraduate Essay Competition Announced!

We are delighted to announce the winner and runner-up of the 2021 PSA Parliaments undergraduate essay competition!

The winner, Callum Murphy who studied at Queen Mary University of London, won £100 for his essay on how Parliament engaged with the Universal Credit policy.

The runner-up, Dana Ali who also studied at Queen Mary University of London, won £50 for her essay on parliamentary scrutiny of air quality.

Congratulations to Callum and Dana! And many thanks to Alice Lilly from the Institute for Government for judging the competition.

You can read the prize-winning essays here.

4. New Overview of the Australian Parliament Published

Many thanks to Thomas Dray for writing an overview of the Australian Parliament.

If you would like to write an overview of one of the parliaments or legislatures not yet covered on our maps, then please get in touch with Chris.

5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series

We are very excited to announce that we are now accepting expressions of interest to contribute to our recently-launched working paper series, which publishes working papers across the sub-discipline of parliamentary and legislative studies.

You can read our first two working papers here and here.

If you are interested in publishing a working paper, please consult our submission guidelines.

6. Call for Applications: Leverhulme PhD studentships at the University of East Anglia

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, is seeking applications for PhD studentships in the Leverhulme Trust’s ‘Critical Decade for Climate Change’ doctoral training programme.

Three of the studentships are focused on the role of parliaments and politicians in climate policy making and implementation:

1. Climate mitigation through the decision of courts: a critical evaluation
2. How are publics’ climate change attitudes and behaviours influenced by politicians?
3. Delivering net zero requires local political action: what will the role of local politicians be in the critical decade?

The studentships start in October 2022 with each scholarship covering: tuition fees (for both home and international students); a maintenance stipend (£15,285 per year in 2022/23); and a generous research and training support grant of up to £8,000 over the course of the 4 year PhD programme.

More information about all the individual projects and the doctoral training programme, can be found here.

7. Call for Papers: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700: Concepts, Methods, Approaches

This interdisciplinary international conference will explore the culture of early modern Europe’s political assemblies, and ask how it was expressed in language, writing, images, institutions, and symbolic practices.

It will be held at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 22-24 June 2022, and is partly supported by The Europaeum.

Deadline for proposals is 31 January 2022. More details about the conference can be found here.

8. Other Events: Study of Parliament Group Annual Conference

The Study of Parliament Group will hold their annual conference at Oxford and online on 7-8 January 2022.

The deadline for booking is Friday 10 December. You must be an SPG member to attend. More details from their website.

9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Nokwazi Makanya has published an article entitled Progress with Parliamentary ‘Power over the Purse’: The Case of South Africa in Parliamentary Affairs.

Diana Stirbu has written a report for the Welsh Senedd on committee effectiveness: Power, Influence and Impact of Senedd Committees: Developing a framework for measuring committees’ effectiveness

Netina Tan and Cassandra Preece have published an article entitled Ethnic Quotas, Political Representation and Equity in Asia Pacific in Representation.

Tom Loughran and Sean Haughey have published a report on public opinion and power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

A special issue of The Journal of Legislative Studies on administering representative democracy has been published.

And, finally, new issues of Representation and Legislative Studies Quarterly have also 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 have recently published two great blogs:

• The Owen Patterson Scandal: Standards, Trust and Democratic Norms by Chris Monaghan, Caroline Bhattacharya and Alexandra Meakin
• Using the past to help us to understand the future of the Palace of Westminster by Alexandra Meakin

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

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture
2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
3. New Working Paper on Bibliometric Analysis of Parliamentary Studies Journals
4. PSA Parliaments at Questions of Accountability Conference
5. New Project: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700
6. Other Events: EUGenDem Workshop on Research Findings
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

It is nearly time for our online annual conference on Friday 12th November 2021 but there is still time to sign up!

We have an excellent line-up of panels on the themes of:

1. Representatives and representation;
2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

In addition to the panels, we will be announcing the results of our 2021 undergraduate essay prize!

To register (for free) and for full details of the conference and each of the panels, please see here.

2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

We are delighted to confirm our panels for the Political Studies Association annual conference (PSA22), taking place in York and digitally in April 2022. We have five excellent panels, plus a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The themes of our panels are:

• Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
• How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
• How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
• Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
• How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

Full details of each of the panels can be found here.

Registration will open on 15 November, with early bird prices ending on 24 January 2022. The details of registration fees can be found on the PSA22 website.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a paper proposal – we were very impressed with the high standard and look forward to seeing you in York!

