The article examines the concept of legislative backsliding and offers a measurement strategy for its empirical analysis. Legislative backsliding is defined as a move away from liberal democracy in four critical dimensions of legislative quality, its public policy; legal-constitutional-formal; procedural; and stability aspects. We operationalise each of these dimensions with their separate indices relying on components such as stakeholder consultations, time passed between bill introduction and passing the law as well as results of constitutional reviews. We use qualitative mini case studies from Hungary, widely considered from 2010 on to be a poster child for democratic backsliding, to illustrate the viability of the proposed measurement strategy. We find that laws which show deficiencies in terms of legislative quality exhibit them in not just but several dimensions. Based on the case studies we offer insights into scaling up the law-level analysis to the level of legislative cycles and show how the legislative quality index can be used to measure macro-level legislative backsliding.
{"title":"The Concept and Measurement of Legislative Backsliding","authors":"Miklós Sebők, Rebeka Kiss, A. Kovacs","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article examines the concept of legislative backsliding and offers a measurement strategy for its empirical analysis. Legislative backsliding is defined as a move away from liberal democracy in four critical dimensions of legislative quality, its public policy; legal-constitutional-formal; procedural; and stability aspects. We operationalise each of these dimensions with their separate indices relying on components such as stakeholder consultations, time passed between bill introduction and passing the law as well as results of constitutional reviews. We use qualitative mini case studies from Hungary, widely considered from 2010 on to be a poster child for democratic backsliding, to illustrate the viability of the proposed measurement strategy. We find that laws which show deficiencies in terms of legislative quality exhibit them in not just but several dimensions. Based on the case studies we offer insights into scaling up the law-level analysis to the level of legislative cycles and show how the legislative quality index can be used to measure macro-level legislative backsliding.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46398102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses Statutory Instruments passed between 2010 and 2019 to evaluate the embeddedness of the UK Government’s regulatory off-setting and business impact target initiatives. It begins by outlining the origins of those initiatives and their scope, technical details and compliance mechanisms. After describing the methodology for the analysis, it reports results, showing that a range of exclusions and exemptions limit the number of Statutory Instruments covered by the initiatives, that the intensity with which burden reduction is pursued declines over time and that the largest savings are incidental rather than being motivated by a desire to reduce burden.
{"title":"Burden Reduction: An Evaluation of Statutory Instruments in the UK Government’s Regulatory Off-setting and Business Impact Target Initiatives 2010–2019","authors":"Kate Ollerenshaw","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article analyses Statutory Instruments passed between 2010 and 2019 to evaluate the embeddedness of the UK Government’s regulatory off-setting and business impact target initiatives. It begins by outlining the origins of those initiatives and their scope, technical details and compliance mechanisms. After describing the methodology for the analysis, it reports results, showing that a range of exclusions and exemptions limit the number of Statutory Instruments covered by the initiatives, that the intensity with which burden reduction is pursued declines over time and that the largest savings are incidental rather than being motivated by a desire to reduce burden.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48579717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: Democracy (Not) on Display: A Structural Collocation Analysis of the Mother of All Parliaments’ Reluctance to Broadcast Herself","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135538896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Committee assignments continue to be gendered with men having higher chances than women to be appointed to the most visible, resourceful and influential committees. I contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon by investigating to what extent women in parliamentary party groups push for gender parity in committee assignments. The empirical analyses build on original data from the 16 German states between 1990 and 2021. I find no indication that women as leaders of parliamentary party groups narrow sex gaps in appointment to the most prestigious committees, but higher shares of women representatives enhance women’s access to these posts.
