The international collaboration on Parliaments in the Pandemic (PiP) convened for its fifth academic workshop in Prague. It was the first in-person meeting since PiP was established in 2020 in the middle of the Covid pandemic. Based on a unique country expert panel study, PiP is a comprehensive study of what happened to parliaments around…
Graphic descriptions of the legislative process usually focus on what is going on “in” parliament – while neglecting the preparliamentary phases of bill preparation. But there is a lot of coordination, negotiation and public engagement happening in this less formalized phase. Bringing together the special skills of designers (with an interest in politics) and political…
Coalition negotiations play a key role in government formation, but they have not been analyzed much in detail. In Germany, the past decades have seen an ongoing differentiation of their organization, leading to a complex multi-level negotiation structure with a policy-oriented division of labor. Studying the working group on health policy in the coalition negotiations…
Engaging the public in the work of parliament has been long practiced. To be in close exchange with the people is indeed a precondition for a successful parliament. In recent years, instruments and processes have been developed, tested and compared that institutionalize engagement. A special issues of the Journal of Legislative Studies looks at thoses…
Are democratic institutions and bureaucracy losing their functionality? This were key topics of a conference held at the Akademie für politische Bildung in Tutzing. Sven T. Siefken gave a talk on informality in politics, analyzing coalition negotiations, expert advisory commissions and coalition management. More about the conference can be found here https://www.apb-tutzing.de/Tagungsprogramme/2023/39-4-23-programm.pdf
Based on data compiled for the Global Parliamentary Report, Maya Kornberg and Sven T. Siefken study the role of committee hearings for public engagement by parliaments. They discuss how hearings have evolved and which mechanisms are in use and how new approaches change the practices, for example through digital hearings or field hearings. The article…
The edited volume on Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process, edited by Sven T. Siefken and Hilmar Rommetvedt, is now available in paperback. It brings together parliamentary experts from around the world to report on the state of knowledge about what is going on in committees and how relevant they really are. More here https://www.routledge.com/Parliamentary-Committees-in-the-Policy-Process/Siefken-Rommetvedt/p/book/9780367617950
The international collaboration on Parliaments in the Pandemic (PiP) started to gather information on how the Covid-19 pandemic influenced parliaments around the globe. On March 13, it is holding its fourth Academic Workshop, continuing to analyze the data – this time with a special focus on oversight, legislation and parliamentary performance. Sven T. Siefken is…
The Institute for Parliamentary Research (IParl), Berlin, and Sven T. Siefken brought together a large group of scholars for a workshop discussing current threats to parliamentary democracy. The meeting was held at the Reichstag building in an open format to debate the various developments in democracies around Europe and grapple with the question how to…
What impact did the pandemic and other crises have on the work of parliaments, both at the member state and the European level? First findings on the topic from various ongoing research projects were brought together in an outreach workshop in Wrocław, Poland, by Professor Aleksandra Maatsch, The Jean Monnet Chair at the Centre for…
In May 2022, the Academy of Sciences organized a workshop Revisiting Parliaments in Pandemics. Keynote speaker Sven T. Siefken presented first findings of the second wave of a global expert survey ‘Parliaments in Pandemics’. Conducted in 2020, 2021, and 2022, the survey focused on how the pandemic changed the legislatures’ roles and, in particular, electoral, legislative, oversight, communication and representation…