German and British parliaments and conceptions of the global climate threat during the United Nation Earth Summit of 1992

Ever since the beginning of international climate conservation politics there has been variation across nations in political traditions in debating the climate issue. Political decision-makers have interpreted the scientific findings on global warming with different emphases, thereby giving rise to variation in views on preferred national or international solutions. These tensions first became evident before and during the Earth Summit of the United Nations in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, when the United Nations Climate Change Convention was prepared and eventually signed. This article discusses the historical background of international climate conservation politics and illustrates the tensions between contrasting parliamentary traditions in conceptualizing the climate issue. It analyses concepts and arguments presented in the German and British parliaments, which debated the necessity and justifications for international and national climate politics and the form these should take. Empirical analysis of the parliamentary debates of the period shows that during this phase in the early 1990s of introducing and initiating climate conservation policies parliamentarians debated the limits and prospects of national, international and supranational decision-making. The German and British parliaments have traditionally articulated different ideas on international and European co-operation and this difference is also apparent in the field of climate conservation policies.     

从设议院到立宪法——晚清“Constitution”汉译与立宪思潮形成考论

在中国,英文"Constitution"一词早期曾被译为"国例"、"例制"、"国法"、"章程"、"国律"等中文词。中国近代立宪意义上的"宪法"一词,最早见于王韬和郑观应的著作,但他们只是一提而过,并未作深入的阐述。维新期间的康有为、梁启超也多次提到"宪法"一词,但他们只是把宪法当作一般的律法看待,并无立宪涵义的认知,更谈不上提出了立宪的主张。学界长期使用的史料、康有为《请定立宪开国会折》中"立宪法"、"三权鼎立"的内容是后来改窜添加的。戊戌时期康、梁的政治主张主要集中在兴民权、设议院上,并非如学界长期认为的那样,已经成为了立宪主义者。康、梁真正成为立宪主义者,要在逃亡日本、大量阅读日译或日著的宪法著作之后。在日本,"Constitution"早期也被译为"国宪"、"政体"等词。日本近代立宪主义上的"宪法"一词,最早出现在明治初年对西方宪法的翻译中,后经立宪进程的推展而成为公定用语。中国近代对宪法概念首次展开深入分析的,是流亡日本后的梁启超于1899年撰写的《各国宪法异同论》一文。英文"Constitution"和具有立宪主义涵义之"宪法"概念,正是经"同文同种"之日本学者的翻译、梁启超以及留日学生的转述而在中国真正广泛传播开来。随着日俄战争中日本取胜,"立宪救国论"随之而起,中国立宪的进程才真正得以开启。     

Out of the Hands of the Parties: Women's Legislative Recruitment at Westminster

At the next general election the percentage of women elected to the smaller House of Commons risks being lower than in the current parliament, where they constitute 22 percent of all MPs. The 2008–10 Speaker's Conference identified many of the barriers faced by women and other under‐represented groups and made a series of recommendations, only some of which have been introduced. The Government favours a voluntary approach to Recommendation 24, which calls for diversity data monitoring, whilst Recommendation 25 which calls for serious consideration of legislative quotas in the absence of a significant increase in the numbers of women in 2010, appears forgotten. A second Speaker's Conference should therefore be established; the issue of women's under‐representation should be taken up above the party level—with legislative quotas introduced to address the system level failure of democratic representation at Westminster.     

The effect of multiple-office holding on the parliamentary activity of MPs in the Czech Republic

This article deals with multiple-office holdings by legislators in the Czech Republic during the VI. Chamber of Deputies, 2010–2013. First, both positive and negative theoretical consequences of simultaneously holding multiple political offices are depicted. Then, a uniquely detailed database of member of parliament-periods is constructed for quantitative research. Multiple-office holding is demonstrated to be a frequent behaviour among Czech deputies. The analysis results suggest that some of the deputies’ parliamentary performances were influenced both positively and negatively. Multiple-office holders probably save time on certain activities, and focus more strongly on others. Different mandates held simultaneously by deputies affect their activity differently; local and non-executive mandates’ effects tend to be positive compared with regional and executive mandates’ effects.     

Integrating the view of the public into the formal legislative process: public reading stage in the UK House of Commons

Recent years have seen increasing calls to integrate the public's voice into the parliamentary process. This article examines the impact of public reading stage (PRS) on the UK Parliament's scrutiny of a bill. A new stage of the legislative process piloted by the House of Commons in February 2013, PRS invited the public to comment on a bill undergoing parliamentary scrutiny (the Children and Families Bill). The PRS was designed to encourage members of the public to participate in the scrutiny of legislation through a specially designed forum on parliament's website. Over 1000 comments were submitted. Drawing on a content analysis of the comments given by the public to the bill, complemented by interviews with members of parliament, key officials and PRS participants, it was found that although the public reading stage had an impressive response, it failed to make much of a tangible impact on the parliamentary scrutiny of the bill. This was largely due to the choice of bill being used for the pilot and its lack of appropriate integration into the formal legislative process.     

