RC08 - Legislative Specialists

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23May 2022

New RCLS website launched

The new RCLS website is now available at https://ipsa-rcls.org/, please check there for current information. This website is no longer updated but stays online as an archive of past activities.

01Apr 2022

Call for Papers: Workshop on "Parliaments in Crises - Crises in Parliaments"

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). 

The world has faced major global crises during the last years that cut across the borders of nation states: the financial and the climate crises, the Covid-19 pandemic and most recently the war on Ukraine. These situations are often understood as a natural “hour of the executive”, and this created new challenges for parliaments in many political systems. While it is their task to fulfill their functions, public attention often turns away from them. Thus, parliaments must not only keep their influence in policymaking and oversight, but also properly communicate their roles and uphold public engagement during crisis situations. Some parliaments had to fight deliberate attempts of cutting back their influence and had to reestablish themselves with regard to the executive government. The goal of the workshop is to understand how parliaments can respond to crises, uphold their influence, and how this can support public understanding and institutional trust.

The workshop brings together academics and practitioners from around the globe to discuss the effects of crises on parliaments and to find out how parliaments deal with such crises. We analyze findings from the ongoing collaboration on “Parliaments in the Pandemic”, organized by the RCLS (http://rc08.ipsa.org). They will be contrasted with findings and experience in other crises.

Participants will give short presentations based on a written paper (minimum 15 pages). We invite contributions about legislative activity, oversight and control and about communication and public engagement of parliaments in crises. We will look at long running institutional evolution of parliaments and at immediate responses in parliamentary practice in various forms of democracy. Based on the workshop contributions, we aim to publish a special issue of an academic journal.

The workshop will be held over two days (October 6 and 7, 2022) in Taipei, Taiwan. Travel to Taipei and accommodation will be paid for by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (http://www.tfd.org.tw). Please submit your proposal by April 12, 2022, to PiCiP@iparl.de. It should include an abstract of the proposed paper (maximum 400 words) and a short biographical introduction (200 words). If there are any questions, please get in touch with the convenors: Professor Da-Chi Liao (dcliao@fac.nsysu.edu.tw) and PD Sven T. Siefken (siefken@iparl.de).

27Mar 2022

Call for Papers: International Workshop on "Parliaments in Pandemics"

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.

The pandemic challenges legislatures in multiple ways: testing institutional features and exacerbating pre-existing political tensions, the interaction between legislative and the executive branch - augmenting executive aggrandizement and pre-existing illiberal tendencies, redefines the relationship between legislatures and experts, functioning of the parliaments – increasing demands for modernization and digitalization of parliamentary procedures.

In particular, the pandemic highlighted the tensions between the two competing logics:  representation (emphasizing voice and individual MPs) and governance (emphasizing decision-making and accountability). While in non-pandemic times, these logics coexist, the pandemic exacerbated these tensions due to the scope and urgency of this crisis. During the crisis, governance logic prevails - focusing on decision-making and accountability to a lesser degree.

Keynote speaker Sven T. Siefken will present first findings of the second wave of a global expert survey ‘Parliaments in Pandemics’.  Conducted in 2020, 2021, and 2022, the survey focused on how the pandemic changed the legislatures' roles and, in particular, electoral, legislative, oversight, communication- and-representation functions.

We are seeking additional papers on the following topics:

We welcome papers on the following topics:

- Pandemics and division of power
- Pandemics and parliament
- Pandemics and hybrid regimes

The workshop is held in hybrid form (in person Prague and per zoom), in English; registration is required, but free. The deadline for abstracts of 200-300 words is 21 April 2022. Prospective paper givers will be notified by 30 April 2022.

The workshop is organized by Dr. Zdenka Mansfeldová and Dr. Petra Guasti.

Direct abstracts to zdenka.mansfeldova@soc.cas.cz and petraguasti@googlemail.com

The event is supported by the Strategy AV21 of the Czech Academy of Sciences, research program No. 15 - Global Conflicts and Local Interactions: Cultural and Social Challenges, and organized in cooperation with IPSA RC08 Legislative Specialist and IPS FSV UK.

08Sep 2021

Call for Papers: Fifteenth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians

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.

Details of the most recent Workshops, with the topics of papers delivered, can be found on the Workshop’s website: www.wroxtonworkshop.org Topics covered in previous Workshops have included the challenges to parliamentary democracy in developing nations, benchmarks for democratic legislatures, parliamentary accountability, measuring parliamentary performance, post-legislative scrutiny, MP-constituency links, the role of committees, the remuneration of MPs, parliaments and political parties, voting dissent, legislatures and the courts, ministerial accountability, the use of informal space in legislatures, and the role of independent members.

Paper proposals are invited for the Fifteenth Workshop.  Proposals are invited that cover any aspect of legislatures – their development, behaviour, functions and consequences – and present findings likely to have practical relevance for parliamentarians.  Papers that address issues of development, accountability, legislative scrutiny, international co-operation and transparency are especially welcome.  Papers may be country specific, though papers that present comparative research are encouraged.  It is anticipated that there will be a concluding plenary round-table session, similar to those held at recent Workshops which addressed international co-operation and research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the challenges facing legislatures today.

