Parliaments can be regarded as ‘communities of practice’ with often highly regulated expectations and codes of conduct (Harris, 2001). Deviations from these standards, in the form of incivility, might include relatively banal provocations like impolite words between opposing party members, as well as more offensive speech that can potentially violate more demanding norms of civility which prohibit harassment, bullying and hate speech. Factors contributing to greater civility or incivility can be structural or systemic (Kettler et al., 2021). For example, party competition where parliamentary proceedings are more adversarial—even of a ‘gladiatorial’ nature—might foster incivility (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2016). Indeed, the high stakes and intense, all-encompassing competition that characterise two-party systems driven by a winner-takes-all logic are likely to increase inter-partisan incivility, since partisans from different parties will often view and treat one another as enemies rather than competitors, a process that can sometimes even result in ‘partisan warfare’ (Kalmoe, 2020). Conversely, in more pluralist party systems where coalition governments are the norm, the frequent need for partisans to interact, compromise and join forces with their counterparts from other parties might incentivise civil behaviour (Bonotti and Nwokora 2024).
This panel invites empirical and normative papers which examine the operation of parliaments, with a specific focus on the ways in which incivility may be apparent in legislatures. We welcome both single case and comparative studies. Empirical papers might focus, for example, on the causes, manifestations and/or consequences of incivility in parliaments, including legislation or public policy outcomes. Normative papers might examine instead the connection between incivility in parliaments and key political values such as democracy, justice, equality and liberty. The panel also invites papers which examine the design and implementation of parliamentary codes of conduct and/or other similar institutional programmes aimed at reducing incivility and increasing civility in parliaments.
