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Keeping Track of the EEC – Commons Committees and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s

Dr Philip Aylett builds on his previous contributions to this blog-site to provide historical insight into the role played by Commons Committees as the UK participated in the European Economic Community during the 1970s and 1980s.

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When will the government respond to the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on UK lethal drone strikes in Syria?

It is two years since the Intelligence and Security Committee published its report into UK lethal drone strikes in Syria. Despite a commitment to ‘respond substantively to any report by the ISC within 60 days’ the government has yet to produce a detailed reply to this report. Andrew Defty examines the government’s record in responding to ISC reports and the changing nature of its commitment to doing so. This blog was originally posted on Democratic Audit and is reposted with permission. 

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Governing under pressure?

Is the psychological strain on MPs not only damaging to their health, but also threatening the health of our democracy? Dr James Weinberg discusses new research, with colleagues from political science and psychology, into the pressures on mental health and wellbeing that accompany political office

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The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee: a committee in decline?

What’s happened to the Intelligence and Security Committee? In a new blog, based on his paper at our Legislatures in Uncertain Times conferenceAndrew Defty, University of Lincoln, discusses delays, a reduced public presence, and decreasing powers, and questions whether the ISC is in decline. 

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‘You don’t walk past this building saying, “That’s a big impressive building, that’s a parliament.” You walk past saying, “Why?”’

David Judge and Cristina Leston-Bandeira discuss the symbolic importance of parliamentary buildings, in a blog originally posted by the Crick Centre at the University of Sheffield.

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Procedural Justice: A fair process for public engagement?

By Dr Catherine Bochel, Reader in Policy Studies, University of Lincoln

In a post-Brexit world, the way Parliament works and engages with the public is more important than ever.

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Promoting Gender Equality in Parliaments

By Jacqui Smith and Kristen Sample

Women account for half of the global population, yet represent less than a quarter of the world’s parliamentarians. The causes behind this imbalance are myriad and multi-faceted, based on culturally rooted gender norms, political institutions, and economic disparities. In other words, a woman who is elected to parliament has beaten the odds.

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2016 in Parliament

Please note that this blog piece was originally published on the Crick Centre blog, and has been re-posted here with the author’s permission.

As 2016 comes to an end, we await the Supreme Court’s verdict on whether the Government can invoke Article 50 without the authority of Parliament. Having the UK’s highest court consider the constitutional role of Parliament has been one consequence of a referendum which hadn’t even been scheduled at the start of 2016, but dominated a turbulent year in the Palace of Westminster.

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A Recipe for Impact? Strengthening academic engagement with Parliament

Reporting on new research that looks at the way parliamentary staff wish academics would engage with Parliament, Katharine Dommett argues that researchers would benefit from not only rethinking where and how they target research, but also the very form academic research should take.

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News

One-day conference: a great success!

Thank you to everyone that attended and participated in our first one-day conference (we hope the first of many!). It was a fantastic event with a range of academic panels, a practitioner roundtable, a poster exhibition, and our annual lecture from the Clerk of the House of Commons, David Natzler. You can see a full summary by following the Twitter hashtag: #ParlConf. We also have a summary of the paper and poster abstracts available here.