Category: News

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.

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

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
2. End-of-Year Survey
3. Recording Available of Our PSA Parliaments Roundtable
4. Call for Papers: Questions of Accountability Conference
5. PSA Report on Career Trajectories in Political Science & International Studies
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 Parliaments 2021 Conference

We are pleased to announce details about our 2021 Annual Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

If circumstances allow, we will be holding a hybrid conference at the University of Birmingham on the 11th and 12th of November 2021.

If circumstances do not allow (and, at the time of writing, we’re still awaiting an update from central PSA), we will be holding a virtual conference on 12th November 2021 only.

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

2. End-of-Year Survey

At the end of a very long, tiring but successful year for PSA Parliaments, please could you take this end-of-year survey about the group and our potential plans for next year.

The survey is very short and should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete. All responses will be anonymous.

3. Recording Available of Our PSA Parliaments Roundtable

The recording of our roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary and legislative studies is now available on YouTube.

If you missed it, the roundtable featured talks by Emma Crewe, Shane Martin and Michelle Taylor-Robinson, as well as a presentation by Caroline Bhattacharya on the results of our recent survey of the sub-discipline.

Recordings of all other presentations made as part of our online conference can also be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.

4. Call for Papers: Questions of Accountability Conference

The University of Worcester and the University of Sheffield are organising a conference/exhibition entitled Questions of Accountability between 1-5 November 2021, full details of which can be found here.

If you would like to propose a paper, event or panel for the conference, perhaps under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments specialist group, then please get in contact with Stephen in the first instance.

5. PSA Report on Career Trajectories in Political Science & International Studiesbs

In case you missed it at the time of release a couple of weeks ago, the PSA and the British International Studies Association co-published a report by Chris Hanretty on career trajectories in UK departments of politics and international relations.

The report brings together data relating to the gender, ethnicity, and other characteristics of those working in Higher Education departments and draws the following conclusions:

• Senior positions in politics and international relations continue to be heavily dominated by white men;
• There is a particular paucity of BAME staff at senior levels in Politics and International Relations departments. The likelihood of BAME staff occupying senior academic ranks is shown to be lower in Politics and International Relations than other social science disciplines;
• Staff from ethnic minorities have a higher risk than their white counterparts of exiting UK Higher education;
• At the current rate of progression, we will not reach gender equality in senior ranks within Politics and International Relations departments until 2045/46.

You can read the PSA’s statement on the report here.

6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Mihail Chiru and Lieven De Winter have published an article, The Allocation of Committee Chairs and the Oversight of Coalition Cabinets in Belgium, in Government & Opposition.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has recently published three reports:

• Doing anti-corruption democratically by Heather Marquette;
• Rethinking strategies for an effective parliamentary role in combatting corruption by Phil Mason; and
• Post-legislative scrutiny of climate and environment legislation: Guide for parliamentary practice by David Hirst.

And, finally, new issues the Journal of Legislative Studies and Legislative Studies Quarterly have 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

We’ve recently published one great blog:

• Cummings on stage: what does it tell us about select committees? by Marc Geddes.

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments Roundtable on the Past, Present and Future of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. (Still) Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Joni Lovenduski
4. PSA Parliaments 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition
5. House of Commons Select Committee Jobs
6. Centre for Security Research Workshop on Parliaments & Security
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 Roundtable on the Past, Present & Future of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies

We are very excited to be hosting a roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary and legislative studies on Wednesday June 9th at 2pm (London time). Our speakers are:

• Emma Crewe
• Shane Martin
• Michelle Taylor-Robinson

The PSA Parliaments team will also be revealing the initial findings of our survey on the sub-discipline, which received over 200 responses, as well as our analysis of publication and citation patterns in sub-disciplinary literature.

This is the last session of this year’s very successful online conference (even if we do say ourselves) and what more can you want from a grand finale?

The roundtable is free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Be there or be square.

Recordings of past presentations, including from last month’s excellent panel on parliaments and social media, can be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.

2. (Still) Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

We are pleased to announce that our next annual Conference will be held on 11-12 November 2021. Our theme will be Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

We had hoped to be able to provide full details of the conference in this newsletter but we’re still awaiting guidance from central PSA about holding in-person events, etc.

As such, for the time being, please just make a note of the dates in your diaries and hopefully we’ll be able to announce more details next month.

3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Joni Lovunduski

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Joni Lovenduski is the sixth interviewee for our feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.

Please visit our website now to find out about her love of Italy, why she likes The Irishman, and what she learnt while working in a jewellers!

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

4. The PSA Parliaments 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition

There is still time to enter your undergraduate students into our 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition!

Given the extraordinary circumstances of this academic year, we are extending our entry criteria to include any essay or assignment related to parliaments or legislatures (with a maximum word count of 4,000 words) and pushing our deadline back to 5pm, Wednesday 30th June 2021.

The winner will receive a prize of £100 and the runner-up £50, with both prizes being awarded at our 2021 PSA Parliaments conference this autumn.

Do you have a student who has produced an excellent piece of work on parliaments this year? Please submit your entry to Alexandra (all entrants must be nominated by a lecturer or seminar tutor (i.e. no self-nominations) and all entries must be made by a PSA Parliaments member).

