Parliamentary Discussions Research Articles

La denuncia de prevaricación como forma de desgastar a un gobierno: el caso Juan Macías del Real = Weakening a Goverment through reporting malfeasance: the case of Juan Macías del Real

The need of rebuild ‘the Escuadra’, destroyed in 1898, caused a political controversy that was used to abate the Sagasta, Silvela and Maura Cabinets. This last, despite the success achieved in 1907, was beset by the complaint of prevarication submitted by Macías del Real. A bitter parliamentary discussion took place with protest marches in La Carrera de San Jerónimo Street of Madrid. Luís Morote, despite suffering high personal and political costs, was asked to clarify the truth of the charges against the Maura Cabinet that emerged strengthened from the test.

The Netherlands Has Not Turned a Blind Eye towards the International Debate Regarding Tax Planning

In response to the international debate on base erosion and profit shifting, the Netherlands has introduced several measures that focus on improving transparency. In this article, the authors discuss these measures and also clarify the Netherlands position. The authors also comment on the Netherlands parliamentary discussions on the Commission’s proposal of 25 November 2013 to amend the EU Parent-Subsidiary Directive.

Construcción de política pública de educación superior en Colombia.

This article describes the Colombian Higher Education public policy process starting by year 2011, in which the Government proposed the Parliament to revise the Law 30 of 1992; draft of which was finally retired from parliamentary discussion by the same Government (2012). It also describes following dialogue processes which lead to a recent official proposal issued (August 2014) by the National Council of Higher Education (CESU according to its name in Spanish). Several points of analysis are described on the present higher education regulatory frame as well as on possibilities for a continuous work in prioritizing and establishing mechanisms for the design and implementation of a new public policy. In the discussion of a long term higher education perspective as a national priority, as well as on the need for strategic changes in face of new policy requirements by the National Development Plan (2014-2018) participative efforts made by several social sectors are recognized. Tensions which could lead to detention of the reform process viewed as normative improvement and strengthening of higher education as key factor for national development are also signaled in the report.

Selling the Scenery or Preserving the Wilderness: Canadian Members of Parliament and their Views on the Purpose of National Parks, 1945–64

This article examines Canadian parliamentary discussion on national parks from 1945 to 1964 and traces how the members of Parliament viewed the purpose of national parks and the value of nature. The article shows how comments in the House of Commons reflected local concerns and the ambiguity Canadians felt about national parks, with opinions shifting between the development of tourism and recreational use and the need to preserve natural areas. Discussion in the House indicated a clear focus on development in the comments of politicians who spoke for constituency interests and the developmental opportunities parks offered politicians’ local areas. While the members were aware of the purpose of parks in preserving areas in their natural condition, they opted to seek economic development through tourism and argued that areas with little tourism potential were not suitable for park purposes. The article concludes that even though the parks were viewed in terms of their development possibilities, during the early 1960s the preservationist sentiment gained more ground. The idea of preservation was still, however, mostly concerned with the preservation of park environments for their recreational use.

¿Federalismo en Chile? Algunos esbozos acerca de su debate legislativo y su promotor en el siglo XIX

Does federalism in Chile was a utopia of a man ahead of his time or was it a legal reality that needed the nascent Chilean nation? Article forth below reviews the parliamentary discussion of political and legislative ideas pushed by Jose Miguel Infante on the federal state model, in Congress July and August 1826, in the Draft Federal Constitution and in some editions of El Valdiviano Federal of Santiago, Chile, between 1827 and 1830. The objective pursued is to show the relationship between a number of concepts and ideas covered under the idea of federalism and proposed Infante in shaping the draft Constitution of 1826 from the same year legislative debate and the impending adoption of the federal organization of the territory (which never see the light in Chile), perceiving whether it was open to challenge much broader conceptualizations as transit of peoples to nation, representation, the idea of citizen or similar.

The Hidden World of Multilateralism: Treaty Commitments of Newly Democratized States in Europe

Why do new EU democracies engage in multilateralism? The dominant explanation proposes that new democracies use international treaties to lock in domestic reforms. This article offers a novel explanation as to why new EU democracies participate in multilateral treaties. We argue that ratifying a treaty serves three external signaling purposes (recognition concerns, increasing strategic autonomy, and pleasing the European Union). We test our argument through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. First, we apply event history analysis. Drawing on a new ratification data set comprising 76 multilateral treaties, we illustrate the prominent role of new EU democracies in multilateralism as compared to other new democracies. Second, to assess the importance of external signaling in the decision to ratify multilateral treaties, we examine parliamentary ratification debates in selected Central and Eastern European countries. Third, we compare parliamentary discussions across European and non-European new democracies to demonstrate the different motives driving their approaches toward multilateralism.