3. New Working Paper on Bibliometric Analysis of Parliamentary Studies Journals

To accompany our recent survey of the sub-discipline, the PSA Parliaments team, led by Caroline Bhattacharya, has produced a bibliometric analysis of three parliamentary studies journals: Legislative Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Legislative Studies and Parliamentary Affairs.

Covering the last 25 years, we present findings on authorship and citation patterns, as well as the topics of articles and key publications.

You can read the working paper (and find out whether you and/or your favourite scholars make the most-cited and key publications lists) here.

4. PSA Parliaments at Questions of Accountability Conference

PSA Parliaments are hosting a panel on parliamentary committees and accountability at the Questions of Accountability conference, co-organised by our very own, Chris Monaghan.

The panel is at 10am on Tuesday 2nd November. Full details of the panel and the conference can be found here. You can sign up (for free) here.

5. New Project: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700

A team led by Professor Paulina Kewes at the University of Oxford has launched a new project, Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700. As part of the project, the team are hosting a blog series on their theme – but ranging more widely in methodology and period coverage – in collaboration with the History of Parliament Trust.

You can follow the project on Twitter here.

6. Other Events: EUGenDem Workshop on Research Findings

Our good friends at EUGenDem are holding an online workshop on 19th November 2021 at 10:00-12:00 EET (9:00-11:00 CET) to present research findings from their project Gender, party politics, and democracy in Europe: Studying European Parliament’s political groups.

Full details of the workshop and how to sign up can be found here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Sarah Dingler and Lena Ramstetter have a FirstView article in Government & Opposition entitled When Does She Rebel? How Gender Affects Deviating Legislative Behaviour

Andrés Dockendorff, Ricardo Gamboa and Marcel Aubry have published a research note in Representation entitled Substantive Representation of Women’s Interests: Chile, 1990–2020

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

8. Recently on the Blog

We have recently published one great blog:

• Parliaments are watching to make sure climate legislation has an impact by Rafael Jimenez Aybar and Franklin De Vrieze

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

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
3. Call for Papers: Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody Workshop
4. New Overview of the Austrian Parliament
5. Welcome to our new Communications Officer, Chris Monaghan!
6. Call for Posters for Study of Parliament Group Oxford Weekend
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

We are delighted to announce an excellent line-up of panels and papers for our 2021 Annual Conference, Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

The conference this year is a one-day virtual event on Friday 12th November 2021.

We have three panels on the themes of:

1. Representatives and representation;
2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

To register (for free) and for full details of the conference and each of the panels, please see here.

2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

We are delighted to launch our call for papers for the PSA Parliaments panels within the 2022 PSA Annual Conference (#PSA22). The conference is currently planned to be a blend of a physical and digital event taking place online and in York, between 10-13th April 2022 with the theme: “Politics from the Margins”. Full details of the conference, including the current plans for digital-only attendees can be found here.

If you would like to present a paper or organise a panel under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments group, then please submit the relevant form(s), which can be found on our website, to Alexandra and Stephen by Monday 4th October.

We welcome papers from PhD students through to professors and we are fully committed to avoiding manels. 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 Alexandra or Stephen if you come from an ethnic minority background and would like to discuss how your research could be highlighted on our panels.

3. Call for Papers: Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody Workshop

Inspired by the recent textbook, Political Science is for Everybody, the Parliaments, Race, Migration & Intersectionality, and Women & Politics specialist groups of the UK Political Studies Association are organising a workshop entitled Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody.

The aim of the workshop is to explore parliaments (and legislatures) at the intersections: how different groups of people engage with, access, navigate and experience parliaments; how parliaments and particular parliamentary institutions might be biased towards certain groups; and how this context might influence parliamentary activity, legislative outcomes and the broader policy-making process.

The workshop will be held via Zoom on Friday 28 January 2022.Full details, including how to submit an abstract, can be found here.

We welcome applications from PhD students to professors, and we do not have any preference in terms of theory and method, or on which parliament(s) and/or legislature(s) you study. We particularly welcome applications from people who are from underrepresented groups in political science and academia more broadly.

4. New Overview of the Austrian Parliament

A new overview of the Austrian Parliament has been added to our map.

Many thanks to Christoph Clar for writing an excellent addition to our collection.

If you would like to write an overview of a parliament or legislature not yet covered on our maps (it is to our collective shame that there is not yet an overview of the UK Parliament), then please get in contact with Stephen or Alexandra.

5. Welcome to our new Communications Officer, Chris Monaghan!

We are really pleased that Chris Monaghan has joined us as our Communications Officer.

