The American Historical Association 2024 annual conference at San Francisco was well attended with excellent sessions. However, despite the fact that few International Commission members were able to make the journey to the ‘city by the bay’, the Commission session were very successful.
Particular congratulations are due to Dr. Gillian MacDonald (MSU), Drssa. Cristiana Senigalia (Passau/Trieste), and Dr. Aristides Hatzis (Athens) who all presented well-received papers. Technology went off without a hitch and that enabled several members from Europe to present.

The deadline for American Historical Association in New York City in 2025 will be at the end of May, 2024 — as per usual — and by the end of this month (March), Peter Aschenbrenner will circulate a list of panel topics designed to embrace all possible interests;

The venue for New York City (which is located at the Midtown Hilton and Sheraton) will be the same as in 2015 and 2020.

What follows Peter Aschenbrenner’s report on the proceedings of the Commission at panels conducted at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting at Philadelphia 5-9 2023.

First, allow me to applaud the work of the following scholars who participated – with great enthusiasm and at a very high level of scholarship – at the Philadelphia AHA / ICHRPI meeting. The scholars are:
Rosamaria Alibrandi
Gillian Macdonald
Adrian Weimer
Rocco Giurato
Genevieve Tan
Takii Kazuhiro
Ayako Kusunoki0
Steven J. Ericson
Jennifer M. Miller
David Malitz
Kaitlyn Bailey
Alexandros Kessopoulos
Jyoti Mohan
Ivan Sablin

For further details as to their papers , please search on “International Commission” via this link
https://aha.confex.com/aha/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Program/1069

Scholars participating in our events included a scholar from Russia who works at the University of Heidelberg, a scholar from Greece, who teaches at the University of Crete and a scholar from Germany who is now associated with a research institute in Tokyo. Scholars from Italy and Singapore presented remotely, along with a scholar of Indian heritage who studies American perspectives on the Indian subcontinent in the 19th c.  Two scholars travelled from Kyoto to present their papers along with a scholar from Dartmouth College; scholars at Dartmouth and in Tokyo also offered their comments on these three presentations. Of special interest, scholars focused on the 1850s (Stephen Douglas’s attempts to carve out an autonomous political culture in US territories) and 1870s (British hijacking of contributions of Indian manufacturers to the 1876 exposition). These presentations expanded our understanding of these related developments in the US.  Scholars investigated New England as a locus of troublemaking-colonists seeking charters and also explored the persistence of petitioners (especially women) to the Scottish Privy Council for financial relief (after King Billy’s War). Our panels were chaired by scholars from the University of Messina, the University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University.

I will follow up with more detailed reporting to individual scholars.  In the meantime, the ICHRPI’s global outreach is underlined by our recent H-Net postings on topics in African and Asia political history.  These follow the invitation of AHA staff to its Affiliated Societies last summer.  If the AHA does not accept these proposals (AHA’s deadline is 15 February 2023), the proposals can be wrapped into the ICHRPI program and appear as ICHRPI events in San Francisco, 2024. The deadline for this latter ‘purely-ICHRPI’ deadline CFP is 20 May 2023.

Your comments and suggestions are well-received. Thanks to your support, the US section of the Commission has achieved a significant level of maturity in two conferences. This is no small achievement given the cancellation of the Seattle (2021) AHA meeting and the modest turn-out at the New Orleans (2022) event.

I look forward to soliciting new members to join the International Commission, as well as to developing topics to attract new talent to our proceedings.  Following the 2024 meeting in San Francisco, in 2025 we will return to the New York Hilton. The inspiration of Dott. Mario Di Napoli in suggesting the ICHRPI connection to the AHA has been favored by the Muses of History.  Let’s hope for their continued approval.

CALL FOR A SCIENTIFIC PROJECT:

 

Improving Academic and Scientific influence and implementation in the Scientific Community of ICHRPI.

