08Jan 2026
11:56 - By RCLS
The next online seminar organized by the RCLS will discuss the role of money, media and violence for change in legislatures. Dr. Maya Kornberg will present findings from her new book and Professor Anne Marie Cammisa will provide comments, the event is moderated by Professor Sven T. Siefken and participation is free. Join us for discussion, questions, comments on March 18, 2026 at 17:00 (Paris) 12:00 PM (New York). Please register here
30Sep 2025
21:08 - By RCLS
The Research Committee of Legislative Specialists (RC08), IPSA awarded the 2025 David Olson Award to the following paper presented at the World Congress 2025: Debating threats to authoritarian rule: Inclusion and Discrimination in the Legislative Council of Northern Rhodesia by Haakon Gjerløw, Anton Kronborg, and Øyvind Stiansen.
left to right: Haakon Gjerløw, Anton Kronborg, Øyvind Stiansen
The Jury noted that this paper stands out for its creative use of historical data and its relevance to broader questions of representation and institutional change. It brings fresh insight to how legislatures function in authoritarian contexts—an area that deserves more attention in the field. Drawing on a newly compiled dataset of colonial legislative debates, the authors explore how limited African representation affected discourse in a racially exclusive legislature under British colonial rule. Your findings—particularly those related to elite adaptation, institutional tension, and the strategic use of discrimination—are both theoretically rich and empirically original.
21Sep 2025
23:33 - By RCLS
RCLS organized an event at the Legislature of the Republic of Korea. After a workshop presentation by Professor Sven T. Siefken on "Modernizing Legislation", the group met with the Speaker of the National Assembly, Woo Won-shik, to discuss the recent and current developments in the country.
Below are some photos of the event.
13Mar 2025
21:22 - By RCLS
Professor Jeong-In Yun (Korea University) gave a talk on 10 March 2025 on recent developments in South Korea. The discussion was moderated by Professor Sven T. Siefken, Vice Chair of RCLS. You can watch her talk below.
20Feb 2025
21:26 - By RCLS
Pleas
e check out the latest issue of PS: the Journal of Political Science and Politics, Volume 58 – Issue 1 – January 2025.Our committee spearheaded another agenda-setting publication in the Politics Spotlight section: Dynamics of Legislative Executive Relations: Global Outline for 2019-2024. Our committee continues to be a well-recognized leader in Legislative Studies, and we are going strong as a community of Legislative Scholars and Practitioners.
27Sep 2024
21:32 - By RCLS
The International Political Science Association World Congress (WC) is being held in Seoul, South Korea between 12th and 16th July, 2025. The Research Committee of Legislative Specialists (RCLS/ RC08) is organizing a section of the WC on “Legislatures in a Polarized World”. The overall theme of the Congress will be “Resisting Autocratization in Polarized Societies”.
Legislatures around the world have been challenged by external and internal developments. Some legislatures are strong and independent institutions, others are “rubber stamps” to executives, and some are struggling to institutionalize. The modern world presents multiple challenges to legislatures. These challenges include the erosion of public trust in democratic institutions, including legislatures, decline in parliamentary influence in some countries, democratic backsliding, populism, and the challenges posed by digitalization, artificial intelligence, and social media influences. Political systems and legislatures within them also face multiple transboundary crises, such as migration, finance, energy security, ongoing geopolitical tensions, and military conflicts. Yet, some legislatures showed incredible resilience in the presence of the most difficult challenges, while others did not.
01Jul 2024
21:51 - By RCLS
RCLS organised an online seminar in late June 2024 about the then forthcoming French elections. It featured a presentation by Dr Calixte Bloquet (Institute for Parliamentary Research, Berlin (IParl)). You can watch a recording of the seminar on the RCLS YouTube channel here.
