SPARK to host panel at ECPR General Conference

The ECPR General Conference is due to take place in September 2026 in Jagiellonian University, Kraków. As part of their open call for papers and panels with standing groups, SPARK submitted a panel with colleagues to examine how parliaments gather, analyse and use knowledge. The panel was distinctively accepted as a joint panel by both the Standing Group on Parliaments and the Standing Group on Knowledge and Governance.

The panel hopes to make a worthwhile contribution at the conference in three different ways.

Empirically, papers cover a range of parliaments across the global north and south, and examine different structures, actors and processes in parliaments. This includes the way that parliamentarians speak about the natural and social sciences in speeches; the types of organisations and types of expertise that are invoked or used in the plenary and in committees; and, the impact of expertise on parliamentary work.

Methodologically, papers follow quantitative and qualitative research designs, and demonstrate a mix of comparative research and individual case studies. The methodological pluralism of this panel demonstrates the value of different methods and innovations in political science, and raises questions for how the intersection of expertise and democracy can be studied.

And normatively, this panel offers a distinctive opportunity to bring together the latest scholarship to discuss the relationship between epistemic quality and democratic values. It raises questions about the values of different kinds of knowledge and expertise in parliamentary work, how this can be organised, and what impact this might have on the quality of democratic decision-making.

Collectively, the papers in this panel offer significant new research to existing scholarship and both broaden and deepen our understanding of the knowledge practices of parliaments.

You can find out more about our panel, including the abstracts of individual papers, on the ECPR webpage here. We will be sure to send an update on how the conference went.

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