Candidates, preferably members of ICHRPI but not exclusively, must submit an application
before 31st December to the Secretary General of ICHRPI, (Mario di Napoli dinapoli_m@camera.it), with the following information:

– Curriculum vitae: PhD level, preferably in the humanities or social sciences, and good
knowledge and experience in ranking academic and scientific publications
– Knowledge of the application of the WOS (Web of Science) to prepare the application for
acceptance of the Journal Parliaments Estates and Representation (PER) in ESCI and in JCR of
the WOS.
– Strategy for the dissemination of ICHRPI and Parliaments Estates and Representation (PER)
Journal within research university groups and departments.
– Scientific communication and dissemination strategy to increase and implement the impact of
articles published in PER.
– Strategy to promote scientific communication among ICHRPI members, using the
Commission’s website (www.ichrpi.info) and making an ICHRPI social and academic network.
For example, scientific social networks of interest: ResearchGate, Academia.edu, DivulgaRed,
Loop, Mendeley Research,…..
– Payment: 1250 euros at the beginning of the project: January 2022.
– 1250 euros. Actions carried out and first results. August 31, 2022

Evaluation of the results in September 2022 by the ICHRPI Direction and possibility of renewal
for a second year in October 2022.

The commission appointed by the ICHRPI Business Meeting in Nafplion, October 23 will
resolve the evaluation and select the best candidate.

Mario di Napoli, General Secretary of ICHPRI
Joseba Agirreazkuenaga, President of ICHPRI
Alastair Mann, Director of Publications

The International Commission for the History of Representative & Parliamentary Institutions is very pleased to announce the publication of No. 103 in its Studies series.

The book is Protecting the Fatherland: Lawsuits and Political Debates in Jülich, Hesse-Cassel and Brittany (1642-1655) by Dr Christel Annemieke Romein. The books is published by Springer.

Dr Romein is a postdoctoral researcher on A Game of Thrones: Order and Governance in the Dutch Republic and the Swiss Confederation, 1576-1701 at the Department of History at Huygens ING.

The book is an open access title and so can be freely downloaded here.

Henry J. Cohn (1936-2021)

 

The tragic death of Dr Henry J Cohn following an accident at home just five days before his 85th birthday is a great and sad loss to ICHRPI, where he was a long-standing member, an editor of this journal and a vice-president. His life was one of great achievement, but one which reflected also the fate of European Jews during the last century. Henry Jacob Cohn was born in London on 5 February 1936. His father Ernst Cohn had been a young and already distinguished professor of law at Breslau (now Wroclav in Poland), who had fallen foul of the Nazi authorities and left Germany to come to Britain with his wife. In 1940 Henry and his mother were evacuated to Jamaica while his father stayed behind and served in the British Army. The marriage broke down, and Henry, their only child, returned to England after the war to live with his father, who had quickly recycled himself into the British legal system.

In London Henry attended The King Alfred School moving on to Haberdashers Aske. He was obviously a bright pupil, because, without A-levels, he directly sat the scholarship examinations for entry at University College, Oxford at the age of sixteen. There he read PPE before switching to History. Having obtained his degree he went on directly to do research, securing his DPhil in 1963, thereby neatly avoiding the need to do National service though that was not his intention. As it was still possible in those days, he applied for his first teaching post in 1961 at Glasgow before completing his doctorate. He moved quickly to Leicester where he taught from 1961 until 1966. Finally, he was invited to come to the newly created University of Warwick in 1967 and taught there until retiring as an Emeritus Reader in 2003. He never became a full professor, though he had gained the respect of his colleagues when he became acting head of department in 1969 while still a lecturer, and was again acting head from 1986 to 1989. He was a highly regarded teacher and administrator –a safe pair of hands, as academics say.