5. House of Commons Select Committee Jobs

Two select committee jobs have recently been advertised: Director of Select Committee Scrutiny & Analysis; and Director of Select Committee Communications and Engagement.

Please see here and here for full details.

6. Centre for Security Research Workshop on Parliaments & Security

The Centre for Security Research at the University of Edinburgh is organising an online workshop on the 23rd and 24th June 2021 on the topic of Parliaments and Security.

While parliaments’ roles in security have often been neglected in practice and in scholarship, the importance of parliaments in security has received significant attention in recent years. This online workshop will take stock of the current understanding of parliaments and security, showcase cutting-edge work in this area, and set an agenda for future research. The invited papers in the workshop reflect on this broad theme from multiple perspectives and across a diverse range of specific topics.

We welcome attendance by others who are not already presenting and on the program.

For full details of the workshop and panels, please see here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Emma Crewe has published a book, The Anthropology of Parliaments: Entanglements in Democratic Politics, with Taylor and Francis.

Moritz Osnabrugge, Sara Hobolt and Toni Rodon have published an article, Playing to the Gallery: Emotive Rhetoric in Parliaments in the American Political Science Review.

Matthew Shugart, Matthew Bergman, Cory Struthers, Ellis Krauss and Robert Pekkanen have published a book, Party Personnel Strategies: Electoral Systems and Parliamentary Committee Assignments, with Oxford University Press.

A new issue of Parliamentary Affairs has 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

This month we’ve published two great blogs:

• Who are the ‘unsung heroes’ of Westminster? Results from a survey of MPs staff by Rebecca McKee.
• You are Unmuted: the Impact of Hybrid Proceedings on MPs Participation during the Pandemic by Wang Leung Ting.

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

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

1. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
3. Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
4. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
5. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with David Judge
6. Launch of the 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition
7. New Overview of the New Zealand Parliament Added to Our Website
8. Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Opportunity
9. Events: Bingham Lecture by Dr Hannah White & Talk by Philip Norton on Governing Britain
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. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies

We have already received over 200 responses to our survey on research in parliamentary and legislative studies.

The purpose of the survey is to map the sub-discipline and to identify any trends and absences.

If you haven’t filled it in yet, there is still plenty of time. The survey will remain open until the end of May.

We will be presenting the initial findings at 2pm on Wednesday 9th June 2021 as part of our roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary studies. Book your ticket now!

2. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies

Our online panel is back after a well earned rest on Wednesday May 12th at 2pm.

For our penultimate panel of the year, we’ll be focusing on innovations in theory and method in parliamentary studies and our speakers are:

• James Strong on “Studying parliament’s past to understand its future”;
• Stephen Holden Bates on “Re-structuring parliamentary roles”;
• Caroline Bhattacharya on “New methodological approaches to party unity and discursive contestation”; and
• Felicity Matthews on “The Democratic Ecology of Parliamentary e-Petitions: A Case Study of the UK Petitions Committee Online Abuse Inquiry”

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Recordings of past presentations, including from last month’s excellent panel on parliaments and social media, can be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.

3. Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

We are pleased to announce that our next annual Conference will be held on 11-12 November 2021. Our theme will be Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

Full details of the conference and how to submit papers will be included in next month’s newsletter but, for the time being, please make a note of the dates in your diaries.

4. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21

This year’s PSA annual conference may have been held virtually but, as in previous years, we were delighted to host a fantastic programme of PSA Parliament panels, featuring exceptional research on parliaments and legislatures. With all four of our panels scheduled for Monday 29 March, we enjoyed a jam-packed day of parliamentary delights.

The day started with three fascinating papers covering Questions, content, and language in parliamentary proceedings. The paper givers (Mia McGraith Burns, Mark Shephard, Sebastian Ludwicki-Ziegler, Daniel Braby and Sylvia Shaw) shared their research on the Scottish and UK Parliaments, covering issues including the topic of questions at PMQs and FMQs and the impact of the hybrid Parliament in Westminster.

Our second panel Representation and diversity in the legislature featured four excellent papers exploring topics including baby leave in the House of Commons, inductions for new MPs in Westminster and Ottawa, use of Twitter by MPs, and the backgrounds of members of the House of Lords. Thanks to our paper-givers on this panel: Sarah Childs, Louise Cockram, Daniel Braby, Marius Sältzer, David Parker, Allison Reinhardt and Sheridan Johnson.

Next we explored the impact of Covid-19 with a panel on Parliaments and the Pandemic, featuring two papers exploring how the move to the hybrid House of Commons affected participation among older MPs (Wang Ling Teung) and those from smaller parties (Louise Thompson, Alexandra Meakin).

Our final panel of the day included a bumper five papers examining Parliamentary relations and powers. Inter-parliamentary relations, the relationship between parliaments and anti-corruption agencies, parliamentary impact on legislation and minority government were all explored by Margaret Arnott, Andrew Jones, Steven MacGregor, Tom Fleming, and Franklin De Vrieze.

We’re very grateful to all of our paper-givers for taking the time to share their research (we especially appreciated the Montana contingent joining us at 4.15am!). Thank you all so much.

Huge thanks also go to everyone who attended each panel and asked great questions to the panels. While the online conference platform had some challenges, it is a tribute to everyone involved that each panel still featured a stimulating conversation.