Chris is a Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of Worcester. He has a keen interest in constitutional law, accountability and legal history, and his current research projects include the Chagos litigation and impeachment as an accountability mechanism.

Chris is the co-editor of the Routledge Frontiers in the Study of Accountability book series, and is currently organising the Questions of Accountability conference.

His twitter handle is @Chris_JMonaghan.

6. Call for Posters for Study of Parliament Group Oxford Weekend

There will be a new poster session at the SPG’s Oxford Weekend on the 7-8th January 2022 which is open to all members of the SPG, including PhD students, early career researchers and officials. Please consider submitting a poster to display findings from current research projects, to disseminate information about new projects, or to put forward case studies of best practice.

If you’d like to take part in the session, please email Louise Thompson with the following information: Poster Title; Author/(s); Affiliation/(s); Short Summary (150 words) of what the poster will cover.

The deadline for submissions of interest is Friday 8th October 2021. Final posters and short videos would need to be completed by Monday 6th December 2021. Support will be given with the printing and display of posters.

Some financial support (up to £100) towards attending the conference is available for PhDs / ECRs who present a poster. For further details contact Richard Kelly. If you are not a member of the SPG but are interested in joining, please get in touch with Louise.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

The South Africa-based Parliamentary Monitoring Group has published a report by Rebecca Sibanda on Assessing the Effectiveness of Written Questions and Replies as an Oversight Mechanism in the South African Parliament.

Rainbow Murray has published It’s a rich man’s world: How class and glass ceilings intersect for UK parliamentary candidates in International Political Science Review.

Fotios Fitsilis has published a research note in the Journal of Legislative Studies entitled Artificial Intelligence (AI) in parliaments – preliminary analysis of the Eduskunta experiment.

Rod Rhodes, Matthew Flinders, Adrian Vatter and David Judge have written a response to Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban’s recent article on the Westminster Model in Government and Opposition: Stretched but not snapped: A response to Russell & Serban on Retiring the ‘Westminster Model.

John Connolly, Matthew Flinders and David Judge have published Reviewing the review: a three-dimensional approach to analysing the 2017–2020 review of the House of Lords investigative and scrutiny committees in the Journal of Legislative Studies, available on early view.

And, finally, new issues of Legislative Studies Quarterly, Parliamentary Affairs and the Journal of Legislative 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 have recently published one great blog:

• Parliaments or Legislatures, or perhaps Assemblies? Names, origins and meanings by Cristine Leston-Bandeira

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

We hope that you had a good summer. We have returned from our lilos and have some updates for you:

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
3. Report on our Survey of the Sub-Discipline
4. Our Plans for the Upcoming Year
5. Goodbye to Gavin
6. Wanted! Communications Officer
7. Book Launch: Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process
8. Other Events: SPG Online Seminar on Select Committee Powers
9. Call for Papers: Fifteenth Wroxton College Workshop
10. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
11. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

Due to a mixture of the current situation and the precautionary measures put in place by the PSA, we have decided that our 2021 Annual Conference, Parliament at a Critical Juncture, will be an entirely virtual event on Friday 12th November 2021.

Due to the previous uncertainty surrounding the format, we have extended the deadline for submissions until 22nd September 2021.

Despite hoping that we could meet in person this year, the conference promises to be an excellent event, following in the footsteps of our successful online events last year.

For full details of the conference, including how to submit a paper proposal, please see our website.

2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

We are delighted to launch our call for papers for the PSA Parliaments panels within the 2022 PSA Annual Conference (#PSA22). The conference is currently planned to be a blend of a physical and digital event taking place online and in York, between 10-13th April 2022 with the theme: “Politics from the Margins”. Full details of the conference, including the current plans for digital-only attendees can be found here.

If you would like to present a paper or organise a panel under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments group, then please submit the relevant form(s), which can be found on our website, to Alexandra and Stephen by Monday 4th October.

We welcome papers from PhD students through to professors and we are fully committed to avoiding manels. 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 Alexandra or Stephen if you come from an ethnic minority background and would like to discuss how your research could be highlighted on our panels.

3. Report on our Survey of the Sub-Discipline

Our report on the findings of the 2021 PSA Parliaments Survey of the Sub-Discipline can now be found on our website.

The survey sought to: (i) identify and map trends in theory and methods across the sub-field of parliamentary and legislative studies; (ii) understand who is undertaking research in this area; and (iii) gain people’s views about how the sub-field could be improved. We received 218 responses from people based in 48 countries.