His thesis had been on ‘the Government of the Rhine Palatinate in the Fifteenth Century’ and was published as a monograph and translated into German (1963). His subsequent publications stemmed from that initial research. He worked on the German Peasants War of 1525, but it was his growing interest in the Imperial diets that probably led him to join ICHRPI by 1969 and to contribute articles papers to its later conferences and publications. As a teacher and scholar he became a leading authority in the field of Reformation Studies, and counted a future Regius Professor of History at Oxford as one of the DPhil candidates he was asked to examine. His interests were wide, not least in Jewish history. He was active in synagogues and in Jewish welfare associations, and shortly before his death he produced a fascinating life of his father, whom he greatly admired.

He may have joined the Commission early on, but my recollection is that he only began to play an active role in it over the last three decades before his retirement from Warwick. At my request, he agreed to become the fourth editor of PER, in succession to Anthony Upton in 2000. He was excellent at the job, expanding the range or articles on German history. As one had expected, he was a meticulous editor, careful to publish only first-rate material. When he in turn retired from the editorship, he inspired our excellent choice of Alex Cowan to succeed him, taking on the Directorship of Publications when Colin Brooks retired, and stepping in briefly as interim editor after Alex’s tragically early death. During this period he was also involved with me in a putative reform of our constitution, his excellent draft remaining sadly on the drawing board. Finally, his major contribution was the renegotiation of our publishing arrangements. We moved from Ashgate to Taylor & Francis. The major advantage of the change of publishers was that it brought ICHRPI funds to enable it to endow two prizes and travelling grants for younger scholars to attend its conferences. This was no mean achievement and the Commission owes it to Henry Cohn.

The Commission came to be an important part of Henry’s academic and social life, as he said in a graceful tribute in Andorra in 2018 when he announced he was not standing for re-election as a vice-president. Many of us will have fond memories of our meetings with him and Loretta at our various conferences in pleasant locations over the years. I had an excellent working relationship with him as editor and director of publications. He deputised for me in 2005 when I was unable to attend our CISH conference in Sydney, which I had organized. He could be a little rigid at times in his approach, but he had a wry sense of humour. He liked to help fellow scholars. He brought great commitment, bold and fresh ideas to everything he took on and had the ability to carry them out. It was a sad day when he laid down his mantle in Andorra. We shall miss him greatly, and so shall my wife, who knew him before I did, when she had her first job at Leicester in the German Department and Henry kindly but typically provided her with background information on Schiller’s Don Carlos.

The condolences and the sympathy of ICHRPI go out to Loretta, to the daughter of his first marriage and to her children.

 

John Rogister

Honorary President ICHRPI, Institut de France, Paris

john.rogister@btinternet.com

(Un)fit to rule: themes of acceptance and rejection of rulers throughout history

International conference to be held on October 26th-28th, 2022

What makes a person legally fit to rule a country? Physical and mental disabilities, gender, religion and nationality, even such intangible issues as personal charisma and honour, could be and have been disqualifying circumstances in various countries and periods, that either prevented a person from ascending a throne or, upon emerging during one’s rule, led to their overthrow. Yet what was a legally binding disqualification in one legal system could be a mere practical inconvenience in another, and no serious obstacle at all in a third. Numerous examples can be found, and it is their analysis and comparison that is the aim of this conference, organised by the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law. For more information, please consult the full Call for Papers at the conference webpage (http://wp2008.ius.bg.ac.rs/un-fit-to-rule/) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/un.fit.to.rule.2022/).

We believe a comparative and multidisciplinary approach to these questions could yield the best results, and therefore we invite scholars from all fields of sciences and humanities (including, but not limited to, legal history, political science, theology, art history, medical history etc.) to submit their abstracts. We welcome papers dealing with all countries and historical periods, from Antiquity to the Modern Age, regardless of whether they focus on an individual legal system or adopt a comparative approach, whether they are of a broader scope or case-studies, etc.

The conference language is English. Applications containing an abstract of 200 to 500 words and a short CV should be sent to un-fit.to.rule@ius.bg.ac.rs by the 31st of December 2021. Participants will be notified if their applications have been accepted by the end of January at the latest.

