Minority Rights and Majority Rule in European Legislatures

The evolution of minority party rights has so far been analyzed chiefly in presidential democracies, particularly in the United States, where scholars have mapped such rights and have explained any changes with institutional, partisan and ideological factors. In Europe, a comprehensive focus on the evolution of procedural rights of individual MPs and opposition parties has so far been largely absent. Against this background, the objective of this workshop is to bring together scholars working on legislative politics and organization to examine the conditions under which the rights of individual members and opposition parties are curbed (or expanded) in European legislatures. In particular, the workshop will address the following questions: What rights do individual MPs and opposition parties have in European legislatures? Do such rights change over time and, if so, how and why? How can cross-country variation in the evolution of such rights be explained? We define minority rights broadly to include a variety of formal and informal, constructive and obstructive, individual and partisan privileges that members and opposition parties can resort to in European legislatures to counteract majority (or government) power. Interested participants are invited to submit both theoretical and empirical papers that explain the evolution of and variation in minority rights and parliamentary organisation in European national legislatures. Theoretically informed case studies and systematic cross-temporal and cross-country comparisons are particularly welcome.