{"title":"Gendered Patterns of Committee Assignments—To What Extent Are Women in Parliamentary Party Groups Game Changers?","authors":"C. Kroeber","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Committee assignments continue to be gendered with men having higher chances than women to be appointed to the most visible, resourceful and influential committees. I contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon by investigating to what extent women in parliamentary party groups push for gender parity in committee assignments. The empirical analyses build on original data from the 16 German states between 1990 and 2021. I find no indication that women as leaders of parliamentary party groups narrow sex gaps in appointment to the most prestigious committees, but higher shares of women representatives enhance women’s access to these posts.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45787971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the influence of district-level party system dynamics on the list placement of women candidates. As local district competitive realities change, the strategic considerations for party leaders regarding the selection of non-mainstream political candidate profiles vary in important ways. We measure these dynamics with a set of novel variables that better capture variation in competition from district to district: individual party magnitude, district dominance and district contagion. Turkey’s lower level of party system nationalisation between 2002 and 2018 offers a useful case for such an investigation, and results reveal both the significance and pattern of influence on women candidates for all three strategic variables.
{"title":"District Variation in Party System Competition and Women’s Candidacy in Proportional Representation Systems","authors":"F. M. Wuthrich, Cagil Albayrak","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the influence of district-level party system dynamics on the list placement of women candidates. As local district competitive realities change, the strategic considerations for party leaders regarding the selection of non-mainstream political candidate profiles vary in important ways. We measure these dynamics with a set of novel variables that better capture variation in competition from district to district: individual party magnitude, district dominance and district contagion. Turkey’s lower level of party system nationalisation between 2002 and 2018 offers a useful case for such an investigation, and results reveal both the significance and pattern of influence on women candidates for all three strategic variables.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43317952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Oliver Booth, Chris Butler, D. Jeffery, Andrew Roe-Crines
This article utilises an original dataset covering all members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) to analyse the basis of support for Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt in the October 2022 British Conservative Party leadership election. The significance of our findings is that they form the basis for a new understanding of how conservatism in the UK is changing post-Brexit. Our political variables include constituency majority size, red wall status, constituency support for leave, an MP’s position in the June 2022 vote of confidence in Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party, ministerial status and rebellion rates on key legislation. Our ideological variables include EU referendum position and membership of the European Research Group and the Conservative Environment Network, along with whether MPs are classed as socially liberal, socially conservative or pro-levelling up. We find that candidates appealed to different, often rival, sections of the Conservative Party. In line with previous studies of this nature, social liberalism still represents a key dividing line within the party, and the European dimension of intra-party conflict has remained significant in light of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.
本文利用涵盖议会保守党(PCP)所有成员的原始数据集，分析了Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson和Penny Mordaunt在2022年10月英国保守党领导人选举中的支持基础。我们的研究结果的意义在于，它们为重新理解英国脱欧后保守主义的变化奠定了基础。我们的政治变量包括选区多数人数、红墙状态、选区对脱欧的支持、议员在2022年6月对约翰逊领导的保守党的信任投票中的立场、部长地位和关键立法的叛逆率。我们的意识形态变量包括欧盟公投立场、欧洲研究小组(European Research Group)和保守党环境网络(Conservative Environment Network)的成员身份，以及国会议员是否被归类为社会自由派、社会保守派或亲平级派。我们发现，候选人吸引了保守党中不同的、往往是对立的部分。与之前的此类研究一致，社会自由主义仍然是党内的关键分界线，鉴于英国决定退出欧盟，党内冲突的欧洲维度仍然很重要。
{"title":"Selecting Sunak: Conservative MPs’ Nomination Preferences in the (Second) British Conservative Party Leadership Election","authors":"Oliver Booth, Chris Butler, D. Jeffery, Andrew Roe-Crines","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article utilises an original dataset covering all members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) to analyse the basis of support for Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt in the October 2022 British Conservative Party leadership election. The significance of our findings is that they form the basis for a new understanding of how conservatism in the UK is changing post-Brexit. Our political variables include constituency majority size, red wall status, constituency support for leave, an MP’s position in the June 2022 vote of confidence in Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party, ministerial status and rebellion rates on key legislation. Our ideological variables include EU referendum position and membership of the European Research Group and the Conservative Environment Network, along with whether MPs are classed as socially liberal, socially conservative or pro-levelling up. We find that candidates appealed to different, often rival, sections of the Conservative Party. In line with previous studies of this nature, social liberalism still represents a key dividing line within the party, and the European dimension of intra-party conflict has remained significant in light of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42830089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alfonso Martínez Arranz, Steven T. Zech, Matteo Bonotti
Incivility in parliaments is always prominently displayed in media reports, often with the implicit or explicit commentary that the situation is getting worse. This paper processes and analyses the records of verbal interactions in the Australian Parliament for over 100 years to provide a first approximation on the evolution of civility. It provides a framework for understanding the multidimensional nature of civility that examines both ‘politeness’ and ‘argumentation’, with the latter grounded in notions of public-mindedness. The analysis focuses on the interactions between parties of the orators and the party in power, the chamber of utterance, and the year. The results indicate that instances of impoliteness have increased since the 1970s but only modestly and remain highly infrequent. Minor parties, particularly those representing right-wing and Green politics are more likely to use dismissive or offensive language than the dominant centre-left and centre-right parties, although direct insults and swearwords are the particular remits of right-wing ‘system-wrecker’ parties. All these minor parties, nonetheless, also display higher levels of argumentation in their interventions. This combination of aggressive language and increased argumentation highlights the pressures on minor parties to convey their points in a forceful way, a challenge that is particularly pressing in two-party systems like the Australian one.
