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).