A Tale as Old as (Devolved) Time? Sewel,Stormont and the Legislative Consent Convention

Interparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention. However, they are an aspect of parliamentary life in which there has been a series of experiments by select committees in the House of Commons. While one of the more prominent examples of such experimentation was the international grand committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy spearheaded by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, this article will look at another example of select committee-led interparliamentary relations, namely the ‘joint inquiry’ conducted by the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Assemblée nationale’s Standing Committee on National Defence into Future Cruise and Anti-Ship Missiles in 2018. This article, written by an official involved in the inquiry, offers the first reflections on the experience of this joint inquiry, demonstrates how the model undertaken for the inquiry differed from the approaches taken by other select committees involved in interparliamentary working, and explores whether it might offer a blueprint for future joint inquiries.     

A Dominant SNP in a Unionist Scotland? The 2019 UK General Election in Scotland

The UK general election in December 2019 produced a resounding victory for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, returning a majority government and the mandate for Brexit that he had campaigned for. The picture was less rosy for the Conservatives in Scotland, where his party lost half its seats to the SNP. This article reviews the election outcome in Scotland, considering the fortunes of each of the main parties, and projects forward to the devolved election in 2021, when the parties will once again debate the key constitutional question in Scotland.     

Ministerial Turnover and Why Reshuffles Matter for Parliament

Reshuffles are a relatively common occurrence in British politics. We expect to see them whenever a new Prime Minister enters Downing Street, after elections and following ministerial resignations. Recent research from the Institute for Government warns that the regular churn of ministers has negative consequences for policy making and for parliamentary accountability. This article summarises their latest research and what this tells us about the potential implications of Boris Johnson’s February 2020 reshuffle on government and Parliament.     

A Mountain to Climb: The Labour Together 2019 Election Review

The Labour Together review of the 2019 election brings together polling data, survey data, interviews, and submissions from across the Labour movement. An unpopular leader, tensions around the Brexit position, and a manifesto which was not seen as credible, are all found to have contributed to the scale of the defeat, but Labour’s unexpectedly strong performance in 2017 also masked long-term issues in its connection with the electorate and within the party’s campaign organisation. The report attempts to move beyond simply diagnosing the difficulties the party faces, but some of the thorniest issues for the party to resolve are nonetheless left unresolved.     

The Regulatory Gift: Politics,regulation and governance

This article introduces the “regulatory gift” as a conceptual framework for understanding a particular form of government‐led deregulation that is presented as central to the public interest. Contra to theories of regulatory capture, government corruption, “insider” personal interest, or profit‐seeking theories of regulation, the regulatory gift describes reform that is overtly designed by government to reduce or reorient regulators’ functions to the advantage of the regulated and in line with market objectives on a potentially macro (rather than industry‐specific) scale. As a conceptual framework, the regulatory gift is intended to be applicable across regulated sectors of democratic states and in this article the empirical sections evidence the practice of regulatory gifting in contemporary United Kingdom (UK) politics. Specifically, this article analyses the 2011 UK Public Bodies Act, affecting some 900 regulatory public bodies and its correlative legislation, the 2014 Regulator's Code, the 2015 Deregulation Act, and the 2016 Enterprise Bill. The article concludes that while in some cases the regulatory gift may be aligned with the public interest – delivering on cost reduction, enhancing efficiency, and stimulating innovation – this will not always be the case. As the case study of the regulatory body, the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, demonstrates, despite the explicit claims made by legislators, the regulatory gift has the potential to significantly undermine the public interest.     

Bring back the party: personalisation,the media and coalition politics

What effect, if any, does a change in type of government have on the degree of media personalisation? This article argues that the different incentives that single- and multi-party governments provide to individual politicians and parties affect the level of media personalisation. Where the parties are more involved (i.e. multi-party coalitions) there will be less media personalisation. In contrast, where a single individual can command the party, there will be more media personalisation. The article tests these assumptions with a novel dataset created from over 1 million newspaper articles covering a continuous 24-year period in the UK. It finds that the switch to a coalition government in 2010 indeed changed the dynamics of media personalisation. These findings not only provide key insights into the phenomenon of personalisation but also enable us to better understand some of the potential consequences of changes in government types for power dynamics and democratic accountability.     

The role of personal parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament

The article scrutinises the behaviour of the personal staff of MEPs, using newly collected survey data. The personal staff known as accredited parliamentary assistants (APAs) have long been in the shadow of staff in parliamentary groups and staff in the European Parliament’s (EP) central Secretariat. In the 2010s, MEPs’ allowance for personal staff increased and a statute for APAs was adopted. Against the background of these reforms, this article hypothesises that APAs are a frequent source of assistance for MEPs in comparison to the other EP staff. It assumes that the significance of APAs’ involvement depends on their characteristics as direct employees of MEPs. Results show that APAs frequently assist MEPs in activities relevant for the internal life of the EP, but that they are less frequently involved in inter-institutional relations. The article shows that MEPs seek support which is political, but also that is tailored towards them personally.     

Red Europe versus no Europe? The impact of attitudes towards the EU and the economic crisis on radical-left voting

The 2014 European Parliament election saw a relatively large increase in the size of radical-left parties (RLPs), particularly in Western Europe. This article aims to provide new ways of thinking about the dynamics of radical-left voting by analysing the changing role of attitudes towards the European Union in explaining support for RLPs at European Parliament elections during the Great Recession. It is argued that the Europeanisation of economic issues during the financial crisis, together with the particular kind of Euroscepticism advocated by these parties, have enabled them to successfully attract a heterogeneous pool of voters. Using the 2009 and 2014 European Election Studies, it is shown that the effect of negative opinions about the EU on support for RLPs increased significantly during the crisis. In addition, support for RLPs also increased among voters with positive views of the EU who were nevertheless highly dissatisfied with the economic situation.     

英国刑法犯罪故意的构造分析

我国刑法学界对于英国刑法中的犯罪故意在理解上值得反思,英国刑法犯罪故意需从判例法和制定法这个角度加以理解.将英国判例法立场的变化归纳为几种并存的学说不够客观,同时,认为英国刑法在该问题上是以认识为本质理解犯罪故意的观点也不能成立.英国判例法在这个问题上既有原则性又有灵活性,尽管这种弹性是我国司法部门不可能做到的,但是英国刑法同样对于我们具有一定的借鉴意义.     

Explaining the European Parliament’s gains in the EU Constitution

The Constitutional Treaty, like each set of reforms since the Single European Act, would constitute another incremental increase in the European Parliament’s powers. But the Parliament did not get everything it wanted. What we do in this paper is investigate why the European Parliament tends to ‘win’ in some areas but not in others. We consider five possible explanations and test these theories by looking at the issues the Parliament promoted in the constitutional negotiations and the factors that determined whether the Parliament was successful or not in a particular area. We find that the Parliament gains power in areas where the governments delegate new powers to the EU and are uncertain about the consequences of this delegation. We also find that public support for the Parliament played a role in the extension of the Parliament’s powers in the Constitution.