RC08 - Legislative Specialists

RCLS online seminar: “How, Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress“

RCLS — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 11:56:00 +0100

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 join us here

David Olson Award 2025 for "Debating threats to Authoritarian Rule"

RCLS — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 21:08:00 +0200

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.

Haakon Gjerløw is a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). His research focuses on political institutions, domestic politics, mass mobilization, and human development.
Anton Kronborg is a Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo (UiO). In his dissertation, he combined natural language processing methods and various sources of individual-level data to study elite political behavior across elections and regime changes.
Øyvind Stiansen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. His research focuses on political institutions and judicial politics.

RCLS at the National Assembly of Korea

RCLS — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 23:33:00 +0200

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.

Emergency Power Abuse and the Korean Parliament

RCLS — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 21:22:00 +0100

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.

https://youtu.be/f8_aqtij-pg

RCLS in PS: the Journal of Political Science and Politics

RCLS — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 21:26:00 +0100

Please 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.

Call for Proposals for the IPSA World Congress in Seoul 2025

RCLS — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 21:32:00 +0200

We would like to invite panel and/or paper proposals on a large range of traditionally discussed issues in legislative studies, including but not limited to parliamentary organization, leadership, parties, committees, legislative behavior, legislative-executive relations, second chambers, gender issues, parliamentary engagement, and outreach.

We are particularly interested in panels that explore novel developments related to legislatures, such as responses to the rise of populism, changing roles of legislatures in the presence of military conflict and natural disasters, democratic erosion, and other challenges that legislatures face.
We are also interested in papers related to legislative strengthening, legislative institutionalization, and analysis of successes and failures of legislatures to become/ remain independent and strong policy-making institutions.

Finally, the call for proposals is not limited to the topics that you see above. We are open to proposals on other topics as well and are interested in additional topics that you are interested in presenting at the conference.

Deadline to submit your proposal: November 5, 2024

Where to submit:

To submit your proposal for a paper and/ or panel, please do the following:

Click here.
Click on My Congress (you will see it in the top right corner of your screen)
When you log in there, click on either “Submit a paper” or “Submit a Panel”
Enter information, e.g. your name, etc.
Very Important – when, for example, you are submitting a panel proposal, you will see options named “Track”. Make sure you click on RC08 Legislative Specialists (you will see other options before that), but RC08 stands for the Research Committee 08. So, if you want your proposal for a panel to be considered within our section, then please click on RC08/

Frequently Asked Questions and Answers:

If I have a question, whom do I ask: For any questions, please contact Dr. Petra Guasti petra.guasti@fsv.cuni.cz , Program Chair.

Do I need to pay to submit a proposal: No conference registration is required to submit a proposal; simply set up an IPSA account (also free of charge).

What if my proposal is accepted, but I cannot travel because of funding: Everybody understands that the ability to travel depends on funding, and to secure funding, many need an acceptance letter. Therefore, submit your proposal, and we will go from there. Everybody will understand if travel is not possible for any reason.

When will you hear about the decision: Acceptance notifications will be sent via email by January 22 2025.

May I share this call for proposals with my professional network: Please share this call with the professional network that you think may want to participate.

Where can I find all the deadlines: You can see all deadlines for WC here.

RCLS online seminar: “Making Sense of the Elections in France“

RCLS — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 21:51:00 +0200

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.

Call for Chapter Proposals: “Exploring Dynamics of Legislative-Executive Relations around the World”

RCLS — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 23:04:00 +0100

Exploring Dynamics of Legislative-Executive Relations around the World to be edited by Dr. Irina Khmelko and Dr. John Ishiyama

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.

More specifically, this volume will present a collection of case studies that will discuss the most recent developments in legislative-executive relations in different countries around the world. This research will allow us to find answers to the following questions: what modern trends can be observed in legislative-executive relations globally? Has executive power grown relative to legislative power, or not? Have legislatures become more assertive when facing the challenge of executive power? What role do political parties play in the balance of power between executives and legislatures? What other factors may explain these observed dynamics (e.g., the degree of polarization, ethnic and cultural pluralism, etc.)? We will be looking for each chapter identifying at least three, but no more than five, of the most important factors that would explain the emerging dynamics in legislative-executive relations in each country’s case study included in this volume.