We can’t wait to get back to the great atmosphere of our PSA conference panels in person in York next year. We hope to see you then!

5. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with David Judge

We are very pleased to announce that Professor David Judge is the fifth interviewee for our new feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.

Please visit our website now to find out about his achievements in eating biscuits, why he thought (and hoped) he might get sacked as Head of Department, and who his musical guilty pleasure is!

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

6. Launch of the 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition

We’re delighted to launch our 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition!

Given the extraordinary circumstances of this academic year, we are extending our entry criteria to include any essay or assignment related to parliaments or legislatures (with a maximum word count of 4,000 words) and pushing our deadline back to 5pm, Wednesday 30th June 2021.

The winner will receive a prize of £100 and the runner-up £50, with both prizes being awarded at our 2021 PSA Parliaments conference this autumn.

Do you have a student who has produced an excellent piece of work on parliaments this year? Please submit your entry to Alexandra (all entrants must be nominated by a lecturer or seminar tutor (i.e. no self-nominations) and all entries must be made by a PSA Parliaments member).

7. New Overview of New Zealand Parliament Added to Our Website

We have recently added a new overview to our website.

Many thanks to William Horncastle for his overview of the New Zealand Parliament!

If you would like to write an overview for one of the countries or jurisdictions not covered on our maps, then please get in touch.

8. Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Opportunity

The Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology is looking for a Parliamentary Academic Fellow to undertake a global landscape analysis of organisations around the world providing science advice to parliaments.

Full details of the fellowship and how to apply can be found here.

9.Events: Bingham Lecture by Dr Hannah White & Talk by Philip Norton on Governing Britain

This year’s Bingham lecture will be given by Dr Hannah White, Deputy Director at the Institute of Government.

The lecture is entitled Against the clock: Brexit, COVID-19 and the constitution and will take place at 5pm on May 18th 2021.

Full details of the lecture can be found here.

Hosted by the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull, Lord Norton of Louth (Philip Norton) will be talking to Dr Elizabeth Monaghan about his new book Governing Britain on Wednesday 5th May at 2pm.

Full details of the talk can be found here.

10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

The Parliamentary Monitoring Group, an information service, was established in South Africa in 1995 with the aim of providing a type of Hansard for the proceedings of the more than fifty South African Parliamentary Committees. Full details of its research outputs can be found here.

Stephen Elstub and colleagues have published a series of reports on some mini-publics either run, or commissioned, by the UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament.

• Elstub, S. & Carrick, J. (2020) Comparing Mini-Publics in the Scottish Parliament, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
• Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019) Evaluation of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizens’ Jury on Land Management and the Natural Environment, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
• Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019) Evaluation of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizens’ Panels on Primary Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
• Elstub, S. and Carrick, J. (2019) Evaluation of the Citizens’ Assembly on the Inquiry of Long-Term Funding of Adult Social Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University.

The first issue of the new International Journal of Parliamentary Studies has been published, including this cheeky little number on parliamentary roles.

A new issue of Representation has been published.

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

11. Recently on the Blog

Our blog is back and this month we’ve published:

• Calmed waters by a missed boat by Ray Snoddy.
• The Public Engagement Journey by Cristina Leston-Bandeira
• Parliaments’ Power in Authoritarian Regimes by Felix Wiebrecht

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

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

1. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
3. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Sarah Childs
5. New Overviews of Parliaments Added to our Website
6. Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies
7. EUGenDem Parliamentary Ethnography Workshop & Book Launch
8. Jobs & PhD Opportunities!
9. Petition: Save Kingston Politics Department
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. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies

We have already received over 150 responses to our survey on research in parliamentary and legislative studies.

The purpose of the survey is to map the sub-discipline and to identify any trends and absences.

If you haven’t filled it in yet, there is still plenty of time. The survey will remain open until the end of May.

We will be presenting the initial findings at 2pm on Wednesday 9th June 2021 as part of our roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary studies. Book your ticket now!

2. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21

PSA Parliaments had a very successful time at the annual PSA Conference, even if we do say so ourselves!

We organised four excellent panels on parliaments and the pandemic, representation and diversity, parliamentary relations and powers, and questions, content and language in parliamentary proceedings.

A full report will be produced for next month’s newsletter.

3. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies

Due to the PSA Annual Conference and the Easter Holidays, our online panel is taking a well earned break this month. Don’t worry though – we’ll be back on Wednesday May 12th at 2pm.

For our penultimate panel of the year, we’ll be focusing on innovations in theory and method in parliamentary studies and our speakers are:

• James Strong on “Studying parliament’s past to understand its future”;
• Stephen Holden Bates on “Re-structuring parliamentary roles”;
• Caroline Bhattacharya on “New methodological approaches to party unity and discursive contestation”; and
• Felicity Matthews on “The Democratic Ecology of Parliamentary e-Petitions: A Case Study of the UK Petitions Committee Online Abuse Inquiry”

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Recordings of past presentations, including from last month’s excellent panel on parliaments and social media, can be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.

4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Sarah Childs

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Sarah Childs is the fourth interviewee for our new feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.

