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The article focuses on the approaches towards understanding the concept of the electoral system, which may be the subject of research outside the field of law. The author distinguishes different opinions of foreign and Ukrainian scholars on the term “electoral system”, in particular, narrow and broad interpretation. The author analyzes the elements which inherently fill and reveal the concept of the electoral system. The article provides an overview of scientific research and concepts that study electoral systems, including the works of prominent Ukrainian and foreign scholars, as well as documents of international organizations and institutions. The author analyzes different approaches to the interpretation of the concept of “electoral system”, its legal nature and key elements that have a significant impact on the formation of elected bodies and the organization of electoral processes, and further establishment of democratic principles. The author presents various positions on the elements through which the concept of the electoral system is revealed, such as the electoral formula, electoral district, method of expressing the will of voters, structure of the ballot and the process of filling it out, method of voting, etc. The author shows the importance of these elements and how they are reflected in the definition and modification of different types of electoral systems. The author emphasizes the need for further study of the concept of an electoral system and its systemforming elements, which allow constructing an appropriate type of electoral system, in the context of Ukraine’s experience in organizing and conducting elections. This will have a positive impact on the process of improving the electoral systems used in the formation of elected bodies at the legislative level, which will consequently contribute to ensuring greater transparency of a number of electoral procedures, obtaining fair results and minimizing the risks of their distortion. The author outlines the problem of periodic unsystematic changes in electoral systems in the formation of elected bodies in Ukraine, which in turn generates negative trends in the decline of citizens’ electoral culture, trust in the results of voters’ expression of will and unpredictable consequences in the socio-political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shakespeare's First Folio included publication of Coriolanus, a play that is said to be inflected by political events at the time of its writing and still so by its publication during a period the English parliament was in abeyance, having been dissolved the year before. In this paper, we take up Raffield and Watt's (2008) invitation to consider the relationship between Shakespeare's work and the nation-state, by considering the relationship between Coriolanus, and specifically the quasi-parliamentarian characters of the tribunes or representatives of the people, and contemporary Australian parliamentarians. We are particularly interested in how parliamentarians approach and grapple with their role as representatives of the people when undertaking human rights scrutiny of proposed laws, and explore this in relation to the tribunes' approach to their representative role when making political decisions. We follow Raffield and Watt's suggestion that, in early modern England, 'government was conducted and represented as theatre' (2008: 4) and argue that, in contemporary Australia, parliamentary work is still conducted and represented as theatre, and therefore it is necessary to adopt a theatre or performance lens when considering the ways in which parliamentarians perform their work as both representatives and legislators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scottish devolution built on an existing structure of administrative devolution around the Scottish Office. The architects of devolution gave a lot of attention to the design of the Scottish Parliament but less to policy-making and delivery. Much of the policy capacity built up since the 1960s had been run down under Conservative governments after 1979. The new Scottish institutions faced a number of institutional, economic and political constraints on making their own policies. There have been significant divergences from policy in England but often these take the form of England diverging while Scotland remained the same. Successive Scotland Acts in 2012 and 2016 were guided by political considerations rather than examination of the powers and instruments needed. There has been a lack of the policy innovation that might have been expected in the new system. The argument is illustrated by examples, together with some footnoted personal reflections from half a century of following policy making in Scotland. There is no attempt to be comprehensive but rather to highlight key issues and trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to devolution, a significant majority of Scots believed that their new parliament would greatly improve the performance of the Scottish economy. We show that, in the subsequent twenty-five years, performance has been mixed. In some areas, Scotland's relative economic performance has improved particularly relative to an increasingly unequal UK economic model. But against key international competitors, and in areas where the parliament has levers to improve performance – such as in exports, business growth, investment, and entrepreneurship – Scotland's economy continues to lag. This is despite a raft of strategies, working groups and action plans. In reality beyond the presentation, policy agendas have remained remarkably similar to where they were back in 1999. Some exceptions exist, including most notably a greater weight upon the environment. But the lack of rigorous evaluation or review of delivery of strategy suggests that, in many ways, the economics of devolution has been more about style than substance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article explores the role of the ‘Public Defender of Rights’ (verejný ochranca práv—VOP) within the Slovak political system and its relationship with the Parliament. It comprehensively examines the complex interactions between these two institutions, shedding light on the limitations of the VOP in a country where the Parliament plays a pivotal role in the political system. These dynamics have profound implications for the protection of human rights. The analysis presented in this article is grounded in various sources, including laws, transcripts from parliamentary debates, government documents, reports from the VOP, media coverage, interviews, as well as decisions from the Constitutional Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2022 article the author described the late