Papers should be prepared and submitted electronically at least three weeks prior to the Workshop.  Papers are normally 5,000 to 7,000 words in length (though shorter papers are also welcome) and may be considered for publication in The Journal of Legislative Studies.

Paper proposals (no more than 300 words), plus suggestions for panels and requests for further information, should be sent to:

Professor The Lord Norton of Louth,
Centre for Legislative Studies,
University of Hull,
HULL HU6 7RX,
United Kingdom.

E-mail: p.norton@hull.ac.uk

Paper proposals should arrive no later than Monday 31 January 2022.  Up to that date, paper proposals will be considered as soon as received.  Decisions will normally be made within a month of receipt.  Early submission is therefore advised.

 

 

02Sep 2021

Book Launch: "Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process"

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

RC08/RCLS Panels at the IPSA World Congress 2021

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!

RC08 Schedule, Jun 2021

10Jun 2021

David M. Olson Award for the best IPSA World Congress 2021 paper

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 with US$ 1,000 for the best self-authored paper presented in one of the RC08 panels at the 2021 IPSA World Congress. 

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. 

David M. Olson is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he used to work as the head of the Center for Legislative Studies. He has published widely on parliamentary democracy, the internal structure of parliaments, and parliaments in transition societies. David Olson served as co-chair of the Research Committee of Legislative Specialists from 2000 to 2006.

Criteria

  • The paper must be of excellen quality.
  • The paper must cover a highly relevant topic for parliamentary research.
  • The paper should have an innovative approach.
  • The paper should have a strong methodological basis.


Guidelines for nomination

Nominations for the award can be made by one of the following ways:

  • by a board member of the IPSA Research Committee 08 (RC08);
  • by the convenor, chair, co-chair or discussant of any RC08 panel at the
  • virtual IPSA World Congress 2021;
  • jointly by two or more IPSA members of at least two different nationalities;
  • by an incumbent IPSA Executive Committee (EC) member;
  • by an IPSA Research Committee other than RC08 (in case of co-sponsored panels).


​​​​​​​Please send your nomination accompanied by the paper presented at the virtual IPSA World Congress 2021 to Zdenka Mansfeldová by 15 August 2021 (zdenka.mansfeldova@soc.cas.cz).
A jury will decide on the best IPSA World Congress paper on parliaments by a younger scholar. The jury will be composed of the current Chair of RC08 / Legislative Specialists and four additional board members.

08Apr 2021

Forthcoming: Edited Volume on Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process

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.

Apr 2021

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

RC08 at the IPSA World Congress 2021: additional Call for Papers and Closed Panels

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

David Olson Award 2021 for the best IPSA World Congress paper on parliaments by a junior scholar

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.

Criteria:

  • The paper must be of excellent quality. 
  • The paper must cover a highly relevant topic for parliamentary research. 
  • The paper must make a substantial contribution to parliamentary research. 
  • The paper should have an innovative approach. 
  • The paper should have a strong methodological basis. 

Nominations for the award can be made by one of the following ways: 

  • by a board member of the IPSA Research Committee 08 (RC08); 
  • by the convenor, chair, co-chair or discussant of any RC08 panel at the IPSA World Congress 2020; 
  • jointly by two or more IPSA members of at least two different nationalities; 
  • by an incumbent IPSA Executive Committee (EC) member; 
  • by an IPSA Research Committee other than RC08 (in case of co-sponsored panels). 

Deadline for applications: 31 August 2021

Jury: A jury will decide on the best IPSA World Congress paper on parliamentary issues by a younger scholar. The jury will be composed of the current Chair of RC08 / Legislative Specialists and four additional board members.

31Aug 2020

Call for Papers: Disruption, Crisis, Opportunity: Whither Democratic Governance

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.

Continue reading

14Jul 2020

Call for Academic Contribution to the Third Global Parliamentary Report

The Inter-Parliamentary Union, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program, is preparing its third Global Parliamentary Report. This year’s Global Parliamentary Report will focus on how parliaments engage with the public. It will aim to demonstrate why public engagement (beyond periodic general elections) is essential to parliaments and parliamentarians, as well as provide support to parliaments in integrating public engagement into their work. The Global Parliamentary Report will feature a series of recommendations on enhancing public engagement.

The Global Parliamentary Report team is seeking examples of academic partnership with parliaments on public engagement initiatives. For example, joint university courses on parliament, training programs, internships and other educational programming for university students etc. Any and all examples of such collaboration would be welcome and inform the report.

If you have any ideas for a story of collaboration, please send them to Dr. Maya Kornberg at gpr@ipu.org. Please include your contact details, any relevant information on where/when/how the project was executed, and contact details for those involved (if available.)

