En l’espace de soixante ans, la Constitution du 4 octobre 1958 a subi de nombreux changements à la fois juridiques et politiques. Une chose a cependant perduré : le parlementarisme rationalisé. Prenant en compte les changements intervenus depuis 1958 et les aspirations des Français à la modernisation et au rééquilibrage des institutions de la Ve République, le Constituant de 2008 a opéré une revalorisation du Parlement et proposé de rendre la fonction parlementaire plus valorisante. Mais à l’aune de dix années d’expérience, force est de constater que les améliorations attendues n’ont pas véritablement eu lieu. Dans le même temps, les exigences démocratiques des Français ont évolué. De ce fait, ce qui était acceptable hier, à défaut d'être accepté, ne l'est plus aujourd'hui. Il en est ainsi des avantages, des pratiques, des comportements individuels ou collectifs de responsables politiques.On peut dès lors s’interroger sur ce que devrait être le député de la Ve République tant au niveau de son statut que de son rôle. Il ressort de cette étude que l’actuel statut du député est appelé à se renforcer, notamment, s’agissant des moyens alloués au député, ainsi que des droits et garanties afin de permettre une plus grande mobilité entre le mandat et l’activité professionnelle de l’élu, et d’améliorer la représentativité du député par l’ouverture de l’Assemblée à un nouveau public. Le cadre institutionnel dans lequel s’exerce le travail parlementaire doit également être assoupli pour rétablir le député dans ses fonctions de collaborateur du Gouvernement pour la confection des lois et de contrôleur de l’action gouvernementale. Enfin, le travail en circonscription ne doit pas être négligé car il permet à l’élu de mieux exercer ses missions législatives et de contrôle. / In the space of sixty years, the Constitution of 4th October 1958 has undergone many legal and political changes. However, one thing has remained: streamlined parliamentarianism. Considering the changes since 1958 and the aspirations of the French people for the modernisation and the rebalancing of the institutions of the Fifth Republic, in 2008 the constituent power worked on upgrading the role of the Parliament and proposed to improve the attractiveness of the parliamentarian function. After ten years of experience, it is clear that the potential improvements have not taken place. At the same time, the democratic requirements of the French have evolved. Hence, what was acceptable yesterday may not be today. This is true for the advantages, traditional practices, individual or collective behaviours of policy makers. Consequently, it may be asked what an MP of the Fifth Republic should be, in both status and function.This study shows that the status of the MP should be strengthened, notably with regard to the resources allocated to the MP, as well as rights and guarantees to allow greater mobility between the mandate and the professional activity of the elected representative, and to improve the representativeness of the MP through the opening up of the Assembly to a new audience. Also, the institutional system within which parliamentary work is performed must be more flexible to return the MP to his/her role as a legislator and overseer of government action. Finally, constituency work must not be neglected because it allows the MP to better carry out his/her legislative and overseeing missions.

This thesis examines a previously unstudied site of interaction: the constituency office. At the constituency office, Members of Parliament (MPs) hold MP surgeries , during which they help constituents to solve their personal difficulties. This thesis provides the first analysis of interactions at the constituency office. It is the only place where ordinary citizens can meet their MP; as such, it also provides the first analysis of face-to-face, unmediated interactions between politicians and their constituents. For this study, 12.5 hours of interactional data were recorded at the office of an MP in the United Kingdom, comprising over 80 encounters between office staff, the MP, and their constituents. The MP was of the majority ( government ) party at the time of recording. The data were analyzed using conversation analysis (CA), in order to investigate how the social activities of the constituency office were accomplished through interaction. The first analytic chapter reveals the overall structure of constituency office encounters, as well as examining what constituents say when they call or visit the office, and how they express that they are in need of assistance. This chapter finds that constituents avoid making direct requests of their MP, and instead use narrative descriptions. These descriptions manage interactional challenges including the unknown nature of the institution (Stokoe, 2013b), contingency and entitlement (Drew & Curl, 2008), reasonableness and legitimacy (Edwards & Stokoe, 2007; Heritage & Robinson, 2006), and recruitment (Kendrick & Drew, 2016). The second analytic chapter examines the action of offering, and finds it to be the central mechanism for transacting service. The staff use different offer designs to index different nuances in the offering action, such as asking permission or confirming an activity. Both the first and second analytic chapters show that systematic deployment of offers help control the direction of the encounters and tacitly instruct constituents as to what services are available. Furthermore, both of these chapters show the flexibility participants employed in turn design and action ascription, which extends previous descriptions of how requests and offers are constructed (Couper-Kuhlen, 2014; Curl, 2006) and supports recent calls for a more nuanced approach to action description from conversation analysts (Kendrick & Drew, 2014; Sidnell & Enfield, 2014). The third analytic chapter investigates the ostensibly political context of the constituency office, and how the MP and constituents raise political topics in conversation. The chapter finds that the term political is challenging to define in live interactions, and relies on the concept of politicizing (Hay, 2007) statements that upgrade (or downgrade) a topic into greater (or lesser) public and governmental concern. Both the MP and constituents were found to initiate political topics, but in different ways. The MP initiated political topics in explicit references to government, in order to provide evidence that the government was aligned with constituents interests. The constituents initiated political topics in vague and indirect references to recent policy changes, and avoided implicating the MP in any criticisms. The findings suggest that constituents privilege interactional norms (such as not criticizing a co-present interlocutor) over any potential interest in making political critiques. The chapter also discusses what impact these findings may have on concepts such as power and evasion . The final analytic chapter assesses the concept of rapport , finding that it is difficult for both participants and analysts to determine long-term outcomes from local, interactional occurrences in interaction. Rapport is important for MPs who may be attempting to build a personal vote relationship with constituents, but this chapter also finds that constituents have a stake in building rapport in order to receive the best (or any) service. The chapter finds that while traditional practices for building rapport , such as doing small talk or finding common ground, are problematic to employ and assess from an interactional perspective, other local outcomes such as progressivity (Fogarty, Augoustinos & Kettler, 2013) and affiliation (Clark, Drew & Pinch, 2003) may be more useful indicators of positive interactions. This chapter concludes that we need a more nuanced, and interactionally-based, framework to train practitioners (and clients) in effective communication practices. This thesis challenges the conversation analytic literature by finding that the constituency office setting revolves around a more flexible ascription of requests than many studies have previously accepted, and that we can analyze actions as if on a spectrum, rather than in bounded categories. The thesis also contributes to the political discourse literature by finding that constituents activities at the constituency office are strongly influenced by interactional norms, rather than political attitudes. Finally, this thesis provides a basis from which to study the constituency office, as a site of service interaction.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / South Africa has undergone a process of dramatic change since the first democratic elections of 1994, notably so in the area of gender equity in public life. The struggles and demands of women during the constitutional process have resulted in an unprecedented 31,5 % representation of women in Parliament, the highest in Africa.