Sir Julian Priestley, Secretary-General of the European Parliament, 1997–2007, as being a ‘consequential senior European Union civil servant’, notably because of initiatives Priestley championed to provide simultaneous interpretation for all languages in an enlarged European Union – a facility not guaranteed at the time but which provided the Parliament with continued democratic legitimacy. This article builds on and develops that ‘consequential’ concept, by identifying some further examples of such consequential senior EU civil servants and then by teasing out common aspects of their roles and activities. It posits that they are in effect sub-political policy entrepreneurs (in the Kingdon definition) who can and do have significant effects on the development of their institutions and of the Union more generally. It shows how they share certain characteristics: long service in or with ‘their’ institutions, enabling them to develop reformist visions; political coverage; the determination to see their visions through. The fact that they remain sub-political raises potential questions about political legitimacy. The article concludes by questioning whether the phenomenon is specific to the European Union or can also be observed in national civil services and the secretariats of other international organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK's 2024 general election was the least proportional of modern times. Labour's substantial parliamentary majority rested on the smallest ever winning party vote share. The Conservatives, meanwhile, suffered one of their worst ever results. While political and economic events during the 2019–2024 Parliament were key to the outcome, the operation of the first past the post electoral system was also important. In 2024, it was strongly biased in Labour's favour and against the Conservatives, contributing substantially to the scale of their defeat and of Labour's victory, allowing Labour to parlay modest support into a large majority. This pro‐Labour bias was to a large extent a result of the much greater efficiency of Labour's geography of support. We place the relative Conservative‐Labour bias at the 2024 contest into a longer historical perspective, demonstrating that it marked the abrupt end of a ten‐year period in which electoral bias had favoured the Conservatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do representatives provide fair and proportional representation to each place in their district or, rather, do they favour some places, creating winners and losers of representation? While the impact of geography on representation has been extensively examined in majoritarian systems, we know little about the geographical losers of representation in proportional representation systems. We investigate the extent to which different places receive unequal levels of attention in parliament, relative to what we would expect based on their population size as a normative proportional ideal. Crucially, we conceptualize place‐based representation at the micro‐level by looking inside electoral districts, using Google Places and Named Entity Recognition. Findings indicate that there are significant deviations from the proportional ideal. We find that small localities and large cities are overrepresented in parliament, while the medium‐sized cities and suburban peripheries of major metropolises are underrepresented. Places with a higher percentage of the population with university degrees are also overrepresented in parliament. These results carry important normative implications for forms of territorial‐based representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia’s authorities allow for gradual increase in women’s legislative representation, but retreat from legislating policies that address women’s concerns. This article relates the discrepancy between two kinds of women’s representation in Russia – substantive and descriptive – to the prevalence of the public sector in legislative recruitment. Using a comprehensive set of data on women’s representation in the regional legislatures of Russia, the study demonstrates that public sector affiliation is the strongest predictor of women’s legislative recruitment by the country’s pro-government party, and that female legislators, in comparison to male legislators, are less likely to pursue long-term political careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis manuscript extensively reviews applications, extensions, and models derived from the Bayesian ideal point estimator. We focus our attention on studies conducted in the United States as well as Latin America. First, we provide a detailed description of the Bayesian ideal point estimator. Next, we propose a new taxonomy to synthesize and frame technical developments and applications associated with the estimator in the context of the United States Congress and Latin American governing bodies. The literature available in Latin America allows us to conclude that few legislatures in the region have been analyzed using the methodology under discussion. Also, we highlight those parliaments of Latin America embedded in democratic presidential systems as novel scenarios for operationalizing the electoral behavior of legislative bodies through nominal voting data. Our findings show some alternatives for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutionalised party systems are said to foster stronger party allegiances and fewer switches. However, this expectation is called into question when we observe the case of South Africa. Despite being characterised by a highly institutionalised dominant party system as well as party-centred electoral and candidate selection rules, South Africa has experienced frequent episodes of floor-crossing over time. This article advances an analytical framework that links elites’ vote-seeking and office-seeking incentives to party switching and party system functioning. It posits that as elites strive for (re)selection and (re-)election, they will depart from smaller to larger parties, and this ultimately reinforces the party system of the day. Utilising an original dataset of 5,230 candidates to the National Assembly and the provincial legislatures of South Africa between 1999 and 2019, the study charts the overall rate of party switching and tests hypotheses postulating the effect of party size and candidates’ electoral marginality on the likelihood of switching parties. The analyses reveal that candidates from smaller parties and those who failed to be (re-)elected by the narrowest margin are more likely to switch parties in the next election. Additionally, most candidates who switched parties tended to move to parties that fared better than their original party in the next election; and they switched from parties