1,720,989 research outputs found
An invitation to partisanship: the Labour government, the Modernisation Committee, and efficiency reforms in the House of Commons
No full text"Where were the massed ranks of parliamentary reformers?" 'Attitudinal' and 'contextual' approaches to parliamentary reform
No full textOn 14 May 2002, the House of Commons voted on proposals put forward by the Modernisation Select Committee for reform of the departmental select committee system. This article examines the origins of those proposals, and the outcome of the vote, focusing on one particular proposal to create a Committee of Nomination to place MPs onto select committees. This raises questions regarding two competing academic approaches to explaining parliamentary reform, the ‘attitudinal’ approach and the ‘contextual’ approach, and concludes that, of the two, the ‘contextual’ approach is better placed to explain the failure to create a Committee of Nomination
Constitutional long-grass and unintended consequences: the 'reformed' House of Lords in the Westminster political system
No full textA number of different proposals to reform the House of Lords have been outlined since the Labour government pledged to reform the second chamber in 1997. This paper seeks to explore the various characteristics of the reformed second chamber that different actors involved in the reform process have said they wished to achieve. These characteristics are contexualised with reference to some of the literature on the role and purpose of second chambers within the political system, and the types of issues that need attention in terms of a reformed House of Lords. This analysis draws particular attention to the question of the legitimacy of the reformed second chamber, which helps illuminate how the current cycle of Lords’ reform has resulted in various unintended consequences. Finally, the paper looks at the extent to which the issue of House of Lords reform has been kicked into the constitutional long-grass
Parliament and policy deliberation: Is the policy expertise of House of Commons select committees effectively utilised by MPs?
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Institutional change in the UK Parliament: the House of Commons select committee system and the development of the parliamentary 'scrutiny universe'
No full textParliament and political disengagement: exploring perceptions of Westminster's linkage function
No full textThis exploratory paper is part of wider research project that seeks to examine how the Westminster parliament is responding to political disengagement from traditional political processes and institutions, in the context of parliament’s linkage function and its relationship with the public. It examines evidence from recent extra-parliamentary Commissions on this issue, and compares their findings with those of the House of Commons Modernisation Committee. It draws on a short series on interviews conducted with MPs and peers, in order to assess how parliamentarians perceive the problem of disengagement, what they think parliament should do to address it, and what this tells us about how they view parliament’s linkage function, and its relationship with the public, at the start of the twenty-first century
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