Secularists, Humanists and religious education: religious crisis and curriculum change in England, 1963–1975

With particular reference to religious education, this article provides an account of the campaigns of Secularists and Humanists in England in the 1960s and 1970s and locates them within their broader religious context. These campaigns, which have been both underplayed and overstated in the existing historiography, failed to garner the levels of support required to fulfil their ultimate aims. Nevertheless, Secularists and Humanists did make a significant contribution to public and political discourses at the time and created opportunities with the potential to exert influence over the development of religious education, collective worship and moral education. Their involvement was welcomed, indeed fostered, by many leading Christians and religious educationists. Secularist and Humanist campaigns also precipitated parliamentary discussion and provoked considerable opposition from Christians in other quarters. Finally, some observations are made about the ways in which this episode in the religious history of education can contextualise comparable contemporary debates.

Men's Groups as a New Challenge to the Israeli Feminist Movement: Lessons from the Ongoing Gender War over the Tender Years Presumption

Men's Groups as a New Challenge to the Israeli Feminist Movement:Lessons from the Ongoing Gender War Over the Tender Years Presumption Daphna Hacker (bio) Introduction Israeli law still contains the tender years presumption, according to which children under the age of 6 should live with their mother in cases of parental separation, unless special circumstances require a different custody arrangement.1 In many other developed countries, this presumption was abolished during the last two decades of the twentieth century, among other reasons due to aggressive campaigns by men's organizations.2 In these countries, the presumption was replaced with gender neutral legal language, encouraging shared legal parenthood and blurring the distinctiveness of the role of the primary care-giving parent by replacing the terms "custody" and "visitation" with terms such as "parental plan" and "contact".3 Similarly, at the end of 2011, a governmental committee (hereinafter: the Shnit Committee) recommended abolishing the tender years doctrine and adopting the terms "parental responsibility" and "parental times". These recommendations were embraced by the Minister of Justice, and are awaiting parliamentary discussion.4 Some feminists in other countries are critical of the outcomes of such legal changes. In the United States, Canada, and Australia, what seemed to be a move from a patriarchal rule that assumes maternal sole caring responsibilities post-divorce to a liberating rule that will lead to gender equality, turned out to be a tool in the hands of many fathers to avoid paying child support, restrict divorced mothers' freedom of movement, and enforce ongoing contact with an abusive ex-spouse.5 Moreover, the gender-neutral [End Page 29] language used by the law in these countries did not lead to significant changes in the gendered labor division, but rather masks the ongoing reality in which in most post-divorce families, like in most pre-divorce ones, the mother is the primary caregiver.6 The dangers for women embedded in the abolishment of the tender years presumption are even more acute in Israel. Divorces in Israel are governed by religious laws and tribunals. Civil marriage and divorce are not allowed, and so women are subordinated to patriarchal religious norms that enable the husband to economically blackmail the wife for a divorce decree (Get).7 Indeed, Ruth Halperin-Kaddari and I have recently warned against the adoption of the foreign legal reforms described above into Israeli law, because it will harm women and children who already suffer from the current discriminatory legal system. In our paper, we argue that the tender years presumption should be changed to a primary caregiver presumption. Such a change will mark the option of paternal custody, if the father was the primary caregiver, and will allow shared physical custody in the rare circumstances when such an arrangement is possible and advisable, while saving most mothers the need to prove in court that the best interest of their children is to stay in their physical custody.8 I will not dwell any further on the pros and cons of each possible legal rule governing parental responsibility upon divorce, discussed at length in the above mentioned paper. Rather, I wish to shift the spotlight towards the innovative strategies used by the Israeli men's groups in their struggle to abolish the tender years presumption. After mapping these strategies I argue that the Israeli feminist movement does not address them adequately, hence not properly adjusting to the challenges of the third millennium. Israeli Men's Groups' Strategies In my empirical study of the field shaping divorce arrangements in Israel at the dawn of the third millennium, I have found several men's organizations that called for the abolishment of the tender years presumption. However, I concluded from the findings that "unlike the status of men's organizations in other countries, these Israeli men's organizations do not enjoy public recognition as carriers of a legitimate socio-legal change."9 Ten years ago, representatives of men's organizations were not invited to Knesset discussions, were belittled by women's organizations, ignored by the media, and disregarded by professionals in the legal and therapeutic fields shaping divorce arrangements. At the time, the only organization that managed to [End Page 30...

Godsdienstvrijheid onder druk?

