The aim in this Thesis is to present a detailed analysis of the immunity versus impunity debate within the framework of a human rights-based challenge to immunity. There are two essential interests in international law: preserving the immunity of States and those who represent them, such as Heads of State and diplomatic agents; and protecting fundamental human rights which fall within the scope of peremptory norms of general international law. Several cases which are recently before international and national courts demonstrate that the protection of fundamental human rights is a significant challenge to the immunities. This Thesis focuses on the tension between the protection of fundamental human rights on the one hand, and the bestowal of immunity on the State and its representatives on the other. It examines the extent to which the tension affects the sovereign structure of the State, and seeks to ascertain how these immunities can be gradually eroded, if not fully abolished, in order to maintain full protection of fundamental human rights under international law. It argues that immunity should not equate to impunity when violations of fundamental human rights recognised as jus cogens norms are committed by States, Heads of State, or diplomatic agents. To make the case, this Thesis sets out the organic structures of the concepts of sovereignty and fundamental human rights. It then examines the human rights-based challenge to immunity in three instances: State immunity, Head of State immunity, and diplomatic immunity. This Thesis, in so doing, puts the notion of fundamental human rights at the centre of the immunity versus impunity debate; and, the transition from a State-centric system to a human-centric system under the microscope.

The career background of politicians is an issue that could potentially have profound implications for the functioning of democracy, yet it has only received sporadic and lukewarm attention from political scientists. Based on the hypothesis that the experience and skills an MP acquires throughout his or her career is going to affect the MP’s performance in the future, this dissertation seeks to explore if the career background of MPs, both professional and political, influences their parliamentary career trajectory and behaviour when they enter parliament. By utilizing a new dataset compiled from the biographical information of all new MPs elected in the 2010 British general election, this dissertation shows that the amount and nature of MPs’ pre-parliamentary careers has a profound impact on the allocation of seats among MPs as applicants, their prospects of frontbench promotion, their voting behaviour, as well as their participation in parliamentary debates. These results show that the pre-parliamentary careers of MPs do affect the way they conduct their duties as representatives. These results also suggest that the background of MPs shapes the composition of parliament in terms of the occupation and political experience, which has an important influence on how representative democracy works.

This research examines the parliamentary representation of Jewish and Muslim minorities. It is assessed drawing upon the behaviour of MPs from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds and their engagement with issues of concern for the respective minority in high- and low-cost parliamentary activities. The analysis is conducted on the content of 96 votes, 708,429 Parliamentary Questions for written answers (WPQs), and 5,160 Early Day Motions (EDMs). Voting divisions are examined using methods of descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis, whereas relational, computer-aided, dictionary-based content analysis with time series cross-sectional data analysis is applied to examine the content of EDMs and WPQs. The analysis demonstrates that coming from a religious minority background has a limited impact on the behaviour of MPs and is largely inferior to the institutional predictors of behaviour, such as legislative role and the party-related predictors. This suggests that MPs from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds do not necessarily act for their minority groups driven by their heritage alone. Instead, MPs’ engagement with minority issues depends on their duties, responsibilities and party affiliations, even when the party discipline is loosened. The findings of the research have significant policy implications. They show that the presence of minority politicians in a legislature does not necessarily lead to better substantive representation of these minority groups through minority MPs’ engagement with minority issues. That is because minority parliamentarians are bound by the same constraints as the rest of the House, which reduces their ability to deliver expertise on minority issues.

This thesis is a study of the development of investigatory select committees of the House of Commons during the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on the period between 1960 and 1990. Synthesising existing analysis as well as presenting new evidence, it describes the early origins of such committees as an integral part of the work of the House, and then considers the House’s apparent loss of interest in select committees between 1920 and 1960. The thesis next discusses the reasons behind the introduction of new select committees in the mid-1960s, and traces further changes to committees during the 1970s. These developments are set in the political context of the period, and in particular the growth of backbench dissent in both major parties during the 1970s. The thesis then analyses the process by which departmentally-related select committees came to be established in 1979. Finally it assesses the quantitative and qualitative evidence about the activity and impact of the new departmental select committees in their first decade up to 1990, relating them closely to the political environment created by the government of Margaret Thatcher.

