Reframing migrant mothers as citizens

This article suggests reframing the study of migrant women's mothering from a question of integration to an engagement with citizenship. Drawing on research with Polish migrants to the UK, it illustrates how migrant mothers and children construct complex belongings, referencing local, national (UK and Polish), transnational and supra-national levels of belonging. Migrant mothers' sense of ethnic distinctness goes hand in hand with universalistic discourses of belonging. The notion of competent mothering is a key aspect constituting the migrant mothers' narratives of ‘good citizenship’. Their narratives challenge the devaluing of their mothering practices as migrants, negotiating not only national but also class and racialized identities so that the figure of the well-educated Polish child symbolizes legitimate mobility and belonging. The article concludes by developing elements of a research agenda on migrant women's mothering as a citizenship practice.     

议会制度与公共预算的监督模式比较

本文主要致力于比较议会制度对公共预算监督模式的影响。在议会规模对预算绩效的影响方面,理性选择理论构建出了三种模式,即普遍化模式、最小获胜联盟模式和超多数联盟模式。大多数的经验研究都支持议会规模越大会带来支出扩张的假设。同时,两院制相对于一院而言更容易带来预算赤字的增长。一个强大的委员会系统,是现代议会提高预算监督能力的必要条件,而且,委员会系统的发达,并不一定会带来委员会的偏好偏离议会整体偏好的现象。     

Evidence-Based Policy Research to Inform the ENP: Five Recommendations for Europe and its Neighbours

The September 2014 referendum is a milestone in Scotland’s history. After 307 years of union with England and a 15-year experience with devolution, Scottish nationalism is within reach of its ultimate goal. Independence would be consensual and Scotland and the rest of the UK would retain multiple links. The EU dimension looms large in the debate and is entangled with the UK’s own review of its membership. Scotland’s referendum is part of a wider trend seeing other ‘stateless nations’ in the democratic world pursuing independence. Even if opinion polls indicate voters will likely reject secession, Scotland’s experience holds important lessons for the wider world.     

Role and place of the parliament of Kazakhstan in the system of checks and balances

This article examines the system of checks and balances in post-Soviet Kazakhstan in general and the role of the Parliament of Kazakhstan in that system in particular. As opposed to the scientific mainstream in Kazakhstan which explains established system of checks and balances as a result of formal constitutional reforms, this article undertakes broader analytical framework and examines the system of checks and balances in Kazakhstan taking into account a correlation of formal and informal practices. The goal of the article is to show that in post-Soviet Kazakhstan the separation of powers is established without proper checks and balances. The inference drawn from the article is that the separation of powers in Kazakhstan is blocked by the strong constitutional and informal powers of the President, which allows him to control and interfere in affairs of all branches of power.     

Contestation and co-optation: why secrecy in EU external relations varies

Abstract

The question posed in this article is how to explain that the governance of secrecy in EU external relations varies. While the Common Foreign and Security Policy appears to retain its secretive character, the EU’s external trade policy has recently seen a shift towards more transparency. This article argues that to understand this variation, one has to take into account the institutional power of the European Parliament as well as the extent to which the rules and practices of secrecy are perceived as legitimate. The empowerment of the Parliament in trade means that it has had recent success in pushing back secrecy in this area. However, a general finding is that the majority of parliamentarians seem only rarely to question the executive’s governance of secrecy in external relations. The analysis shows that perceptions of legitimacy are crucial to account for different secrecy regimes – a finding that is likely to be relevant for the understanding of secrecy in foreign policy beyond the EU.     

WASPI's Is (Mostly) a Campaign for Inequality

Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) has mounted a vociferous campaign for full compensation to be given to ‘1950s women’ who, it argues, have suffered severe financial hardship as a result of the rise in their state pension age from age 60. That campaign has gained significant political traction, with much sympathy expressed for the plight of those affected and acceptance (most notably by the Scottish National Party and the Labour Party) that some form of compensation is urgently needed. But WASPI fails to acknowledge the rise in the state pension age's roots in the fight for women's equality, disregards the fact that the problems experienced by this cohort as they near retirement are faced by both women and men and glosses over the fact that the increase in pension age above 65 applies to both genders equally. Its campaign obscures deeper and more important issues in old‐age income replacement.     

Towards parliamentarisation of foreign and security policy?

Abstract

It is customary to argue that foreign policy is very much dominated by the executive, with parliaments wielding limited influence. However, with the exception of the US Congress, legislative?executive relations in the realm of foreign and security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. Drawing on a principal?agent framework, this collection scrutinises the conventional wisdom of ‘executive autonomy’ in foreign affairs, indicating that even though parliaments have arguably become more involved in foreign and security policy over time, any notions of parliamentarisation need to be treated with caution. While expectations of consensus in the name of the national interest continue to play an important role in foreign policy decision-making, the papers highlight the role of party-political contestation structuring parliamentary debates and votes in this increasingly politicised issue area. This introductory paper introduces the analytical framework and hypotheses guiding the contributions in this collection, summarises their main findings and suggests avenues for future research.     

State–defence industry relations in the European context: French and UK interactions with the European Defence Agency

While many have noted that EU member states have different preferences over the prospect of an integrated EU defence, analyses that specifically explore state–industry relations in the definition of EU defence-industrial issues, and in the evolution of the Common Security and Defence Policy in general, are lacking. This is surprising, given that different configurations of government–industry relations have represented a persistent impediment to European defence-industrial cross-border collaboration. This article investigates how state–defence industry relations impact on member states’ preferences towards the EU defence-industrial framework. Based on the case studies of the interaction of France and the UK with the European Defence Agency, this analysis focuses on the difference between public and private defence firms’ governance settings as the crucial explanatory variable accounting for diverging member states’ preferences in this domain.     

Procedural Change in the UK House of Commons, 1811–2015

Recent research has shown an increasing interest in the historical evolution of legislative institutions. The development of the UK Parliament has received particularly extensive attention. In this article, we contribute to this literature in three important ways. First, we introduce a complete, machine-readable data set of all the Standing Orders of the UK House of Commons between 1811 and 2015. Second, we demonstrate how this data set can be used to construct innovative measures of procedural change. Third, we illustrate a potential empirical application of the data set, offering an exploratory test of several expectations drawn from recent theories of formal rule change in parliamentary democracies. We conclude that the new data set has the potential to substantially advance our understanding of legislative reforms in the United Kingdom and beyond.