🚨📄 New paper (conditional accepted at @thejop.bsky.social): We test whether social desirability bias actually distorts answers in online surveys. Short version: It mostly doesn’t. w. @timallinger.bsky.social @kristianvsf.bsky.social @morganlcj.bsky.social URL: osf.io/preprints/os...

“I am delighted to conditionally accept your article for publication in The Journal of Politics.” 🥳 We find that gender quota laws for legislatures also increase the share of women in cabinets. w @gventurini.bsky.social @tiffanydbarnes.bsky.social dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

This from The Times newsletter is also.. not right. As Cabinet Manual sets out, PM appts on basis of advice from outgoing Cab Sec and 1st CS Commissioner. PM is not at all dependent on those previously shortlisted. And can make a direct appt with minimal process (if that person is appropriate)

NEW - Gender Bias in Legislative Oversight: Do Parliamentarians Control Women Ministers More Tightly than Men Ministers? - https://cup.org/45Rm9Z6 - @corinnakroeber.bsky.social, @lenastephan.bsky.social, @sarahdingler.bsky.social & @camilamontero.bsky.social #OpenAccess

New piece by me for @uk.theconversation.com, explaining yesterday’s Lords vote on under-16s’ social media use. ‘The House of Lords has voted to stop under 16s using social media – what happens now?’ theconversation.com/the-house-of...

Four UQs in the Commons can be a good sign of parliamentary scrutiny but don't tend to be a sign that things in the world are "good"

📈Four UQs is a very rare record number of UQs in a single day, if we look at numbers since 1997 (particularly since the revival of UQs after 2010). The last time this happened was on 25 Oct 2021. Three UQs in one day occurred most recently on 5 Jan, and this has happened eight times this session.

📝The Commons Procedure Committee is conducting an inquiry on Written Parliamentary Questions. Read evidence from colleagues at the link below ⬇️ @stephenholdenbates.bsky.social @carolinebha.bsky.social & Stephen McKay - WPQs use over time @ruxandrasrbn.bsky.social - WPQs procedures comparatively

Very interesting piece from the HoL Library on amendments to 'that this bill do now pass' motions at Third Reading. Seems to suggest that no such amendment (whether fatal or non-fatal) had passed since, at the very least, the 70s until this Monday! lordslibrary.parliament.uk/lords-public...

🧵Sky News has a piece running today about a big increase in written parliamentary questions. @samcoatessky.bsky.social says a senior government source has suggested MPs may be using AI to submit written questions to ministers. news.sky.com/story/number...

📝Our new @instituteforgovernment.org.uk report with @jackpannell.bsky.social & @emmanorris.bsky.social out today sets out out the underlying problems with the way public inquiries are established We argue ministers need better support to make informed decisions about how an inquiry should be set up

So because everything can be a ~ teachable moment ~ if you're nerdy enough, let's learn about Speaker Denison's rule-- a convention established in the nineteenth by (you guessed it) a Speaker of the Commons called John Denison.

It will be interesting to see how this case fits into the comparative explanations for why reforms to reduce assembly size are introduced, e.g. Jacobs and Otjes (2015) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

As Duncan says, this article was a lot of fun. There's so much to it - the funky method, in-depth case studies, the nuancing of a well-established party organisation theory, spatial regressions, maps...

Political communication research overwhelmingly relies on text. But parliamentary speech is multimodal! In our new @psrm.bsky.social article, Mathias Rask and I show that legislators also signal partisan conflict nonverbally— through changes in vocal pitch during floor speeches. 🧵 1/11 #polisky

The BBC reports that the Speaker ‘had a word’ with Keir Starmer today about making policy announcements at the start of PMQs. Starmer has increasingly used his PMQs opening answer to make a statement on policy, as we explored in this @conunitucl.bsky.social blog: tinyurl.com/2t5jun9w

Great article from @amyborrett.ft.com. But it does make me wonder again why there was zero national media coverage when the University of Brighton closed down its big, decades-old campus in Eastbourne. Now of course, it would make a great case study for a journalist of the economic/cultural impact.

We are so proud of our parliamentary studies star Dr Lauren Martin! ⭐️

🙏 Thank you so much from the PSA Parliaments committee to everyone who contributed and attended! 🎉 Introducing you to our soon-to-be Co-Convenor @rickwhitaker.bsky.social… 🫡 That’s us all signing off for 2025! 🤠 See you in the New Year! #PSAParl25

Our Parliaments Specialist Group's annual conference has come to a close! Thank you to all that came and everyone who contributed to the discussions during the panels and the events.

The new Comparative Constitutions Project website is now live! Developed by yours truly. We're also releasing version 5.0 of our Constitutional Chronology and Constitutional Characteristics datasets, updated through 2023. Explore and download: comparativeconstitutionsproject.org

NEW BLOG: Assessing the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee 15 years on Unit Director Meg Russell and Hannah Kelly argue changes are needed to get back to the Wright Committee’s vision of it helping facilitate a more responsive and independent House of Commons.

new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

Keir Starmer uses the answer to the ‘engagements’ (first) question at PMQs as an opening statement. On average, they are around 153 words, but some have been longer (e.g. about 586 words on the China spying case), leading to criticism that he’s using them as a substitute for a full statement.

