Parliamentary Staff: A comparative perspective

Abstract

The standard description of parliamentary staff is that these are “unsung heroes” (McKee 2021) who “stay in the shadow” (Michon 2008) and who have at best received “only marginal scholarly attention” (Egeberg et al. 2013). This, however, should not be overstated, since the mid-1970s, a small but strong cottage industry has sprung up, focused in particular on the staff of the U.S. Congress (e.g. Salisbury & Shepsle 1981). The research on parliamentary staff outside of the U.S. is much smaller (Hammond 1984; Egeberg et al. 2013), with studies focusing on specific characteristics of individual parliaments. Comparative work in this area is truly very thin. The goal of this panel is to bring together papers that bring in a comparative perspective on parliamentary staff. How parliaments are organized differs between countries: in some countries, most staff is institutional; in others, committee staff plays a major role; yet in other countries, the key staff works for the parliamentary party groups, while in others most staff works for individual MPs. The goal of this panel to map the differences between parliaments comparatively: How does the work of parliamentary staff differ between countries? What country characteristics drive differences in the staff of parliaments?

Title	Details
The professionalisation of Parliamentary Assistants in Sub-State Parliaments: The cases of the Scottish Parliament and Parlament de Catalunya	View Paper Details
Solo-Effort, Group-Effort or Team-Effort: The inner workings of parliamentary offices on political communications on behalf of parliamentarians	View Paper Details
A matter of trust? Delegation and Control in the relations between Parliamentarians and Personal Assistants: A comparative case study from Scottish and Finnish Parliamentary Offices	View Paper Details
Parliamentary Staff Size Around the World	View Paper Details