Every other year, wearing my hat as Director of the Centre for Legislative Studies at the University of Hull, I organise a Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians. Co-sponsored by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, it draws academics and parliamentarians from a wide range of countries. It enables scholars to present research findings likely to be of practical interest to members of parliaments and for a dialogue between practitioners and scholars.
The first Workshop was held in Berlin in 1994 and all subsequent Workshops at Wroxton College, in Oxfordshire, housed in a magnificent Jacobean mansion, the home of Lord North, Prime Minister under George III. The Ninth Workshop was held at the weekend. It proved an extremely productive occasion, with a good range of high quality papers. I shall shortly provide more details of the papers on my own blog.
In opening the Workshop, I drew attention to the importance of studying legislatures. Though they are rarely, despite their name, law-making bodies, they are significant as law-effecting bodies. For law to be recognised as such, and to be enforced, it has to have the assent of the legislature. The legislative process thus becomes important and can limit what the executive can achieve. Legislatures also tend to fulfil functions that extend beyond the legislative process and as such can act as an important link between people and government. Even in non-democratic systems, the legislature can and sometimes does fulfil functions beyond that of simply summarily approving whatever the regime lays before it.
I also emphasised the importance of comparative analysis. There is a substantial literature on particular legislatures, not least the US Congress, but relatively little on legislatures as a particular species of institution. Comparative analysis is important if we are move beyond description in respect of any particular legislature. We only properly understand our own legislature by reference to others. I am amazed at times by how people generalise or make assumptions about Parliament, not least the House of Lords, without having any knowledge of what happens elsewhere. Some people appear to think that the UK is exceptional in having an appointed second chamber. We need to look elsewhere not only for the purpose of analysis but also for lesson-drawing. If we are to contemplate change, it is highly inefficient to embark on it without examining whether it has been attempted elsewhere. It is inefficient to devote time to inventing the wheel if someone else has done so already. It is also valuable to look elsewhere in case change has been attempted and had unintended consequences.
“It is inefficient to devote time to inventing the wheel if someone else has done so already.”
Yet the French,Spanish,Italians and so on invariably claim that they did some invention first; a feature of patriotism perhaps.
They all have their own inventors.
It is surely not a failing on the part of Lawyers (of whom there are far too many) not to know of the similarities and differences of other legislatures. The custom of making such comparisons has been going on ever since the time of the Muslim Schools of Law and translation in Cordoba and Toledo in the 9th/10thC ad during the Golden Age of Islam.
We look forward to hearing more, from such different sides of the Matter of Democratic-Governance advancement.
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(JSDM1617T27July10)
“The Ninth workshop held last weekend proved to be an extremely productive occasion with a good range of high-quality papers.”
It is to be very strongly recommended that
for improving and advancing British Governance not only up-to-the-minute Facts, Knowledge, Skills such as the Six Thinking Modes, and the friendly Method III Win-Win-Win participatorily cooperative problem-solving, need to be in-play and masterfully leading, but that until such is the established and growingly-succeeding case, all comparisons are odious, and all attempts to ‘piggy-back’ upon other nations’ achievements are in a moral sense ‘copy-cat-cowardly’ and in a National sense utterly insulting to The British People and to the British Expertise and Life-Experience contained within British Peoples.
Because certain major desired-improvements to (British)democratic-governance are testable on affordable small scales progressively at neighbourhood, suburban, City, County, and Regional levels, Britain needs to be proactively searching for better methodologies, ways and means and putting such desirable advances through our internal British capabilities; neither Parliaments and Universities nor The People should be waiting for Other nations to drop-the-answer fruitfully into your work-shop-ing Lords’ and Scholars’ laps.
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Once again in the interest of Truth and Clarity parliamentarians’ and Lord Norton’s own failures need to be spotlighted:
1a All Peoples need to be enabled to perform fact-gathering, constructive-discussion, friendly Method III Needs, Hows and Affordable-Costs Win-Win-Win participatorily cooperative problem-solving;
1b and People need all of those enablements before they can constructively wield ‘further democratic empowerment’ (such as the pusillanimous and puerile Conservative government’s ‘Big Society’ pretends is possible and to be gone-all-out-for);
1c and every Level of the British People most certainly needs that practical mind and communicational functioning enablement before they ever need top-down pedagogic one-way ‘education’ (inculcation) about “Life and Work in the House of Lords”.
1d for instance from Lord Norton’s inward-oriented weekly Quiz; and from the dominant generally ‘pushy’ top-down mind-set of most if not completely all of the Lords of the Blog.
