Parliamentary Agenda Research Articles

A classical study on parliamentary procedure. Conceptions of parliament in Josef Redlich’s Recht und Technik des Englischen Parlamentarismus (1905)

ABSTRACT In this article I analyse the intellectual contribution of Josef Redlich’s Recht und Technik des Englischen Parlamentarismus, a classical study on the Westminster parliamentary procedure from 1905. Redlich presents the origins of the procedural literature and the revision of British parliamentary procedure in the second half of the nineteenth century, the extended post-reform parliamentary agenda as well as the Irish members’ obstruction campaign. He emphasizes parliament’s measures for dealing with the scarce time threatening to paralyze its activities. His perspective is that of guaranteeing an efficient parliamentary government in the age of democratizing representation and extending legislation, which was realized at the cost of thorough debates deliberating pro et contra. With later scholarship, we could emphasize the continuous presence of deliberative procedure and rhetoric at Westminster.

Putting dog welfare high on the parliamentary agenda

The BVA team has been busy engaging with MPs to help improve dog welfare, as Vera Cottrell, BVA policy and public affairs officer, reports.

Speaking of politics in parliament: experiences of writing a book on the digitized Bundestag debates, 1949–2017

ABSTRACT This article consists of ex post methodological reflections on the procedures and practices that I applied in my monograph Politik als parlamentarischer Begriff: Perspektiven aus den Plenardebatten des Deutschen Bundestags (Leverkusen, 2021). The book analyses through 18 parliamentary terms the conceptualization of politics in German Bundestag plenary debates from 1949 to 2017. The book was an illustration of my long-term aim of combining political theorizing with the empirical analysis of debate. In writing the book, my guiding idea was to apply Ludwig Wittgenstein’s point, that the meaning of a concept lies in its use, to an analysis of how parliamentary debates open a perspective on the conceptualization of politics closer to ‘political life itself’, to quote Quentin Skinner. Conversely, I also wanted to discuss how a focus on politics as a concept helps us to improve our understanding of the parliamentary style of politics, in which parliamentary voting forms the last step of a debate. To this purpose, the book assumes that every item on a parliamentary agenda has a political aspect to be debated. The book makes use of two interpretative approaches: the rhetoric of topoi and a typology of politics as an activity.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORMATION OF THE RIGHT TO PETITION

The first legal mechanisms for both appeals and court proceedings appeared in the Roman state. The genesis of the development of the institution of citizens’ petitions to government agencies is undoubtedly of scientific interest. Some scholars insist that the right to petition to public authorities should be dated to 1215 with the adoption of the Magna Carta. According to another group of scholars, the origin of the right to petition appeared lately, due to the formation of political power. In any case, the right to petition to the public authorities stems from the need to protect the relationship between society and political power long before the election, which created universal suffrage.The right to petition to public authorities is the foundation of any democracy, because the law studied allows citizens to participate in the management of public affairs and influences the parliamentary agenda.

Animal welfare stays high on the parliamentary agenda

Mandy Ryan, BVA's head of media and public affairs, gives an update on our recent lobbying and campaigning activity in Westminster and the devolved nations.

Strengthening Malaysian Parliamentary Democracy Through Private Member’s Bills

At present, the ability of the Malaysian Legislature – specifically the House of Representatives (Dewan Rakyat) – to effectively check and balance the powers of the Executive is impeded by the lack of a formal mechanism enabling the deliberation and debate of Private Member’s Bills. The Government or the Executive branch remains the primary agenda-setter in Parliamentary sittings, thus undermining the full extent of legislative independence and representative debate taking place in the August House. Drawing on local and international examples, this article argues in favour of allocating space to Private Member’s Bills within the parliamentary agenda and consequently returning legislators their rights and agencies towards strengthening Malaysia’s parliamentary democracy.

Disseminating legislative debates: How legislators communicate the parliamentary agenda.

While a rich literature addresses legislative agenda-setting in multiparty democracies, relatively little is known how members of parliament disseminate the legislative agenda beyond the parliamentary floor. Drawing on content analyses of 110 legislative debates and 5,847 press releases from Austrian MPs (2013–2017), we test whether legislators are more likely to send press releases on issues that are salient to their party (party agenda-setting) and to other parties in the party system (systemic salience). MPs should also communicate more on issues that fall within their area of expertise (issue specialization) and when they have given a speech on that issue during the legislative debate (intra-party delegation). While we find empirical support for all these expectations, communication of the legislative agenda largely rests on each parties’ issue specialists and their speakers in plenary debates. Importantly, there is no significant discrepancy overall between the actual parliamentary issue agenda and the agenda communicated by party MPs.

