Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament

This book assesses aspects of the role that ceremony and ritual in legislatures play, especially but not exclusively, in their gendered and racialised dimensions. Within this broad frame, it considers the impact of space, identity, ritual and/or ceremony on the institutional form of parliament, how power is shaped within it, how the behaviour of members is facilitated, constrained and shaped, how power and rituals interact to and how they impinge upon the relationships between representative institutions and citizens. Contributions are theoretical and empirical, comparative or single-country studies of national or sub-national legislatures. They have interdisciplinary, historical, or postcolonial perspectives that contribute to this emerging field in the study of parliaments.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies.