Advancing the Study of Parliaments: Structures, Actors and Processes at a Crossroads

Overview Against a backdrop of changing political contexts – such as the rise of challenger parties, policy and economic crises, distrust in political institutions, and democratic backsliding in some nations – it is clear that parliaments are at a crossroads. This section seeks to advance our study of parliaments as critical institutions in representative democracies, and to examine how the role and importance of parliaments has evolved over time. It focuses on the structures and organisational aspects of parliaments, as well as key actors and their relationships within and outwith these institutions (such as individual parliamentarians, parliamentary party groups, administrative staff or external stakeholders), and the processes and practices inside these political arenas. To support these multiple foci, this section has developed several cross-cutting and comparative panels exploring both recent challenges that have impacted parliaments, as well as more classic topics that are ever-relevant. We welcome papers about any parliament, whether national, sub-national or international, with a particular invitation on under-researched regions. Contributions may be empirical, theoretical or methodological. The ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments endorses this section. Panels 1. Parliaments under pressure Chair: Zsófia Papp. Discussant: Anja Thomas. Parliaments have faced and are facing challenges: new political parties that are disrupting established norms within parliaments, policy and economic crises which parliaments are seeking to solve, obstacles by executive actors to ensuring fair and substantive democratic functions of legislatures, and beyond. How do parliaments deal with these challenges? How effective are they at doing so? 2. Studying parliaments in the digital and AI age Chair: Isabelle Borucki. Discussant: Fotis Fitsilis. Contemporary parliaments are innovating in a range of ways, from the use of social media by individual legislators to placing large amount of data on parliamentary websites for transparency. At the same time, parliaments are dealing with the challenges that digital tools may present, such as the reliability of artificial intelligence or the vast volumes of data and information sent to parliaments. This panel welcomes all papers that broadly examine how parliaments relate to, deal with or make use of digital and AI tools. 3. Actors in parliaments I: Individual MPs, roles and pathways to parliament Chair: Jon Slapin. Discussant: Javier Martínez Cantó. Parliaments are constituted of a collective of MPs. This panel focuses on them and asks questions about how they conceive of their role, how they build and understand their career trajectories in (and out of) parliament, the relationship between roles and behaviour, and beyond. 4. Actors in parliaments II: parties, administration and stakeholders Chair: Laura Chaques-Bonafont. Discussant: Oliver Kannenberg. Parliaments are also comprised of a wide set of collective actors, that frame how parliamentary work happens. This includes parliamentary party groups that drive the work of MPs, but also the parliamentary administration that needs to ensure work goes smoothly. Though generally from the outside, interest groups also seek to influence parliamentary outcomes in their own way. This panels investigates how those groups act and how they relate to each other. 5. Representation, engagement and participation Chair: Ruth Candlish. Discussant: Helene Helboe Pedersen. Parliaments are, first and foremost, representative institutions. But how do MPs seek to fulfil this core function? And how have modern conceptions of representation affected the work of parliaments? To what extent do parliaments engage with the wider public to overcome challenges of distrust and apathy? This panel examines the core function of representation both within and outwith this institution in the wider system of representative democracy. 6. Legislation and policy in parliaments Chair: Robert Zbíral. Discussant: Patricia Calca. This panel welcomes all papers dealing with the legislative process: initiation of legislation, government and private bills, pre-legislative stages, parliamentary stages in plenary and in committee, adoption, implementation and post-legislative scrutiny. Paper topics could include government-majority coordination, the influence of parliamentary and non-parliamentary actors on legislation, effectiveness of parliamentary processes, case study analysis of particular bills and processes, and beyond. 7. Oversight and accountability Chair: Hallbera Friða West. Discussant: Ruxandra Serban. The relationship between the executive and the legislature is one of the most fundamental aspects of representative democratic systems. In parliamentary systems, especially, the executive and parliament are intertwined and interdependent. These relations can fundamentally affect the nature of parliamentary work, both from individual parliamentarians as well as other actors. This panel focuses on these relations, with a specific focus on accountability and control. 8. Analysing parliamentary structures in comparative perspective Chair: Diana Stirbu. Discussant: Shane Martin. The organisation of legislatures crucially affects the conduct and outcomes of representative democracy in lots of ways. For example, committees support parliaments in efficiently carrying out many important tasks. However, these and other structures, such as the nature of uni- or bi-cameralism, but also the existence of friendship groups or else, vary in terms of processes, memberships, effectiveness, outputs, and influence on parliamentary work. This panel explores these and other themes. 9. Coalition and minority governments Chair: David Willumsen. Voter fragmentation has accelerated in recent years and has complicated the search for parliamentary majorities. This panel explores how parties and legislators manage their relationships within coalition governments, and how minority governments manage to stay in office and pass legislation without commanding a majority in parliament. 10. Methodological advances in legislative research Chair: Sophie Suda. Methodological diversity and advances in the methods of studying legislatures is at the cutting edge of the field. This panel welcomes papers that apply or develop innovative methods for the study of legislatures, such as text-as-data, analysis of parliamentary Open Data, social media data, anthropological approaches, and experiments. Section chair biographies Dr Marc Geddes is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and steering group member of the ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments. His research interests include parliamentary accountability, MPs’ interpretations of parliamentary work, and the relationship between parliaments and knowledge use. Dr Calixte Bloquet is Research Associate at the Institute for Parliamentary Research (IParl), Germany. His research interests include parliamentary structures, law-making, party discipline and gender in Parliaments, as well as discussions related to institutionalism.