Every Single Word: A New Data Set Including All Parliamentary Materials Published in Germany

AbstractIn this article, we introduce a unique data set containing all written communication published by the German Bundestag between 1949 and 2017. Increasing numbers of scholars make use of protocols of parliamentary speeches, parliamentary questions or the texts of legislative drafts in various fields of comparative politics including representation, responsiveness, professionalization and political careers or parliamentary agenda studies. Since preparing parliamentary documents is rather resource intensive, these studies remain limited to single points in time, types of documents and/or policy areas. The long time horizon and various types of documents covered by our new comprehensive data set will enable scholars interested in parliaments, parties and representatives to answer various innovative research questions related to legislative studies.

Movement and countermovement and the configurations of the political field around the use of pesticides in Brazil

Na última década, o debate sobre o uso dos agrotóxicos tem se acirrado no Brasil em razão do retorno do Projeto de Lei 6.299/02 à pauta parlamentar. De iniciativa da “bancada ruralista”, o PL visa flexibilizar a legislação vigente, considerada um obstáculo ao desenvolvimento econômico do setor do agronegócio, permitindo a intensificação da utilização dos agrotóxicos. Em contraposição a esse movimento, diversas organizações sociais e de saúde se articularam na “Campanha Permanente Contra Agrotóxicos e Pela Vida” sendo uma de suas estratégias, a proposição do PL 6670/2016, cujo objetivo é limitar o uso dos referidos produtos. Essas disputas configuram um campo político importante, objeto de análise deste artigo. Partindo das concepções de movimento e contramovimento, oriundas da teoria dos movimentos sociais, procurou-se compreender as relações de enfrentamento entre esses grupos por meio dos repertórios discursivos mobilizados para conquistar a opinião pública e de suas estratégias políticas contra e a favor das Leis. Utilizou-se como fontes de pesquisa: entrevistas; depoimentos de representantes desses grupos, disponíveis em jornais, revistas, sites, audiências públicas; e o documento dos PLs. Identificou-se que a relação movimento/contramovimento trouxe impactos institucionais significativos. Acordos entre o Estado e os empresários do agronegócio favoreceram mudanças na legislação de agrotóxicos intensificando a liberação de novos produtos, rebaixando o sistema de classificação de toxicidade admitindo, inclusive, produtos banidos em outros países. Nesse processo, contribuíram os esforços para construir uma imagem positiva do setor por meio de coalizões políticas, com forte apelo midiático e grande lobby político. De modo similar, mas com menor incidência, o contramovimento estabeleceu alianças internacionais importantes mobilizando a opinião pública e conseguiu implementar políticas restritivas de uso em âmbito municipal e estadual.

Trustworthiness, Stability and Productivity of Minority Governments in Australia

Abstract In this study, we question commonly held negative perceptions of minority governments and determine whether they can be trusted to deliver on the promises contained in governance agreements, whether they are stable in being able to govern over full terms of parliament, and whether they are productive in being able to successfully pass legislation. We examine eight minority government agreements and the following eight majority government opening parliamentary agendas in Australian national and state governments from 1989 to 2018 and compare their performance using legislative data. The main differences are not how long they last or how much legislation they pass, but rather that majority governments generally make more commitments, particularly more policy-focused commitments. They are also more successful in fulfilling their promises, albeit not completely. We theorise that major parties faced with having to form a minority government agreement will overpromise in order to secure power but can underdeliver due to the risks for minor parties and independents in forcing elections over breaches.

The value of ‘between-election’ political participation: Do parliamentary e-petitions matter to political elites?