Here are the guidelines for your proposals:

Limit your proposal to 250 words or less, please.
Identify a country (or countries) you want to analyze in your chapter.
What data sources do you plan on using?
Do you have a draft, or did you start already working on a paper on this topic, or perhaps you have published a paper on a similar topic in the past? If so, please include it with your proposal.

Please include your CV with a list of your presentations and publications.

Please submit your proposals to Dr. Irina Khmelko by January 30, 2024.

Thank you for considering,

Dr. Irina Khmelko (Chair RC08, IPSA)

[1] Irina Khmelko, F. Stapenhurst, and M. Mezey. Legislative Decline in the 21st Century: A Comparative Perspective. Routledge, 2020.

[2]John Ishiyama (2022) Has legislative power declined globally?, The Journal of Legislative Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13572334.2022.2103288

A Tribute to Dave Olson

RCLS — Fri, 12 May 2023 23:17:00 +0200

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)

From our Members about Dave Olson:

“I have known Dave since the 1990s, and we have met at numerous RCLS events since then. Dave was a great scholar and really gentle person. It was always interesting to hear his comments in various panels, and a pleasure to be together with him and Ellen in the evenings. Dave and Ellen also visited my wife Jutka and myself in our home in Tananger, Norway, when we worked on a book on WTO negotiations (published in 2014). Dave wrote a very interesting chapter on American trade policy from Bush to Obama.” – Hilmar Rommetvedt

“David was always a star at our meetings.

“If I can share a story, I first met David when Riccardo and I were doing some research on parliaments around the world (Irina: I think this was the first time I met you, too, in New Orleans, for the SPSA some 15 years ago).

“David was very interested in our research, and I explained (very proudly (!) that we had developed a questionnaire that was sent to the Clerk/SG of parliaments, including Eastern Europe. David said something like: “That must have been the questionnaire I saw staff filling in when I was in [blank: I forget the country]. I overheard their discussion: ” How do you think the researchers would like us to answer this question?” !” David was always the pragmatist, and helped keep me grounded!” – Rick Stapenhurst

“This is very sad news. I’m sure all of us have many personal memories of David Olson, and many of us had personal friendships with him. As someone from post-communist Europe, I want to recall his great contribution to the development of parliamentary research in our region. I recall the first RCLS conferences in the early 1990s, which I and some of my colleagues attended, and other projects under David Olson’s leadership that I participated in. I remember numerous personal/non-work meetings. I have always greatly appreciated his kind attitude and tolerance for the opinions of others.

“When I was talking about David Olson’s understanding of the parliaments in Central and Eastern Europe, I remembered that together with DO and Petra Guasti (Rakusanova at the time) we also edited a publication on parliaments in CEE” – Zdenka Mansfeldova

“Prof. Dr. David Olson (Dave) was among a few scholars, among them Prof. Gisbert H. Flanz, Prof. Lawrence Longley, Robert Nakamura, and Prof. and Prof. Allan Kornberg, who had worked, shared plenty of time, and learned a lot in this field. It was a great pleasure for me to get together with people whose scholarly works were and are my primary reading. All passed away. C’est la vie!

“I met Dave at the IPSA RCLS Paris Conference in 1994 and then on several occasions in Berlin, Ljubliana, Istanbul, Greensboro, and my home town of Trabzon. It was really sad that I failed to contribute to the special issue on The New Roles of Parliamentary Committees (JLS) 1998 when Larry and Dave called me. Beloved Dave and Ellen guided me when I was exploring NGOs in North Carolina as a Fulbrightee in 2001.

“He was always positive and motivating in person. They hosted me and my sister, Adalet, at their home in Greensboro in 2005, and they stayed with us for about a week in Istanbul, Ankara, and Trabzon in 2007. In addition to his scholarly contributions, he and his wife work with social organizations, such as LWV.” – Omer Faruk Genckaya

IPSA RC08 & RC13 Conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida

RCLS — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 23:23:00 +0100

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.

ipsa-rc08rc13-conference-program-online-2023-01-04.pdf

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

RCLS — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 16:50:00 -0400

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).

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

RCLS — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 13:25:00 -0400

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.

Call for Papers: Fifteenth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians

RCLS — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 07:56:00 -0400

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.