that either did worse or stayed the same. But we did not find a strong correlation linking party performance to switches. The study highlights the role of intra-party competition in patterns of elite migration and reveals the importance of linking elite behaviour to party system functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notable efforts have been made to apply the institutionalisation concept to legislatures, parties and party systems. In contrast, parliamentary party groups (PPGs) were either side-lined or bundled under the concept of institutionalised parliaments and parties, which implies some conceptual confusion. However, PPGs should be treated as distinct topic given their role in stabilising the parliamentary business in all modern assemblies. Encouraging research to close that gap, we introduce a framework to study the institutionalisation of PPGs for which we use illustrations from various polities. We suggest that highly institutionalised groups exhibit stable personnel, coherent legislative behaviour, structural differentiation, well-established procedural routines, and autonomy in terms of policy decision-making, leadership selection, and resources. Also, we examine PPGs as embedded institutions and provide a conceptual map for varying relationships with the institutionalisation of parliaments and parties. Finally, we point to a widely unexplored field for comparative research including investigations on democratisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores issue agenda-setting in Australia's 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum, analysing the dynamics of Yes and No campaigns in a diverse media ecosystem. We identify influential messages across this complex media environment using soft clustering of sentence embeddings from large language models (LLMs). Drawing on 3.3 million documents and over 10 million Voice specific sentences from mainstream and social media sources, we identify the narrative configurations of the campaigns, their audience size and engagement. Overall, the Yes campaign dominated with more diverse messaging and greater audience size and engagement than No. Yet, the No case prevailed. We find the narrower, mostly negative No campaign helped sustain the issue agenda both online and offline, forcing Yes to respond to it. The findings also challenge echo chamber theory, revealing most unique topics contained content from both #Yes and #No perspectives, indicating robust public engagement rather than isolated filter bubbles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the supervision of the Aceh Regional Representative Council for the direct cash assistance program in the Lhoong sub-district, Aceh Besar district in 2023. The purpose of the study is to analyze and describe policy implementation of the supervision of the Aceh Regional Representative Council for the direct cash assistance program in the Lhoong sub-district, Aceh Besar district. The study uses a descriptive qualitative method with primary data and secondary data as the data source. Primary data were obtained through interviews, while secondary data were obtained from library research and documentation studies. The study concludes that the supervision of the Aceh Regional People's Legislative Assembly for Direct Cash Assistance in the Lhoong sub-district, Aceh Besar district is not maximized and there are still many recipients of direct cash assistance who do not meet the criteria and are not on target. Oversight of the Aceh Regional People's Representative Council is very much needed so that it is in line with the expectations of Aceh's society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The peremptory challenge is one of the oldest and most well-established jury selection procedures. Its use dates back to the earliest days of English common law, and it was a firmly established and protected practice at the United States' founding and into the early twentieth century. But while peremptory challenges are foundational, they remain perhaps the most controversial aspect of jury selection today. This is because they are regularly used by the government and private parties to advance racist, sexist, and bigoted ends. For this reason, over the last three decades, calls to abolish the practice have been regularly made by U.S. Supreme Court Justices and law students alike. And in 2022, Arizona became the first state in U.S. history to take that dramatic step--eliminating peremptory challenges in all cases. This Article is the first to demonstrate that abolition of peremptory challenges is unconstitutional. Despite some contrary Supreme Court precedent, it contends that the early history, practice, and texts show that the Sixth Amendment secures to criminal defendants, particularly in capital cases, the right to participate in jury selection through peremptory challenges. Whether the Seventh Amendment secures an analogous right to civil litigants is less clear, though there is a strong argument that it should be so read. Crucially, constitutionalizing the right does not mean that peremptories may escape all regulation. The Fourteenth Amendment imposes limitations, and legislatures may make further appropriate restrictions. The Article concludes by reviewing paths for balancing the right to peremptory challenges with the need to eradicate systemic bias from jury selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much of the American West, water districts dominate water governance. These districts serve vitally important functions in regions challenged by aridity, growing populations, and climate change. These districts also often operate within boundaries developed a century ago, or more, and under governing rules that are undemocratic by design. In many water districts, people who do not own land cannot serve on the governing board. Nor can they vote in water district elections. Not surprisingly, given their composition and power, water districts often thwart efforts to modernize and bring equity to water management. This Article describes these problems. Drawing on original data and mapping, it shows how pervasive these undemocratic governance structures can be and how water districts with these structures are expanding their reach into new policy realms. It also explains continued problems with the geography of water districts. And it shows how some water districts have acted to thwart important state policy interests and why such conflicts are likely to increase. This Article also explains how state governments can respond. It advocates a shift from impact litigation--which earlier generations of lawyers tried to use, largely unsuccessfully--to legislative activity. It explains specific steps state legislatures can take to reform water district governance