Responding to the crisis of democracy, legislatures worldwide are developing new participatory mechanisms to promote parliamentary engagement and provide additional opportunities for citizens to influence policymaking. Yet despite the prevalence of such initiatives, little is known about whether political elites are receptive to public input. This article addresses this important gap, presenting original research that examines the e-petition system in the United Kingdom’s national legislature. It demonstrates significant apathy – on occasion, antipathy – on the part of Westminster’s elected MPs. In particular, it reveals concerns that parliamentary e-petitions risk undermining the relationship between MPs and their constituents; inundating the parliamentary agenda with immediate, but not necessarily important, issues; and exacerbating misunderstandings of the parliamentary process. More broadly, political elites remain sceptical about the capacity of parliamentary e-petitions to address the democratic divide, with a widespread sense that e-petitions often amplify the voices of those who already shout the loudest.

Whistleblowing: still not an issue of social policy, but an issue for social policy

PurposeThis paper revisits the claim of Vinten (1993) in this journal that whistleblowing is achieving prominence as a question of social policy.Design/methodology/approachIt examines literature from social and health policy to focus on the importance of whistleblowing and the policies that may encourage whistleblowing. However, it finds little extant academic literature in social policy, and so it turns to examine documents on whistleblowing in the British National Health Service such as NHS Inquiries, Parliamentary Debates, Parliamentary Committee Reports and government documents.FindingsIt is found that whistleblowing has not achieved prominence as a question of social policy in nearly 30 years since Vinten's argument. However, it argues that whistleblowing should be an issue for social policy as it is clear that whistleblowing can save lives.Practical implicationsIt supports the growing Parliamentary agenda for legislative change for whistleblowers.Originality/valueThis is one of the first articles on whistleblowing in a Social Policy journal for nearly 30 years and provides an argument that the discipline should pay more attention to a topic that can save lives.

Legislating or rubber‐stamping? Assessing parliament's influence on law‐making with text reuse

AbstractLaw‐making is a core function of parliaments in democratic systems. Yet, we still know little about the extent to which parliaments influence legislation and the reasons why MPs modify some bills more than others. We analyse the degree of bill amendments operated by parliament, by comparing bills before and after parliamentary deliberations with a text reuse approach. We postulate that MPs attempt to overcome the problem of limited processing capacity by prioritising certain bills over others. To this end, they use considerations related to institutional rules, attention dynamics and partisan politics. Empirically, we apply zero‐inflated beta regressions on a dataset covering about 1,700 bills adopted from 1995 to 2015 in the Swiss Parliament. Moreover, we address the problem of observational equivalence affecting analyses of parliament's impact on law‐making, by taking into account the government's anticipation strategy. Results highlight a reasonably high amendment activity, but with strong variations across bills. MPs change bills more if they are subject to direct democracy, rank high on the parliamentary agenda or if they attract media attention. The influence of the electoral cycle and coalition politics is not confirmed.

Media, public opinion and parliamentary agendas’ effect in political parties’ agenda-setting

Abstract Why do parties pay more attention to some policy issues than to others? To what extent does policy attention conveyed by the media, public opinion, and parliament explain party agenda-setting? And, more specifically, to what extent does the media agenda influence other agenda effects? This paper addresses these questions in an original manner by analyzing the influence of these three agendas – media, public opinion, and parliament – in party manifesto elaboration. The analysis relies on an extensive database of the Portuguese Policy Agendas Project that includes media attention, voter preferences, parliamentary questions and pledges in manifestos, between 1995 and 2015. Our findings show that the media agenda is the most influential in party manifesto elaboration, and that the other agendas have a stronger effect when the media also give attention to the issue. This depends, however, on the political party being in cabinet or in opposition, as well as on the economic context. These findings have important implications for party competition literature.

Presentation of the Political Agenda in the News Programs of Lithuanian TV channels

The authors of the article investigate how the parliamentary agenda is reflected in the agenda-setting. They determined the study period and examined how many decisions made in the Parliament are on the agenda of Lithuanian television channels. The study showed that the agenda of the Seimas of Lithuania occupies a very small part of the schedule of media topics. The researchers relied on journalistic criteria for the selection of information – novelty, relevance and conflict. According to them, the criteria by which journalists choose news are not very clear. Sometimes the selected news does not match any –novelty, relevance, or conflict criterion, and sometimes only one of them. However, the criterion of conflict should be considered dominant. Let‘s do it the premise that scandalous news is of most interest to the public. On the other hand, the fact that journalists take the news of a press release already prepared by the Parliament also partly explains the fact of non-compliance with the news selection criteria.