{"title":"Political Parties and Civility in Parliament: The Case of Australia from 1901 to 2020","authors":"Alfonso Martínez Arranz, Steven T. Zech, Matteo Bonotti","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Incivility in parliaments is always prominently displayed in media reports, often with the implicit or explicit commentary that the situation is getting worse. This paper processes and analyses the records of verbal interactions in the Australian Parliament for over 100 years to provide a first approximation on the evolution of civility. It provides a framework for understanding the multidimensional nature of civility that examines both ‘politeness’ and ‘argumentation’, with the latter grounded in notions of public-mindedness. The analysis focuses on the interactions between parties of the orators and the party in power, the chamber of utterance, and the year. The results indicate that instances of impoliteness have increased since the 1970s but only modestly and remain highly infrequent. Minor parties, particularly those representing right-wing and Green politics are more likely to use dismissive or offensive language than the dominant centre-left and centre-right parties, although direct insults and swearwords are the particular remits of right-wing ‘system-wrecker’ parties. All these minor parties, nonetheless, also display higher levels of argumentation in their interventions. This combination of aggressive language and increased argumentation highlights the pressures on minor parties to convey their points in a forceful way, a challenge that is particularly pressing in two-party systems like the Australian one.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46586642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, we argue that the entourage of ministerial advisers available to prime ministers and other ministers is an institutional power resource that can serve as a useful indicator to measure the changing nature of the political executive. Two novel contributions are made utilising four new datasets on ministerial advisers coupled with a comparative analysis of 21 governments in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, in varying dates between 1997 and 2020. First, by using ministerial advisers as a proxy indicator, we chart how the offices of executive politicians can either expand, remain stable or contract. As a corrective to the general long-term narrative that ministers’ offices continually expand, our evidence shows this expansion has in some cases been interrupted and more generally manifests in different patterns from one government to the next. Second, we interrogate these patterns against the background of four typical assumptions from the party family, government tenure, parliamentary control and leadership stability literature. The new datasets, typology and analysis provide fresh comparative insights to advance our understanding about the evolving nature of the political executive in the four classic Westminster family countries.
