Senior Lecturer in Law
Dr Davor Jancic's public engagement work stretches from Consultancy, Legal Advice and Training to involvement in the press, blogs and policy papers.
In his policy engagement activities, Davor draws upon research primarily centred around the role of parliaments in foreign affairs. He explores how parliamentarians engage with issues that transcend state boundaries, encompassing topics such as European integration, regional integration projects outside the EU, and global affairs. The breadth of his research encompasses examining how national parliaments participate in EU decision making, how the European Parliament engages in EU external relations, how different international parliamentary institutions interact with legislative bodies but also with foreign governments, non-governmental organisations and industry representatives. In a nutshell, Davor writes about various dimensions of parliamentary diplomacy.
Davor has primarily collaborated with the UK Parliament and the European Parliament. He has used the UK Parliament’s Select Committee system as a route for engagement. By subscribing to Parliamentary newsletters, he was able to be alerted to relevant inquiries when they were launched and submit written evidence accordingly. His engagement with the Select Committee inquiry process brought his research to Committee Clerks' attention, who later invited him to participate in other activities. For example, he was invited to speak as an expert witness in an academic roundtable in the House of Lords on inter-parliamentary relations between the UK Parliament and the European Parliament post-Brexit.
In 2021, Davor was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee as the Principal Investigator for a groundbreaking study on the promotion of gender equality in parliamentary diplomacy. He was approached by a consultancy seeking experts in parliamentary diplomacy, ultimately leading to the successful bid for the research project. The outcome was an extensive study of over 200 pages, which had its Executive summary translated into 4 other EU languages in addition to English due to high level of interest across the European Parliament. The study was presented in a session of the European Parliament, which was attended by the Vice-President of the European Parliament in charge of gender equality and diversity. Before the study’s publication, its key findings were also discussed with parliamentarians from the Greens/European Free Alliance group, following their request for an advance debate on the policy implications of the study. The study was subsequently cited in a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association research report.
Davor has also been enlisted as an expert for two bodies within the European Parliament - the Committee on International Trade and European Parliamentary Research Service (Comparative Law Unit).
Through his work with UK and EU parliamentary bodies, Davor has been directly involved in discussions as part of policy-making processes and his research has been cited in Parliamentary reports, such as the 2021 House of Commons report on the parliamentary scrutiny of UK-EU relations (paragraphs 65 and 76).
Davor’s work has also served as guidance in international benchmarking processes. The ‘Indicators for Democratic Parliaments’, published in October 2023 by a large consortium led by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, cites one of his journal articles on parliamentary diplomacy (page 211). His work is also referred to in a 2021 report of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, an international organisation established to provide policy recommendations to the 16 founding states of this region.
His academic contributions have been acknowledged in various forms within these reports, ranging from citations in footnotes to direct quotations within the main text to the adoption of his policy recommendations in the report’s conclusions.
The practical, hands-on nature of Davor’s policy engagement with the UK and European Parliaments provided a refreshing departure from purely theoretical pursuits, allowing him to delve into tangible, real-world scenarios.
Additionally, his participation as an expert witness in policy-oriented roundtables and seminars, such as the one held in the House of Lords, has further cemented the profile and reputation of his research. Indeed, Davor’s policy impact goes beyond parliaments. For example, in 2023, an Advocate General of the European Court of Justice cited one of his journal articles in her Opinion, while the European Environment Agency cited his recent volume on the changing role of citizens in EU democracy in their report on sustainable transitions.
Davor received funding from the European Parliament to conduct the gender equality in parliamentary diplomacy project. This funding was crucial in facilitating his involvement in this impactful policy initiative.
In his experience with policy engagement, several challenges have arisen, primarily stemming from practical constraints posed by his academic responsibilities at the university. Balancing these competing priorities is a significant challenge, as teaching commitments frequently limit the time and energy that can be allocated to policy engagement activities. Furthermore, the topics that can be addressed within policy-oriented projects are often restricted by technical specifications imposed by the institutions involved, which may require adhering strictly to the predefined parameters and this may prevent the exploration of other dimensions which would otherwise be academically intriguing. These dimensions would thus remain for purely academic research.
This case study was supported by Audrey Tan (Policy Partnerships Manager, Mile End Institute) and Maja Wawrzynowicz (Policy Associate, Mile End Institute). If you’re interested in learning more about how you can build policy engagement into your own work, check out the Queen Mary Policy Hub’s Learning Resources and Policy Engagement How-To Guides.