2. Without a reliable People-Upwards Life-experience and Constructive-suggestion Flow, you have no Democracy in the first place;
3. When our parliamentarians continue in the Fixed-Mindset tradition of substituting, for that essential real-life people-upwards component, heavily expensive hypothetical components drawn from ‘scholarly papers’ and work-shops; and when fourthly
4a. Our parliamentarians use foggy aimless terms such as “change” without specifying whether for the Peoples’ betterment, for the further fattening of elites-few at their ‘scholarly top’, or whether it will mean ‘for the Worse’ ? then when they
4b Tell us that their ‘Workshop’ ‘enables’ scholars (who by definition are already highly-enabled) rather than using the more today-truthful term ‘facilitates’ them
4c to “present research findings likely to be of practical interest to members of parliaments and for a dialogue between practitioners and scholars”, when the whole Purpose of democracy and indeed of governance is to present to The People, or to every distinctly different level of the British Peoples, what is of practical-interest to those people; and
4d to present findings for a dialogue between Peoples (as the Real-Life practitioners) and scholars- and-parliamentarians (as the miniscule-few and probably essential, but never ever monopolising, governance-body).
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When our parliamentarians do any of those things, and then when
5 one of them, Lord Norton herein, uses the phrase “Comparative analysis is important if ‘we’ –
“(‘all-in-this-together’ fallacy ? or ‘we governance-expert few up here at the Top’ sub-focus ?)
– are to move beyond ‘description’ in respect of any particular Legislature: what is the central sense ? because it could well be inferred that Lord Norton’s ‘Top’ workshop-ers and or governance-majorities are ready, willing, able and eagerly-waiting, to progress forwards into the new Generative Disciplines and Enablements liberation, rather than lingering amidst weaker, blinder and less-constructive Descriptive Disciplines*;
can parliamentarians not improve theirselves up there at The Top, concurrently with helping The People down here to improve ?
5a And should we people down here not ‘participate’ by constructively pointing out ‘woolly’ or ‘wrong-looking’ words and talk from on-high; ?
or not make our concerns and uncertainties known as directly as possible ?
*(ISBN 978-0-9740155-8-3 page 39-44 “Descriptive Versus Generative Scientific Theories” by Dag Forsell).
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Without governance-enablements, of every level of all Peoples, by all levels of the Nation, Britain neither will nor can become a true Democracy;
is this not the vital and inescapable truth all co-operators and contestants alike in Britain need to be tackling, Win-Win-Win ?
and workshop-ing more intensively extensively and frequently than do the occasional infrequent ‘Top-Governance-Experts’ however necessary such Top-Activity may be ?
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(JSDM1545T27July2010).
I’ve just been writing a scholarship application arguing the same point about comparative politics and legislatures. Very reassuring to read it here!
Emmy: Many thanks. I’m very pleased the comments meshed with what you have argued.
Lord Norton (or your assistant-moderator/’Editor’):
‘Full marks’ for
1. Instantly exposing each of my comments (to the public)
2. Removing the first main one the instant my second very short ‘reply’ to Gareth Howell’s was clicked-in
3. Returning the main first one by the following morning (and leaving my reply to GH also intact).
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My main comment was I think quite ‘castigatory’ towards ‘your parliamentary set’;
such that it would not have been highly commended under Toastmasters International evaluation-criteria ((wherein one is expected to first list all (except the best one) of the good-points, then focus upon only one ‘bad’ point the sub-criteria for which is most importantly of all that it should be something that that speaker could well improve before the next meeting (often weekly but rarely more than a month apart), and finally brighten up the whole meeting by enthusiastically dwelling strongly for a minute or so upon that speaker’s best point; and rounding off one’s critique by encouraging all members to ‘do likewise’ or ‘learn quite a bit from that’ and generally to go forth and be of good speech and good cheer ))!
(((Incidentally, do we British have such an Educational Association available right down to individual neighbourhood levels, as some Toastmasters clubs are in some places around the World ?))).
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In a sense, I think ‘Workshop’ can mean ‘a voluntary educational-improvement gathering’ ?
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(JSDM0733W28July10)
JDSM: Your comments are approved as they arrive and as soon as I access the site (there can be delays if I am in meetings); I can safely say that any technical gremlins are beyond my responsibility. All I do is read all incoming comments (which can occupy a fair amount of time – no names, no pack drill) and then approve them.