Ruxandra Serban

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...

Constitution Unit publishes new briefings on constitutional principles and the health of democracy The Constitution Unit has today published new and updated briefings as part of its Constitutional Principles and the Health of Democracy project.

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 👇

Prime Minister's Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons: Lessons in parliamentary reform Between 2017 and 2025, the Canadian House of Commons operated a Prime Minister’s Question Period procedure, introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In a new published article summarised here, Ruxandra Serban explores how this procedure worked, and how it differed from the traditional Question Period model.

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. 👇

(Watch this space for a more detailed analysis of the 🇨🇦 PM’s Question Period coming out soon!)

YouTube video by Hansard Society Prime Minister's Questions: Westminster's weekly gladiatorial combat

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.

International student levy could cost English universities £600m a year The proposed 6% surcharge has prompted warnings from vice-chancellors over its impact on budgets and global competitiveness

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...

Speaker nods towards large changes to Parliament's Question Time Parliament's Speaker is considering a major rewrite of the rules for Question Time to prevent "an unequal competition".

#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

🧵

Is confrontational questioning bad for parliaments and democratic politics? Parliamentary procedures such as Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK or Question Time in Australia are often criticised for their contentious style of debate. Ruxandra Serban compares questioning …

Some reflections on this from a comparative perspective:

constitution-unit.com/2023/09/06/i...

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 👇

OppositionCast Discussion of political opposition with leading academics, politicians and commentators, presented by Dr Nigel Fletcher of the Centre for Opposition Studies.

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

pod.link/oppositionca...

House of Lords To Move To QEII Centre While Parliament Restored The House of Lords is set to move to the QEII Centre while Parliament is restored, no matter which option for the estate’s restoration is eventuall...

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...

(Of course ‘to what extent does AI act like a human interviewee?’ is a great research question worth exploring. Some excellent literature out there on this. But that’s not what is happening here)

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!