Scrutiny of legislative behaviour of members of parliament (MPs) has a long tradition in Western Europe. Nonetheless, there has been a research gap in the Czech Republic. Thus, the dissertation thesis identifies the most burning and exciting questions and delivers the answers as a collection of to some extent separated but still interconnected studies. To be more specific, I employ quantitative methods of analysis. I deal with the data on all the members of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic who held the mandate between 1993 and 2017. Overall, the original and unique dataset consists of 1,518 legislators and their comprehensive parliamentary activity. The results suggest that two main conflicts drive parliamentary politics - the institutional division between ruling parties and opposition, and the ideological left-right socio-economic dimension. Besides this, the thesis shows that both the age and tenure of the MPs noticeably affect their parliamentary activity. While older and more experienced MPs propose more bills, address more speeches and obtain more intra- parliamentary posts than young novices, the latter group focuses on the work outside of the parliament. Next, the gender differences in the parliamentary activity of Czech legislators resemble patterns from...

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / The Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is a type of decentralised government funding that is supposed to deliver goods and services directly to constituents by providing additional funds for local community development, outside line ministries. It is predominantly a developing country policy that is intended to meet the immediate social needs of local communities. In countries where it is operational, CDF is appropriated by Parliament within a country’s national budget. CDF in Zambia was introduced in 1995 for the implementation of community based projects which would in the long term improve the socio-economic wellbeing of the constituents. The stated objective of the CDF in Zambia is to provide Members of Parliament and their constituent communities with the opportunity to make choices and implement (MPs) projects that maximise their welfare in line with their needs and preferences. However, questions have been raised over whether CDF actually represents efforts to spur local development and consequently national development, or whether it is primarily a political project aimed at benefitting MPs by providing them with the resources to help them gain popularity with the electorate. The study aims to assess the effectiveness of CDF as a tool for community development. This has been done through a case study of Katuba Constituency in the Central Province of Zambia, using qualitative research methods. The study seeks to gain insight into of the impact of CDF projects in relation to the goals espoused by the CDF as laid down in Zambia’s Guidelines for the Utilisation and Management of the Constituency Development Fund.

This thesis seeks to explain the phenomenon of party switching (or floor-crossing) in the understudied case of the Canadian House of Commons. It uses Müller and Strøm’s “Policy, Office or Votes?” framework at the individual level of analysis and a mixed methods approach that combines document analysis and econometrics to assess the effects of individual and institutional variables on the decision to switch parties. The results inform a wider discussion regarding individual political behavior as well as the role, influence and evolution of political parties in the Canadian state. The research demonstrates that the electorate is adept at recognizing opportunism and tends to respect MPs who switch parties on principle while punishing those that switch for more self-centered reasons.

This PhD. thesis is dedicated to the legal regulation of instruments presenting guarantees of the independence of the member of parliament during the performance of his/her functions. The aim of this thesis is in particular to present a comprehensive picture of the topic concerning protection of independent performance of the parliamentary mandate, evaluate the Czech legal regulation in force and, last but not the least, to find an answer to the question to what extent is the Czech legal regulation in force complete and effective as well as present possible alternatives de lege ferenda. Member of parliament must be independent with regard to all aspects of the exercise of his/her mandate. Independency of the member of parliament is necessary precondition for his/her ability to exercise the mandate in such a way, which will enable him/her to face external pressures, not only from the state bodies, but also from other subjects or phenomenons. Instruments protecting independent performance of the mandate also support the possibility of members of parliament to fulfil their role freely and as a result to constitute working parliament. Presented PhD. thesis deals with the topic of parliamentary immunity, particular focus is put on the part presenting protection of freedom of voting and freedom of...

Migration is a phenomenon which has strong impact on the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic is currently under transformation from transit country to immigration country. At the present time the situation is even more complicated because of the migrant crises which impact all of us. I suppose that the Members of Parliament will create social constructions or narratives about migrants during the sitting of parliament. I aim to identify social constructions of migrants that are created by the Czech political parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies since the 2013 election. I will divide social construction into two main groups. Ones belong to migrants and the other ones to refugees. I would like to find out if there are more positive or negative social constructions and how are benefits and punishments distributed to these groups. I would like to discover key narratives of particular political negotiation as well. Theoretical background of this thesis is the social construction of target population theory of Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram. In the manner of Lina Newton's article "It is not a question of being anti-immigrant: Categories of deservedness in immigration policy making", I will use a combination of discursive and narrative analysis as the main method. I will analyse statements and...