structures, reset boundaries, and address districts that persistently undermine state policy goals. More generally, it explains how different governance frameworks can replace states' current handsoff approach to water district oversight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During their term of office, members of parliament are responsible for passing laws, monitoring government activities, and approving the budget to ensure the legitimacy of parliament while representing the interests of citizens. However, in recent years, the ability of parliamentarians to effectively represent citizens has weakened, with growing concerns about their accountability and ethics. This highlights the need for a study on the negative impacts of these issues. The concept of the "optimal size of parliaments" explores the capacity of parliaments to fully perform their duties. The aim of this research is to determine the appropriate number of members for the Mongolian parliament, ensuring it remains at an optimal size. Specifically, the effectiveness of the parliament is linked to its size, as the ability to maintain ethical standards and properly implement laws that benefit society is connected to the number of representatives. The size of parliament affects its capacity to represent citizens, the workload it can manage, and its overall efficiency during the term of elected members. The research results suggest that the optimal number of members in the Mongolian parliament could range between 114, 151, and 155, considering factors such as traditions, geography, administrative divisions, and the electoral system. As a result of this study, the Constitution was amended in 2023 to increase the number of members to 126, which reflects the findings of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of Türkiye's important achievements in the international arena after the establishment of the Republic was lifting the restrictions imposed in Lausanne on the Straits with the Montreux Convention. By the 1930s, it was understood that the conditions after the First World War had changed and a new world war was approaching. Taking advantage of the changing international situation, Türkiye changed the status of the Straits to its own advantages. This success was achieved through peaceful and successful diplomacy. The success, which ensured Turkey's full control over the Straits, was greeted with great joy throughout the country. The convention negotiations in the Parliament were also held with great enthusiasm. This study, which aims to analyze the parliamentary discussions on the Montreux Straits Convention in the Parliament, discusses the post-Lausanne situation and the process leading to Montreux. Then, the new Straits regime introduced by Montreux and finally the negotiations in the Parliament are analyzed in detail. It was observed that the deputies were extremely excited, joyful, and proud and felt great gratitude towards all statesmen who contributed to the success achieved, especially President Atatürk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hansard—Australia’s record of parliamentary debate—might seem an unlikely site for literary analysis. It is, however, a publisher of original poetry and its criticism a forum for the performance and citation of poetry, and a complex archive of literary reception in Australia since Federation. In this paper, we discuss our findings in relation to the uses of poetry in the Australian Hansard from 1901 to 1950, focusing on how the work of two settler Australian poet-parliamentarians, J. K. McDougall and John Cash Neild, is put to use in parliamentary speeches as recorded in Hansard. Together, these examples indicate that poetry is not only deployed for a range of heightened rhetorical effects on the floor of parliament; it is also part of the fabric of routine political debate, put to a range of adversarial and racist purposes, and part of the wider history of literary publication and reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When are executives in authoritarian regimes more likely to comply with formal legislative powers? Building from theories of authoritarian power‐sharing, we argue that executives will be more likely to respect legislative prerogatives when protests or elite organization increase the ability of legislators to undermine the executive's political position. We evaluate this argument by analyzing novel protest and legislative data in Jordan between 2010 and 2015. In line with our expectations, we find that parliamentary queries were more likely to receive the required response from the cabinet during months of higher protest activity and when they were submitted by MPs from Jordan's only well‐organized opposition bloc in the parliament. This study extends the burgeoning scholarship on authoritarian legislatures by contributing to understanding of executive‐legislative interactions under autocracy and providing new insights into the conditions under which these legislatures are more likely to influence decision‐making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of the European Health Data Space is a milestone. It establishes something new and makes it possible to have faster and more efficient health treatment, but also to untap the potential of unused data for policy-making and development of new technologies. However, for the EHDS to be functional, it is imperative that a balance it struck between the aim of having useful data to achieve important public objectives on one side and the goal of enabling patients to have control over their health data. The original Draft Report of the European Parliament came closest to achieving these objectives and should have represented the blueprint for the final compromise. Having a harmonised opt-out for secondary use is crucial for striking the right balance between the mentioned objectives. The end result is far from perfect regarding primary use, but represents a good balance in the area of secondary use concerning the opt-out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal is the property of Majalat Monazaat Al-Aamal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The South African Copyright Amendment Bill (CAB) was passed by parliament on 29 February 2024. From the formal commencement of the legislative process for the enactment of the CAB, by way of its introduction to parliament in 2017 to its eventual passage and afterwards, there has been very serious debate about whether or not the CAB will live up to the objectives it is formulated to achieve. The debate has mainly been centred around the limitations and exceptions the CAB seeks to introduce into the copyright regime in South Africa. This debate has the effect of blurring other key proposals in the CAB that are geared