The Scots MPs of the eighteenth century have traditionally been portrayed in a negative light. In a century once noted for electoral corruption and the abuses of patronage, they were seen by contemporaries and later writers as among the worst examples of their kind: greedy, self-seeking, unprincipled ‘tools of administration’ whose votes could be bought with the offer of places and pensions. Lewis Namier’s seminal work exposing the cynical approach to politics of MPs generally, sparked a backlash which has produced a more balanced evaluation of English politics. Strangely, although Namier exonerated the Scots MPs from the worst of the charges against them, his less judgmental verdicts are found only sporadically in more recent writing, while the older viewpoint is still repeated by some historians. There is no modern study of the eighteenth-century Scots MPs, a situation which this research proposes to remedy, by examining the group of MPs who represented Scotland at Westminster between 1754 and 1784. It re-assesses the extent to which the original criticisms are merited, but also widens the scope by examining the contribution made by Scotland’s MPs, to British and Scottish political life in the later part of the eighteenth century. A study of the social make-up and the careers of this particular cohort provides the backdrop for the two main themes: the participation of Scots MPs in the legislative process, and their effectiveness as representatives of Scottish interests at Westminster. Existing biographical information has been supplemented by an examination of Parliamentary Papers, debates, and personal correspondence to enable further analysis of attitudes, in particular with regard to politics and political mores. The research explores issues of motivation, asking questions about allegiance, identity, perceptions of government, and how conflicts of interest were resolved, before presenting a conclusion which aims to offer a revised, broader, but more nuanced, assessment of this much-criticised group, based on more recent approaches to interpretation of the period.

Cette thèse explique la participation des parlements nationaux à l’élaboration et au contrôle des politiques européennes de justice et de sécurité intérieure. Le décalage que l’on observe entre les prérogatives formelles des parlements nationaux et la réalité de leur participation à l’élaboration des politiques européennes de justice et de sécurité intérieure nous conduit à adopter une grille de lecture fondée sur le cadre juridique, sur sa concrétisation et sur son interprétation par les acteurs parlementaires. La participation parlementaire est étudiée à l’aide d’une comparaison en deux temps. En premier lieu, les déterminants de l’activité parlementaire sont spécifiés à l’aide d’une comparaison quantitative de l’ensemble des parlements nationaux européens pour la période 2010-2012. La portée de ces déterminants est saisie, en second lieu, par une étude de l’examen parlementaire de trois enjeux de justice et de sécurité intérieure — la Convention d’application de l’accord de Schengen, les négociations pour les Accords Passenger Name Record (PNR) avec les États-Unis et la réforme de la gouvernance de Schengen — dans trois systèmes de gouvernement parlementaire majoritaire différents — la France, l’Italie et la Grande-Bretagne. La comparaison des cas contrastés a confirmé que, malgré les spécificités organiques et fonctionnelles nationales, le contrôle parlementaire des actes européens de justice et de sécurité intérieure revêt, dans les systèmes de gouvernement parlementaire majoritaire, des formes similaires. La participation des parlements nationaux à l’élaboration et au contrôle des politiques européennes de justice et de sécurité intérieure s’explique par un dosage variable de règles formelles relatives au contrôle parlementaire des politiques européens de justice et de sécurité intérieure, d’une part, et par les volontés des parlementaires à en faire usage, d’autre part. / Since the end of the 1980s, the traditional role of national legislatures regarding internal security and the protection of fundamental rights has been questioned by the progressive enforcement of the European Union’s legislative power. This thesis explains how national parliaments contribute to the decision-making process and to the scrutiny of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). The gap between the formal scrutiny prerogatives of national parliaments and the reality of their participation in the AFSJ decision-making process leads us to adopt an approach based on the legal framework, its concretization and its interpretation by the parliamentary actors. The involvement of national parliaments in the AFSJ is examined using a two-step comparison. First, the determinants that contribute to the variation of parliamentary activity in the AFSJ are specified through a quantitative analysis of all 27 European national parliaments for the period 2010-2012. Second, the scope of each determinant is assessed though a study of the parliamentary scrutiny of three AFSJ issues – the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement, the negotiations of the Passenger Name Record Agreement with the United States and the Schengen governance reform- in three different majoritarian parliamentary systems - France, Italy and Great Britain. The most different systems design has confirmed that, despite institutional and functional national specificities, the parliamentary scrutiny of AFSJ takes on similar forms in majoritarian parliamentary systems of government. A mix of formal scrutiny prerogatives and MPs incentives explain the involvement of national parliaments in the AFSJ.