Parliamentary Staff Research Articles

Evaluating Parliamentary Academic Fellows

Abstract Parliamentary Academic Fellowship (PAF) schemes have been introduced to boost knowledge exchange between legislatures and the academy. Evaluations of these schemes are rare. This article evaluates the UK Parliament’s PAF scheme based on interviews with former PAFs, Parliamentary hosts, and the Knowledge Exchange Unit. I find that PAFs and hosts want different things from the scheme. This is part of a wider issue of the differing incentives that academics and Parliamentary staff face in conducting knowledge exchange. Bringing academics and Parliamentary staff closer together means adapting the PAF scheme and exploring other forms of engagement beyond a formal fellowship scheme.

Gauging the roles of parliamentary staff

Abstract There is a small but growing literature on the staffs working in national parliaments. These are mostly single-country studies studying one role that staff can play or one principal that they serve. Our contribution provides a comprehensive measurement instrument of the role of parliamentary staff, which takes into account organisational diversity within and between parliaments. We recognise four types of staff that may be present to a greater or lesser extent in different parliaments, which have different principals (PPG staff, personal staff, plenary or committee staff). These different staffs can play different roles (information broker, advisor, ghostwriter, compromise facilitator and marketeer). We apply this typology to the Dutch lower house and find out how different types of staff combine multiple roles in practice.

Building public engagement in small island nations

ABSTRACT Research of parliaments regularly focuses on larger, well-known parliaments. Practices of parliaments of small jurisdictions are often overlooked. This paper investigates public engagement by parliaments in small island states and seeks to answer: how effective public engagement is built by parliaments? What are the opportunities for meaningful engagement? Can public engagement be possible despite serious resource challenges and other barriers? For effective public engagement to happen, parliamentary administrations in these locations need to consider a number of issues and overcome some barriers. Therefore, the paper analyses common contextual themes, like institutional barriers and sociological issues. The paper presents successful approaches applied by parliaments, as well as tools and practices that can be effective in leading to tangible results. The authors argue that effective public engagement by parliaments in small island states is in fact possible and concludes by providing some significant lessons for legislators, parliamentary staff, and civil society.

Cooperating to contrôle: French senators as defence overseers and civil-military actors

ABSTRACT This article examines how the French Senate engaged in legislative oversight of the military between 2015 and 2020. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with French parliamentarians, parliamentary staff, and serving and retired military leaders, the article argues that the French Senate performed “community policing” oversight of the military during this period. This community policing approach, which relies on mutual trust and cooperation between the principal and the agent, allowed senators to oversee the military and check the executive at relatively low cost, while giving military leaders a parliamentary ally in their disagreements with the President and Cabinet. The article examines what conditions enabled and encouraged the French Senate to perform this type of oversight, as well as what civil–military dynamics led the French military to view senators as allies in their policy disagreements with the President. The article finds that the 2015 terrorist attacks on French soil played an important role in establishing closer ties between the upper house and the armed forces, with the Senate securing additional capabilities for the armed forces during this time. The article concludes with avenues for future research focusing on upper houses and legislative oversight of the military.

Gender sensitive parliaments and the legislative cycle: conceptualising new cultures and practices

ABSTRACT As an emergent international norm, gender sensitive parliaments offer parliamentarians and parliamentary staff a new lens through which to consider all aspects of their institutional culture and work practices. In this article, I consider the origins, application and remaining gaps in one particular aspect of gender sensitive parliaments: gender mainstreaming legislation across its entire ‘life cycle’. I begin with a reminder of the international mandates for gender sensitive legislation (GSL), acknowledging a historical emphasis on the responsibility of political institutions to ensure legislation, policy and programmes address – rather than exacerbate – gender inequality. I then assess the tools that have been developed over the past 20 years to support GSL and discuss enduring limitations in its implementation, relating to political will, the collection and analysis of quality data, and inadequate parliamentary opportunities and mechanisms for gender sensitive scrutiny.

Keperluan Mewujudkan Semula Akta Perkhidmatan Parlimen di Malaysia

Parliament represents an ever-important institution in the nation-building of a country. Parliament is committed to its oversight function towards the executive action of the government and represents the voice of the people through its elected representatives to the Dewan Rakyat (House ofRepresentatives) of Malaysia. The Dewan Negara (House of Senate) plays its check and balance role in the decisions taken in the Dewan Rakyat. Therefore, Parliament as an institution needs a parliamentary service system that is independent and efficient to provide impartial support to members of the House. Since the Parliamentary Service Act 1963 was abolished in 1993, there has been no specific legislation on parliamentary services in place in Malaysia. This has resulted in parliamentary staff being bound under the Federal Public Service. However, in the current context of modern parliament, there is a pressing need for legislation on parliamentary service to be introduced to ensure the empowerment and independence of parliamentary institutions in uplifting the quality of parliamentary representation in Malaysia. The practice in several countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, is compared to evaluate the need to reintroduce the parliamentary service act. This article finally sets out to recommend the reintroduction of the act to ensure parliament’s check and balance function can be discharged accordingly.