Please click HERE for the new CIHS – ICHS newsletter, February 2021

Scottish Privy Council Project website launch

Last week saw the launch of the Scottish Privy Council Project website at https://privycouncil.stir.ac.uk/

A blog was also posted introducing the project’s two PhD students see https://privycouncil.stir.ac.uk/project-blog/
The PI is the commission’s own Dr Alastair Mann (Stirling), that the other senior members of the project team are Co-I Alan MacDonald (Dundee) and Project Manager Allan Kennedy (also Dundee), both of whom have attended conferences in the past and are PER authors.

72th Conference – Poznan (Poland)
22 – 28 August 2021

The most recent communication from CISH – ICHS is as follows:

 

“We are currently preparing the next newsletter of the CISH in which we also want to report on the realization of the next congress in Poznán that was postponed to August 2021. The Board has decided to hold the Congress in its traditional form, because we hope that by then the risk of infection will have been reduced and the vaccines will have brought relief.”

73rd Conference of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (ICHRPI)

Athens, Greece 20-23 October 2021

                                   

                              CALL FOR PAPERS

 

The 73rd conference of the ICHRPI will be held in Athens, Greece, from 20th to 23rd October 2021. It will be co-organized by the Greek Section of the ICHRPI and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

 

Main conference theme: Post-Napoleonic Europe Revolutions and parliamentary institutions: The case of Greece on the occasion of the bicentenary since the War of Independence (1821-2021)

Other conference themes:

  • The role of parliamentary and representative assemblies in the institutions-buildings in the Mediterranean and Balkan areas;
  • Political conflict inside parliaments;
  • The evolution of representative institutions towards parliaments;
  • Relationships between legislative assemblies and the executive power.

 

Submission deadline for abstracts: abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted to 2021athensichrpi@gmail.com by April 30th, 2021. Further information can be obtained from the National Convener of the Greek Section of the ICHRPI Dr Karvunaki gkarvunaki@gmail.com.

The Conference will be held according to all the prevention rules against the propagation of Covid-19 that will be in force at that time.

 

POSTPONED

Presidencies of parliamentary and representative institutions (XV-XXI centuries), which had been due to take place in the Jean Monnet House in Bazochessur- Guyonne (France) on 8, 9 and 10 July 2020, has been postponed until further notice.

Once a new date has been set, an announcement will be made on this page.

As the 23rd Congress of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS-CISH) to be held in Poznan next Summer has been postponed to 2021 (Aug., 22-28) due to the present global emergency, the 72nd conference of our commission is consequently postponed.

We will provide further details as they become available.

Our publisher, Taylor & Francis, has suspended printing of our journal, Parliaments, Estates & Representation until at least May, due to the Covid-19 outbreak around the world. We will keep members updated across our platforms as and when we hear any further news.

They sent the Director of Publications the following message:

The March issue is still being affected by the aftereffects of our Covid-19 management measures, implemented earlier in the year. While as a business we are approaching more settled and ‘normal’ workflows again, distribution of issues sent to print in the spring are still backed up from when we had to pause print production and so we are experiencing delays on these while we get things moving again. Apologies for the inconvenience to members. We’re working hard to get our schedules back on track and I’ll be in touch with regular updates on progress. The reason that issue 2 has arrived is due to the fact that this was sent via a different distribution model for new issues intended to bypass older issues delayed earlier in the year.

The International Commission for the History of Representative & Parliamentary Institutions scholars in the United States announce the following Call for Papers to be presented at the annual conference of the American Historical Association at Seattle, 7–10 January 2021. The International Commission has been an Affiliated Society of the AHA since May, 2019

Deadline for submission of paper proposals (to aschenbrenner.historian@gmail.com) is 10 June 2020.

 

Topic A:

Pacific Rim parliamentary history: 1850-1945

The panel will survey parliamentary institutions from 1850 to 1945 in countries that face the Pacific Ocean: during this interval, what role do technological progress and economic change play in the history of these institutions?