towards ensuring and promoting fair remuneration for creators and performers in South Africa's creative industries. Building on previous work and based on desk research, this report undertakes an in-depth analysis of key clauses in the CAB relating to equitable remuneration and fair royalty, reversionary right, licensing of orphan works, artist resale royalty and regulation of collective management organisations (CMOs) in order to illuminate and ignite debate on the CAB's proposals aimed at ensuring fair remuneration for South African creators and performers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In majoritarian legislatures, minority parties cannot directly influence policymaking. However, they may serve as whistleblowers against the majority parties' harmful policymaking. This study aims to explore whether a minority party's monitoring mitigates a political agency problem in a majoritarian legislature. For this purpose, we construct a two-period election model in which voters face information asymmetries regarding each party's type and the state of the world. After the majority party proposes a bill, the minority party votes for or against the proposed bill, which is a cheap-talk message. We show that the role of monitoring by the minority party is limited, even if we allow the possibility that the party is the truth-telling type. Under a weak condition, its opposition is informative, but does not change the electorate's voting behaviors. Consequently, any equilibrium outcomes attained in the game with monitoring are attainable in the game without monitoring. This implies that monitoring by the minority party does not influence electoral accountability. This irrelevance of monitoring is resolved when the minority party can delay legislation through obstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the number of women in government has increased, prior research on whether enhancing women's political representation alters policy choices has produced inconclusive findings. This study asks if higher women's participation in electoral institutions at the local level is associated with a different spending profile. Using Peterson's typology of developmental, redistributive, and allocational government programs, we argue that legislative bodies with more female members will spend more on redistributive programs than on developmental or allocational. Using data from Florida's 67 counties between 2005 and 2015, our analysis supports this theoretical expectation. In line with critical mass theory, women's representation in county commissions must reach a threshold of about 33% to sway budgetary decision-making toward more extensive redistribution. We also find that the traditional commission form of government intensifies the redistributive effect of women commissioners on county spending while having a home rule charter has no significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centralized agenda control is a feature of many parliaments, with important consequences for the conduct and outcomes of legislative politics. Much previous work has thus sought to understand the emergence of centralized agenda‐setting rules. We extend this literature by studying the “Balfour reforms”, which centralized agenda control in the early twentieth century UK House of Commons. Our aim is to probe a conventional claim in the existing literature: that the opposition supported these reforms. This is a counter‐intuitive claim, which rests on relatively little direct evidence. We analyze historical roll‐call data from 1902 to assess how far the opposition supported agenda centralization. We complement this analysis by examining attempted amendments and speech contributions to parliamentary debates. Contrary to the standard view, we find that the primary opposition party consistently resisted these reforms. This evidence of controversy rather than consensus revises our understanding of a key milestone in the development of the Westminster parliament, and contributes to the wider literature on the choice of agenda‐setting procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do parties campaign differently in different circumstances? Research seems to suggest that parties do indeed engage in harsh interparty attacks and fearmongering during ‘second-order’ elections, such as European elections/elections to the European Parliament (EP), perhaps even to the same extent as during national elections. However, to the best of our knowledge, the differences in the campaign strategies used by parties in national and European elections have never been assessed systematically. In this article, we compare the content of election campaigns (negative tone, fear appeals, enthusiasm appeals) by 150+ parties across 28 countries that participated in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament and at least one national election between 2016 and 2020. Triangulating two independent expert surveys (EPEES_19 and NEGex) we show that, contrary to our expectations, parties do not use more negative campaigning during European elections. However, more extreme parties tend to use a more negative tone and fewer enthusiasm appeals during European than national elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because parliaments are the cornerstone of representative democracy, we know a significant amount about how they operate in ordinary times. Covid-19 presented extraordinary challenges to the functioning and operation of national parliaments. This article explores the impact of Covid-19 on parliament from the point of view of its members. We report results from a survey of Irish parliamentarians, exploring members’ perceptions of their engagement in law-making, government oversight, and constituency representation. The results suggest an interesting paradox: Parliamentarians felt less able to perform their legislative and oversight functions but – with the aid of new technologies – felt better able to perform their representative and constituency roles. The wider implication is that Covid-19 intensified existing patterns of executive legislative relation: in the Irish case at least, the (electoral) incentives to undertake constituency work motivated continued constituency service, while the weakness of parliamentary oversight of the executive intensified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions can challenger parties disrupt mainstream party dominance in democratic institutions? While extant work describes the cultural and economic developments that benefit challengers and parties’ programmatic responses to these, I demonstrate when and how challengers exploit these conditions in their political communication. Theoretically, I posit that challenger parties have relatively stronger vote-seeking