Parliamentary Committees

Many parliaments around the world are undergoing a ‘participatory makeover’. Legislative institutions are opening their doors to the public through open days and communicating the latest ‘parliamentary updates’ via websites and social media.  Many of these ‘community outreach’ activities may make parliaments more informative and publicly accessible, but their impact on democratic renewal is likely to be minimal. This paper argues that more meaningful steps towards ‘participatory parliaments’ could be made through improving the way legislative committees engage with the public. Drawing on insights from democratic theory, this paper argues that deeper more inclusive forms of public engagement in committees would help improve the epistemic, representative, and deliberative capacities of legislative committees (and hence the larger Assembly). More sophisticated approaches to engaging affected publics would enable committees to access relevant views and information and to better represent broader public interests (beyond their own constituencies and special interests) in their deliberations. Such qualities would enhance the public legitimacy and democratic effectiveness of committee procedures and their outputs. A number of strategies are put forward for how committees might broaden and deepen public engagement in their work.

This paper analyses how the House of Lords European Union (EU) Committee and its respective sub-committees have scrutinised the process of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU from 2016-21 through its reports and how the government has responded differently to varying types of recommendations made by this Committee during the Brexit process. This paper finds that the EU Committee tended to have the most influence in prompting disclosure of information, making legislative recommendations and calling for a change in attitude to Brexit negotiations. It finds that the most frequent recommendations were calls for disclosure, followed by calls for attitude change and legislative change. On government responses, it finds the most common response is an indication that the government already intends to implement the recommendation, particularly in the case of calls for disclosure and legislative change. It also finds that, in most cases, the government tended to positively respond to committee recommendations, indicating either its agreement, that the course of action is already being undertaken, or that it will take it into further consideration.

The contribution examines the evolution of the regulation of parliamentary groups in the Italian Chamber and Senate. The analysis moves from the very first provisions regulating this matter, that were introduced in 1920 under the Albertine Statute. Then, the contribution explores the reactivation of the regulation of parliamentary groups at the dawn of the Italian Republican experience, investigating its subsequent transformations, till today. Some concluding remarks are devoted to perspectives and recent reform proposals, especially those deriving from the constitutional amendment on symmetric bicameralism approved in 2016 (currently subject to a referendum). This reform aims at introducing a new Senate, that would represent territorial autonomies and exercise, among others, a " connecting function " , thus requiring an appropriate balance of the political cleavage with the territorial and institutional ones.

Souvent perçue comme étant complémentaire à la diplomatie officielle de l’État, la diplomatie parlementaire s’avère néanmoins un levier de démocratisation et un outil indispensable pour la résolution des différends sur la scène internationale. Elle avance à pas sûrs et réussit là où la diplomatie régalienne échoue. Cet ouvrage tente à bon escient de démontrer l’importance de la diplomatie parlementaire, en cherchant à mettre en avant le rôle et les pratiques des principaux acteurs impliqués dans cette forme de diplomatie, notamment les parlements, les parlementaires et les organisations interparlementaires. Il se propose également de cerner les fondements juridiques de la diplomatie parlementaire et de dresser l’ensemble des mécanismes et des outils déployés par les parlements et les institutions interparlementaires dans la conduite de cette diplomatie, ainsi que leur apport et leurs règles de fonctionnement.

Ce livre qui met en avant des recommandations qui sauraient optimiser et consolider l’efficacité de la diplomatie parlementaire, s’adresse à la communauté des chercheurs, aux étudiants, ainsi qu’aux parlementaires et aux institutions parlementaires et interparlementaires qui font de cette diplomatie le fer de lance de leur action internationale.

(co-authored with Pamela Pansardi) In this article, we investigate whether and how political parties function as gate-keepers in determining gender differentiations in committee appointments by using the Italian parliamentary committee system from 1994 to 2013 as a case study. Committee membership provides individual MPs with direct influence in a specific policy area as well as with visibility and expertise, thus affecting MPs’ political careers. Accordingly, to study women’s appointments to committees’ positions is eventually to say something about women’s chances to have an actual effect in the political process. After presenting the theoretical framework, three hypotheses are proposed. Our findings show that women tend to be appointed to committees dealing with stereotypically ‘feminine’ and ‘less prestigious’ issues, and that left-wing parties reproduce this pattern less than right-wing parties, but not when it comes to the appointment to more prestigious and influential positions. Moreover, we found that no significant longitudinal trends towards more unbiased distributions can be detected. A discussion closes the article

Like in many countries, MPs in Turkey are confronted with contradictory role expectations. However, in a context characterized by high turnover, there seems to be no strong standardization of role learning, neither through the main ways of transmission of political roles (party and elected offices) nor through the professionalisation of legislative activity. This statement makes it even more important to take into account each individual’s extra-parliamentary experience to understand how the MP role-set is interpreted. The basic assumption is that the way individual MPs invest the role-set is shaped mainly by the resources at their disposal. The qualitative analysis of a limited number of selected cases, resting on observation and in-depth interviews, tends to show that the main factor affecting Turkish MPs’ role orientation is their relation with the party. Non-parliamentary (especially professional) skills and relations with the constituency also contribute to shape the MPs’ role orientation.

