Acts Of Parliament Research Articles

SEDUCTIONS OF THE BOUZOUKI AND THE BRASS BAND: TRANSGRESSIVE REFLECTIONS ON MIKIS THEODORAKIS AND GIUSEPPE VERDI

It may transgress convention to compare Mikis Theodorakis, better known for his songs than for his operatic work, with the Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi. Both, however, in very different national contexts, were engaged in political activity through their music – which often faced severe censorship – and their parliamentary activity. Both drew on popular traditions and utilised strong rhythms in their earlier works, experimenting later with freer forms. The differences between them meanwhile serve to highlight important differences between two countries often viewed within the shared frame of assumed Mediterranean commonalities and of ancient cultural origins, and help us to understand the role music plays in linking lived time to recorded history.

“United Russia” as the Basic Institution of the Personalist Regime

This article describes the “United Russia” party as a party that appeared on the political horizon and reached the parliamentary Olympus thanks to the administrative and political support of the government. This party performs useful functions for the regime to control parliamentary activity, administrative elite, and neutralize the opposition. The political and electoral successes of the party, in particular, reflect the vicissitudes of political support and political choice that the government is dealing with.

JAMES I AND GUNPOWDER TREASON DAY

AbstractThe assumed source of the annual early modern English commemoration of Gunpowder treason day on 5 November – and its modern legacy, ‘Guy Fawkes day’ or ‘Bonfire night’ – has been an act of parliament in 1606. This article reveals the existence of earlier orders, explains how these orders alter understandings of the origin and initial purposes of the anniversary, and provides edited transcriptions of their texts. The first order revises the accepted date for the earliest publication of the special church services used for the occasion. The second order establishes that the anniversary thanksgiving was initiated not by parliament, but by King James I; it also shows that, in a striking innovation, he issued instructions for regular mid-week commemorations throughout England and Wales, expecting the bishops to change the Church of England's preaching practices. The annual thanksgivings were not just English, but ordered also in Scotland and observed in Protestant churches in Ireland. The motives for these religious thanksgivings are placed in a Stuart dynastic context, with Scottish antecedents and a British scope, rather than in the English ‘national’ setting assigned to the anniversary by English preachers and writers and by recent historians. The parliamentary act is best explained as an outcome of tensions between the king and the House of Commons.

The logic of parliamentary action: Brexit, Early Day Motions, and bolstering the personal vote

ABSTRACT More than 300 Members of Parliament (MPs) found themselves in an awkward position after the vote on Britain’s membership in the EU: They had taken a public stance on Brexit in opposition to their constituents. We investigate whether MPs attempted to bolster their personal vote in response and if this provided electoral protection. Using Early Day Motions (EDMs), we find that MPs supporting Leave in Remain constituencies sponsored more EDMs after Brexit but were also more likely to lose re-election in 2017. Remain supporting MPs in Leave constituencies switched their position on Brexit when voting to trigger Article 50, but did not sponsor more EDMs post-Brexit and did not lose disproportionately compared to Brexit-aligned MPs. We conclude by considering whether the value of the personal vote and incumbency may have declined as affective polarization (Mason, 2018) among the British electorate may be on the rise during the era of Brexit.

Representação política feminina sob a ótica das eleitoras brasileiras

Como as eleitoras brasileiras avaliam a representação política feminina? A sub-representação feminina seria um problema para elas? Com base nessas questões, o artigo analisa as percepções do eleitorado feminino obtidas por meio de survey, com 812 informantes, em 2019. Os principais resultados mostram insatisfação das mulheres com o número de representantes femininas na política, desaprovação das instituições legislativas municipais, estaduais e do Congresso Nacional quanto à atuação parlamentar voltada para as mulheres. Apenas 10% das respondentes conhecem algum partido político que defenda os interesses e direitos das mulheres.

Parliamentary Recruitment in the UK House of Commons: De-Gendering Workplace Structures, Gendering the Applicant

Abstract Recruitment to key positions in institutions can be viewed as one way to introduce strategic reforms; however, little research has been conducted as to the effectiveness of the practice within parliaments. Even less has been written about the recruitment practices for non-elected parliamentary actors. Applying a feminist discursive institutionalist analysis, this article highlights the main discourses prominent in discussions around the recruitment to the Clerk of the House of Commons in 2014. It is argued that there are three discourses that rhetorically de-gendered career structures in the UK House of Commons, while two discourses explicitly gendered the applicant to the position of Clerk. The article discusses the broader significance of these insights for analysing parliaments as gendered workplaces, and for member engagement with parliamentary administrations.