incentives than mainstream parties. These collective incentives affect individual parliamentarians’ cost–benefit calculations. Challenger parliamentarians will engage in anti-establishment rhetoric and issue-entrepreneurship when these signals are more likely to reach the voting public and pay-off electorally. I test this theory by analysing parliamentary debates from the European Parliament (1999–2016) through a novel combination of word embeddings and bespoke dictionaries. I find that challenger parties indeed pursue different communication strategies than mainstream parties. Challenger parliamentarians engage in anti-establishment rhetoric in the run-up to elections and issue-entrepreneurship during crises. This is because these factors make speeches more likely to be transmitted to voters. These results demonstrate that challengers adjust their political communication in opportune moments giving them a competitive advantage over less flexible mainstream parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Declining political trust has long been seen as a challenge for democracies, and parliaments seek to counter this through public engagement. Many parliaments have established visitor centres and both expanded and professionalised their visiting services. Parliamentary visiting programmes are in high demand with some parliaments attaining millions of visitors every year. However, little is known about how such programmes impact on visitors. Therefore, the present study investigates whether or not political trust changes as a result of a visit to parliament, and whether it makes a difference when visitors observe a parliamentary debate. N = 746 adult parliamentary visitors to the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, were asked about their trust in politics in a pre–post study at both the beginning and the end of their visit. Results showed that visiting parliament had only a very small positive effect on political trust, and that there was no significant difference in impact between visit programmes with vs without observing a plenary debate. Results are also relevant for the question of the stability of political trust in adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reformers assert that lobbyists take advantage of legislators who lack adequate staffing and research to win policy outcomes for their interest group clients. However, in the United States, legislators usually determine their own levels of staff. This paper exploits the 1990 passage of California's Proposition 140 to test a situation when the legislature's capacity dropped. Proposition 140 immediately lowered legislative expenditures for the 1991–1992 session by 38%, which decimated the policy staff, particularly in the state's Assembly. Using bill analyses that identify which outside groups served as the source of legislation, we shows that group sponsored bills became more likely to pass than non‐group bills in the wake of Proposition 140. This effect is concentrated in bills introduced in the Assembly. We account for other factors that could explain this relationship, particularly direct and indirect effects of the term limits wrought by Proposition 140, but find they did not alter legislator relationships with outside groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Bt technology has played significant role in controlling bollworms and increasing cotton yield in earlier days of its introduction, a subsequent decline in yield became apparent over time. This decline may be attributed to various environmental factors, pest dynamics, or combination of both. Therefore, the present biophysical survey and questionnaire were designed to evaluate the impact of Bt cotton on bollworms management and its effect on reducing spray costs, targeting farmers with varied landholdings and educational backgrounds. Additionally, data on farmers' cultivated varieties and the prevalence of bollworms and sucking insects in their fields were recorded. Subsequently, about eleven thousand cotton samples from farmer fields were tested for Cry1Ac, Cry2Ab and Vip3A genes by strip test. Results: In this analysis, 83% of the farmers planting approved varieties believe that Bt technology control bollworms, while 17% hold contradictory views. Similarly, among farmers cultivating unapproved varieties, 77% agree on effectiveness of Bt technology against bollworms, while 23% disagree. On the other hand, 67% of farmers planting approved varieties believe that Bt technology does not reduce spray costs, while 33% agree with the effectiveness. Similarly, 78% of farmers cultivating unapproved varieties express doubt regarding its role to reduce spray costs, while 22% are in favour of this notion. Differences in opinions on the effectiveness of Bt cotton in controlling bollworms and reducing spray cost between farmers planting unapproved and approved varieties may stem from several factors. One major cause is the heavy infestation of sucking insects, which is probably due to the narrow genetic variation of the cultivated varieties. Additionally, the widespread cultivation of unapproved varieties (21.67%) is also an important factor to cause different opinions on the effectiveness of Bt cotton. Conclusion: Based on our findings, we propose that the ineffective control of pests on cotton crop may be attributed to large scale cultivation of unapproved varieties and non-inclusion of double and triple transgene technologies in country's sowing plan. On the basis of our findings, we suggest cotton breeders, regulatory bodies and legislative bodies to discourage the cultivation of unapproved varieties and impure seed. Moreover, the adoption of double and triple Bt genes in cottons with a broad genetic variation could facilitate the revival of the cotton industry, and presenting a promising way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative advocacy clinics are excellent vehicles for teaching lawyering skills, for achieving broad-based social change, and for imparting to law students the important roles they can play in preserving and strengthening our democracy. Notwithstanding their growth over the last 15 years, there has been little scholarly reflection about the pedagogy of teaching such clinics. This Article helps to fill this gap. We provide a roadmap through the challenges that come with teaching legistative advocacy clinics-some inherent to working within legislative bodies and some that accompany working with organizational clients and advocacy partners-identifying ways that clinicians can ensure an excellent learning experience for our students while achieving essential and systemic social change for our clients and the communities they serve. We discuss four features of clinic design-project selection, supervision, the seminar, and