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Welcome! |
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The newsletter of EuParl provides an overview of relevant
activities carried out by participants of the network.
The Board of EuParl.net would like to wish all participants happy
holidays and a wonderful 2011!
EuParl.net: new developments
The Spanish/Basque research group Biography and Parliament has
joined the network. This group was formed in 1989 at the University of
the Basque Country and strives to analyse governance and representation
in the contemporary society in its social, political-institutional and
cultural dimensions.
Institute for Parliamentarism and Democracy
Questions
Five point plan for 'Participation of women in
politics'
During a conference of the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), President of the Institute Dr. Werner
Zögernitz, put forward an action plan in a keynote speech on how to
improve the chances of women taking an active part in political life. The
German version of the speech can be found at www.parlamentarismus.at. Also, Dr Zögernitz and
deputy of the Institute, Dr. Melanie Sully, attended another OSCE
conference in Chisinau, Moldova, on the topic of democracy and female
participation in political life. A transcript of this English speech can
also be found on the website.
'How many Ministers does a country need?'
This publication, issued by Dr. Zögernitz and Dr. Sully, examines
the optimization of government in the 27 Member States of the European
Union, constitutional provisions, the number of ministries and the
division of responsibilities. This succinct, comparative study on
cabinets, governments and legislatures fills a gap in contemporary
research and received widespread comment by the Austrian media. A summary
is available in English and German on www.parlamentarismus.at.
University of Jyväskylä
and Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual
Change
Annual Conference of the Finnish Political Science Association,
20-21 January 2011
The digitalization of records of parliamentary speaking and
decision-making constitutes a potential that has not yet been fully
explored. Relatively little historical research on parliamentary speaking
and decision-making exists. Historians have mainly focused on the history
of the institutions as well as on individual politician's participation
in decision-making.
The potential of these new digital sources to shed light on
parliamentary modes of decision-making and the associated political use
of language, the cultural aspects of representative institutions and the
transnational features of parliamentarism, is the focus of a workshop
during the annual conference in January 2011. Also, the relationship
between parliament and the general public, the media or the executive
will be discussed.
For more information, please send an e-mail to: pasi.t.ihalainen@jyu.fi
Rethinking Parliaments: Concepta International Research Training
Course, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 12-13 June
2011
This course will be held after the Sixth Annual Jyväskylä Symposium
on Political Thought and Conceptual History with the theme 'European
Conceptual History - Principles and Practices', 9-10 June 2011. Projects
that will be discussed are 'The Politics of Dissensus: Parliamentarism,
Rhetoric and Conceptual History' and 'Parliamentary Means of Conflict
Resolution in Twentieth-Century Britain'.
The course will consist of lectures, comments and participants'
papers. Those interested in participating should send the paper
proposals, an abstract of 200 words, by 15 April 2011, to the course
organizers.
For more information, please send an e-mail to: pasi.t.ihalainen@jyu.fi
Comité d’Histoire Parlementaire et
Politique
'Exchanges of violence in parliamentary
circles'
The coming issue of 'Parlement(s), Revue d’histoire politique', the
French academic journal published three times a year by the CHPP, deals
with the role of the parliamentary assemblies towards the pacification
process of political behaviors.
Although assemblies aim to regulate speech and pluralism, the
parliamentary order is frequently broken during the sessions. The
historical, sociological and institutional approaches gathered in this
issue make sense of the endurance of parliamentary violence, in France
and in the United States. Commented sources emphasize the paradoxical
efforts of the parliamentary institution to control the violence of its
members by codifying and publicizing it, in England, Ukraine and France,
from the 19th century until recent troubles in the French
National Assembly. Table of contents and English abstracts are available
on www.parlements.org
The Montesquieu Institute
PhD Research on how much 'say' voters have over EU
policy-making
With ever increasing policy discretion of the EU in place of the
capacities of national governments, European directives have increasingly
been making a visible imprint on citizens' everyday life. The growing
impact of EU-level policy-making is contrasted with changes in public
support for the EU that has taken a downward turn since the early 1990s.
Such contrast begs a pressing question about whether the generally
decreasing support of voters for the EU is reflected in the manner
'business' is done in the EU.
This research project studies the effect of decreasing public
support for the EU in relation to how much these changes influence
EU-level policy decisions of domestic elites. The research is carried out
by PhD-researcher Lucie Spanihelova who has presented her research at
Annual Conferences of the American Political Science Association in
Washington DC.
Symposium 'German and Dutch perspectives on European
integration', 24 and 25 February 2011
European integration could best be considered as a work in
progress. Since the 1950s, the legal and political impact of the
integration process on the constitutions of the member states has been
considerable. The Lisbon Treaty has again strengthened the position of
the EU vis-à-vis the member states. On the other hand, via the European
Council, the member states have strengthened their position within the
EU. However, a growing number of European citizens is worried about the
EU influence on national politics. To dispel these worries, a clear
demarcation of responsibilities between member states and the EU is
necessary.