Missing here is another way unis are managing costs: a de facto hiring freeze across much of the sector (judging by how few jobs are being advertised)

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN 🎉 The PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2025 will be hosted by the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of York in conjunction with The White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership on the 27th-28th November!

📣 We are very excited for this year’s @psa-parliaments.bsky.social annual conference taking place at the University of York! 📝 More details and registration: psaparliaments.org/annual-confe...

It is briefings day! We are releasing newly updated versions of our briefings, plus three new ones! The series covers topics from the constitutional principles that underpin democracy to the role of citizens' assemblies. Use this mega-thread to browse them. And find out more 👇

ON THE BLOG: Prime Minister's Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons: Lessons in parliamentary reform @ruxandrasrbn.bsky.social explains how Canada's experiment with a Prime Minister's Question Period procedure between 2017 and 2025 worked and how it differed from the traditional model.

New Working Paper 🚨 I am introducing the new dataset on Parliamentary Elites in Authoritarian Regimes (PEAR). It includes information on the composition of parliaments in 819 legislative terms in 130 autocracies from 1945 - based on over 200k individual-level observations. tinyurl.com/48h68hmh

1/ Whatever you think of digital ID, the process matters. And in 2025, this is still how we make big public policy. 👇

It was great to talk about all things PMQs with @ruthfox.bsky.social and @darcyxtip.bsky.social on @hansardsociety.bsky.social Parliament Matters! We discuss why France and Canada have experimented with PMQs, and why it may be time to retire the ‘engagements’ question. youtu.be/OtpApR3fNQE?...

Want a good starting point for learning good principles of Dataviz? I'd highly recommend @andrew.heiss.phd course--Data Visualization with R. Reading materials, slides, lecture videos, examples, code, etc. are all posted for free on his website.

Couldn't even finish this cos I thought I would turn myself inside out like a pretzel with cringe. The stupid, it burns! www.theguardian.com/education/20...

#NZPol www.rnz.co.nz/news/thehous...

🎉 PSA Parliaments Annual Conference on 28 Nov @york.ac.uk 🎉 📣 Call for Papers is now live! Submit your abstract here: bit.ly/4o879gP ✏️Our ECR methods workshop will also take place on 27 Nov! Apply here: bit.ly/3J4uQXk 💻 Check out our website for more details: psaparliaments.org/annual-confe...

This is the kind of article APSR used to be famous for. The ones that make your brain explode, that challenge you, confuse you, test your patience, and make you smarter by making you realize your limitations. Well done Erica Simmons and @nickrushsmith.bsky.social‬ 👏

We live in an era of democratic backsliding. But the terminology of "backsliding" isn't up to the task of making sense of the deep crisis of liberal democracy around the world. I've just finished a working paper that lays out what I think is going on. tl;dr it's about the state and society 🧵

Changing adversarial behaviour at PMQs is a collective action problem. MPs and parties criticise it, but continue to engage in it because confrontation draws attention to PMQs and is the way it has worked for a long time. Meaningful change would require all parties agreeing to stop engaging in this.

I’m really pleased that the @psa-parliaments.bsky.social conference will be at @uoypolitics.bsky.social this November! If you work in the field of parliaments or legislative studies please consider applying More details on the website: psaparliaments.org/annual-confe...

I've been working on something on this and here's a sneak peek of recent trends in Politics job adverts on jobs.ac.uk Here's a scatterplot and (GAM) trendline showing that the number of advertised politics jobs has pretty much halved since 2021.

After debate this amendment was not pushed to a division, the Bill will return (after 3rd Reading) with 3 principal amendments: 1) phasing hereditaries out by abolishing by-elections 2) essentially banning unsalaried lords ministers 3) allowing creation of life peers without a seat in parliament

Today the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill is set to have its second day of report stage in the Lords. We will mainly be looking out for amendment 23, from Crossbencher Lord (Terry) Burns. This would cap the chamber's size at 650 and limit prime ministerial appointments. A thread 👇

Me, on a podcast, talking about backbench rebellions. What else do you want? pod.link/oppositionca...

Brilliant scoop from the always excellent @sophiealichurch.bsky.social at @politicshome.bsky.social: The QEII Centre *finally* agreed as the decant location for the Lords during Restoration and Renewal www.politicshome.com/news/article... #WestminsterRR

If anyone has something like this for the UK I'd be very intrigued...

If true, this feels like a very unfortunate continuation of the “AI will make qualitative research scalable” trend, which misunderstands the core premises and aims of qualitative research.

What is a parliament? This workshop aims to start a fresh conversation on this classic question in legislative studies. ⏰ You have two more days (deadline Friday 4 July) to submit a brief paper proposal. Sign up details below ⬇️

We have new opinion polling on House of Lords reform! There is overwhelming public support to go beyond the government's current plans to remove hereditary peers (due to be debated in the Lords on Wednesday), including to limit prime ministerial appointments and cap the chamber's size. A thread 👇

📢📢📢 CfP: What is a Parliament? ***Hurry! Deadline is this Friday!*** Interdisciplinary workshop on 19th September 2025 in London. Full details below. Kindly sponsored by Birkbeck, the University of Birmingham and @psa-parliaments.bsky.social Please apply and/or spread the word!