 

Topic B:

Constitution writing and parliamentary organization in the Atlantic World 1775-1815

In the forty year study interval (1775-1815) 523 constitutional instruments were composed or proposed.  What do they have in common? Given the high failure rate of these constitutions, what were the enduring achievements of this outburst of top-down modelling? If enough proposals are received on the subject of constitutions imposed by force of French arms or on the subject of state constitution-making in the US, we will organize separate panels directed to these topics.

 

Topic C:

Elements of European political culture from the 11th century

Medievalists have isolated and studied specific elements in statecraft, such as consultation, negotiation, recording of disputes, choreography in ordered discourse, and the composition of procedural treatises.  What is the state of today’s scholarly art in the study of statecraft as an emerging collection of skills and logics? Presenters are invited to center their attention on an author who has made a major contribution to the elements of statecraft from the 11th century or on an interval in which notable progress was made.

 

The International Commission welcomes submissions from scholars interested in the history of parliamentary institutions. The Commission is an American Historical Association Affiliated Society. Its scholars participated in AHA’s most recent conference (New York City, 3–6 January 2020). The ICHRPI was founded in Lausanne in 1936 and has been continuously active throughout the world since its re-founding in 1950 in Paris. Please see the commission webpage for further information regarding the history of the organization and its purposes, as well as updates on the evolution of this panel. Please note: H-Net does not permit the commission to update its postings on the H-Net webpages.

Contact Dr. Peter J. Aschenbrenner, National Convenor (US) regarding this announcement: aschenbrenner.historian@gmail.com

 

The Commission is also interested in hearing from scholars wishing to serve as panel chairs and commentators.

The scholarly journal of the Commission is the Parliaments, Estates and Representation and welcomes submissions from academic or independent scholars on all aspects of parliamentary and political history throughout the world. Please refer to www.ichrpi.info/journal/ for further information on the Journal.

Presidencies of parliamentary and representative institutions (XV-XXI centuries), will take place in the Jean Monnet House in Bazochessur- Guyonne (France) on 8, 9 and 10 July 2020,
Deadline: 15 March 2020

Legitimation by Procedure: The Role of Parliaments in Public Decision-Making in Past and Present Times
Tirana, Albania – 26 & 27 March 2020

CALL for PAPERS: 20200217_Eng_Information _ International Research Conference_ Parliament

Alastair Mann of Stirling University, Director of Publications for the ICHRPI, has as Principal Investigator been awarded a large Research Project Grant from the Leverhulme Trust, one of the largest funders of academic research in the UK. The three year project, the Scottish Privy Council Project, has the main purpose of producing an online, critical edition of the business of the Privy Council from 1692 to 1708, when it ceased to exist, and will use the widely acclaimed, online resource The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, of which Dr Mann is co-editor, as its template –see http://www.rps.ac.uk. The project is a collaboration between the universities of Stirling and Dundee, with the latter’s engagement coming from Dr Alan MacDonald and Dr Allan Kennedy, both of whom, along with Dr Mann, have published articles in the journal Parliaments, Estates and Representation. The council was in effect the executive, equivalent of the modern-day cabinet, in the government of Scotland in the premodern period, and its records offer up insights into day-to-day government business and its relationship to other national institutions, including the Scottish Parliament, as well as foreign policy links with England, Ireland and Europe. The project will therefore open up a wide range of research possibilities into the economic, social, political and religious history at a key time in Scotland’s history, from the Revolution of 1689, at which the Catholic King James VII and II was replaced by William of Orange, to the parliamentary Union of England and Scotland in 1707. The project starts in April 2020 and will see the recruitment of two postgraduate research assistants and to PhD students.