project rounds-and explore how best to reinforce four key clinical learning goals-taking responsibility and self-reflection, client-centeredness, collaboration, and pursuing social justice-in these contexts. We also share stories from our own clinics' legislative advocacy projects, trusting that clinicians Can learn from our successes and our struggles. We conclude by encouraging our colleagues to more actively consider offering legislative advocacy clinics-or to mindfully incorporate such projects into their existing clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the experiences of its East Asian forerunners, Macao's Legislative Assembly introduced the Trust Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao Trust Law) on 3 November 2022, with the dual aim of encouraging the public's use of trusts during asset transactions and regulating the conducting of trust business in Macao. As a newly enacted law, it is hardly surprising that there is a current lack of scholarly treatises examining its structure and provisions. This article is the first English-language analysis of the Macao Trust Law from an organisational law perspective. It has two parts. The first part explores how organisational laws' internal administration and asset partitioning rules are manifested in the context of Macao trusts, and identifies the problems associated with their observance. The second part discusses the implications of this organisational law analysis, proposing ways to address the problems identified in the Macao Trust Law and explaining the rationale behind these proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. It focuses on the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first defines legitimacy and briefly elaborates a theoretical framework enabling a historical study of this unobservable variable. It proceeds to substantiate that the low-legitimacy, post-Reformation Tudor monarchs promoted Parliament to enhance their legitimacy, thereby changing the legislative process from the "crown and Parliament" to the "crown in Parliament" that still prevails in England. The break with Rome permanently altered England's political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes Judgment 91/2024 of the Constitutional Court regarding the unconstitutionality of certain articles of the Galicia Parliament Law 7/2022. The competence of the Autonomous Community of Galicia in the protection of the maritime-terrestrial public domain is questioned. The Court declares the extinction of the question of unconstitutionality as it had previously been annulled by another judgment. [Extracted from the article]

The Nature Restoration Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1991) was published in September 2024 by the European Parliament and the Council. This regulation focuses on the restoration of degraded ecosystems in the European Union, with the aim of strengthening biodiversity and combating climate change. Specific obligations are established for Member States, such as the planting of 3 billion trees and the creation of national restoration plans. The regulation seeks to promote the recovery of environmental services and the resilience of biodiversity to address climate change. [Extracted from the article]

As formulated in the Preamble to the 1945 Constitution, Pancasila represents the core values agreed upon during the meetings of the Body of Investigators for Preparatory Efforts for Indonesian Independence and the Preparatory Committee for Indonesian Independence. These values were subsequently adopted as the Foundation of the Indonesian State. However, the question persist regarding whether Pancasila can be considered as the grundnorm within Hans Kelsen's framework in his pure theory of law. This study finds that the grundnorm, as the highest source of legal obligation, is accepted as a necessity by individuals as a necessity through their free will and is inherently perceived as true. It exists in the practical reason of each individual, is a priori, and is never formalized through state processes. Pancasila, although fundamental, cannot be equated with the grundnorm as its authority as the source of all state laws derives not from its content but from its formal declaration by legislative and executive bodies. Despite this, Pancasila serves as a unifying foundation that reconciles differences in ethnicity, race, and religion, ensuring Indonesia's sustainable existence, transcending merely being a source of legal obligation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies examining parties' attack behaviour, also called negative campaigning, largely neglect temporal dynamics. Therefoe, this paper examines how the electoral cycle, the period between two elections, impacts parties' attack behaviour in parliaments. We argue that parties attack all the time but that the (i) level, (ii) type, and (iii) nature of attacks are affected by the electoral cycle as parties adapt their objectives. Analysing longitudinal data on parties' attacks in the parliaments of Belgium, Croatia, and the UK (2010–2020), we find that when elections draw closer parties' use of attacks, trait attacks, and uncivil attacks increases. We also find support for the notion that not all parties' attack behaviour is equally impacted by the electoral cycle, as parties differ in sensitivity to the electoral cycle based on risk acceptance. Overall, the impact of the electoral cycle on parties' strategic choices in general, and attack behaviour specifically, should not be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the supply-side of protest activity in Latin America in the post-neoliberal era. It argues that parties' cohesive voting in Congress under different power constellations and parties' voter-linkage strategies create institutional conditions of power collusion, inter-branch stalemate, or party erosion that delineates political terrain for social mobilization. First, the firm control of a single party or coalition over the executive and legislature with cohesive voting of party members in line with party leadership denotes power collusion and incites underrepresented actors to protest. Second, the dislocation in the executive-legislative relations (either with party members voting against the president's proposals in a majority government or with cohesive opposition bloc(s) acting against the president's will in a minority government) leads to policy immobilism and pushes legislative parties to ignite popular discontent. Third, more programmatic party linkages increase the degree of party institutionalization and predictability about policy commitment and mitigate struggles in extra-electoral arenas. The theoretical argument is tested with a battery of statistical tests that lend credence to the