Information and analytical resources on the development of modern parliamentarism

The interaction of national parliaments in the international arena requires information support, which is provided not only by international parliamentary organizations and associations, but also by creating special web platforms that contain a variety of information about the activities, problems and prospects of parliaments and determine the general trends in the development of the institution of parliamentarism. The article describes the AGORA web portal, which positions itself as a "leading global platform for knowledge about parliamentary development." Its aim is to centralize and share knowledge on the development of parliamentarism, as well as to develop and demonstrate high-quality resources to support parliaments and provide relevant information to politicians and academic circles. In November 2020, a new modernized version of AGORA was launched, which includes three areas: 1) accumulation and exchange of knowledge in the field of parliamentarism, 2) coordination of exchange of experience and development of recommendations on best practices in parliamentary activities, 3) development and implementation of e-learning courses for parliamentarians and parliamentary staff on various issues (climate, gender, budgets, interaction with civil society). The most interesting and innovative materials of AGORA are analyzed, special emphasis is placed on the problems of development of modern Ukrainian parliamentarism and specific activities of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The facts presented in the article show that the international web portal AGORA is an authoritative factor in shaping the views of the international community on the processes and events of modern parliamentary development. The use of his publications will contribute to a clearer understanding and adequate assessment of the state of affairs in the field of representative democracy and the exercise of democracy.

Political group formation in the European parliament: Negotiating democracy and gender

Political group formation in the European Parliament (EP) after European elections is a core feature of supranational party politics. The research objective of this article is to scrutinise democratic practices and the role of values, more specifically gender equality, in this political group formation. Complementing extant literature, this article engages with gendered political group formation as a dynamic process consisting of three intertwined layers, which are assessed by analysing formal and informal institutions around democracy and gender. The article draws on a unique data set of 130 interviews with MEPs, political group and parliamentary staff conducted in 2018–2020. The key findings of the article show that gender plays a role in each layer of political group formation, yet there are clear differences between political groups. By deciphering the reasons behind these differences, the article enhances the understanding of the political dynamics and struggles within the political groups.

‘A cloister of curious workmanship’: the patronage of St. Stephen’s cloisters within the Palace of Westminster in the early sixteenth century

Abstract A beautiful set of early sixteenth-century cloisters survive today within the nineteenth-century houses of parliament. Built for St. Stephen’s College, they have survived fire and bombs to become one of just three pre-modern survivals within the modern palace. Unlike the better-known Westminster Hall, the cloisters have received little attention because they have been offices for M.P.s and parliamentary staff. As there are no surviving building accounts, this article uses the institutional context and history that produced the cloisters, the design of the surviving vaulting and possible patronages to reassess a significant ecclesiastical project on the eve of the Reformation.

What explains the size of parliamentary staff?

Little is known about the staff who support MPs in their work. The literature suggests that these staff serve different important roles in democratic systems. This article compares the size of parliamentary staff in 48 countries and in 66 houses over an eight-year period. It compares three explanations of staff size, which reflect different roles they can have: firstly, that these staff serve MPs as compromise facilitators, planners and scribes. In that case, their number reflects the number of MPs. Secondly, that staff members function as information brokers and advertisers and as such act as intermediaries between the population and MPs. In that case, staff size reflects population size. And thirdly, that these staff primarily serve as a source of independent advice for MPs. In that case, staff size reflects the strength of the house they serve. Population size is found to be the dominant driver of the size of parliamentary staff.

Democratic Innovation in the Scottish Parliament: An Evaluation of Committee Mini-Publics

When the Scottish Parliament was established the intention of the founders was to make it a more innovative, participatory, and deliberative legislature than the UK had experienced before. Research suggests that attempts to achieve these aspirations were short-lived. Recently, a Commission on Parliamentary Reform (2017) was established to add fresh impetus to this mission. Its recommendations included the running of inhouse mini-publics to support the committee system. In 2019 the Scottish Parliament’s Citizen Engagement Unit ran their first mini-publics: a Citizens' Jury on land management and the natural environment for the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, and a series of Citizens’ Panels on the future of primary care for the Health and Sport Committee. This paper evaluates their design and implementation against key norms of deliberative democracy and the expectations of the reform committee, to establish whether the Scottish Parliament is now adopting a meaningful ‘new politics’. We analyse primary data collected from a mixed method study that included structured participant surveys, semi-structured interviews with parliamentary staff, committee members, and expert witnesses; supplemented with non-participant observations and secondary data sources. We conclude with suggestions to enable mini-publics to be embedded in the committee system more permanently.