For the full programme, click HERE

International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions 
American Historical Association Conference 
AHA Affiliated Society Sessions and Reception 
Hilton Hotel Sixth Avenue and 53rd Streets 
New York City 
3 to 6 January 2020 

Sunday, January 5, 2020: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Harlem Room (New York Hilton, Fourth Floor)
The Medieval to the Early Modern: Origins of Contemporary Parliamentary Institutions
Chair: Eva Hoffman Jedruch, independent scholar

- Paul Seaward (History of Parliament Trust): Writing the History of Parliament: The Historiography of Political Institutions

- Joachim W. Stieber (Smith College): Representative Institutions in the Age of the Reformations in Europe: Corporate Liberties of the Nobility and of Communes as Limits on Monarchy and as Precursors of Personal Religious Freedom, 1500-1700

- William Lubenow (Stockton University): The Secular Clerisy and the Formation of the Liberal State in 19th-Century Britain

- Sean Perrone (Saint Anselm College): Representation via the Mail: The Décima Negotiations of 1685-88

- Joseba Agirreazkuenaga (University of the Basque Country): The main questions and debates over 83 years (1936-2019) in the 71 Conferences of the ICHRPI

- Johannes Helmrath (Humboldt University of Berlin): The Voices of Medieval Orators before Diets and Councils

Sunday, January 5, 2020: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Harlem Room (New York Hilton, Fourth Floor)

Debates on Approaches to Parliamentary History in the ICHRPI since Its Foundation, 1936-2019 
Chair: Mario Di Napoli, Camera dei Deputati

- Richard Helmholz (University of Chicago School of Law): The Role of Counsel in Medieval Canon Law

- John Young (University of Strathclyde): Parliamentary Representation in Scotland to the 1832 Reform Act

- Coleman Dennehy (University of Limerick): The Irish Parliament: Colonial Model or Parliamentary Particularism?

- Rocco Giurato (University of Calabria): Modernity, Statehood, and the Development of Tudor Parliaments

Reception
Sunday, January 5, 2020: 6:00 PM-8:00 PM
Green Room (New York Hilton, Fourth Floor)

The commission is delighted to announce the publication of:

The Irish parliament, 1613-89: the evolution of a colonial assembly (Manchester, 2019) by Dr Coleman A. Dennehy

This is no. XCVIII in our Studies series

The Commission is very pleased to announce that the 2018 Emile Lousse prize has been awarded to Dr Aaron Graham of University College London for his article entitled ‘The principle of representation in Jamaica and the British Atlantic in the age of revolutions, 1786-1807’.
The essay will be published in the next issue of Parliaments, Estates & Representation.

The commission is delighted to announce the publication of:

Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200–c. 1690), edited by Mario Damen, Jelle Haemers and Alastair J. Mann, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2018

This is no. XCV in our Studies series

The commission is delighted to announce the publication of:

Il Tempo E Le Istituzioni.  Scritti in onore di Maria Sophia Curciulo, a cura di GUIDO D’AGOSTINO, MARIO DI NAPOLI, SANDRO GUERRIERI, FRANCESCO SODDU

This is no. C in our Studies series.

The commission is delighted to announce the publication of:

Regards nouveaux sur les institutions représentatives de l’ancien regime, la Cour, la diplomatie, la guerre et la littérature. Essais en hommage à John Rogister, textes réunis et présentés par BERTRAND AUGÉ

This is no. XCIX in our Studies series

Travel to Andorra, July 2019

Click TRAVEL TO ANDORRA

Minutes of the Statutory Business Meeting of the 69th ICHRPI/CIHAE held on Friday 8th September 2017 at Le Sénat, Palais du Luxembourg, Paris, France

The president of the ICHRPI, Joseba Agirreazkuenaga, chaired the Statutory Business Meeting, with 36 in attendance. The president expressed his heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Jean Garrigues, Pierre Allorant, and to Laura Mellet for their hard work and success of the conference. The minutes from the previous meeting of 2016 in Palma de Mallorca were received as published in Parliaments, Estates & Representation, 36:2 (2016), pp. 263-6. Apologies were expressed on behalf of Mario di Napoli, Lothar Höbelt, and Henry Cohn.