Nstitutional structures for student-inclusivity in quality assurance promotion in higher education: The case of one university in Zimbabwe

Researchers have investigated co-curricular and extracurricular activities associated with student learning and personal development but neglected exploring levels of students' involvement. IHLs oftentimes have no structures responsible for quality assurance (QA). Research should focus on specific structures, activities and the frequency of student involvement. Although Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education superintends over QA processes, it remains unclear which/how institutional structures foster student inclusivity in QA processes. Pragmatic research, marked by mixed methods was used to examine university QA structures for inclusivity. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics IHLs were targeted and purposive sampling helped select 15 QA office(rs) and SRC in one STEM university. Primary data from questionnaires and key informant interviews were used. Structures governing IHLs are prescribed by Acts of Parliament and the current frequency of involvement depends on meetings scheduled for IHL structures. This constricts effective involvement. Minimal involvement occurs in prescribed structures although more satisfying involvement is in student-initiated social clubs and organisations. IHL legislative instruments should be amended to reflect diversity in higher education; allow university Councils to tailor-make IHL institutional/infrastructural structures to deliver on their mandates than rely on prescribed one size fits all. Such change will foster more satisfying involvement for student socio-academic success.

Property rights and the conservation of forests in communal areas in Zimbabwe

Institutional arrangements for managing forests at the constitutional level of the state define the property rights bundles through which rural households access benefits and manage forests in communal lands. Forest degradation in communal areas of Zimbabwe show that there is need to understand the influence of forest-related constitutional level rules on actual or perceived benefits to conserve, preserve and improve management of forests in communal areas. We examined through a systematic search and review of Acts of Parliament, the overarching principles that underlie property rights bundles for harvesting of forest produce in communal lands in Zimbabwe. Results show that the rights to regulate access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation of land and forest resources lie with the minister and the state President. The legislation criminalizes unauthorized access and commercial use even for inhabitants. Local communities and individuals can initiate and implement management systems only with the approval of the appropriate authority. The constitutional level rules restrict inhabitants of communal lands to authorized entrants for protected forest areas or authorized users for communal forests thus shifting the responsibility for proactive management of forest resources away from the direct users. The current legislation inherited the legislative provisions of the colonial era where centralization of forest management shaped land and forest resources conservation policies. Therefore, there is need for legislation that stimulates local management of land and forest resources through revision of property rights for rural households. Coupling alienation rights with exclusion rights could stimulate rural households to invest in forest resources and undertake more intensive management of woodlands in communal lands.

MP Firefighting and the institutional logic

ABSTRACT In parliamentary systems, parliament ensures that the government governs well, and typically parliaments institutionally are empowered to hold the government accountable. This article focuses on MPs Firefighting response to audit Fire Alarms about the government maladministration. Institutions foster expectations and as parliamentarians, MPs are expected to support audit reports. Nevertheless, the strong role of political parties in parliamentary systems fosters partisan expectations and challenges ex-post control activity. MPs activate control institutions when it serves partisan interests. However, this article argues that rules and specific procedures strengthen the institutional ‘non-party’ mode and challenge the partisan logic in parliamentary control activity. The article tests this expectation by an investigation of MPs Firefighting reactive activity to audit Fire Alarms as part of the institutionalised control process related to the Faroese SAI institution and PAC. The results show that MPs in fact to a high degree display parliamentarian behaviour in the institutionalised audit control process.

Explaining Change in Legislatures: Dilemmas of Managerial Reform in the UK House of Commons

How do institutions adapt and reform themselves in response to new challenges? This article considers the role of ideas and posits that the concept of ‘dilemma’ – clashes of beliefs played out through power relations and practices – offers a complementary tool to understand institutional change. It draws on the 2014 appointment of a new Clerk to the UK House of Commons – in which conflicting beliefs about the House of Commons administration opened a dilemma for key parliamentary actors – as a token case study to highlight the value of the concepts of beliefs, practices and dilemmas. It further broadens out these findings to consider the value of a wider interpretive approach for understanding how institutions may adapt and change. In doing so, it makes (1) a theoretical contribution by exploring the role of ideas in causing institutional change and (2) an empirical contribution through its analysis of parliamentary administration, an understudied area.

