Parliamentary control

 

Monitoring the government is a core task of parliaments. Members of parliament have various control instruments at their disposal. The means by which they exercise parl. The means by which they exercise parliamentary control depend primarily on which parliamentary group they belong to: While the opposition parliamentary groups have a particular interest in scrutinising the government publicly - for example by means of question rights - the parliamentary groups in government form a functional unit with the government and scrutinise it primarily in closed sessions.

For questions about the control activities of parliaments, please contact Anastasia Pyschny (pyschny@iparl.de) or Prof Dr Franziska Carstensen (carstensen@iparl.de).

Our publications on parliamentary oversight

Why do MPs in some countries address their questions to the Prime Minister rather than the relevant minister? In the Hansard Society's 'Parliament Matters' podcast, Dr Ruxandra Serban (UCL) talks about her joint research with Calixte Bloquet on the French National Assembly's experiments with questions to the Prime Minister, as well as her work on Canada, Australia, Ireland and the UK.

Together with Amal Sethi (University of Leicester) and Michael Riegner (University of Erfurt), Danny Schindler has published a special issue of the journal Verfassung und Recht in Übersee/World Comparative Law (Open Access) on the topic of "Public Law and Opposition". With contributions on China, Morocco, Pakistan and South Africa, among others, the volume sheds light on how legal regulations influence the opposition's opportunities for participation.

Danny Schindler's study discusses possible reasons for the constitutionalisation of parliamentary minority rights and the conceptual and empirical variations in oppositional participation.

Presentation of a research project by Sebastian Ludwicki-Ziegler (University of Stirling) and Andreu Paneque (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) at the IParl Research Colloquium, Berlin.

All the important information on fundamental topics from politics and society on one A4 page. This is the "Spicker" from the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Issue no. 23 on the German Bundestag by Danny Schindler is now available in an updated version. In it, among other things: Why can the Bundestag also be called a parliamentary group?

Conflicts within the Republican Party have damaged the office of Speaker of the US House of Representatives in recent years. Kevin McCarthy was the first Speaker to be voted out of office. Significant differences within the Republican party also made the election of his successor Mike Johnson more difficult. In the latest IParl-Blickpunkt Alexander Kühne traces the developments from 2023 to 2025.

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