            Joseba Agirreazkuenaga, President of the ICHRPI presented his report to the assembled audience, again re-iterating his gratitude to Jean Garrigues of the French section and his colleagues in Orléans. He also took the opportunity to thank all of the office holders of the commission for their work over the year. He specifically brought attention to two projects in June – one led by Maria Betlem Castellà on parliamentary commissions in Barcelona and another led by Francesco Soddu in honour of Anton Paolo Tanda in Sardinia. Both were advertised by the commission and promoted as being held in conjunction with the commission. The president encouraged those working on similar events to take the opportunity to connect with the commission.

            The president gave the meeting an introduction to the new website, highlighting its advantages and its connectedness with the social media platforms. Following this, the president put forward the Direction’s recommendation for a second secretary general to be appointed, with particularly responsibility for communications, media, and promotion. This was approved of and the Coleman Dennehy was nominated for the role. The president mentioned the forthcoming meetings (2018-2020) detailed below. The report was approved by the meeting.

The president read the report of the secretary general. The report highlighted his work with the national convenors, and working with some of the national sections towards consolidation and consistency. The work towards numbers will be greatly helped by the work of Alastair Mann in having online access for all of our members. The report also detailed work with the president on the website, which has been greatly advanced, adding to our ability to disseminate information from the website and in conjunction with the other social media platforms.

The secretary general’s report suggested with regards to the Helen Maud Cam grants for young scholars, that Eva Jedruch (chair of the selection committee) be given flexibility and confidence in continuing to do its work, particularly in the criteria for allocating grants and determining the amount. The report concluded with descriptions of the conferences for the coming three years, details of which are provided below. The secretary general’s report was approved by the meeting.

The president invited the treasurer to present his report. The treasurer presented several tables with all financial information on a large screen. Overall, the financial prognosis for the commission is sound. The membership is relatively stable and this has continued our secure financial situation. He drew attention to unknown membership fees paid and some national convenors who have over-paid. Exchange rates are still somewhat volatile and need careful attention.

           Two issues, somewhat connected, were considered worthy of further examination. The first of these are bank charges, which can amount to in excess of CHF 1,120 in the last nine-month period up to June 2017. The other factor is that of legal personality or status, which the commission does not currently have. This is primarily because we are not based in any one particular country. The president and the treasurer agreed to further explore the issue, looking at possible arrangements that would benefit the commission and make the governance issues easier and more cost-effective. The meeting approved the report of the treasurer.

At the invite of the president, the director of publications gave his report. On the whole, the work of the commission with regards to publications is healthy. The journal has seen growth in sales, particularly in online downloads, overall (excluding members) up 5%. Print is down slightly but this has been offset by strong performance in online. Full text downloads are also performing strongly, boosted by the third issue, and likely to hit 7 – 8,000 before the end of the calendar year 2017. The readership is wide, coming from around the Western World but showing new growth in India. The strongest performing articles are recent ones by Rosamaria Alibrandi (2015) and Cristina Senigaglia (2011). The highest citations come in for articles by I.A.A. Thompson (1982) and M. Hart (1991). Marketing initiatives by Taylor & Francis continue to reap rewards and generally the publisher is optimistic about our future prospects.

The 80th anniversary of the commission was marked by a new jacket, typescript, and design, as well as by going to three issues a year. In addition T&F have produced a free online collection of influential essays from our previous publications, 80 years of parliamentary scholarship and the ICHRPI, along with an introductory essay by the president. Successful negotiations were concluded to allow members online access, and the last few issues relating to this should be solved soon. Social media (with thanks to Bertrand Augé and Coleman Dennehy) continues to shed light onto the commission’s activity with increasing attention towards our tweets and to our facebook posts.