Brexit as a (de)politicized issue? Evidence from Czech and Slovak parliaments

ABSTRACT The article engages in the debate about the extent of the domestic politicization of Brexit in the EU27, and the causes and agents thereof. More specifically, it examines which parliamentary actors in Czechia and Slovakia have tried to de/politicize Brexit, and which strategies they have applied while doing so. By inquiring into the concrete de/politicization moves by different agents within parliamentary arenas, we attempt to open up the black box of the de/politicization processes associated with Brexit. Empirically, the article relies on original data from a large-scale quantitative content analysis of parliamentary deliberations on Brexit between 2016 and 2019. We argue that Brexit is largely depoliticized in Czech and Slovak Parliaments, with many factors intimately interlinked and jointly at work in its de/politicization. At the same time, we show that the lines of conflict on Brexit run in multiple directions and that the government/opposition status, left/right scale placement and the pro-EU/anti-EU approach appear to be important factors of parliamentarians’ tendencies to de/politicize the Brexit issue. As such, our findings help explain a key puzzle in the withdrawal process, namely why Brexit and its repercussions have not matured into a political issue that is being politicized within EU27 domestic politics.

Mandated Representation: Exploring the Consequences of Gender Quota Design on Parliamentary Activity

Abstract Although the scholarship on legislative behaviour widely agrees that electoral rules determine parliamentary activities, surprisingly little is known on the impact of gender quotas. We contribute to this research gap by developing an innovative interdisciplinary framework and by exploring it based on a unique dataset on varying gender quota designs throughout EU countries and parties running for the 7th term of the European Parliament (2009–2014). Based on the scholarship on gender diversity in management teams and the research on gendered processes in political parties, we argue that especially mandated gender quotas stimulate processes of social categorisation, intergroup biasing and competition due to a normative mis-fit between conceptions of gender equality and gender quotas, which in turn influences coordination and communication and hence, parliamentary activity more generally. Combining negative-binomial regression models and expert interviews, we indeed find that mandated gender quotas promote ‘individual’ parliamentary activities (e.g. speeches) and tend to impede ‘collaborative’ parliamentary activities (e.g. reports).

The Parliamentarisation of Security in the UK and Australia

Abstract This article examines the parliamentarisation of security through four decades of committee activity in the UK and Australia. Security governance has expanded since the Cold War from defence and secret intelligence to an array of problematisations that could arise in almost any policy area. This has driven parliamentary activity, with the effect that a much wider range of committees have done substantive work on security issues. The UK and Australia display similar levels of security parliamentarisation but of a different character due to differences in executive/legislative relations, party discipline, parliamentary rules and geopolitical circumstance.

Implementing UK reservoir safety – thoughts on future needs

The safety of the UK's large, raised reservoirs has been assured since 1930 by act of parliament together with associated technical guidance. There are now separate Reservoirs Acts in England, Scotland and Wales. Periodic adjustments are made to both legislation and technical guidance based on experience and to ensure both stay relevant. Further changes are anticipated in the coming years. The author draws on 50 years of reservoir safety experience in both the UK and overseas and including 26 years as an All-Reservoirs Panel Engineer under the UK Act, to explore aspects where future changes may prove beneficial. The paper contains the results of a survey of All-Reservoir Engineers on the efficacy of some potential measures. It discusses safety conflicts in current legal requirements, possible continuity issues with safety reviews in Scotland, the need to better define compliance requirements and the benefits of real-time monitoring. It concludes by reflecting on the nature of inspections and how more precise definitions of downstream consequence and reservoir complexity could help better target an increasingly scarce skill base.

REMOTE ACTIVITIES OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE AND THE NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS IN TIME OF COVID-19

The current world crisis raised serious debate about the role and place of the information and communication technologies (hereafter “ICT”) in the parliamentary activities. The new advanced technologies play a pivotal role in maintaining the efficiency and public service value of digitalisation by creating optimal conditions for the exercise of parliamentary functions. Before the current global health crisis, vast majority of the national parliaments had neither the possibility for remote plenary and/or committee meetings, nor a possibility for remote (distance) voting. Even the parliaments of the countries that have been struck by terrorist attacks in recent decades have not introduced a system of remote (distance) meetings or voting in case of any real direct risks for the parliamentary functioning. Democracy is never accomplished or perfect in its nature; it is an ongoing process that is continuously faced with new challenges and needs to adapt itself to new contexts. The parliamentary system is one of the most impactful institutions in the modern world and is steeped in deep country's history. Consequently, all new steps must be taken with extreme caution. The article offers an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses aspects of the parliamentary functioning in a “virtual space”, as well as a description of new mechanisms and methods.

National parliaments as ‘multi-arena players’ in the European Union? Insights into Poland and France

ABSTRACT Have national parliaments become ‘multi-arena players’ in the field of EU affairs? Through the means of cross-country comparison of Poland and France this study probes how national parliaments juggle their activities between domestic and EU-level realms with regard to four EU-oriented arenas: ex-ante scrutiny of national governments, the Early Warning Mechanism for subsidiarity control, the political dialogue with the European Commission, and the ‘green card’ initiative. The paper detects what conditions parliamentary activity in particular arenas and to what extent domestic legislatures act autonomously within them. The findings are counterintuitive and yet clearly demonstrate that what drives parliamentary mobilization in EU affairs is not the institutional strength of a parliament in EU scrutiny, but rather Member of Parliament’s perception of their institutions’ EU-related roles.

