Going ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’: How Effective was the Backbench Business...
By David Foster During the 2010-12 parliamentary session the Backbench Business Committee (BBBC) demonstrated its potential to become the most important reform of the House of Commons since 1979....
View ArticleMargaret Hodge on inappropriate conversations and fingering civil servants
By Professor Philip Cowley (originally published on his blog, Revolts) Birkbeck’s Centre for the Study of British Politics and Public Life hosted a very enjoyable seminar yesterday with the Chair of...
View ArticleHow Well Does Parliament Scrutinise?
By Dr Ben Worthy One of the key tasks of any Parliament is scrutiny. But what is scrutiny? What makes it effective and how does it work? Jessica Crowe from the Centre for Public Scrutiny gave us an...
View ArticleTime for All-Men Shortlists?
By Dr Rainbow Murray This post originally appeared on the PSA Political Insight Blog. It is now two decades since the Labour party introduced All-Women Shortlists (AWS) in an attempt to redress the...
View ArticleThis Ludicrous Obsession, Parents in Parliament: The Motherhood Trap
By Dr Rosie Campbell and Professor Sarah Childs Men’s over-representation and women’s under-representation in the UK Parliament is pretty well known, even if the public sometimes over-estimates just...
View ArticleParliamentary Puzzle 3: What Do Peers Do?
By Dr Ben Worthy reports on an visit by Baroness Bakewell to the Department of Politics Parliamentary Studies course This post originally featured on our sister blog, 10 Gower Street. In our...
View ArticleHot MPs or not? Attractiveness worth 2.3% in vote share (and other things...
This post originally appeared on Revolts, the blog of Professor Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart, and it reports on the Centre’s recent conference on MPs and their constituents in contemporary...
View ArticlePrime Minister’s Questions as Masculinity
By Professor Joni Lovenduski PMQs are a prominent feature of political news routinely reported by journalists. They are a recurring topic in parliamentary sketches and Wednesday news bulletins. The...
View ArticleMissing Women: It’s Time for Legislative Quotas in British Politics
By Rosie Campbell, Sarah Childs, and Meryl Kenny and the other members of the UK Political Studies Association (PSA) Women and Politics Specialist Group Originally posted on the PSA Women and Politics...
View ArticleThe new political class of 2015
There is a perception that Westminster politics is a self-serving career machine for the ambitions of a small cadre of self-reproducing politicians. To what extent is this view justified on the basis...
View ArticleFollowing the pink battle bus: where are the women voters in 2015?
By Dr Rosie Campbell, Reader in Politics, Department of Politics, Birkbeck On 11th February Harriet Harman launched the Labour party’s magenta battle bus intended to reach out to women voters. The bus...
View ArticleBirkbeck Predicts Who Will Win in 2015
This General Election is the most unpredictable in decades. From the SNP in Scotland to UKIP’s assault and the Green insurgency, this election is full of uncertainties. We tried to make sense of a...
View ArticleDesperately Seeking an Elderly Gentleman with a Large Majority … to Persuade...
by Professor Rosie Campbell and Professor Sarah Childs Or a woman MP for that matter. But they must be adored by their parliamentary and local constituency party so that both will be happy for them to...
View ArticleQuestion Time for Mr Speaker
by Dr Ben Worthy Last week Birkbeck’s Parliamentary Studies students visited Parliament, where we met Mr Speaker, talked Brexit and peeked into the Commons and Lords. The Speaker John Bercow was kind...
View ArticleVotes for Women… and Seats, and Parliaments, and Politics for Women
by Professor Sarah Childs The celebrations and commemorations are well under way: there are numerous seminars, conferences and workshops; [1] #Votes100 is trending on Twitter; and many of us are...
View ArticleMaking a Good Parliament: Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow Visits...
by Dr Ben Worthy How can Parliament be reformed? The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, took time out from imposing order on MPs to tell a packed audience of Birkbeck students how he intends...
View ArticleA Better, But Not as Yet, Good Parliament: The UK House of Commons 2016-2018
Originally posted on the PSA Parliaments Group Blog Written by Sarah Childs, Professor of Politics and Gender, Birkbeck College University of London and Distinguished Visiting Researcher, University...
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