LIST OF WORKSHOPS

This panel is oriented to increase our understanding regarding the role of parliaments as policy-making institutions covering a wide  spectrum of legislative activities. Parliaments have been for long conceptualized as irrelevant institutions, tasked with approving policies negotiated elsewhere (Olson 1994, Kreppel 2014, Andersen and Burns, 1996; Russell and Cowley 2015). The executive is considered to control the agenda and the policy making process, and the opposition parliamentary groups are depicted as being passive and permissive, leading to high levels of parliamentary consensus. This literature has mainly conceptualized parliamentary groups as a unitary actor (focusing on the government vs opposition dichotomy) and relied on the analysis of formal rules and structures to draw conclusions and to develop opposition typologies (e.g. Sartori, 1966, Dahl 1966; Oberreuter, 1975; Blondel, 1997; Gelman, 2005; Kaiser, 2008, 2009, Norton 2008).
The study of parliamentary opposition is also connected to the broader analysis of the strength and weakness of legislatures. Also conceived as unitary actors, the literature has explored the role of legislatures regarding two main questions (e.g. Mezey 1970, 1979; Polsby 1975; Olson and Norton 1996; Morgenstern 1998; Laver 1999). First, legislatures’ capacity: potential for action (what parliaments can do) based on the analysis of the opportunity structure defined by constitutional rules and internal organization and procedures. Second, legislatures’ efficiency: actual performance (what parliaments do) based on the analysis of parliaments bill’s production. From this literature, a number of typologies of legislatures have emerged, for example “transformative” or “talking” legislatures (Polsby 1975), “reactive” legislatures (Mezey, 1979), “policy-making” or “policy-influencing” legislatures (Baldwin 2004).
However, the picture of weak legislatures and oppositions has been challenged by recent literature signaling that both government success and opposition failure might have been overstated (e.g. Russel et al 2017; Cowley 2016). On the one hand, the euro crisis and the rise of new radical parties ended the consensual politics that characterized the legislative process in most European parliaments (DeGiorgi and Ilonszky 2018). On the other hand, conclusions on executive preponderance have relied disproportionately on the study of visible influence, with a focus on early or late stages of the policy-making process: the success rate of bills or the final vote on legislation (Russell and Cowley, 2016). In other words, the capacity of parliamentary groups to influence policy making along the legislative process is a question largely ignored by existing research.
Many stages of the parliamentary process allow legislators to participate in policy making. The amendatory process is one where research is in its infancy. Defined as the “black hole” of the legislative process (Capano and Vignati 2008:35)  we know very little regarding legislators’ incentives for introducing amendments, and also regarding their capacity for having these amendments passed (see Damgaard and Jensen 2006; Shepard and Carney 2005; Griffith 1994; Russel and Cowley 2016; Russel et al. 2016). Amendments are examined and discussed in parliamentary committees oriented, among other aspects, to provide expert evaluation regarding the pros and cons associated to different policy-making alternatives. Recent research show that legislators respond to variations in both governmental factors and bargaining dynamics. Palau et al (2023) have demonstrated, for instance, that amending activity reacts to attention allocation dynamics – mediatised bills receive more amendments. But still, we need more research to understand better when and why amendments are policymaking tools or if there are other political and contextual variables that explain which amendments are more successful than others.
In addition to considering the legislative activity of parliamentary groups, one of the objectives of this panel is to better understand their interaction with civil society, more specifically with interest groups that interact with parliamentarians throughout the legislative process through formal and informal channels (Lisi and Muñoz, 2019). Conventional wisdom is that core compromises with interest organizations on legislation are negotiated during the pre-parliamentary phase. Nonetheless, parliaments and parliamentary groups are not isolated from the interaction with extra parliamentary actors, such as interest groups. Ideally, parliamentary groups should not be responsive to interest groups, as they serve the interests of the majority of citizens and not of specific organized interests (Lohmann 1993). Yet, research on interest groups highlights that they work as transmission belts of citizens' concerns (Albareda and Braun, 2018). They provide policy makers useful policy information and simultaneously aggregate and represent diverse constituency interests (Berkhout et al., 2017a; Kohler-Koch and Quittkat, 2013).
However, scarce research has been done, on this topic. We know that interest groups are invited to parliamentary hearings to highlight governmental failures during minority governments and to legitimize highly conflictive issues during majority governments (Chaqués and Muñoz, 2016). This means parliamentary groups and interest groups follow a partisan and contingent logic though constrained by formal institutional rules. Also we know, that hey provide policy makers useful policy information and simultaneously aggregate and represent diverse constituency interests (Berkhout et al., 2017a; Kohler-Koch and Quittkat, 2013).
There is some evidence that interest groups policy advising and thus transfer information -both in the pre-parliamentary stage and during the legislative procedure- is mainly driven by few interest groups that concentrate most of the interaction with government and parliamentary committees. This is specially the case of NGOs, while hundreds of them are part of governmental advisory bodies and hearings in parliament, only few are invited more than once (Muñoz and Orué, 2021). However, there are still a number of unanswered questions: what types of groups interact most with parliamentary groups? What does this interaction depend on - media issues (media attention paid to laws discussed in parliament), the power that interest groups have in particular sectors, the type of government? To what extent are the testimonies of interest groups during hearings taken into account when laws are amended? In sum, the interest on the functioning of parliamentary committees has increased but we still have little empirical information regarding their actual role as policymaking institutions. In sum, the interest on the functioning of parliamentary committees has increased but we still have little empirical information regarding their actual role as policymaking institutions. This panel seeks to answer such questions by focusing on the behaviour of parliamentary groups and their legislative activity, as well as their interaction with interest groups.

