In their heyday, Royal Commissions played an important part in the policy-making process. By today, Royal Commissions have declined almost to the point of extinction. Nevertheless, a range of other commissions, committees and inquiries are still established. They have different status and take various forms but, in common with Royal Commissions, seek to broaden the basis of public policy-making beyond government, Parliament and interest groups, through engaging a wider range of participants in a more public arena to generate new ideas, develop consensus or to confer legitimacy upon controversial government policy plans. Commissions are thus important to both policy process and policy outcome. The existing literature on commissions is limited, and much of it is descriptive, centring on analysis of their political origins, membership and recommendations. It explicitly avoids some other key questions, perhaps because they are not readily answered. There is little real academic evaluation of the purpose or value of commissions and what they might uniquely bring to the policy process and to policy outcomes. This article explores these issues, drawing upon research analysing contemporary experience of a range of commissions, committees and inquiries with a view to offering some generic lessons.
Modest levels of female representation at the House of Commons are in sharp contrast to the Nordic‐levels of representation achieved in the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales since devolution in 1999. One apparent advantage of devolution is the opportunity that it provides for lesson‐learning across jurisdictions. This article offers six lessons on women's political representation—three positive and three negative—drawn from the experience of devolution in Scotland and Wales. We draw conclusions from these lessons, including the need to keep parties under scrutiny to ensure they deliver on their rhetorical commitments. We also postulate that gender equality might prove too important to be left to political parties and consider whether there is a need to consider stronger measures such as mandatory quotas.
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