The freedom of religion which exists throughout Europe has not led to equal rights nor equal social acceptance of Muslims. This holds especially true for Islamic rituals and symbols such as the public call to prayer which only in the Netherlands has been accepted on national level after discussion in Parliament in the 1980s. That this right has only sporadically been effectuated is probably mainly due to the influence of increasing social pressures related to increasingly negative attitudes of the non-Muslim population since the 1980s and anti-Muslim political parties and a changing view on the public display of religious symbols. The same pressures appear from discussions about mosques in general and minarets in particular. This article discusses the reactions of 21 religious and humanist organisations in the Netherlands on the Swiss ban on minarets and argues that they show an awareness of an increasing pressure on the free exercise of this right. They all see the freedom to build minarets as a core element of freedom of religion on equal footing with the freedom to build other religious buildings (although they do not value minarets in the same way). Most of them denounce the proposal to prohibit or limit the freedom to build them as expressions of anti-Islamic views. However, their reactions show different appreciations and solutions to the pressure, ranging from outright rejection of any concessions to possible adaptation.

Admission policy of Swedish teacher education favouring men: Discussion in Parliament in 1962

In 1962 the Swedish Parliament decided on a school reform. Meritocracy and equal opportunity were important goals. However, these ideals were not applied to elementary school teacher education, where a sex quota policy favoured male applicants. In the parliamentary debate, a woman member of the Right Wing Party raised objections to the policy. A man representing the Social Democrat government’s education politics had to explain why the admission policy that favoured men was not abolished. By evoking historical ideas of women teachers as inferior, and warnings of the feminisation of schools as a great threat, the admission rules were defended. Further, analysis of the debate shows that women were supposed to hold back their individual rights and a woman arguing in favour of a gender-neutral admission policy risked being labelled ‘unwomanly’.

A Long Way to Tipperary: Time in the Italian Legislative Process 1987–2008

The Italian legislature does not enjoy widespread trust. At least one of the reasons has to be the perception of its inefficiency. Comparatively, the Italian law-making process is slow and most policy-makers complain about the difficulties experienced in trying to speed up the process. In spite of the political relevance of the topic, the issue has not attracted much scientific attention. This study tries to cover that void, focusing explicitly on the temporal dimension of law-making and analysing the duration of more than 3,000 laws approved during the period of 1987–2008: 21 years of intense Italian political history. Our exploratory analysis finds that successful proposals spend most of their time in those stages preceding the discussion in parliament, waiting to find room on the agenda. Concentrating on ordinary laws, we realise that the factors that expedite a legislative process are its sponsorship, the procedure adopted, the policy sector, and the timing of introduction, whereas the level of consensus is not associated with the duration of the process.

The Necessity for Multi-disciplinary Research: Ralph Jacobi's Institute of Freshwater Studies

In spite of many proposals, Australia has no national freshwater research centre. Thus the passing in the Senate of Ralph Jacobi's private member's bill for an Institute of Freshwater Studies in 1982 was unusual. His driving force was the need to overcome State boundaries and for research to inform policy and management of water resources. It gained widespread support, and not just from the parliamentary Labor Party, but was strongly opposed by the Fraser government, State and federal water bureaucracies, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The election of 1983 prevented further discussion in parliament, but the proposal was part of the Labor Party platform taken to the election. An Interim Council set up to investigate whether or not such an institute should be established, but with narrow terms of reference very different from those in Jacobi's bill, sided with the large water bureaucracies and CSIRO, in spite of majority support for an institute. An institute was rejected and the government accepted the recommendation. Jacobi's proposal failed primarily because of a fear of independent advice by many in the bureaucracies, a potential loss of power and influence, and inter-governmental rivalries. The status quo remained; the bigger picture is still unseen.

In fear of a reversal back to the spirits-drinking era — the 2004 decrease of Finnish alcohol taxes in public discourse

Aims The study investigates how the dissimilar tax reductions for different alcoholic beverages (spirits, wine and beer) were debated during the large tax decrease on alcoholic beverages in Finland in 2004. Design and Data The material comprises parliamentary proceedings and discussions, as well as daily press items (=105) from 2003–2004. Content analyses, both quantitative and qualitative, were performed. Results The parliament's discussion on the unequal treatment of different beverage types concerned mostly the overall framing of a public health perspective, differencing between consumption of “spirits” and “non-spirits”. The mass media framed the question mostly from the industry's point of view. Neither a clear support of the total consumption model (excluding specification of beverage sort), nor a strong liberalisation model for alcohol policy were expressed in the materials. Varying stances were merely motivated within a paradigm of “changing drinking patterns”. Conclusions The differing treatment of different beverage types, especially the large reductions in spirits taxes, was crystallised as the fundamental public health concern surrounding the decision to lower alcohol taxes. In the end of the article the authors ask whether the lack of clear stances other than the drinking pattern framing could imply that the Finnish alcohol policy debate has become more heterogeneous, neutralised or resigned in its basic nature.