institutional explanations of mass mobilization. This is corroborated with empirical cases that show the plausibility of the statistical findings in particular contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soon after the accession of James I to the English throne, the Society of Antiquaries debated the origins of the English Parliament. Records of their debates, notably the tract of Sir John Doddridge, were compiled and circulated widely in manuscript before their print publication during the Interregnum. The tracts asserted that parliaments had ancient origins predating the Norman Conquest and, in Doddridge's case, even the origins of monarchy in England. Scholars have argued that these tracts articulated an understanding of England's immutable "ancient constitution," in which a stance on Parliament's antiquity defined a position on the scope and limitations of royal power. This article explores the tracts in light of the context in which they were written—the putative Jacobean Union, and the new king's assumption of the royal supremacy over the Church of England. It argues that the assertion of the antiquity of Parliament was not incompatible with an understanding of the complex development of the assembly's history over time, especially its mutability at the hands of the Crown. As such, these early attempts to understand the institution's history, and its transformations under different monarchs, may have fueled the existential fears for Parliament's future that characterized the turbulent parliaments of the 1620s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Europe, the multiplication of elections makes the election calendar a decisive issue given the decreasing participatory trend. Turnout is expected to be higher in simultaneous elections, while it lessens if several elections are held over a short period. The saliency of the preceding ballot may also affect participation in the next one. In this article, we argue that these temporal effects are crucial for European Parliament elections due to their second-order nature. We analyse how the position, frequency and nature of domestic ballots affect European Parliament elections turnout since 1979. Our results indicate that the participation level is less affected by the timing of elections than by their overall frequency. The type of preceding election also matters, although not the second-order nature per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uniqueness of the European Parliament, as well as the magnitude of impact its decisions wield over member states, are elements that capture researchers' attention. However, several of this institution's particularities have made broad analysis of the textual content it produces difficult. This research note presents Vitrine Démocratique, a new, publicly accessible, and centralized database structuring interventions made in the European Parliament starting in 2014, both in their original languages and translated to English. The process by which this high-velocity database was created is presented, as well as a descriptive overview of the contents of this data source, which is continuously updated on a daily basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work challenging the "rubber stamp" view of authoritarian legislatures demonstrate that they are important arenas for policymaking. Yet their amending function remains understudied. To what extent is draft legislation modified in authoritarian parliaments? Why are some bills amended more than others? This article addresses these questions in the Chinese case, using a dataset covering 167 bills adopted by the National People's Congress or its Standing Committee from 2008 to 2022. I assess the degree of bill change by comparing bill content before and after parliamentary treatment with a text reuse method. Results show a moderately high level of amendment activity, with noticeable variations across bills. I argue that the amending role of the Chinese legislature serves a crucial mechanism for integrating and coordinating bureaucratic interests. I find that bills are modified to a greater extent if more ministerial and provincial stakeholders are involved within the legislative arena. This article provides systemic evidence supporting the power-sharing theory: legislative institutions compensate for the executive-level deficiencies and help manage intra-elite relations in policymaking. It does not confirm the influence of public opinion, casting doubt on the bottom-up account of bill change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament (EP) constitutes a prime site of contemporary party politics in Europe. Its seven political groups represent political interests and ideologies beyond specific national interests. Within the groups, national delegations exert considerable power. The research objective of this article is to generate new knowledge about the role of national delegations within political groups. The research material consists of 140 elite interviews with MEPs and staff. The data allow the article to analyse the construction of the role and the importance of national delegations and to focus not just on formal institutions, but also on informal ones which are often outside the reach of quantitative methods and data. The findings suggest that political groups can be divided into different categories. The role and influence of national delegations are strongly governed by informal institutions, in particular when it comes to distribution of leadership positions and policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of Euroscepticism has shifted the structure of political conflict in the European Parliament (EP) towards an increasingly dominant pro-/anti-EU divide. Focusing on the hard case of EU enlargement, this article examines changes in MEPs' discursive and voting patterns over the past two EP mandates. It combines two original datasets containing MEP statements during plenary debates and subsequent roll-call votes to examine the polarisation, cohesion, and consistency of legislative behaviour across different European Political Groups. The findings show that soft Eurosceptics drive a deepening of the pro-/anti-EU divide by radicalising in both discourse and vote to join hard Eurosceptics in their firm rejection of further enlargement. Pro-European MEPs, in contrast, show discursive accommodation of Eurosceptic concerns, with a growing inconsistency between sceptical discourse and continued vote-based support for enlargement-related initiatives. A case study of Turkey illustrates these two mechanisms. The findings shed light on the changing dynamics of political competition in the EP and the impact of rising Euroscepticism upon MEPs' legislative behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]