SPARK hosts panel at ECPR General Conference

In early September, SPARK organised a panel at the ECPR General Conference at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The panel, chaired by SPARK’s PI Marc Geddes, focused on how parliaments gather, analyse, and use knowledge. The Standing Group on Parliaments and the Standing Group on Knowledge and Governance jointly hosted it, bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds.

At our panel, five speakers addressed various aspects of knowledge use in parliaments:

• Daniel Wiesner presented his paper on references to scientific evidence in parliamentary speeches across six European states. In his large-scale analysis, he also estimated the factors influencing the use of scientific evidence. 

• Jesper Dahl Kelstrup and Peter Heyn Nielsen discussed how MPs use knowledge in parliamentary scrutiny in the Danish Folketing and argued that various dynamics affect this use. 

• SPARK’s doctoral researcher Marie Bruyndonckx discussed findings from her analysis of the European Parliament's health policy knowledge base and assessed its representativeness. You can find her presentation here.

• Lise Moawad examined how parliaments in France, Germany, and the UK define social scientific evidence, drawing on a qualitative historical-conceptual analysis of parliamentary debates.

• Nikita Sorgatz also discussed parliamentary debates, focusing on how MPs use knowledge to make claims about the economy. His analysis used a named entity recognition approach and compared debates from Australia, Germany, Poland, South Africa, and the UK. 

Each presenter received constructive feedback from their discussants and other attendees, and the panel fostered a valuable exchange of ideas. 

Together, the papers filled several gaps in the existing literature and offered a better understanding of knowledge use in parliaments. The panel made several contributions. First, its empirical diversity was notable: presentations focused on various parliaments, both European and non-European, and on different aspects of parliamentary work (debates, committees, parliamentary studies). Second, the papers were methodologically diverse, based on both quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as comparative and individual case studies. This highlights how knowledge use in parliaments can be studied in multiple ways, opening new avenues for future research. Third, the panel made normative contributions by interrogating how knowledge and democracy are intertwined. The papers raised questions about the perceived importance of different knowledge types in parliaments, how knowledge is managed, and how it influences democratic decision-making. 

SPARK also enjoyed the rest of the conference and attended several panels from the Standing Groups on Parliaments, Knowledge and Governance, and Knowledge, Science, and Expertise. The panel on the politicisation of knowledge, chaired by Stefanie Beyens and Janne Ingelbeen, was particularly relevant (https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PanelDetails/17394). The conference also offered a great opportunity to meet new people, reconnect with existing contacts, and learn from one another. We are grateful to the conference hosts for their excellent organisation.

Image: Kraków, Poland, Jagiellonian University. Image by Dariusz Staniszewski from Pixabay