Please visit our website now to find out about her job in an industrial laundry, whether she’s a Hotspur or a Gooner, and whether she’ll be the first respondent not to say that the Palace of Westminster is their favourite building!

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

5. New Overviews of Parliaments Added to our Website

We have recently added three new overviews of parliaments to our website.

Many thanks to Mark Egan, Roberto Cabrera-Tapia, and Andreja Pegan & Alenka Krašovec for their respective overviews of Jersey, Chile and Slovenia.

If you would like to write an overview for one of the countries or jurisdictions not covered on our maps, then please get in touch.

6. Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies

PSA Parliaments have organised a webinar for prospective PhD students who are interested in parliamentary and legislative studies. The webinar will take place at 2pm on Monday April 19th 2021.

More details, and how to sign up, can be found here.

Please spread the word to any undergraduate and MA students you may know!

7. EUGenDem Parliamentary Ethnography Workshop & Book Launch

Our good friends at EUGenDem are holding their last spring workshop on parliamentary ethnography, featuring talks by Emma Crewe and Sarah Childs.

The workshop will be followed by a book launch of Cherry Miller’s monograph Gendering the Everyday in the UK House of Commons: Beneath the Spectacle, which is based on her prize-winning thesis. The book will be introduced by the author herself and then discussed by Marc Geddes (late of this parish).

Full details of the workshop and book launch can be found here.

8. Jobs & PhD Opportunities!

Lectureships at the University of Birmingham

The Department of Political Science & International Studies at the University of Birmingham is advertising several positions at lecturer and senior lecturer level.

It’s an open call, although the department would particularly welcome applications from those working in the areas of Representation, Accountability and Democracy; Race and Ethnicity; Gender; and Data and Technology.

Full details can be found here of how to apply to work in a friendly, intellectually-vibrant department in the best city in the world where the sun always shines (OK, that’s enough now – Ed.).

Policy Analyst, Lords Constitution Committee

The House of Lords Constitution Select Committee is hiring a policy analyst.

Full details can be found here.

PhD scholarships at the Centre for Democratic Engagement, University of Leeds

The Centre for Democratic Engagement invites applications from motivated students with PhD proposals reflecting our areas of expertise in advance of upcoming scholarship deadlines.

Information on how to apply is here.

The Centre for Democratic Engagement is able to support candidates for both University-funded Leeds Doctoral Scholarships and the School’s own Politics of Global Challenges Doctoral Scholarships:

Please direct informal queries to Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira.

9. Petition: Save Kingston Politics Department

The Politics & IR department at Kingston University is under threat of closure.

Please see here for a joint statement by PSA, BISA and UACES on the risks to the study of Politics and International Relations and please see here for a petition to save the department, which, at the time of writing, had already received over 1,700 signatures.

10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

James Strong has published an article in Parliamentary Studies called “Did Theresa May Kill the War Powers Convention? Comparing Parliamentary Debates on UK Intervention in Syria in 2013 and 2018”.

David Judge has recently published two articles: “Walking the dark side: evading parliamentary scrutiny” in Political Quarterly, and “Why it matters to keep asking why legislatures matter” with Cristina Leston-Bandeira in the Journal of Legislative Studies.

Cherry Miller’s article “Parliamentary ethnography and feminist institutionalism: gendering institutions – but how?” has been published on fast track by the European Journal of Politics & Gender.

Jorge Fernandes, Thomas Saalfeld and Carsten Schwemmer have published an article on the politics of select committee assignments in the British House of Commons in Legislative Studies Quarterly.

Jessica Smith (with Sarah Childs)has published a report Remotely Representative Parliament: Lesson Learning from the Hybrid Parliament with the Centenary Action Group and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

A new issue of Legislative Studies Quarterly has been published.

And, finally, not a publication but our co-convenor, Alexandra Meakin, appeared on Today in Parliament to talk about the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster.

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

11. Recently on the Blog

Our blog is still taking a breather but we’ll hopefully be back in April.

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. PSA Parliaments Panel on Analysing Representation
3. PSA21: Register Now!
4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Michael Rush
5. Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies
6. Upcoming Events: Diversity Sensitive Parliaments Seminar & EUGenDem Workshops
7. Jobs in Poland and the University of Cambridge
8. Call for Chapters: Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power
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 Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies

We are very pleased to announce the launch of our survey on research in parliamentary and legislative studies.

The purpose of the survey is to map the sub-discipline and to identify any trends and absences.

We encourage all our members who undertake research on (any aspect of) parliaments and legislatures to fill it in.

We will be presenting the initial findings at 2pm on Wednesday 9th June 2021 as part of our roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary studies. Book your ticket now!

2. PSA Parliaments Panel on Analysing Representation

Acting as a scholarly oasis in the arid dessert of pandemic-ridden UK academia, this month’s PSA Parliaments panel is at 2pm on Wednesday 10th March.

We’ll be focusing on representation and our speakers are:

• Rebecca McKee on “Who works for MPs? Representation in the House of Commons”
• Sardar Aziz on “Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament: stuck in the middle”
• Wang Leung Ting on “Professional Representation: The Effects of Prior Occupation on MPs’ Attention on Policies”
• Fotis Fitsilis on “Digital Tools to Bridge the Representation Gap”

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Recordings of past presentations, including from last month’s excellent panel on parliaments and social media, can be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.