Women in the Egyptian parliament: a different agenda?

Purpose Theoretically, the quality of representation is likely to be enhanced when more societal segments are included in formal political structures. An interesting question, however, is whether a similar correlation holds empirically outside established Western democracies. In the 2015 Egyptian parliament, women representation achieved an all-time high of 14.9% of total seats – nearly four times the historical Egyptian average. It is asked whether female legislators riding this unprecedent tide were different from their male colleagues in terms of their socio-economic backgrounds. But more importantly, the authors examine whether this increased representation led to any change in inclusion of more women’s issues in the legislative agenda, and how traditional topics are debated. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a content analysis of selected parliamentary scripts – generating on an original data set – to trace the topics and interventions raised by female MPs. The authors draw on the extensive literature on women’s representation, giving special attention to the structure versus agency dichotomy in this quest. Findings The authors conclude that female MPs were as active in parliamentary debates as to their male colleagues. Moreover, women did stress women issues more than men. The results indicate that the inclusion of traditionally under-represented groups does affect parliamentary agendas. Originality/value The authors conducted a content analysis of selected parliamentary scripts – generating on an original data set – to trace the topics and interventions raised by female MPs based on a case study of the 2015 Egyptian parliament.

‘No politics in the agenda-setting meeting’: plenary agenda setting in the Netherlands

The process of agenda setting is fundamental to politics, yet there is surprisingly little research about this process in parliamentary systems. The reason for this lacuna is that agenda setting tends to occur behind closed doors. The Dutch Tweede Kamer is an exception to this rule: decisions about the parliamentary agenda are made in public. This study examines agenda setting in the Dutch parliament from an issue-competition perspective. It looks at a sample of more than 400 agenda-setting meetings of the Dutch parliament between 1998 and 2017. It finds that opposition parties which stand far from the government make proposals on issues that they ‘own’; these proposals are supported by other opposition parties, parties that stand close to them and focus on the same issue. Coalition parties and parties that stand far away sabotage these proposals.

Beeinflussen Regierungen die parlamentarische Tagesordnung? Agendakontrolle und Zeitverteilung im britischen Unterhaus und im Deutschen Bundestag

Do governments use their control of the parliamentary agenda to influence the allocation of plenary time and devote relatively less time to important legislation? Using an original dataset comprising all plenary debates during two parliamentary sessions each in the British House of Commons and the German Bundestag in which all (legislative and non-legislative) debates on matters of national importance are identified, one can find no support for this claim . Both in absolute and relative terms, more legislative time is allocated to important legislation under centralized agenda control in the House of Commons . If one additionally considers non-legislative debates, the relative shares of plenary time devoted to important topics is similar . However, in absolute terms, more than twice as much time is allocated to important topics in the House of Commons than in the Bundestag .

The political agenda-setting power of the media: the Europeanization nexus

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have demonstrated that the extent to which media coverage influences the issue priorities of policy-makers is contingent on the type of issues, media, and political agendas. This article contributes to this literature by elaborating on a factor that has been surprisingly neglected so far: the domestic or Europeanized character of the political issue covered in the news. Empirically, we apply time-series cross-section analyses to a dataset on media and parliamentary agendas during the years 1995–2003 in Switzerland. We find that the media’s political agenda-setting power mainly stems from news coverage of domestic issues. News on Europeanized issues have a weak impact on so-called symbolic parliamentary agendas, and no impact at all on the more substantial parliamentary agendas that may initiate decision-making processes.

From agenda setters to agenda takers? The determinants of party issue attention in times of crisis

Question time represents one of the most relevant institutional arenas where parties compete to get their favourite issues on the parliamentary agenda. Parties select which issue to address by weighing up two commitments simultaneously: fulfilling the party mandate received by their voters at election time and responding to the current priorities of voters. This article assesses the extent to which the recent sovereign debt crisis impacted the way parties balance these two imperatives of democratic representation. Through the issue coding of around 10,000 parliamentary oral questions tabled in Italy, Portugal and Spain between 2003 and 2014, the analysis shows that the worsening of economic conditions intensified the impact of citizens’ priorities. However, there is no clear evidence of a decline in the importance of the party mandate for either the majority or opposition parties. These findings offer insights on the topic of party political representation in Southern Europe and whether it was affected by the Eurozone crisis.