The Covid-19 pandemic transforming parliaments and democracy: Emerging practices for representation and policy-making across Europe

Abstract

This panel will explore the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the political and representative work of parliaments. Like all workplaces and institutions, parliaments across Europe were faced with the external shock of the Covid-19 and with dilemmas on how to maintain their daily routines when the lockdowns and restrictions were put in place across the continent. For parliaments, however, the question was one of democracy: with crises traditionally favouring the executive’s swift policy making, how could parliaments exercise their oversight and legislative functions effectively – often remotely. The proposed panel will present original empirical findings from the European Parliament, the Westminster and different EU member state parliaments to explore these questions. In doing so it paves way for a new emerging comparative research agenda of parliamentary practices and policy-making during the pandemic. It will demonstrate how the questions of ensuring effective democratic representation differed in different parliamentary settings where parliamentary traditions range from debating (Westminster) to working (European Parliament) parliaments. The proposed panel analyses how the new remote practices have the potential to either exacerbate or solve existing inequalities within parliaments, such as those based on gender. It further analyses the parliaments as rising conflict zones when new emergency measures and economic relief packages were introduced and debated.

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