3. PSA21: Register Now!

There are only four weeks to go until the start of the Political Studies Association Annual International Conference, PSA21, which will be taking place virtually this year.

We have four fantastic panels for you, featuring cutting edge research on parliaments and legislatures from around the world.

Take a look at our updated papers and panels list and register now!

4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Michael Rush

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Michael Rush is the third interviewee for our new feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.

Please visit our website now to find out the reason why the Public Accounts Committee features in his greatest disappointments, why there is only one way to eat a scone, and whether he’ll be the first respondent not to say that the Palace of Westminster is their favourite building!

We must also apologise to last month’s interviewee, Christine Leston-Bandeira, for including a wrong link to her answers in last month’s newsletter. To read her answers, please click on this link.

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

5. Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies

PSA Parliaments have organised a webinar for prospective PhD students who are interested in parliamentary and legislative studies.

The webinar will take place on Monday 19th April at 2pm and the panel features Margaret Arnott, Sarah Childs and Marc Geddes.

More details, and how to sign up, can be found here.

Please spread the word to any undergraduate and MA students you may know!

6. Upcoming Events: Diversity Sensitive Parliaments Seminar & EUGenDem Workshops

The Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre at London Metropolitan University is running a seminar on Diversity Sensitive Parliaments on Wednesday March 24th 2021.

More details, including how to register, can be found here.

The EUGenDem project is organising two virtual workshops in March as part of its series on Gender, democracy and polarized politics in Europe.

1. Gendering Representative Institutions: Actors, Inner Lives, and Political Struggles on 12 March 2021 at 11am (Eastern European Time);
2. Democratic backsliding in Europe and the opposition to gender equality on 17 March 2021 at 11am (Eastern European Time).

Please click on the titles above for full details of the workshops, including how to register.

7. Jobs in Poland and at the University of Cambridge

The Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Wrocław, Poland, is seeking to appoint a full-time postdoctoral researcher for the research project “Democracy in pandemic times: towards a decline or a new form of representative democracy? (PANDEMO)”.

More details about the postdoc, including how to apply, can be found here.

The Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge is seeking a Research Assistant/Associate to support a research project led by Professor Michael Kenny, exploring the British state’s approach to devolution across the UK since 1999, and contemporary pressures upon the domestic union in the wake of Brexit and Covid-19.

More details about the position, including how to apply, can be found here.

8. Call for Chapters: Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power

Jonathan Chibois (IIAC, France) and Samuel Shapiro (Université Laval, Canada) are planning to publish an edited collection entitled Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power: The Example of Deliberative Bodies.

The aim of the book will be to examine the methodological and epistemological challenges of field research in centres of power. The editors are seeking contributions from both young and experienced researchers, from all continents, as well as from different academic disciplines.

Full details of the edited collection, including how to submit your proposal for a chapter can be found here.

9. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has recently published two reports, both by Franklin De Vrieze and Luka Glušac.

1. Combatting corruption capably: An assessment framework for parliament’s interaction with anti-corruption agencies;
2. It’s complicated: Parliament’s relationship with anti-corruption agencies in Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Maldives.

And a new issue of both the Journal of Legislative Studies has 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

Our blog is taking a breather while we do some homeschooling and catch up with the extra marking and teaching preparation that has been foisted upon us because of UK Higher Education’s masterful response to the pandemic.

We’ll hopefully be back in March firing on all cylinders!

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments Panel on Analysing Legislative Scrutiny & Behaviour
2. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Cristina Leston-Bandeira
3. New Constitution Unit Report on Control of Parliamentary Time
4. UK Study of Parliament Group Publication on Parliaments and the Pandemic
5. Book Launch: Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny
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 Parliaments Panel on Analysing Legislative Scrutiny & Behaviour

Acting as an intellectual beacon in the desolation and darkness of pandemic-ridden UK academia, this month’s PSA Parliaments panel is at 2pm on Wednesday 10th February.

We’ll be focusing on the impact of legislative scrutiny and behaviour and our speakers are:

• Nokwazi Makanya on “Progress in parliamentary ‘power over the purse’: the case of South Africa”;
• Andrew Jones on “Managing coalition government in an upper house: testing the ‘keeping tabs’ theory in the House of Lords 2010-15”;
• Jack Sheldon on “Standing up for the nations and regions? Patterns of sub-state territorial representation in the UK House of Commons, 1992-2019”; and
• Margaret Arnott on “Interparliamentary Relations in the Devolved UK – Democratic Scrutiny & Accountability”.

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Recordings of past presentations, including from last month’s excellent panel on parliaments and social media, can be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.

2. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Cristina Leston-Bandeira

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira is the second interviewee for our new feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.

Hurry over to our website now to find out what she looked like as a small child, what style of ballroom dancing she prefers, and the reason she left Portugal for Hull!

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

3. New Constitution Unit Report on Control of Parliamentary Time

The Constitution Unit have published a new report by Meg Russell and Daniel Gover called Taking Back Control. The report argues that the House of Commons should govern its own time, and makes proposals for wresting such control from government.

More details, and the full report, can be found here.

