Bridging the gap between research and parliament: An examination of parliamentary mechanisms for engaging with academic research

This report focuses on the global landscape of parliamentary research services with a particular focus on those that seek to bring academic research into parliamentary processes. It is based on research and knowledge exchange activities conducted as part of a Joint Parliamentary Academic Fellowship hosted by the UK’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) between September 2021 and December 2023. The aims of the fellowship were to: • Explore and map the mechanisms parliaments across the world use to access and source research evidence. • Understand how these parliamentary research mechanisms are structured, how they function and their relationship to the academic community. • Facilitate connections between different mechanisms and the wider research community. In this report we offer an overview of the global landscape of parliamentary research services (PRS). As well as providing a map of these services (or at least as many as we were able to identify), we also provide an overview of their functions, common challenges they face in accomplishing their work and how some services have sought to overcome these. We hope that it can act as a source of information and inspiration for parliamentary research services and support their efforts to develop and strengthen their work.