The Scope of Climate Assemblies: Lessons from the Climate Assembly UK

In recent times we have seen a spate of climate assemblies across Europe as the climate emergency gains increasing prominence in the political agenda and as the citizens’ assembly approach to public engagement gains popularity. However, there has been little empirical research on how the scope of citizens’ assemblies affects the internal logic of the assembly process and its impacts on external policy actors. This is a significant oversight given the power of agenda setting. It is also of particular importance for climate assemblies given the exceptional scale and complexity of climate change, as well as the need for co-ordination across all policy areas and types of governance to address it. In this paper, we start to address this gap through an in-depth case analysis of the Climate Assembly UK. We adopt a mixed methods approach, combining surveys of the assembly members and witnesses, interviews with the assembly members, organisers, MPs, parliamentary staff, and government civil servants, and non-participant observation of the process. We find that attempts to adapt the assembly’s scope to the scale of the climate change issue compromised assembly member learning, the co-ordination of the resulting recommendations, assembly member endorsement of the recommendations, and the extent of their impact on parliament and government. We argue that more democratization in setting the agenda could help combat these issues.

The mainstreaming of EU affairs: a challenge for parliamentary administrations

ABSTRACT Past research has identified a trend towards the bureaucratisation of the parliamentary scrutiny of EU affairs. It highlighted the role of parliamentary staff in selecting relevant issues, advising on subsidiarity and procedures and drafting of opinions and resolutions. However, while administrators clearly play a role, less is known about the Europeanisation of parliamentary administrations. In particular, the impact of the growing Europeanisation of sectoral committees on the Europeanisation of staff is unexplored. This article presents data from a survey of parliamentary administrations in 2021, which shows that the Europeanisation of parliamentary administrations extends beyond the main units in charge of EU affairs and affects sectoral committee staff more generally. At the same time, it reveals that the organisation of staff support for EU affairs varies greatly across the national parliaments depending on the organisation of the political scrutiny, on administrative capacity and on pre-existing units.

Global Challenges and Opportunities for Parliamentary Public Engagement during the Covid-19 Crisis

During the Covid-19 crisis, parliamentarians and parliamentary staff faced a novel combi­nation of challenges to their existing functions . In responding to the Covid-19 crisis, parlia­ments were forced to re-examine their political and democratic roles, and in many cases restricted themselves to a small number of ‘core functions’ . Drawing on interviews and focus group undertaken for the third Global Parliamentary Report by the Inter-Parliamen­tary Union and the United Nations Development Programme, different approaches to public engagement by parliaments are assembled and their challenges and opportunities discussed . It shows that public engagement was side-lined in many parliaments while it was maintained or even received renewed attention in a few . This is especially true when it comes to procedural digital innovation and to outreach activities in remote areas and dias­pora communities . Thus the pandemic did accelerate changes that were already underway in some parliaments . It also showed the need for a renewed focus on parliamentary engage­ment not only in the crisis but also beyond .

Parliamentary rituals, institutional continuity, and the reinvention of political traditions in Myanmar

ABSTRACTShedding light on an understudied aspect of Myanmar's institutional history, this study interrogates the perpetuation of parliamentary rituals in the country's successive postcolonial legislatures. It focuses on two ritualised ceremonies: the oath taken by new members of parliaments and the mace-bearing spectacle marking the opening of the daily session. Their maintenance, re-appropriation and re-designing under Myanmar's different post-independence regimes reveal a persistent linkage between institution-building, state formation and the reinvention of royal symbols and religious traditions of the country's dominant ethnic group, the Bamar. Furthermore, drawing on document analysis, archival research and interviews with MPs and parliamentary staff carried out in Myanmar's Union legislature, this article argues that the continuing performance of such parliamentary rituals has served two other purposes: conferring hegemonic powers and status on the parliamentary speakers, while ensuring loyalty, discipline and deference in the house.