4. UK Study of Parliament Group Publication on Parliaments and the Pandemic

The UK Study of Parliament Group (SPG) has published a collection of essays reflecting on the experience of parliaments in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020. The essays examine how parliaments innovated and adapted their working practices to cope with the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, and also consider the impact of COVID-19 on their ability to fulfil their roles of legislating, facilitating debate and holding government to account.

The essays focus mainly on Westminster and the UK’s devolved legislatures but also document the experience of the Crown dependencies and the New Zealand and Bahrain legislatures.

More details, and the collection of essays, can be found here.

5. Book Launch: Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy are hosting a panel discussion on Post-Legislative Scrutiny to help launch the book Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny, published by Routledge, and edited by Franklin De Vrieze and Lord Norton.

Panellists will discuss the key principles and practices of this innovative practice, sharing lessons from their own experience.

The event is co-hosted by Agora, the University of Hull, and your very own friendly neighbourhood PSA specialist group, PSA Parliaments.

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

6. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Andrew Gamble has published an intellectual memoir of Michael Moran, who died in 2018 and whose work will be familiar to many of us.

New issues of both Parliamentary Affairs and Government and Opposition have been published.

And finally for this month, Lucy Kinski has published a new book European Representation in EU National Parliaments as part of the Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics book series.

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

7. Recently on the Blog

Thanks, once again, for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:

PMQs: quieter and more civilised but not more accountable by Stephane Revillet

Why it’s difficult to interview MPs – and how best to do it anyway by Philip Cowley

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

We hope that you are keeping safe and well and that 2021 is going to be, in general, better than 2020. We have a lot of updates for you:

1. PSA Parliaments Panel on the Impact of Digital Technologies and Social Media on Parliaments
2. PSA Parliaments Panels at PSA Annual Conference, Belfast
3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Philip Norton
4. Women in Legislative Studies Initiative
5. Request for Help on Research Project about MPs and Parliamentary Party Groups
6. Volunteers Needed for Prospective Parliamentary Studies PhD Students Webinar
7. Call for Papers: ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck
8. Nominations Wanted for PSA Prizes
9. PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel
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 Panel on the Impact of Digital Technologies and Social Media on Parliaments

What better way can there be to start 2021 than by attending the third panel of our Online Annual Conference at 2pm on Wednesday 13th January?

We’ll be focusing on the impact of digital technologies and social media on parliaments and our speakers are:

• Ben Worthy and Stefani Langehennig on “Who is monitoring Parliament?”;
• John Bryden on “How does Facebook influence parliament?”;
• Sue Griffiths, Greg Power and Emily Death on “International approaches to virtual parliaments”; and
• Abel François, Benjamin Monnery and Olivier Rozenberg on “Members of Parliament go back to school: A natural experiment of relative performance feedback and parliamentary activities in the French Parliament”.

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

2. PSA Parliaments Panels at PSA Annual Conference, Belfast

We are very pleased to announce details of our five panels at the PSA Annual Conference.

This year the conference is taking place online between the 29th and 31st March.

Registration is now open. We look forward to seeing you virtually!

3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Philip Norton

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Philip Lord Norton of Louth is the very first interviewee for our new feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.

Hurry over to our website now to find out who the most important people have been in Philip’s career, in which country he had a four-man bodyguard, and whether he prefers trains, planes or automobiles!

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

4. Women in Legislative Studies Initiative

A new initiative has been launched called Women in Legislative Studies.

The group is for women and non-binary scholars who have or are pursuing a PhD in political science (or related field) who research legislative politics broadly defined. Their mission statement is: “To engage, support, and promote women who study legislative politics”.

More details about the group and how to join can be found at their website.

5. Request for Help on Research Project about MPs and Parliamentary Party Groups

Prof. Gidi Rahat (Hebrew University) and Dr Chen Friedberg (Israel Democracy Institute) are undertaking some research on the roles of MPs and parliamentary party groups. As part of this project, they are running a questionnaire and are seeking a country expert to complete it on the UK.

If you are knowledgeable about parliamentary party groups in the UK Parliament and are interested in taking part in the research project, then please contact Chen directly.

6. Volunteers Needed for Prospective Parliamentary Studies PhD Students Webinar

PSA Parliaments are hoping to run one or two webinars during 2021 aimed at prospective PhD students who are interested in studying parliamentary studies at doctoral level.

If you would like to be on the panel offering advice and answering questions, please email Stephen.

We are particularly interested in recruiting current PhD students as panel volunteers, especially those who come from backgrounds under-represented in both the sub-discipline and political science more broadly. All volunteers who are PhD students will be paid for their time.

7. Call for Papers: ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck

The call for panels and papers for the next ECPR General Conference in Innsbruck (31 August-3 September 2021) is now online.

The ECPR Standing Group of Parliaments is happy to endorse the section “Parliaments under Pressure: Advances and Challenges in Parliamentary Research”. Please see here for more information.

If you would like to organise a panel or present a paper, please submit proposals through the webpage. The deadline for panel & paper proposals is February 10th 2021.

8. Nominations Wanted for PSA Prizes

The PSA are seeking nominations for their various prizes. Please consider nominating someone by the deadline of January 18th.

We are not going to nominate ourselves for best specialist group because of the comparative lull in activity during the pandemic. However, we are going to go all out to win it in 2022!

9. PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel

PSA Parliaments now has its own YouTube Channel where you can catch up with all the presentations from our online conference, including from last month’s excellent panel on analysing PMQs.

10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Following on from theme of our second on-line conference panel, two articles have recently been published on PMQs and holding Prime Ministers to account.

Ruxandra Serban’s article “How are prime ministers held to account? Exploring procedures and practices in 31 parliamentary democracies” has been published in the Journal of Legislative Studies, as has Alan Convery, Pavielle Haines, James Mitchell and David Parker’s article “Questioning scrutiny: the effect of Prime Minister’s Questions on citizen efficacy and trust in parliament”.

An interesting new dataset can be discovered via the pages of Government and Opposition. Tobias Remschel and Corinna Kroeber have published “Every Single Word: A New Data Set Including All Parliamentary Materials Published in Germany”.

And finally for this month, Michelle Caplan, Nicole McMahon and Christopher Alcantara have published “Representing the Constituency: Institutional Design and Legislative Behaviour”.

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

11. Recently on the Blog

Thanks, once again, for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:

Parliaments and COVID-19: principles and practice; challenges and opportunities by Meg Russell

Parliaments and Peacebuilding by Rosie Frost

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments Panel on Prime Minister’s Questions
2. Roundtable on the Past, Present and Future of Parliamentary Studies
3. PSA Parliaments Conference YouTube Playlist
4. Other Events: EUGenDem Series of Online Workshops
5. Congratulations!
6. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
7. Coming Soon on the Blog

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

We hope you’re able to have a relaxing and restful time over Christmas and the New Year and, if you’re unable to make our panel on PMQs this month, we look forward to seeing you, hopefully in person, at some point during 2021.

1. PSA Parliaments Online Panel on Prime Minister’s Questions

A quick reminder that the second panel of our Online Annual Conference is at 2pm on Wednesday 16th December. We’ll be focusing on analysing PMQs and our speakers are:

• Stephane Revillet on “PMQs: Quieter and more civilized but not more accountable”;
• Mia McGraith Burns and Mark Shephard on “Issue ownership vs wave-riding: an evaluation of priority congruence between political parties and the public in questions to the Prime Minister”; and
• Mark Shephard and Daniel Braby on “Bringing in the constituents: do MPs use PMQs to refer to their constituents, and does the electoral context of constituencies help to explain this?”

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Tickets are selling faster than hot cakes so you’d better hurry, hurry, hurry if you don’t want to miss out!

Full details of the other conference panels can be found on our website.

2. Save the Date! Roundtable on the Past, Present and Future of Parliamentary Studies

We have added an extra panel to our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference. On the 9th June 2021, we are holding a roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary studies and we have some very special guest speakers:

• Prof. Emma Crewe (SOAS, University of London);
• Prof. Shane Martin (University of Essex); and
• Prof. Michelle Taylor-Robinson (Texas A&M University)

This promises to be an excellent way to end our conference and celebrate getting to the end of a very difficult academic year. You can book your tickets here.

3. PSA Parliaments Conference YouTube Playlist

If, for some reason, you missed the first panel of our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference, then you can now watch the papers on our PSA Parliaments Conference YouTube Playlist.

Papers from subsequent panels will be added throughout the year. 

4. Other Events

Starting in December 2020, the EUGenDem team are organising a series of online workshops for both academics and practitioners to debate ‘Gender, democracy and polarized politics in Europe’.

The first workshop ‘European Parliament’s political groups in turbulent times: New research avenues’ will take place on 15 December 2020 at 3PM (EET) on Zoom and feature some key research coming out of the EUGenDem project. The speakers are:

• Johanna Kantola: Gender and democracy in European Parliament’s party group practices
• Valentine Berthet, Anna Elomäki, and Barbara Gaweda: Political dynamics, power struggles, and intra-group policy formation in the European Parliament
• Cherry Miller: ‘Ethno, ethno, what?’ How Parliamentary Ethnography can help us to better understand Parliament’s Political Groups

See here for more details and to register.

The workshop sessions in 2021 will include talks by key scholars working on the European Parliament; gendered parliaments; democratic backsliding; gender policy issues; impacts of Covid-19 on parliamentary politics and gender policy; and parliamentary ethnography.  The full program can be found here.

5. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Edward Elgar have published a new Handbook of Parliamentary Studies, edited by Cyril Benoît and Olivier Rozenberg.

When buying the Handbook from the Edward Elgar website, members of the PSA Parliaments specialist group can receive a 35% discount by applying the discount code PARL35 before checkout (yet more proof of why it pays to be part of your friendly neighbourhood specialist group).

A new issue of Legislative Studies Quarterly has been published.

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

6. Congratulations!

Congratulations to PSA Parliaments member, Tom Caygill, who has secured a lectureship in politics at the Department of Social & Political Sciences at Nottingham Trent University!

7. Coming soon on the Blog!

The blog has been taking a little break this month. It’s nothing to worry about. We just need to regain some poise after all the excitement of providing an excellent blended learning experience in a Covid-secure educational environment.

We’re going to be back in December with a vengeance so please keep an eye out for blogs on some of the papers from our first conference panel on the impact of Covid-19 on parliaments.

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer, Gavin Hart, or message us on Twitter.