In an attempt to shed new light on the role of parliaments as policy-making institutions, this panel welcomes papers oriented to explore any of the following aspects. First, the role of parliaments along the legislative process, including analysis oriented to explain legislators’ motivations for proposing new legislation, legislative amendments on executive bills, and/or the likelihood of these amendments to be incorporated into the final text of laws. Second, we are interested on papers analysing under what circumstances legislative committees are capable of creating independent knowledge on policy problems and the role of internal or external resources in the process. Of special interests is the analysis of the participation of interest groups, public officials or authorities in the process. The goal is to explore committee’s motivation for inviting different types of actors but also their actual contribution, namely, what particular information they provide to policy makers, on the basis of what arguments and with what consequences. Methodologically, the panel welcomes all types of qualitative and quantitative research on case studies, comparative research across countries and/or different territorial levels (including the European parliament, national or regional parliaments). Theoretically, we are open to conceptual frameworks oriented to explore causality taking into consideration the macro level (such as the characteristics of bills, the type of government, coalition agreements, committee structure, the impact of the electoral cycle or the politicization of issues), but also the micro level (actors’ gender, preferences and resources, including past parliamentary experience, specialization and/or expertise).

This panel is oriented to increase our understanding regarding the role of parliaments as policy-making institutions, covering a wide spectrum of legislative activities. The general question addressed in this panel, will be under what circumstances parliaments are capable of creating independent knowledge on policy problems and the role of internal or external resources in the process. In an attempt to shed new light on the role of parliaments in the design and analysis of public policies, this panel welcomes papers oriented to explore any of the following aspects. First, papers oriented to explain legislators’ motivations for proposing new legislation, legislative amendments on executive bills and/or the likelihood of these amendments to be incorporated into the final text of laws. The panel welcomes also papers oriented to explore the role of parliamentary committees, regarding the discussion of amendments along the legislative process but also more generally, concerning their functioning and influence. Of special interests is the analysis of the participation of interest groups, public officials or authorities along the legislative process. Methodologically, the panel welcomes all types of qualitative and quantitative research on case studies, comparative research across countries and/or different territorial levels (including the European parliament, national or regional parliaments).

Luz Muñoz
Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Barcelona. She has been researcher also at the University of Washington (USA, in 2009 and later in 2017) and the University of Newcastle (UK, 2013). Her research focuses on interest groups politics, advocacy and legal mobilization. She also is interested on legislative studies and courts. She is member of the research group “Quality of Democracy” (www.Q-dem.com), aimed to analyse the role of institution, the policy process and interest groups in democratic countries. Together with Q-dem members, she has developed the construction of several databases on interest groups access to the governmental and the parliamentary arena, as well as datasets on legislative activities such as bills, voting and amendments. Within this line of research, she has paid specially attention to the study of NGOs as policy actors, going beyond the analysis of their access to parliament and government to analyse their mobilisation in the courts. Her research has been published in the Journal of Public Policy, Representation, West European Politics, Voluntas The Journal of Nonprofit Sector, The Journal of Legislative Studies and Interest Groups and Advocacy, among others.
Anna Palau
Serra Húnter Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona (Department of Political Science). She conducted post-graduate studies at the University of Essex (UK) where she got an MA in Politics (with distinction) and received her PhD from the University of Barcelona. She has been researcher also at the University of Washington (USA) and Sciences Po (Bordeaux). Her research focuses on the analysis of parliamentary behavior and public policy, with a focus on agenda setting dynamics. She is author of two books, Agenda Dynamics in Spain (with Laura Chaqués & Frank Baumgartner) and Cataluña en Europa: Límites y Oportunidades del Proceso de Integración. She has also published a number of articles in national and international journals, among others European Union Politics, Parliamentary Affairs, Legislative Studies, Journalism Studies, Comparative Political Studies, West European Politics, Representation or Journal of Legislative Studies.