Taxation for New Zealand’s future: The introduction of New Zealand’s progressive income tax in 1891

The Land and Income Assessment Act of 1891 introduced both New Zealand’s first income tax and the principle of progression into New Zealand’s taxation system. Its passage through Parliament provided a rare opportunity for Parliament to discuss taxation policy at the level of broad policy, rather than at the level of specific measures. The 1891 Parliamentary Debates provide evidence of the thinking of Parliament on such fundamental issues as the legitimacy of taxation, the focus of taxation, and the question of progression – discussions which continue to this day. This article reviews these parliamentary discussions by discussing the contemporary context, and how the 1891 Bill was defended and opposed. The resulting discussion enhances understandings of the past and provides a basis for further interpretation and application.

A Perfect Storm: Parliament and Prisoner Disenfranchisement

In Hirst v UK (No. 2) the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Representation of the People Act 1983 breached the right of prisoners to vote under Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Since then, much of the delay in reform has been premised on the understanding that the disenfranchisement of prisoners has been a consistent feature of the UK's history as a parliamentary democracy. Both parliamentary debates and consultation documents on prisoner disenfranchisement, however, have overlooked the complex history of prisoner participation in the political process in the UK. Most importantly, large sections of the prison population were enfranchised in the decades after the Second World War. This article explores the reasons why the ability of many prisoners to take part in elections in the post-war era has been ignored during the recent debates on prisoner voting rights. This neglect has enabled a range of discourses, including penal populism, Euro-scepticism, concern over the juridification of the UK's system of government and the trivialisation of human rights, to vie for dominance of parliamentary discussion of prisoner enfranchisement. In combination, by hampering the reform of prisoner voting rights required by the Hirst decision (and recently affirmed in Greens and MT v UK), these discourses threaten to expose the UK to further censure by the Council of Europe and to exacerbate the divisions within the Coalition Government regarding human rights.

‘Soft’ pedagogy? The invention of a ‘feminine’ pedagogy as a cause of educational crises

Every now and then the feminisation of the teaching force is put forth as a barrier to reduce educational equality between the sexes. The feminisation of education is supposed to have a negative impact on boys’ achievement, causing educational as well as behavioural problems. It is not just boys who allegedly suffer; over the years, the feminisation of education has been held responsible for countless other education-related problems and social crises. In the latest parliamentary and public discussions in the Netherlands, the failure of educational reforms in the second half of the twenty-first century is attributed to the feminisation of education. This time it is not too many female teachers, but a so-called ‘female pedagogy’ that is to blame. It is assumed that women teachers have a different (‘soft’) approach to methodology, didactics and pedagogy than their male counterparts. We have sought historical evidence for this assumption by examining the rise and development of pedagogy within the teaching profession, using a content analysis of the professional association journal for the (teaching of) modern languages in secondary schooling.

A simple and flexible alternative to Stability and Growth Pact deficit ceilings. Is it at hand?

We model a monetary union where fiscal discretion generates excessive debt accumulation in steady state and inefficiently delayed debt adjustment following shocks. By setting a debt target and raising the political cost of deviating from the optimal pace of debt reversal¸ institutional design induces fiscal policymakers to implement unbiased responses to shocks. This is partly achieved by increasing the transparency of the decision-making process. We therefore call for more focused supervision tasks for the European Commission and for parliamentary discussion whenever a disagreement arises between the Commission and a national government.

Mathematics curriculum change: Parliamentary discussion over the past two decades

This paper explores views of mathematics that have been offered in parliamentary exchanges over the past two decades. It makes connections between the development of mathematics curriculum and the political and ideological arrangements in which curriculum is nested. In tracing how school mathematics debates in parliamentary sessions are set within specific social, cultural and economic contexts, we draw attention to an increasing national drive for competitiveness and to heightened allegations of falling standards.

Political economy and tax reform in parliament: Spain's attempt to implement income tax in 1868-1869

AbstractThe influence of economic ideas in parliamentary debates has attracted increasing attention in the analysis of the institutionalisation of political economy in the liberal age in the Western world. Within this framework, this paper explores a particular case: the relevance of economic ideas and the role of economists in the debates that took place in the Spanish Parliament in 1869 following the bill issued by the Minister of Finance Figuerola to establish a tax on personal incomes. Economic ideas and parliamentarian economists played a significant role in the design of the income tax as a key tool to modernise Spain's tax system, and in the subsequent parliamentary discussions.

A duras e pesadas penas: imprensa, identidade e nacionalidade no Brasil imperial

O texto apresenta estudo sobre a construção da imprensa brasileira durante o primeiro reinado. Reflete sobre a certificação da imprensa como espaço privilegiado da luta política. Analisa a relação centrípeta e centrífuga entre Bahia e Rio de Janeiro na efetivação da opinião pública. Interpreta discussões parlamentares sobre liberdade e censura de expressão. Afirma a importância da imprensa na consolidação da identidade nacional brasileira.