15Jan 2024
23:04 - By RCLS
This is a call for chapter proposals for our new edited volume that will explore dynamics in legislative-executive relations in different countries around the world. This volume is intended to be a follow-up volume to the one we published on Legislative Decline[1]. In that volume, we presented cases where legislatures were losing powers to the more powerful and frequently populist executives in different countries of the world. Since that time, Dr. Ishiyama, who wrote the conclusion to that volume, has published an article arguing that this may not be a monotonic global trend[2] and that there is wide diversity in emerging legislative-executive relationships. Thus, a central theoretical question for this volume is: what explains this diversity? Why is executive power growing in some countries relative to legislative power, whereas in others, the balance remains unchanged, or, in fact, legislative power has grown? This is a critically important theoretical question, especially since previous literature suggests that this balance helps determine the future of democracy in the world.
12May 2023
23:17 - By RCLS
Our beloved colleague, Dave Olson, has passed away. He cherished our RC08, IPSA very much. He was proud of the work of the committee, and, more importantly, he felt so fortunate to have worked with and known so many of our members! He especially loved our meetings in person, where we combined work and pleasure with our traditional RCLS dinners.
Our RCLS is strong and, according to what Dave told me during our last conversation, is the most active and productive that he could have imagined us ever being. He was certainly happy with where we are now and where we are going with our work.
We will continue the best traditions that started under Dave’s leadership and add more as we go forward to respond to the needs of new times. We will continue producing high-quality research. Further, we will continue our work on bringing academics and practitioners together. We will also continue creating opportunities for our established scholars to lead and raise new generations of scholars who will continue producing high-quality research.
I am deeply saddened by this news, but I know that Dave will always be a part of our group in our hearts, mind, and our work. See below, please, words from some of our colleagues who knew Dave very well and some pictures that our members shared.
Dr. Irina Khmelko (Chair, RC08, IPSA)
06Jan 2023
23:23 - By RCLS
IPSA RC08 & RC13 Conference Within Conference in collaboration with the Southern Political Science Association
RC08 (Legislative Specialists) and RC13 (Democratization in Comparative Perspective) have collaborated on organizing a conference to bring together academics and practitioners from around the world to discuss topics related to modern legislatures and the processes of democratization and de-democratization. Full details of the 12 panels and other events organised by RC08 and RC13 can be found below.
01Apr 2022
16:50 - By RCLS
In cooperation with the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and the Institute for Parliamentary Research, the IPSA Research Committee of Legislative Specialists is delighted to announce an international workshop on Parliaments in Crises, which is to be held between October 6 and 7, 2022, in Taipei (Taiwan).
27Mar 2022
13:25 - By RCLS
We would like to strongly encourage you to submit your paper for the international workshop „Parliaments in Pandemics“ that will be held in hybrid form (in-person – Prague, Academic Conference Centre, and on zoom) between 26-27 May 2022.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, democracy worldwide continued to deteriorate. As established and new democracies faced unprecedented challenges to public health and the economy, their democratic quality declined. While established democracies could largely prevent pandemic erosion of democratic quality, democracies in transitions could not. Pandemic is an opportunity for executive aggrandizement –strengthening governments, weakening parliaments, and testing the judiciary.
08Sep 2021
07:56 - By RCLS
We are delighted to announce that the Fifteenth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians, will be held on Saturday 30 July and Sunday 31 July 2022 at Wroxton College, Near Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK.
The Workshop serves to bring together scholars and parliamentarians – from legislatures around the globe – to discuss research findings likely to be of practical interest to members of parliaments. The event is notable not only for panel presentations, but also for the opportunity for informal discourse between scholars and practitioners, enabling each to benefit from the knowledge of the other.
02Sep 2021
08:34 - By RCLS
Routledge are publishing a collection "Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process" edited by Sven T. Siefken and Hilmar Rommetvedt. The book sheds new light on the often shadowy but essential role of committees which exist in modern parliaments around the globe. It questions the conventional notion that the ‘real’ work of parliament happens in committees. Showing big variation between parliaments today, the volume serves as a guide for future research, too.
This book launch will be held as a virtual meeting on September 29 at 13:00 GMT. It features talks by the editors, Philip Norton, and some of the country specialists who contributed chapters. This will be followed by a Q&A session and general discussion.
