This book explains how parties and their members of parliament structure parliamentary debate, providing novel insights into intra-party politics and representation.

Legislative debates make democracy and representation work. Political actors engage in legislative debates to make their voice heard to voters. Parties use debates to shore up their brand. This book makes the most comprehensive study of legislative debates thus far, looking at the politics of legislative debates in 33 liberal democracies in Europe, North America and Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The book begins with theoretical chapters focused on the key concepts in the study of legislative debates. Michael Laver, Slapin and Proksch, and Taylor examine the politics of legislative debates in parliamentary and presidential democracies. Subsequently, Goplerud makes a critical review of the methodological challenges in the study of legislative debates. Schwalbach and Rauh further discuss the difficulties in the comparative empirical study of debates. Country-chapters offer a wealth of original material organized around structured sections. Each chapter begins with a details discussion of the institutional design, focusing on the electoral system, legislative organization, and party parties, to which a section on the formal and informal rules of legislative debates ensues. Next, each country chapter focuses on analyzing the determinants of floor access, with a particular emphasis on the role of gender, seniority, legislative party positions, among others. In the concluding chapter, the editors explore comparative patterns and point out to multiple research avenues opened by this edited volume. The Oxford Politics of Institutions series is designed to provide in-depth coverage of research on a specific political institution. Each volume includes a mix of theoretical contributions, state-of-the-art research review chapters, comparative empirical chapters, country case study chapters, and chapters aimed at practitioners. Typically, the majority of chapters in each volume comprises of country studies written by country experts. Volumes in the series are aimed at political scientists, students in political science programmes, social scientists more generally, and policy practitioners. Series editors: Shane Martin, Anthony King Chair in Comparative Government and Head of the Department of Government, University of Essex; and Sona N. Golder, Professor of Politics, Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University.

Elements of Parliamentary Debate: A Handbook is the first complete guide available to students on parliamentary debate. The brief handbook covers the basics of parliamentary debate in an easy-to-use and flexible format. Topics covered include debate preparation, resolution analysis, case construction, refutation, argumentation, and delivery and adjudication. As a text or supplement, Elements of Parliamentary Debate offers a handy reference guide to students, instructors and coaches interested in, or now practicing, parliamentary debate.

The Politics of Dissensus inverts the traditional perspective on the study of parliamentary politics by focusing on its less obvious and less well-known aspects. Dissensus instead of consensus becomes the condition for the intelligibility of parliamentary politics. Such politics is indebted to the rhetorical culture of addressing issues from opposite perspectives and debating the alternatives pro et contra: no motion is approved without a thorough examination of, and confrontation among, imaginable alternatives. Establishing the openness of political debating, parliamentarism has become a distinctive historical contribution to the rise of parliamentary democracy. Parliament in Debate refers to the paradigmatic institution for political deliberation, the debates surrounding its legislative activity, as well as the supervision of government and administration. Parliament has become a fascinating object of scrutiny as a political institution adopted and developed by different political traditions. In a nutshell, the book retrieves the study of parliamentary politics to present political theory and action in the parliamentary mode. It is a book on the relevance of parliamentarism to the study of politics and a book on the comparative conceptual and institutional history of parliamentary politics. The Politics of Dissensus: Parliament in Debate is the outcome of an international team of contributors coordinated by two ongoing research projects, relying on a long-lasting international cooperation, namely the Academy of Finland project The Politics of Dissensus and the Spanish National Research Fund projects The Rhetorics of Democracy and The Civic Constellation.

Art, Argument and Advocacy offers a theoretical and practical foundation for effective participation in academic debate competition, as well as public debate and discussion events.

Legislatures are arguably the most important political institution in modern democracies. The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, written by some of the most distinguished legislative scholars in political science, provides a comprehensive and up-to-date description and critical assessment of the state of the art in this key area.

Parliamentary theory, practices, discourses, and institutions constitute a distinctively European contribution to modern politics. Taking a broad historical perspective, this cross-disciplinary, innovative, and rigorous collection locates the essence of parliamentarism in four key aspects—deliberation, representation, responsibility, and sovereignty—and explores the different ways in which they have been contested, reshaped, and implemented in a series of representative national and regional case studies. As one of the first comparative studies in conceptual history, this volume focuses on debates about the nature of parliament and parliamentarism within and across different European countries, representative institutions, and genres of political discourse.

The notion of 'representative democracy' seems unquestionably familiar today, but how did the Victorians understand democracy, parliamentary representation, and diversity?

This text examines the interaction and contention between party leaders and MPs to study the underlying structure of party unity.