Domesticating Treaties in the Legal System of South Sudan – A Monist or Dualist Approach?

This article examines the approach for the domestication of treaties in South Sudan. Such examination is undergone in light of the theories for the domestication of international law norms into the domestic legal systems of state members of the international community. The article establishes that the approach in South Sudan is not clearly indicated, and seems to be inconsistent with regard to the practice of various institutions linked to the domestication of treaties process in South Sudan. However, the article expands on two foundations: the status quo and the ‘ought to be’ approach. The article argues that the approach as it exists seems to be a monist rather than a dualist approach. This is evident from the indicators of South Sudan's constitutional, legislative and judicial settings such as the text of the Transitional Constitution of South Sudan 2011, the treaty ratification process, the practices of the National Legislative Assembly in respect of international conventions and a judicial circular issued by the Supreme Court of South Sudan. Furthermore, the article advances that the ‘as ought to exist’ approach needs to be a clearly mixed approach, partly monist and partly dualist. Such approach combines the advantages associated with each approach in one place. The article recommends that there is a need to have a well informed, well established and clear status in respect of the domestication approach guided by the various arrangements and settings highlighted above. It may also take account of the various states’ attitudes towards international law and the legal school of thought which forms the basis of South Sudan legal system. Such recommendation could be materialised via an act of parliament, a regulation or a practice manual.

Parliamentary Assembly as a factor for development and consolidation of the Union State

This article is dedicated to examination of the role of Parliamentary Assembly in development of the Union State. The goal is to trace the parliamentary activity in the Union State throughout the entire time of its existence, the objectives that were pursued, their transformation, and change of conditions for their accomplishment. This topic is especially relevant in the current context. A new milestone has passed in the history of Union State: December 2019 marked twenty years since its creation. Agreement on the formation of Parliamentary Assembly of the Community of Belarus-Russia Union State was signed earlier, in 1996. The novelty of this works consists in comprehensive and detailed analysis of different stages in formation of Parliamentary Assembly, which allows describing their role in further consolidation of the Union State. The scientific problem of this article can be articulated as follows: Parliamentary Assembly is not just a legislative institution that formulates the agenda for development of the Union State; it is also a platform for a continuous dialogue between Russia and Belarus. Therefore, examination of this government institution in an urgent scientific problem that allows revealing the key aspects of evolution of the Union State. As the resources for this article, the author explored the legislative acts of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation, legal information from official portals of the Union State and the Parliamentary Assembly. This underline the need for further development of parliamentarism in Russia-Belarus Union State for the purpose of improvement and strengthening of relations between the countries in the current conditions of international transformation. The article is based on most relevant documents pertaining to Russia-Belarus relations for the period from 1991 to the present.

Parliament in action: Drug withdrawals and policy changes in the U.K.

Previous studies on changes in health policies theorize such changes either as crises responses, or as the outcome of longer-term stakeholder conflicts. In this paper, we propose that parliaments function as overlooked, intermediate actors that contribute to translating the interests of stakeholders into policy changes. We study the role of parliament connecting policy makers and stakeholders in the context of drug regulation. Based on three high-profile cases of drug withdrawals between 1991 and 2005 in the United Kingdom (triazolam, rofecoxib, and co-proxamol), we distinguish partisan-political, individual-idiosyncratic, and collective-institutional pathways of parliamentary action on drug withdrawals. Distinguishing direct and indirect actions, we argue that indirect courses of action, including advocacy and educational work, can be just as effective as regular legislative endeavours, under certain conditions.

Shirking and Slacking in Parliament

How and why do the activities of members of parliament (MPs) change in response to electoral constraints? In this article, we draw on unique and newly collected data from the Swiss federal chambers and two cantonal parliaments (Basel‐Stadt and Basel‐Land) to explore the effects of electoral constraints. Leveraging variation in mandatory term limits, we study the extent to which term‐limited MPs engage in shirking—that is, move away from their principal, whether it be the party and/or voters—and slacking—that is, reduce their parliamentary activities. Our analysis, which draws on a combination of novel roll‐call votes and speech data, yields mixed results: while there is no evidence of shirking by term‐limited MPs in the cantonal parliaments, we find some indications of such behavior among term‐limited legislators in the federal chambers. These latter legislators also engage in some limited slacking, which is not observable in the cantonal parliaments. Our findings shed light on the (political) implications of term limits and the effect of electoral constraints on legislator behavior.