Towards Legislative Institutionalisation? Emerging Patterns of Routinisation in Myanmar’s Parliament

This article investigates the patterns of parliamentary change observed in Myanmar since a constitutionally sanctioned, partially elected legislature was revived in January 2011. In particular, it poses the question as to whether processes of legislative institutionalisation have taken place in the course of the 2010s. Grounded on ethnographic work carried out between 2013 and 2018 in Myanmar’s Union parliament, established in Naypyitaw, the article explores how in the two post-junta legislatures elected in 2010 and 2015 a number of institutional legacies and parliamentary procedures and functions have been both reintroduced and also reappropriated. The findings point to emerging patterns of routinisation of some legislative tasks and duties performed by neophyte lawmakers and parliamentary staff alike. It is argued that, despite persistent capacity and efficiency problems, and a continuing dominance of the executive and the armed forces in the post-junta context, a parliamentary culture has re-emerged in Myanmar. The article concludes by drawing attention to how a process of legislative institutionalisation has been developed, albeit cursorily.

Украина как стратегический партнер: политические изменения после революции достоинства

The political processes taking place in Ukraine since the beginning of 2014 are characterized by increased intensity and radicalism that alarms the foreign partners. There are absolutely opposite points of view on socio-political processes taking place in Ukraine. And while comparing Ukraine with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe the results of reforms will seem insignificant. If we compare the present-day Ukraine with the one of even five years ago, the depth of change is obvious. It is, first of all, about the institutional changes in the system for the formation of political decisions. Thus, the return to the parliamentary form of government and the expansion of the parliamentary staff powers allows the launching of political competition processes. Decentralization of finance has strengthened the position of local government. Reform of the government allows to optimize the system of public administration and delimits the responsibilities of local authorities. The lustration and the creation of anti-corruption bodies allow to improve the state authorities. At the same time, the main problem of Ukraine is the monopolization of the economy and politics by the financial and industrial groups. Reducing their influence and role in socio-political processes is a condition for Ukraine’s withdrawal from the hybrid state. After the Revolution of Dignity, their influence was significantly reduced due to the deregulation of the economy and changes in the system of principles for the formation of public authorities. But the destruction of the negative impact of informal institutions still has not been completed. The main reason is the conservation of mixed electoral system that was established as an instrument for the reproduction of the interests of financial and industrial groups in the government due to which the effect of the reforms is reduced.

Participatory Adaptation in Contemporary Parliamentary Committees in Australia

Contemporary parliamentary institutions operate in a dynamic participatory and digital context. Recent studies demonstrate that many parliaments are rethinking how they reach out to the public in this changing environment. This article discusses the findings of empirical research that examined how and why parliamentary committees are adapting their public engagement practices. Parliamentary staff in six Australian parliaments were interviewed about the forms and extent of participatory adaptation in their committee systems. The research finds while committees continue to rely heavily on standard practices, such as written submissions and formal public hearings, many are adapting the way their public outreach and engagement practices. Four common participatory adaptations are identified including: employing new ways to promote and publicise committee work; using digital interfaces to collect and manage public input; increasing accessibility to affected publics; and building participatory capacity of committee members and affected publics. The article argues that in an era of significant political and digital change, parliamentary committees need to adopt a more strategic approach to participatory reform to better connect with, and represent, diverse publics.

A tale of two moralities: Politicians, doctors, use of addictive substances and lobbying

Alcohol use during the day is common amongst British MPs and Parliamentary staff even when Parliament is in session. MPs are frequently under the influence of alcohol when deciding on important bills, potentially affecting their judgement. Lobbying from the alcohol and the tobacco industries is rife in Parliament. What hope is there to change alcohol and tobacco policy in a more rational and healthy direction if the companies responsible for their harms are corrupting the political process in this fashion? We propose recommendations in line with the standards required for doctors.

Assessing Parliament of Zimbabwe’s informatics database as a tool for providing evidence-based information for decision making

The application of information and communication technologies to parliamentary activities is growing. Informatics databases represent a growing trend used for gathering, collation, processing, storage and dissemination of parliamentary information to Members of Parliament, parliamentary staff and the general public. Many parliaments are moving forward, assisted by development partners to implement informatics projects from constituency level where the public can access information manually or electronically through parliament itself. The purpose of this article was to assess Parliament of Zimbabwe’s informatics database in providing evidence-based information for decision making. This is achieved by sampling 25 Members of Parliament and 25 Office Assistants from constituencies, and Parliament staff as important respondents. The instruments of data collection were questionnaires, interview schedules and analysis of documents. Findings revealed that constituents were the largest beneficiaries, followed by the education sector, and Members of Parliament. Data also showed that Members of Parliament improved their knowledge and participation in parliamentary activities based on real facts from the informatics data base. The study identified challenges affecting the informatics database. Results recommend that resources be provided for information and communication technology equipment, staff should be trained and an online informatics database be implemented.