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

1. PSA Parliaments Panel on Covid-19
2. PSA Annual Conference update
3. Other Events
4. Call for Papers
5. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
6. Recently on the Blog

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

Best wishes

Stephen (@Stephen_R_Bates), Alexandra (@A_Meakin), Seán (@S_Haughey), Gavin (@GavinHart10) and Caroline (@CarolineBha)

1. PSA Parliaments Online Panel on the Impact of Covid-19 on Parliaments

A quick reminder that the first panel of our Online Annual Conference is at 2pm on Wednesday 11th November.We’ll be focusing on how COVID-19 has impacted on parliaments and our speakers are:

• Meg Russell on “The principles and practice of parliamentary functioning post-COVID-19: challenges and opportunities”;
• Philip Norton on “Parliaments and informal space: the unseen impact of crisis”;
• Dalila Maulide on “Inter-parliamentary cooperation in times of pandemics”; and
• Kuffour Nimako Anning on “The past, present and future debates of Ghana’s parliament: making it possible amidst COVID-19”

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Tickets are selling faster than hot cakes so you’d better hurry, hurry, hurry if you don’t want to miss out!

Full details of the other conference panels can be found on our website.

2. 2021 PSA Annual Conference Update

Thank you to everyone who has submitted paper and panel proposals for our Specialist Group panels at next year’s PSA Conference. We were really impressed with the standard and number of proposals we received, including papers on a diverse range of subjects and legislatures. Our draft panels have been submitted to the PSA and we are currently sending out notifications of acceptance. We will confirm details of panels and dates/times once confirmed by the conference convenors – reminder that the conference will now be taking place entirely online. Thank you again and we look forward to a great selection of panels next year.

3. Other Events

The Constitution Unit are holding a webinar, Constitutional Reform, Then and Now, on Tuesday 3rd November at 18.00.

Speakers include Jack Straw, Professor Francesca Klug OBE, and David Gauke.

More details here.  
 

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The Centre for Political Ethnomethodology at the University of Southampton are hosting a talk by Marc Geddes (Edinburgh) about his book, Dramas at Westminster, on Thursday 5th November at 13.00.

More details here.
 

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The first conference event of the Parliaments Buildings Conference is taking place on the 12th and 13th of November. 

More details here.

4. Calls for Papers

European Conference of Politics and Gender, hosted by the University of Ljubljana (7-9 July 2021)

A timely section: ‘Parliaments, governments and parties as gendered organisations’, at the bi-annual European Conference of Politics and Gender, warmly welcomes panels and paper submissions.

Further information on the CfP can be found here. The deadline for panel and paper proposals is 8th December 2020.

For any questions about the section, please do get in contact with the section co-chairs, Michal Smrek (Uppsala University, Sweden), Josefina Erikson (Uppsala University, Sweden), or Cherry Miller (Tampere University, Finland).
 

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3rd Annual UK Political Psychology Conference (11-15 Jan 2021)
 
This year’s annual political psychology conference will take place virtually and will draw on best practice in its use of both synchronous and asynchronous content. This year, we invite abstracts on any of the following:
 
1.Political attitudes, beliefs and ideology;
2.Political elites and leadership;
3.Conflict and security;
4.Government and governance;
5.Emotions;
6.Populism and the people;
7.Political psychology of inequalities.
8. Methods
 
The conference will take place over the course of one week (11th-15th January 2021). Successful applicants will be required to provide a pre-recorded presentation; there will then be live roundtable discussions amongst the panellists with opportunities for audience Q&A. This format has been purposefully designed to maximize the accessibility of the conference for potential delegates, whilst allowing for more detailed and informative debate amongst presenters in the live sessions.
 
Submissions should contain an abstract of no more than 200 words, a brief professional biography of the presenter, and contact details. Deadline for submissions is midday on Friday 27th November.
 
Submissions should be sent electronically via email to the convenor in charge of your desired section. Please send your submission to either: Dr Raynee Gutting (raynee.gutting@essex.ac.uk – political attitudes); Dr James Weinberg (james.weinberg@sheffield.ac.uk – political elites); Dr Tereza Capelos (T.Capelos@bham.ac.uk – conflict); Dr Ben Seyd (B.J.Seyd@kent.ac.uk – governance); Donatella Bonansinga (d.bonansinga@pgr.bham.ac.uk – emotions);Dr Kesi Mahendran (kesi.mahendran@open.ac.uk – populism) or Dr Ashley Weinberg (a.weinberg@salford.ac.uk – inequalities). If you would like to present on the methods panel, please email Dr Todd Hartman (t.k.hartman@sheffield.ac.uk).

5. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Louise Thompson’s book The end of the small party? Change UK and the challenges of parliamentary politics has been published with Manchester University Press.

A new issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies has been published.

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

6. Recently on the Blog

Thanks, once again, for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:

• From anti-terrorism legislation to COVID emergency laws: Can sunset clauses live up to their promise? by Franklin De Vrieze and Sean Molloy
• Braking the law: Is there, and should there be, an executive veto over laws made by parliament? by Paul Evans
• How did parliamentary procedure change while Theresa May was Prime Minister? by Thomas Fleming

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer, Gavin Hart, or message us on Twitter.