{"title":"Ministerial Advisers as Power Resources: Exploring Expansion, Stability and Contraction in Westminster Ministers’ Offices","authors":"Heath Pickering, Jonathan Craft, M. Brans","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this article, we argue that the entourage of ministerial advisers available to prime ministers and other ministers is an institutional power resource that can serve as a useful indicator to measure the changing nature of the political executive. Two novel contributions are made utilising four new datasets on ministerial advisers coupled with a comparative analysis of 21 governments in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, in varying dates between 1997 and 2020. First, by using ministerial advisers as a proxy indicator, we chart how the offices of executive politicians can either expand, remain stable or contract. As a corrective to the general long-term narrative that ministers’ offices continually expand, our evidence shows this expansion has in some cases been interrupted and more generally manifests in different patterns from one government to the next. Second, we interrogate these patterns against the background of four typical assumptions from the party family, government tenure, parliamentary control and leadership stability literature. The new datasets, typology and analysis provide fresh comparative insights to advance our understanding about the evolving nature of the political executive in the four classic Westminster family countries.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42688253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
James D Griffiths, Richard Wyn Jones, Ed Gareth Poole, Jac M Larner
In 2022, the Welsh Government announced plans to increase the size of the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru, a culmination of two decades of elite-level argument over whether more members should parallel the institution’s growing suite of legislative and fiscal powers. While an expanded legislature may improve the Senedd’s capacity to scrutinise the executive, opposition has focused on increased costs that detract from core public spending. Using a novel survey experiment conducted in the 2021 Welsh Election Study, we assess public attitudes and find that support for expanding the Senedd is limited to those with a strong Welsh-only identity and pro-autonomy preferences. Although appeals to holding the executive to account do not broaden this base of support, a framing that the Senedd should be comparable in size to legislatures in Scotland and Northern Ireland does have a positive effect on voters with more median constitutional preferences.
{"title":"Making the Case for More Politicians: A Survey Experiment to Investigate Public Attitudes to an Expanded Welsh Parliament","authors":"James D Griffiths, Richard Wyn Jones, Ed Gareth Poole, Jac M Larner","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad004","url":null,"abstract":"In 2022, the Welsh Government announced plans to increase the size of the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru, a culmination of two decades of elite-level argument over whether more members should parallel the institution’s growing suite of legislative and fiscal powers. While an expanded legislature may improve the Senedd’s capacity to scrutinise the executive, opposition has focused on increased costs that detract from core public spending. Using a novel survey experiment conducted in the 2021 Welsh Election Study, we assess public attitudes and find that support for expanding the Senedd is limited to those with a strong Welsh-only identity and pro-autonomy preferences. Although appeals to holding the executive to account do not broaden this base of support, a framing that the Senedd should be comparable in size to legislatures in Scotland and Northern Ireland does have a positive effect on voters with more median constitutional preferences.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134942031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article proposes a distinctly affective methodological approach to Hansard transcripts using feminist affect theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive methodologies. Expanding the ‘toolkit’ of analysis available to parliamentary and legislative researchers to understand the political worlds we inhabit, I contend scholarship engaging with Hansard is shaped—but not limited—by the format and editorial decisions that inform its publication. Feminist scholarship on affect enables both (i) generative methodological approaches to so-called limitations of Hansard, and (ii) empowers a critical advancement of how researchers can engage Hansard as data. Considering the Hansard corpus as a process (rather than a thing) enables analyses to begin not with the question of can affect and emotion be present in transcripts, but rather how can emotion and affect proliferate throughout a genre designed and mediated in such a way as to occlude these emotional and affective speech patterns. I conclude by offering methodological strategies through an exploration of research vignettes drawn from my work with Canadian provincial Hansards.
{"title":"‘Such Cold, Dispassionate Terms Fail Us’: ReadingHansardas an ‘Archive of Feelings”","authors":"M. Leibel","doi":"10.1093/pa/gsad006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad006","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes a distinctly affective methodological approach to Hansard transcripts using feminist affect theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive methodologies. Expanding the ‘toolkit’ of analysis available to parliamentary and legislative researchers to understand the political worlds we inhabit, I contend scholarship engaging with Hansard is shaped—but not limited—by the format and editorial decisions that inform its publication. Feminist scholarship on affect enables both (i) generative methodological approaches to so-called limitations of Hansard, and (ii) empowers a critical advancement of how researchers can engage Hansard as data. Considering the Hansard corpus as a process (rather than a thing) enables analyses to begin not with the question of can affect and emotion be present in transcripts, but rather how can emotion and affect proliferate throughout a genre designed and mediated in such a way as to occlude these emotional and affective speech patterns. I conclude by offering methodological strategies through an exploration of research vignettes drawn from my work with Canadian provincial Hansards.","PeriodicalId":19790,"journal":{"name":"Parliamentary Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47313633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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