The Swiss: A Political Nation?

Abstract: Proponents of constitutional patriotism advocate the promotion of a political national identity. Whether a national identity founded on common political values is viable, however, remains a matter of dispute. The Swiss nation is one of the few empirical cases cited by those who argue that a political national identity can be a sufficient guarantor of institutional stability and social coherence; indeed, Switzerland is widely regarded as a prototype of the political nation. The aim of our analysis is to empirically test this claim. In doing so, we rely on classical typologies of national identity. We propose to use a more finely graded typology than the usual dichotomies, however – one which allows for combined types – and to focus on individual perceptions of national identity at the mass‐ and elite‐levels. The empirical analysis of whether the Swiss nation can correctly be classified as a political nation draws on data from mass and MP surveys. Our conclusion is that the Swiss imagine their nation in both political and cultural terms, and the essence of their cultural identity is Swiss linguistic pluralism and regional diversity.     

Should Britain Have a Written Constitution?

The question - ought Britain to have a written, more properly, a codified constitution - is perhaps wrongly put. The real question ought to be - why should Britain not have such a constitution… She is, after all, one of just three democracies without one.
There are two reasons why Britain has lacked a constitution. The first is that, historically, Britain never had a constitutional moment; the second is the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Today, however, Britain finds herself engaged in the process of gradually converting an uncodified constitution into a codified one. There is undoubtedly a case in principle for enacting a constitution, but perhaps it ought to wait until the process is completed.
There is, moreover, a tension between two types of codified constitution - a lawyer's constitution which would be long and highly detailed, and a people's constitution which would be short, but, inevitably, broadly-worded, and therefore open to interpretation by the courts.     

从马克思的财政理论到西方财政政治学的兴起——议会财政权理论的历史性梳理

财政是政府的命脉,财政权是主导国家财政资源配置乃至政治权力配置的关键要素。目前,西方国家议会的财政权已形成一个完备的制度体系,对议会财政权的理论研究也走向更深的层次。本文从阐述马克思的财政理论入手,着重介绍以亚当.斯密为代表的传统学派、以诺思和布坎南为代表的新制度主义学派和公共选择学派对议会财政权问题的论述以及当代以威尔达夫斯基为代表的财政政治学理论的兴起过程,在系统地梳理议会财政权理论历史发展脉络的基础上,阐明其在政治学研究领域的重要地位。     

Open parliament policy applied to the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

ABSTRACT

This article will analyse the implementation of an open parliament policy that is taking place at the Chamber of Deputies, in accordance with the guidelines of the Open Government Partnership international programme (OGP), regarding the action plan of the Opening Parliament Work Group in particular, one of the subgroups of OGP. The authors will evaluate two blocks of initiatives for open parliaments executed by the Chamber in the last few years, that is, digital participation in the legislative process and Transparency 2.0, in order to observe their impasses and results obtained until now. In the first part the authors will study the e-Democracy portal and in the second part the authors will focus on open data, collaborative activities to use those data (hackathons) and the creation of the Hacker Lab, a permanent space dedicated to open parliament practices. The analysis considers the initiatives that the authors evaluated as part of the transformative and arena profiles of the Brazilian Parliament, according to Polsby's classification, with exclusive characteristics.     

Petitioning in early seventeenth-century Scotland, 1625–51

ABSTRACT

In contrast to recent work on England and other parts of Europe, research on petitioning in early modern Scotland is still in its early stages, notably in respect of its political significance in a comparative context. This article investigates supplicatory activity in Scotland during a crucial period in which the petition came under intense scrutiny. The 1630s saw a determined attempt by King Charles I’s Scottish government to clamp down on the use of supplications to express criticism of royal policy; assertive, but carefully controlled, petitioning was one part of a resistance strategy that resulted in the downfall of the king’s regime. When a new government came to power in 1638 headed by the Covenanters, petitioning activity came to be seen as a potential challenge to their authority. Petitioning does not appear to have invoked ‘opinion’ in 1640s Scotland as has been claimed for England; the printed petition remained a rarity in Scotland. Nevertheless constitutional reform, combined with the wartime conditions of the 1640s, generated more recourse to petitioning, and the government recognized opportunities to enhance its claims to legitimate rule. A preliminary investigation of everyday petitions to the government during the 1640s shows how the narratives constructed by supplicants often sought to endorse its values and ideals, but that this type of petitioning was also used by supplicants to critique the government’s policies and hold it to its own rhetoric.