Marc Geddes provides us with an overview of some important findings from his research into select committees. In this blog he discusses how committees collate and examine evidence to support their deliberations and to effect scrutiny.
Tag: legislative studies
Victoria Hasson and Graeme Ramshaw of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy discuss party-parliament nexus points using the South African Democratic Alliance Party as an empirical case-study.
How do the national parliaments of France and the UK assess the impact of the legislation they have adopted? In this article, Franklin De Vrieze compares the role of parliamentary committees and the outcome of the legislative impact assessments in both countries. It is based on the recent Westminster Foundation for Democracy publication, Post-Legislative Scrutiny in Europe.
Ben Worthy and Stefani Langehennig discuss their Leverhulme funded project on monitory democracy. The blog outlines some of the key implications for scrutiny of political representatives and the manner in which monitoring mechanisms are used in the arena of democratic conflict.
Alex Prior (University of East Anglia) and Cristina Leston-Bandeira (Leeds) discuss the potential for parliamentary story-telling to reach new audiences and to promote wider public engagement.
Dr Mark Bennister of the University of Lincoln provides an incisive account of last week’s Liaison Committee. The piece considers the quality of scrutiny and the effectiveness of the Prime Minister’s performance during the session.
Jonathan Chibois of EHESS discusses recent technological innovations in the French National Assembly within the context of longer, historical trends in parliamentary reform.
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The Senate of Canada: Coming of a New Age?
Matt Williams of Jesus College, Oxford provides a fascinating overview of the effects of Trudeau’s reforms in the Canadian Senate.
In 2014, Justin Trudeau disbanded the Liberal caucus of Senators in Canada’s upper house. On becoming Prime Minister, in 2015, he appointed independent Senators on recommendations of a non-partisan body. More than half of Senators (58/103 in 2019) are now independents. In this blog, I will assess what observable effects, if any, reform has wrought on the Senate’s representativeness (Pitkin 1967), independent-mindedness (Russell 2001) and “redundancy” (Patterson and Mughan 1999). Statistical analyses of all 16,629 senatorial votes recorded in the 42nd Parliament are presented, along with machine reading data from all 1,611,817 words of enacted legislation. Preliminary evidence suggests that Senators are independent-minded but not transforming legislation, so a new age of Canadian bicameralism is yet to come.
Stephen Holden Bates (University of Birmingham, UK)
Stephen McKay (University of Lincoln, UK)
Mark Goodwin (Coventry University, UK)
The results of the elections for the UK House of Commons Select Committees are out[1]!
The 2010 Wright Reforms, designed to increase the standing of Parliament in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal, are now a decade old. One of the main reforms introduced was to alter the method of selection for House of Commons Select Committees[2] from one of appointment by party managers to one of election by the whole House (in the case of chairships) and by party caucuses (in the case of membership). This reform has been hailed by many as one of the reasons why select committees have become an ever more prominent and prestigious part of Parliament. There is also evidence that the reform has been good for some aspects of gender equality within the committee system, particularly in terms of female MPs becoming committee chairs[3]. Below we consider the outcomes of the latest round of select committee elections and argue that, in terms of female representation, they are a case of simultaneously bedding down, treading water and taking two steps forward.
Franklin De Vrieze, Senior Governance Adviser at the Westminster Foundation for Democracy discusses the role played by independent oversight institutions in ensuring democratic accountability. As governance processes occur within a country’s political-economic and legal-constitutional context, bringing accountability to national governance cannot be left to those individuals and groups holding power. Independent oversight institutions have a specific role in strengthening accountability which is complementary to the oversight role of parliament. Because the relationship between parliament and independent oversight institutions is sub-optimal in many countries, this article discusses the issues shaping their relationship, outlining how to make it more productive.