Afterword: ‘I will play my part!’, or parliamentary politics in action

Abstract

On the 9th September 2019, the Speaker of the British House of Commons, John Bercow, challenged Boris Johnson's Conservative Government on its prorogation (temporary suspension) of Parliament. The Government's action was not, Bercow contended, a 'normal prorogation' at all: I will play my part! This is not, however, a normal prorogation. It is not typical, it is not standard, it is one of the longest for a decade and it represents not just in the minds of many colleagues, but a large number of people outside, an act of executive fiat.

The insides and outsides of parliamentary politics: Introduction to a special section of Social Studies of Science on parliamentary practices

“…Why is it important to revisit parliamentary practices now, more than a decade after the introduction of the object turn in STS-informed research on politics? The answer, as Barry (2020) points out in his afterword, is closely related to the turbulent period we are witnessing, again on both sides of the Atlantic. Whereas the 1970s and 1980s were about the identification of the ‘dark sides’ of modernity and 1990s and early 2000s were about the promotion of democratization and increased participation, the 2010s have raised several questions about the strength and adequacy of democratic politics itself vis-à-vis such complex problems as climate change, growing inequality and mass migration.…”