Since the government reshuffle in Sept25, the representation of women among cabinet ministers has dropped slightly from 48% to 44% - but remains higher than under any previous prime minister.
Ahead of International Women’s Day, here's some insights from our interviews with women who served in govt
There is probably no easy answer to this, but building more ethical recruitment processes - actually sitting down and thinking what that should look like given the conditions of the job market - is the least departments could do.
This is an important thread. The other side of this is how departments run job searches in this climate. Ask any ECR and you will hear some horrible stories about their experiences going through recruitment processes.
🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about...
🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples?
We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...
3 weeks to decide, 9 months salary to choose to leave - almost certainly forever - the industry you've dedicated most of your adult life to.
The workload facing MPs and their staff is growing, in ways that aren't visible to the public: casework and the inbox.
For @thehousemag.bsky.social, I delved into what the workload looks like, why it's growing, and what this means for how MPs can balance the different aspects of their role
Classic portrayal of men in politics.
What I call the "Daggy Dad" - an “everyman” character that balanced blokiness with an appearance of compassion and traditional family values.
Their families are just tools to increase their political legitimacy.
#AusPol
🚨📄 New paper (conditional accepted at @thejop.bsky.social):
We test whether social desirability bias actually distorts answers in online surveys.
Short version:
It mostly doesn’t.
w. @timallinger.bsky.social @kristianvsf.bsky.social @morganlcj.bsky.social
URL: osf.io/preprints/os...
Gender Quota Laws and Women in Cabinets 36 Pages Posted: 16 Dec 2024 Last revised: 11 Feb 2026 Tiffany Barnes University of Texas at Austin Giulia Venturini University of Strathclyde Ana Weeks University of Bath Date Written: December 06, 2024 Abstract Do legislative gender quotas increase women’s presence in cabinets? Women remain underrepresented in political leadership worldwide. As a remedy, over 80 countries have adopted gender quotas, requiring parties to nominate or elect a minimum share of women. But can quotas have effects beyond the positions they directly target? We argue that quotas increase the presence of women in executive cabinets by expanding the pool of experienced female legislators. Using a global dataset (168 countries) from 1990 to 2021, we find gender quotas increase the share of women ministers by 15 percent relative to the average baseline–including increases in both high- and lowprestige portfolios. Consistent with a supply-side mechanism, effects are largest in parliamentary democracies—where ministers are often selected from parliament—and in countries that experienced the greatest increases in women’s legislative representation post-quota. The findings suggest quotas can generate meaningful spillover effects at the highest levels of government.
“I am delighted to conditionally accept your article for publication in The Journal of Politics.”
🥳
We find that gender quota laws for legislatures also increase the share of women in cabinets.
w @gventurini.bsky.social @tiffanydbarnes.bsky.social
dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...
Extract from The Times newsletter: The prime minister wants to appoint someone immediately to the job to avoid a power vacuum at the heart of government. This means only those shortlisted for the job when Wormald was appointed in December 2024 will be eligible. One of the candidates has left the civil service, while another was also involved in vetting Mandelson. By process of elimination, this puts Dame Antonia Romeo in pole position to become Britain’s first ever female cabinet secretary.
Extract from the Cabinet Manual: The Cabinet Secretary is the head of the Cabinet Secretariat. The Cabinet Secretary is appointed by the Prime Minister on the advice of the retiring Cabinet Secretary and the First Civil Service Commissioner.
This from The Times newsletter is also.. not right.
As Cabinet Manual sets out, PM appts on basis of advice from outgoing Cab Sec and 1st CS Commissioner.
PM is not at all dependent on those previously shortlisted. And can make a direct appt with minimal process (if that person is appropriate)
BJPolS abstract of a scholarly article discussing the influence of legislators' gender on the questioning behaviors in parliamentary activities.
NEW -
Gender Bias in Legislative Oversight: Do Parliamentarians Control Women Ministers More Tightly than Men Ministers? - https://cup.org/45Rm9Z6
- @corinnakroeber.bsky.social, @lenastephan.bsky.social, @sarahdingler.bsky.social & @camilamontero.bsky.social
#OpenAccess
New piece by me for @uk.theconversation.com, explaining yesterday’s Lords vote on under-16s’ social media use.
‘The House of Lords has voted to stop under 16s using social media – what happens now?’
theconversation.com/the-house-of...
Four UQs in the Commons can be a good sign of parliamentary scrutiny but don't tend to be a sign that things in the world are "good"
📈Four UQs is a very rare record number of UQs in a single day, if we look at numbers since 1997 (particularly since the revival of UQs after 2010). The last time this happened was on 25 Oct 2021.
Three UQs in one day occurred most recently on 5 Jan, and this has happened eight times this session.
📝The Commons Procedure Committee is conducting an inquiry on Written Parliamentary Questions. Read evidence from colleagues at the link below ⬇️
@stephenholdenbates.bsky.social @carolinebha.bsky.social & Stephen McKay - WPQs use over time
@ruxandrasrbn.bsky.social - WPQs procedures comparatively
Very interesting piece from the HoL Library on amendments to 'that this bill do now pass' motions at Third Reading. Seems to suggest that no such amendment (whether fatal or non-fatal) had passed since, at the very least, the 70s until this Monday!
lordslibrary.parliament.uk/lords-public...
🧵Sky News has a piece running today about a big increase in written parliamentary questions. @samcoatessky.bsky.social says a
senior government source has suggested MPs may be using AI to submit written questions to ministers.
news.sky.com/story/number...
📝Our new @instituteforgovernment.org.uk report with @jackpannell.bsky.social & @emmanorris.bsky.social out today sets out out the underlying problems with the way public inquiries are established
We argue ministers need better support to make informed decisions about how an inquiry should be set up
So because everything can be a ~ teachable moment ~ if you're nerdy enough, let's learn about Speaker Denison's rule-- a convention established in the nineteenth by (you guessed it) a Speaker of the Commons called John Denison.
It will be interesting to see how this case fits into the comparative explanations for why reforms to reduce assembly size are introduced, e.g. Jacobs and Otjes (2015) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
As Duncan says, this article was a lot of fun.
There's so much to it - the funky method, in-depth case studies, the nuancing of a well-established party organisation theory, spatial regressions, maps...
Political communication research overwhelmingly relies on text. But parliamentary speech is multimodal! In our new @psrm.bsky.social article, Mathias Rask and I show that legislators also signal partisan conflict nonverbally— through changes in vocal pitch during floor speeches. 🧵 1/11 #polisky
The issue here was that *new* policy was being announced, which is something that the PM should do through a statement to the House.
The BBC reports that the Speaker ‘had a word’ with Keir Starmer today about making policy announcements at the start of PMQs.
Starmer has increasingly used his PMQs opening answer to make a statement on policy, as we explored in this @conunitucl.bsky.social blog: tinyurl.com/2t5jun9w
Great article from @amyborrett.ft.com. But it does make me wonder again why there was zero national media coverage when the University of Brighton closed down its big, decades-old campus in Eastbourne. Now of course, it would make a great case study for a journalist of the economic/cultural impact.
We are so proud of our parliamentary studies star Dr Lauren Martin! ⭐️
🙏 Thank you so much from the PSA Parliaments committee to everyone who contributed and attended!
🎉 Introducing you to our soon-to-be Co-Convenor @rickwhitaker.bsky.social…
🫡 That’s us all signing off for 2025!
🤠 See you in the New Year!
#PSAParl25
Our Parliaments Specialist Group's annual conference has come to a close!
Thank you to all that came and everyone who contributed to the discussions during the panels and the events.