            There have been no publications in the Studies series this year, but vols XCV–C will take in collections by Alastair Mann, et al, the Palma conference proceedings, a Bertrand Augé monograph, a Bertrand Augé festschrift for John Rogister, a Francesco Soddu festschrift for Maria Sofia Corciulo. A book by Cristina Senigaglia is also under consideration. The report was approved by the meeting.

The president invited John Young to present his editor’s report for Parliaments, Estates & Representation. The editor indicated that the journal is in rude health and the jump from two to three issues a year has been successful. The first of these, Congresses versus caudillos: the untold history of democracy in Latin America, 1810-1910, was published in July and three more are in varying degrees of preparation: Parliamentary debates: a style of democratic politics (Kari Palonen & Marion Löffler), first issue of 2018; Political petitioning and public engagement in early modern Scotland, Britain and Northern Europe (Thomas Munck & Karen Bowie); Working commissions of parliamentary and representative institutions, 14th – 21st centuries (Maria Betlem Castellà, Marcella Aglietti, Alessandro Breccia, Esther Martí, John Young).

The editor announced the winner of the Emile Lousse Prize: Umberto Tulli (University of Trento), ‘Which democracy for the European Economic Community?: Fernand Dehousse versus Charles de Gaulle’. It will be published PER in November 2017. The deadline for the prize is 18 May 2018. Dr Young made a point of highlighting that, in keeping with recent years, the prize has a relatively low number of entries. Other trends continuing included the relatively low number of submissions by our members, relatively high submissions from non-members (which he cited as an intellectually positive sign), and that without the initiative of the editor and other individual members, there would not be enough articles for three issues. The editor also highlighted the fact that whilst individual members of the commission are helpful in sending titles to be reviewed, he would like to see more national convenors involved in the process. The president announced that the Direction had appointed Coleman Dennehy as Reviews Editor. The report was approved by the meeting.

The president invited Eva Jedruch, chair of the selection committee gave for the Helen Maud Cam grant, to present her report. Generally the chair was pleased with the workings of the grant application and selection process, and had identified areas for streamlining. Neil McIntyre (Glasgow), Giorgio La Neve (Palermo), Giuseppe Mecca (Macerata), and Daria Safronova (Moscow) were the four beneficiaries. She thanked Gerald Kohl and Sandro Guerrieri for their support in their work on the committee. The report was approved by the meeting.

Maria Sofia Corciulo reported on relations with CISH. They concerned the next meeting in Moscow and the selection of themes for the CISH meeting in Poznan in 2020, which will be attended by Mario di Napoli in place of Maria Sofia Corciulo. The commission has put forward the theme of ‘Les parlements transationaux dans leur evolution historique après la deuxieme guerre mondiale: Limites et perspectives’, which will be formally accepted at the next meeting. John Rogister spoke to reiterate the role of all members in having input into the selection of themes for the commission sessions of the day and a half. The meeting approved of the report.

Two reports were given by those organising future conferences. The next conference is being held in Vienna (10 – 13 September 2018), organized by Gerald Kohl. It is being supported by the Austrian section and also by the Institute for Legal and Constitutional History at the University of Vienna. The themes will be ‘Parliamentarianism and state founding’ – parliament and state foundation in general and also ‘Glory and misery of the parliamentary concept 1918-1938, ‘The quality of (parliamentary) legislation’, and ‘Parliamentary infrastructure: building, assistance offices, technology’. Excursions are being planned for Eisenstadt and, in cooperation with the Hungarian section, to Sopron.

The 71st conference will be held in September 2019 in Andorra at the invitation of the parliament of the Principality of Andorra. 2019 marks the 600th anniversary of the establishment of the Consell de la Terra. Mikel Urquijo made a brief presentation and circulated information about the event and about Andorra generally. The 72nd conference will be held in Poznan, Poland as part of the CISH meeting. There is currently nothing planned for 2021.

All items on the agenda having being covered, the president closed the meeting.

Coleman A. Dennehy

ICHRPI 2nd Secretary General

coleman.dennehy@ucd.ie

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