We look forward to hearing from you!

19Jun 2020

RC08 at IPSA 2021 World Congress: additional panel and paper proposals

RC08 will organize more than a dozen panels with a record number of papers at the 2021 IPSA World Congress in Lisbon. 

RC08 is happy to announce that it will issue an additional Call for Papers/Panels on September 1st providing IPSA members with the opportunity to take part in the 2021 IPSA Congress. All papers and panels covering legislative topics are welcome. We would like to encourage IPSA members to submit proposals covering issues related to parliaments in the current pandemic. 

We will provide more information on how to submit a paper or panel in late August. 

Please note that IPSA regulations on double appearances in the same function do apply for the 2021 World Congress.

12Jun 2020

Democracy by glass and concrete? The architecture of German state parliaments

What can architecture communicate about a political system? Political science has tended to regard architecture merely as a backdrop, yet the ways in which political systems manifest themselves in their physical structures provides a rarely used opportunity to investigate how institutions see themselves and their relationship with citizens. This has only become more relevant in times of diminishing trust in representative institutions and fundamental questions about the legitimacy of political decisions.

Continue reading

16Sep 2019

CALL FOR PANELS: SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL FOR A CLOSED RC08 PANEL

We would like to strongly encourage you to submit your proposal for a closed panel (the call for open panels was closed on 10 July) to the RC08 session.

A closed panel is defined by IPSA as closed for paper submissions to the general public (submissions by invitation only). It is a pre-organized and complete panel that already has an appointed chair, co-chair, discussant(s) and 4-6 papers. The panel convenor (proposer) will be responsible for sending invitations to the authors (presenters) and accepting all paper abstracts submitted to the panel. A closed panel proposal should, therefore, include a title, a description, 1 chair, 1-2 discussant(s) and 4-6 submitted papers.

For the procedure of how to submit your panel please check the IPSA website: https://wc2020.ipsa.org/wc/submit-panel 

Please note that the deadline for both paper proposals and proposals for closed panels is 10 October. 

16Sep 2019

CALL FOR PAPERS: SUBMIT YOUR STAND ALONE PROPOSAL FOR THE RC08 SESSION

You are welcome to submit your stand alone panel proposal to our session at the World Congress. Please make sure that when submitting your proposal you tick the RC08 session box. As in the past, we will try to "cluster" such stand alone proposals and open new  panels as thematically coherent as possible. 

For the procedure of how to submit your paper please check the IPSA website: https://wc2020.ipsa.org/wc/submit-paper

16Sep 2019

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL FOR OUR OPEN PANELS IN LISBON

RCLS/RC08 has submitted five open panels for the WC in Lisbon:

Candidate Selection and Intra-Party Democracy

Exploring the Architecture of Parliaments – How visible is Democracy?

Legislative Work and Career Paths of Elected Political Elites

Parliamentary Indicators – Ways towards Performance Measurement

Populists in Parliament. The Parliamentary Practices and Performance of Populist Parties

Please note that the third panel in the list ("Legislative Work...") by Marija Taflaga and Keith Dowding is a co-sponsored panel with RC02. Any paper submission for any of our five open panels is warmly welcome. For the procedure of how to submit your paper please check the IPSA website: https://wc2020.ipsa.org/wc/submit-paper

03Jul 2019

Proposals for the next Global Parliamentary Report

IPU and UNDP are currently inviting proposals for the theme of the third Global Parliamentary Report. We are looking for great ideas that would lead to stimulating debate among the parliamentary community and actionable recommendations to strengthen parliaments. See here for the Call for Papers. If you have any questions, please contact Sven T. Siefken: svensiefken@hs-harz.de.

30Apr 2019

Call for Proposals for Puerto Rico 2020 (January 9-11)

Research Committee of Legislative Specialists (RCLS) invites proposals for papers on wide range of topics to be considered for presentation at the RCLS’s Conference: “Legislatures in the 21 Century: Roles, Issues, and Solutions”.

RCLS is working with the Southern Political Science Association on organizing a conference within a major conference in the USA: https://spsa.net/annual-meeting/2020-conference-information/. 

Legislatures have experienced remarkable changes in response to challenges of the 21 century. We invite papers that discuss new and emerging roles of legislatures, responses to executive challenges, changes in legislative institutions and structures, and analysis of any specific aspects related to the internal operations of legislatures around the world. 

RCLS invites you to join us in this enchanted location of a tropical Caribbean island for meaningful conversations among legislative scholars. We plan to have regular panels and special events there. 

Please forward your proposal to: Dr. Irina Khmelko at Irina-Khmelko@utc.edu 

Deadline for proposals: June 25, 2019.

18Feb 2019

RCLS/RC08 Call for Contributions for an edited volume on parliamentary committees (initiated by Hilmar Rommetvedt and Sven Siefken)

There is a Call for Contributions for an edited volume on parliamentary committees, initiated by Hilmar Rommetvedt and Sven Siefken. See here.

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