The report is the first paper in our new PSA Parliaments Working Paper Series. More details about how to publish a working paper with us will be included in a future newsletter.

4. Our Plans for the Year

Thanks to all those who filled in our end-of-year survey over the summer. On the basis of your responses and our reflections on last year, we aim to do the following during the 2021-22 academic year, in addition to our annual conference and our panels at the PSA Annual Conference:

• Instead of the regular monthly virtual panels we ran last year, this year we have decided to run fewer on-line events and make use of different formats. We are planning to hold book launches (our first is detailed below) and one-hour departmental-style seminars (where a single scholar presents a paper), as well as conference-style panels. If you are interested in holding a book launch with us, or presenting a paper either as part of a seminar or a panel, please get in touch.
• We are hoping to help organise a couple of workshops– keep an eye-out for details of the first one in next month’s newsletter!
• We are launching the PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series. Again, more details in next month’s newsletter!
• If we have enough time and resources, we’re also hoping to launch a PSA Parliaments Podcast. The aim of the podcast will be to discuss the academic study of parliaments and legislatures with scholars at various stages of their careers who have expertise in particular areas. If you are a member of the PSA and based in the UK and would like to be involved in this project (or, indeed, take a lead on it), then please get in contact.

5. Goodbye to Gavin

It is with mixed emotions that we are saying goodbye to our communications officer, Gavin. We are very happy that he has secured a lectureship in criminology at Liverpool Hope University but sad that his migration across disciplinary boundaries means that he’ll be focusing his research away from parliamentary studies.

Gavin has been communications officer for us since 2019 and has been brilliant at editing our blog and tweeting our tweets. We will miss him and are frustrated that we never convinced him to play his guitar during one of our zoom meetings.

So, it is with a tear in our eye but with fondness in our heart that we must say goodbye to Gavin… but not before he gets a newly-instituted PSA Parliaments send-off by answering some Urgent Questions!

6. Wanted! Communications Officer

Would you like to be our new Communications Officer?

The role entails editing our blog and running our Twitter account, as well as contributing to the general running of the group. The PSA Parliaments team tends to meet once a month during the academic year with some emailing in the meanwhilst. PSA Parliaments is one of the biggest specialist groups of the PSA and must surely be the friendliest.

If you are interested, or want to discuss the role in more detail, please feel free to contact Alexandra and/or Stephen. To take up the role, you must be a member of the PSA and be based in the UK.

7. Book Launch: Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process

A virtual book launch will be held for the new Routledge collection Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process edited by Sven Siefken and Hilmar Rommetvedt on Wednesday 29th September at 13:00 London Time.

There will be talks by the editors, Philip Norton, and some of the country specialists who contributed chapters.

The event is free but please register here beforehand. All welcome!

The event is co-sponsored by PSA Parliaments and IPSA’s Research Committee of Legislative Specialists.

8. Other Events: SPG Online Seminar on Select Committee Powers

The Study of Parliament Group are holding an online seminar on select committee powers on 16th September 2021 at 19:30.

Full details of the seminar, including how to register, can be found here.

9. Call for Papers: Fifteenth Wroxton College Workshop

The Fifteenth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians will be held on 30th-31st July 2022 at Wroxton College, Near Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK.

Paper proposals (no more than 300 words), plus suggestions for panels and requests for further information, should be sent to Philip Norton by 31st January 2022.

Details of the most recent Workshops, with the topics of papers delivered, can be found on the Workshop’s website.

10. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Mark Bennister has published an article, Navigating three faces of decentred leadership in the UK Parliament, as part of a special issue on decentering leadership in The International Journal of Public Leadership.

Stephen Elstub, David Farrell, Jayne Carrick and Patricia Mockler’s evaluation of Climate Assembly UK, which was commissioned by six House of Commons Select Committees, has been published.

Women, Power, and Political Representation, edited by Roosmarijn de Geus, Erin Tolley, Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant and Peter John Loewen, has been published by University of Toronto Press.

Paul Chaisty and Timothy Power have published an article in Government & Opposition entitled Does Power Always Flow to the Executive? Interbranch Oscillations in Legislative Authority, 1976–2014.

And, finally, new issues Parliamentary Affairs and Representation have been published. The former features special sections on voting age reform in the UK and opposition parties in parliament; the latter is a special issue on parties, electoral systems and political theory.

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

11. Recently on the Blog

We’ve recently published one great blog:

• Parental Leave, ‘Locum MPs’ and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority by Nick Dickinson.

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer (once we have a new one) and, in the interim, Stephen.