Post-legislative scrutiny allows Parliament to revisit legislation after it has been enacted to ensure that it is operating as intended. As most literature on the UK legislative process suggests that is not optimal, this is an important task that committees can undertake to ensure that any problems can be located and rectified. This paper reports the findings of a systematic study of the outcomes of post-legislative scrutiny in terms of the types of recommendations being made, whether they are being accepted by the government, and what factors impact upon the acceptance of those recommendations. It concludes that there is a bias in the legislation being selected to receive post-legislative scrutiny and that committees, on the whole, are producing weaker recommendations which are more likely to be accepted. Additionally, it concludes that the stronger the action that a recommendation calls for, the more likely it is to be rejected.

In recent years Parliaments in the Pacific Islands have received considerable development assistance. The effective operation of legislative processes is considered, after all, one of the essential foundations of the rule of law. Parliamentary committees strengthen the deliberative aspect of these legislative processes, and their performance and effectiveness is therefore regarded as an important indicator of the overall health of a parliament. There has been little scholarship, on the other hand, concerning the foundations of parliaments in the Pacific Islands, let alone detailed examination of the structure and operation of their committee systems.

This paper examines one of the newer parliaments in the Westminster tradition, established in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea at independence in 1975 (on the foundations of a Legislative Assembly created during colonial rule), through to completion of its sixth term, in 1997. It sets out the origin of these committees in the Constitutional framework, reviews the range of committees established, and provides an initial evaluation of the role they have played in the parliamentary process.

Parliaments channel legislation efforts and oversight functions to parliamentary committees in order for them to transform policy ideas into agreed-upon policies and then monitor their implementation. Committees play a major role in the policymaking process when they possess agenda-setting powers over the bills they process and through their employment of oversight capacities. The rules that construct checks and balances between the government and Israel’s Knesset potentially minimize the Knesset committees’ agenda-setting influence. Nevertheless, Knesset committee chairs strategically use their institutional powers to affect committee deliberations through bargaining and dynamic agenda setting. Consequently, Knesset committees play a major role in the policy process due to bargaining rather than through institutional rules.

A mi-mandat, la 7ème législature du Parlement européen est caractérisée par une volonté significative de répondre aux crises et d'être toujours plus pro-européen et proactif. L'actualité a poussé les députés à concentrer leur activité. Elle apparait moins éparpillée que sous la législature précédente et a gagné en efficacité ainsi qu'en temps de traitement des propositions. A cette fin, le travail en commissions parlementaires a été essentiel pour définir des compromis, ce qui permet par ailleurs de montrer un visage d'unité et de cohésion face aux autres institutions lors des sessions plénières et des négociations inter-institutionnelles. C'est également une des conséquences du Traité de Lisbonne et de l'accroissement du pouvoir et des compétences des députés européens démontrées par exemple à l'occasion des débats sur le futur budget européen ou le renforcement de la gouvernance économique. Si la bipolarisation politique de l'institution s'est accentuée, le centre reste un véritable arbitre et un équilibre entre les délégations est à noter. D'un point de vue qualitatif, l'activité s'est concentrée sur les réponses à apporter aux crises ainsi qu'aux abus de certains secteurs, financier notamment, mais également pour faire progresser le marché intérieur en renforçant la protection des citoyens.

Agriculture is one of the most important sectors in Argentina's economy. Although most of the time congressional committees play a secondary role regarding agricultural policy, they become crucial in certain situations. In this article, we analyze the political economy of agriculture committee assignments in the Argentine Congress and the embeddedness of their
members in the agricultural sector from 2001 to 2019. Conventional wisdom holds that in Argentina—a strongly presidential country with a congress full of amateur legislators and party‐oriented career paths— the standing committee's composition reflects party leaders' preferences rather than constituencies' interests or legislators' backgrounds. Through descriptive analysis and a binary logistic regression, we show that many committee members are in fact experts in agriculture and are highly embedded in the sector, whereas others have no bonds whatsoever. Moreover, constituency
preferences have some influence on committee appointments. These findings contribute to understanding better the legislative organization of Congress and the overlap between politics and this fundamental economic
sector. They further help to expand the theoretical approach for studying economic committee composition in Argentina.