The event is co-sponsored by IPSA's Research Committee of Legislative Specialists (RC08) and the UK PSA Parliaments specialist group.
All interested are cordially invited. Participation is free. Please register by September 22 for the event here.
Please find more details about the book here.
28Jun 2021
12:24 - By RCLS
Dear scholars, colleagues and friends,
here is the schedule of all 11 panels organized by RC08/RCLS at the IPSA World Congress 2021. We hope that many scholars from around the world will join the panels and take an active part in the discussions.
We look forward to see you all online!
10Jun 2021
17:27 - By RCLS
The purpose of the David M. Olson Award is to honour a younger scholar engaged in parliamentary/legislative studies, the focus of David Olson’s research and teaching. Eligible are doctoral students and PostDocs who completed their Ph.D. dissertation after 2013 (and not serving as a full professor). Authors of co-authored papers are only eligible if all authors satisfy this condition. The Award will then be split among the co-authors. The Award is funded by the Research Committee of Legislative Specialists / RC08 and will be given after the 2021 IPSA World Congress. Nominees must have uploaded their full papers on the IPSA website.
08Apr 2021
17:51 - By RCLS
Parliamentary Committees are often seen as the central place where policy is made in modern democracies. They do exist in almost all parliaments today, in democratic and non-democratic systems, in parliamentary and presidential democracies. Political science has provided very useful comparative studies on the formal settings of committees in Western democracies, but some of them need to be updated after a few decades have passed.
However, what exactly is going on inside committees has not been studied very much, not the least because committees traditionally have held their sessions closed to the public in many parliaments and thus data access has been difficult.
Renowned country experts, among them several members of the Research Committee of Legislative Specialists (RCLS), take a close look at what goes on in committees and how it matters for policy making.
This edited volume provides a comparative examination on the role of parliamentary committees of various political systems through a detailed and thick description of country cases based on a common research framework. Bringing together formal and informal aspects, rules and practices shows that committees are not a paradise of policy making. They have great relevance nonetheless: as crystallization points in the policy networks, as drivers for division of labor and for socialization and the integration of MPs.
The book will be published in September 2021 and is available for pre-order here.
04Sep 2020
10:46 - By RCLS
The Research Committe of Legislative Specialists is happy to launch an additional call for the RCLS/RC08 session at the IPSA World Congress 2021 in Lisbon. Any paper and (closed) panel covering legislative research is welcome. Papers and panels can be submitted from 1st September onwards. The deadline for all submissions is 20 October 2020. Please check the follwing links at IPSA website for details on how to submit your paper or panel:
Please note that paper and panel proposals that were accepted for the 2020 Program will remain in the 2021 Congress Program. Revisions of proposals are possible until 15 September. You may also wish to consider that the general IPSA guideline of no double appearances in the same function remains valid for the WC 2021.
31Aug 2020
12:43 - By Dr. Erik Fritzsche
The purpose of the David M. Olson Award is to honour a younger scholar engaged in parliamentary / legislative studies, the focus of David Olson’s research and teaching. The recipient will be rewarded for the best self-authored paper presented in one of the RC08 panels at the IPSA World Congress in Lisbon in July 2021. Eligible are doctoral students and PostDocs who completed their PhD dissertation after 2013 (and not serving as a full professor). Authors of co-authored papers are only eligible if all authors satisfy this condition. The Award will then be split among the co-authors. The Award is funded by the Research Committee of Legislative Specialists / RC08 and will be given after the 26th IPSA World Congress. Nominees must have uploaded their full papers on the IPSA website.
31Aug 2020
10:47 - By RCLS
This online conference (14 - 17 December 2020) aims to bring together global scholarly community concentrated around a number of Research Committees of IPSA to reflect upon and examine the challenges faced by democracies and non-democratic regimes in the light of a sequence of interrelated political, economic, social disruptions.
The conference is organised jointly by the RC14 Politics and Ethnicity, RC28 Comparative Federalism and Multilevel Governance, RC13 Democratization in Comparative Perspective, RC08 Legislative Specialists, and RC30 Comparative Public Policy of the International Political Science Association.
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