Book Launch: "Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process"

RCLS — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 08:34:00 -0400

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.

RC08/RCLS Panels at the IPSA World Congress 2021

RCLS — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 12:24:00 -0400

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!

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

RCLS — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 17:27:00 -0400

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.

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.

Forthcoming: Edited Volume on Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process

RCLS — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 17:51:00 -0400

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.

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

RCLS — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 10:46:00 -0400

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.

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

Dr. Erik Fritzsche — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 12:43:00 -0400

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.

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

RCLS — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 10:47:00 -0400

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.

Over the past two decades, societies worldwide have experienced a series of disruptions to what was at the time perceived as the regular way of life: the COVID-19 pandemic, global financial crisis, increasing global population mobility, 9/11. European continent has experiences additional cross-border disruptions: the UK’s departure from the EU, the so-called refugee crisis, EU enlargement, to name but a few. Each global region has had a fair share of its own challenges in the past, and the true social, cultural, economic, and political effects of the COVID pandemic are likely to be long lasting. How have international organisations, national, regional, local level authorities innovated in response to acute challenges; and have these actually made a difference in dealing with these new challenges? How have democratic institutions responded to citizens’ needs over the succession of disruptions, and what differences can be observed between democratic and non-democratic responses, and between local, regional and national level policies?

The online conference will provide an opportunity to examine the role of local, national, regional, and international actors in the changing role of democratic governance over the past two decades. We welcome contributions that focus on moments of disruption to the “way of life BC (before corona)” as critical junctures in policy, political and institutional developments globally, and as such have had ripples across the globe. Moreover, the US under President Trump, Russia under President Putin, and cash-stripped countries in the Global South have had to develop their own coping strategies to the current crisis. How has this affected their governance mechanisms, institutions and political elites? Has there been a substantial impact on the role of trust that citizens have in their elites? Are we witnessing an authoritarian revival in the wake of the current pandemic, as some have predicted, quoting Hungary and Israel as examples? To what extent has the current crisis, and previous crises, exposed state weakness in parts of the world, and how have regional and international organisations reacted?

We invite proposals for individual paper contributions and/or panels that engage empirically, conceptually and normatively with these issues. We aim to feature the best of contemporary research on democratic governance under conditions of uncertainty or galvanised by moments of radical and unanticipated challenge, including new research by established academics as well as by early career scholars. Papers that focus on the social, economic and legal challenges posed by crises, past and ongoing, how they have affected or are likely to affect the future direction of politics in diverse settings are particularly welcome. We welcome proposals that develop case studies or compare the effects of crises on popular societal response, policy change, political innovation, institutional design, and/or accommodation of novel approaches to delivering governance in response to the ongoing pandemic.

In addition, we welcome proposals for roundtable discussions on current themes, which may include the outcome of the US elections, the political consequences of economic strain in MENA, or the impact of Coronavirus on ethnic minorities’ rights and equality, the future of Hong Kong or any other topic deemed relevant. Roundtables should consist of one chair and up to four discussants. The chair shall prepare some questions for the discussants before a wider debate with the audience opens.

If you (or your colleague) have recently published (or are about to publish) a book, we are happy to include your book panels as part of the programme. This should include a chair of the panel, the author(s), and at least three discussants.

Furthermore, the conference will feature several panels to the benefit of early career academics, including on “How to get published” which will bring together leading journal and book series editors. These will provide insights into how to draft, write and see a paper to publication in leading academic outlets. Another expert panel will bring together academics with experience of applying for and managing research funding from different sources. The panellists will help early, mid- and senior career academics evaluate their opportunities to maximise their chances of getting funding for their research projects.

The conference will take place online, there is no charge for participation. We however encourage all participants to join the sponsoring IPSA RCs, and would welcome any donations to the RCs organising the conference.

While we will use Brussels time as the time of the organisation, we encourage scholars from all parts of the world to participate and will be flexible in accommodating timing requests for panels from other time zones. A certificate of attendance can be provided by the organising committee.

The final deadline for the electronic submission of paper and panel proposals is 23:59 Brussels time, October 11 2020. Notices of acceptance will be sent out the weekend of October 17 2020. Proposals should be submitted online here.

All participants will be required to register for the conference whereupon they will be receiving a personal link for participation.