In 2017, an extensive reform of the Rules of Procedure of the Italian Senate was enacted. The revision was soon welcomed as a step towards a more efficient and rapid upper house. In this article, we focus on one crucial aspect of the reform: the changes made to the rules governing the assignment of bills to parliamentary committees. In particular, we analyze the costs associated with the different assignment procedures and develop some theoretical expectations about the change brought about by the reform in terms of decision-making efficiency. These expectations are empirically evaluated against data on lawmaking in the Senate before and after the reform. A comparison is also carried out using data from the Chamber of Deputies. Preliminary results show that the new rules have not improved the efficiency and productivity of the Italian Senate so far.

This article is the result of research undertaken with a view to answering the following question: What was the opinion of the Committee of Reports on the 7,796 documents referred to it under the National Constituent Assembly (9 July 1789–30 September 1791)? The decision to answer this question was prompted by the fact that the Committee of Reports was one of the most important and best-informed committees of the first French parliamentary assembly. Those complaints, reports, and addresses submitted to the Assembly that were not addressed to a particular committee, were remitted to the Committee of Reports, as was most of the information concerning the administration and the police. Another important reason for addressing this question was that during the early period of the French Legislative Assembly (1 October 1791–20 September 1792), a group of deputies on the leftist side was opposed to the idea of reinstating the committees of the National Assembly and was in favour of reading all of the correspondence received by the Legislative Assembly. These deputies did not want the information that had been sent to the legislature to be filtered in any way. They refused to deliberate and legislate on the basis of only information selected by the offices and committees established within the framework of the Assembly.

In the last decade a more systematic approach to post-legislative scrutiny has been taken by both the UK Government and Parliament. Currently, owing to a lack of systematic analysis we do not know how both Houses of the UK Parliament are undertaking post-legislative scrutiny. The aim of the article is to determine the similarities and differences between the House of Commons and the House of Lords when undertaking post-legislative scrutiny. The article addresses this gap in knowledge through the use of four case studies, which address how legislation is selected for review, what recommendations are produced and how government responses are followed up. The article finds that there are a number of differences in the way legislation is selected by both Houses and also highlights the differences between them in terms of the output of their recommendations. Overall, this article contributes to our knowledge of the processes available to the UK Parliament for the undertaking of post-legislative scrutiny. This is important as post-legislative scrutiny, as a formalized activity, is relatively new, and there is a contribution to be made here in terms of how such procedures can be utilized in other legislatures.

Parliamentary committees in Canada are undeniably important resources for interest groups – particularly in terms of gaining information, articulating one's message on public record, and establishing oneself as a legitimate stakeholder in the eyes of politicians, government and the public. However, one of the intended functions of standing committees — to serve as a venue for non-governmental influence on policy — has largely proved to be a canard in Canada's House of Commons. The first part of this article prioritizes the challenges facing non-governmental actors who wish to exert policy influence through parliamentary committees. It asserts that standing committees' function of carrying out studies has more surmountable challenges than the function of legislative reviews. The second part of the article emphasizes that two developments are imperative in order to realize the potential committee studies hold: first, the open-ended nature of studies and the inadequacy of follow-up mechanisms should be addressed (with the scope of questions designed to feed into a pipeline of future legislative activity wherever feasible), and second, long-overdue accountability mechanisms should be introduced to ensure that the government responds to committee reports upon request.

Other than during the world wars, there have only been two periods in the past century when the global economy has contracted: the Great Depression of the early 1930s and 2009. In both periods the Australian Treasurer sought to adopt active macroeconomic policies to offset the impact on the Australian
economy. In both cases these measures (or at least their magnitude) were opposed in certain quarters. In both cases Senate committees were asked to investigate aspects.

Parties neither cease to exist nor cease to compete for office when the general election is over. Instead, a new round of competition begins, with legislators as voters and party leaders as candidates. The offices at stake are what we call “mega-seats.” We consider the selection of three different types of mega-seats—cabinet portfolios, seats on directing boards, and permanent committee chairs—in 57 democratic assemblies. If winning parties select the rules by which mega-seats are chosen and those rules affect which parties can attain mega-seats (one important payoff of “winning”), then parties and rules should coevolve in the long run. We find two main patterns relating to legislative party systems and a country's length of experience with democratic governance.