This conference brings together scholars, judges, lawyers and
students, to compare the effects of the checks and balances in the German
and Dutch political systems on the integration process in both countries.
What have been the effects so far on the balance between the
constitutional institutions in The Netherlands and Germany? Is the
criticism of the EU democratic deficit justified? These and more
questions will be discussed during this two-day conference in Maastricht,
The Netherlands.
for more information on the activities of the Montesquieu
Institute, visit www.montesquieu-institute.eu
History of Parliament
Publication of six new volumes regarding MPs and elections of
1604-1629
The History of Parliament has published a new set of volumes
covering the MPs and elections of 1604-1629. These 6 volumes trace the
people and politics of the period in unparalleled detail. Biographies of
each of the 1,782 men who sat in the House of Commons are accompanied
with electoral histories of each of the 259 constituencies which returned
them. The work draws on research in over 170 archives, both in the UK and
abroad, by an expert team of historians. They cover some of the darkest
moments in the history of Parliament.
In addition to the Member and Constituency articles a
groundbreaking Introductory Survey provides the first ever account of the
early seventeenth House of Commons as an institution. New discoveries
include a dramatic decline in Parliament's traditional role as
legislator. The Survey also shows that as relations between King and
Commons worsened, so interest in membership of the House increased,
leading not only to a rise in the number of contested elections but also
to a dramatic reduction in the number of lawyer-Members (despite the fact
that lawyers were now more important to the business of the Commons than
ever).
This is the second set of the History of Parliament volumes to be
published within the last 12 months. Last November saw publication of The
History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-32 ed. D.R. Fisher, in 7
volumes.
The History of Parliament is also shortly publishing a highly
illustrated volume presenting some of the initial findings from its
research on the House of Lords from 1660-1715.
Institute for Contemporary History
Research project: National Assembly – the Slovenian Democratic
Legislative Body 1990 - 2010, 20th Anniversary
With this research project the Institute for Contemporary History
will try to demonstrate that the Slovenian parliamentary life in the last
twenty years has been based mainly on the wishes of democratically
oriented Slovenians, expressed already before the 1990
elections.
This research will be placed in the wider context of the
implementation of the new parliamentary life in the former East European
communist countries as well as outline the functioning of the Slovenian
parliamentarism in this regard and offer a brief cultural history of
Slovene parliamentarism from 1990 (first democratic elections after WWII)
until 2012.
Launch of the Slovene parliamentary history
website
In 2011 the Institute for Contemporary History is planning to
launch a parliamentary history website as a special section of the
Slovene history website: www.sistory.si. By digitalising the Slovene
historical parliamentary sources and literature and transferring their
contents online, we want to provide the public an easier and more
comprehensive access to data on this country’s background.
Biography and Parliament
Biographical Dictionary of MPs of the Basque
Country
In 2006, following the publication of the 'Biographical Dictionary
of MPs of the Basque Country', funded by the Basque parliament
(1993-2006), the 'Biography and Parliaments' Research Group at the
University of the Basque Country promoted the research project of the
'Diccionario Biográfico de Parlamentarios Españoles
(1810-1854)'.
In September 2010, the Spanish Parliament published the
'Diccionario Biográfico de Parlamentarios Españoles (1810-1814)' in
electronic format (ISBN 978-84-7493-386-4); a paper edition will be
published in December 2010.
The biographies follow a model that involves analysing
political-parliamentary activity from primary sources. The 1810-1814
period includes 723 parliamentary biographies, prepared by 184
researchers from different European and Latin American countries (Spain,
France, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Dominican
Republic and Venezuela). The second phase of this project will culminate
in 2011 with the publication of the volume covering the 1820-1854 period:
3,072 biographies, involving 360 researchers in Spain and Latin
America.
Kommission für Geschichte des
Parlamentarismus
International Conference of KGParl 'Parliamentary Cultures in
Europe - the Parliament as Communicative Space', Berlin November
2010
From 4-6 November 2010, the international conference
'Parlamentarische Kulturen in Europa – das Parlament als
Kommunikationsraum' took place in Berlin. Organized by KGParl, this
conference was an important step forward to extending the fields of
research on comparative European history of parliaments.
The conference looked at the parliament as a place of communication
– with special manners, rituals, rules and ways to talk and to react. The
vivid and productive discussions were about the structural conditions and
changes in function of parliamentary communication in Europe from the
19th to the 21st centuries, the process of the perception and
self-observation of parliaments, the media and the public. The conference
brought together more than 80 international experts and was structured in
four panels.
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by 'PDC Informatie Architectuur'