Kari Palonen

Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal

SUMMARY This article proposes that historians and political theorists should exploit parliamentary sources to move from the writing of national histories to the comparative study of the conceptual history of European political cultures. Complementing the German lexicographical approach to conceptual history, the authors argue that parliamentary debates in several European countries provide more reliable sources for the past use of the language of politics. They emphasize the possibilities for the study of political history and the rhetoric of parliamentary institutions offered by the use of parliamentary debates side by side with the study of archival sources and published literature. Rhetorical studies and historical analyses of the use of key concepts emphasize speaking as a major form of political action and the value of parliamentary debates independently of the results of the final votes. Parliamentary debates in themselves, as a part of the decision-making process and with their increasing links to extra-parliamentary publicity, promoted change in political language and culture. The debates allow us to identify precisely the actual speaking situations in which the key political concepts were used. They also show how the emerging codification of parliamentary procedure was registered in the contested parliamentary vocabulary and how parliamentary debate gradually superseded the ancient examples of deliberative rhetoric. Finally, the authors address the methodological challenges involved in the use of parliamentary sources for the study of a comparative conceptual history of politics. The examples provided focus on the British Parliament and the Swedish Diet, particularly in the eighteenth century.

TWO CONCEPTS OF POLITICS

In contemporary debates we may distinguish a number of individual conceptions of politics, which, however, can be understood as versions of combinations of two and only two concepts of politics. I will call the two the sphere-concept and the activity-concept. Although they on most occasions are closely intertwined, they refer to two distinct concepts, both of which are regularly evoked but seldom clearly distinguished from each other either in the daily or in the academic debate on politics as a concept. The sphere-concept arose from the need to demarcate politics from other fields or sectors, ‘the political system’ currently serving as the main metaphor. The conceptualization of the activity of politics refers to its qualification as a contingent, controversial and temporal phenomenon from different perspectives, which are here discussed as rhetorical topoi for the activity of politics. In this article I want to discuss the strange character of speaking about politics, to elucidate the opposition between the two concepts of politics by illustrating their internal history, range of variation and then discuss the indirect style of the contemporary debates on the concepts of politics.

Quentin Skinner's rhetoric of conceptual change

the rhetorical turn avant la lettre. My thesis revises the conventional interpretations of his work and the history of contemporary interest in rhetoric in political theory. It is Skinner’s recent explicit attention to rhetoric that makes me, at the risk of appearing anachronistic, look for the presence of rhetoric in his earlier writings as well, especially in the methodological ones. The idea behind my interpretation is borrowed from Richard Rorty. He argues for recontextualization as a strategy of reinterpretation: ’The most that

Max Weber, Parliamentarism and the Rhetorical Culture of Politics

In this article the concept of parliamentarism is extended to the concept of ‘government by speaking’ (Macaulay 1857), to a political form of rhetorical culture based on arguing for and against. Weber’s relationship to parliamentarism is reassessed in this perspective. The first part deals with his ‘parliamentary theory of knowledge’, which refers to his view that the competition of perspectives is constitutive of the human sciences. In this sense the Weberian ideal of scientific practices resembles politics in its openness to change and re-valuation of controversy. In the second part Weber’s critique of anti-parliamentarism is analysed as a rejection of political controversy and struggle. In the third part Weber’s theory of knowledge serves as a point of departure for re-reading his late writings on suffrage, parliamentarism and politicians. The opposition between bureaucracy and politics in particular can be rendered more intelligible in terms of Weber’s ‘parliamentary theory of knowledge’.

Political Theorizing as a Dimension of Political Life

Quentin Skinner’s thesis ‘that political life itself sets the main problems for the political theorist’ marks a turning point in the study of the history of political thought. The Protestant princes who revised Luther’s doctrine of disobedience in order to save Lutheranism as a political force are the best example of this ‘Skinnerian revolution’ in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. This is in accordance with his claim that principles play a legitimating and innovating role in politics. A tacit implication of the thesis is that we should not only read theorists as politicians but also read politicians as theorists. The politician possesses a special competence in discerning between various types of situation, has a distinct contestational imagination, is a person who is prepared to acknowledge the inherent paradoxes of the situation and who has the capacity to deal politically with limited time.

Second chamber, ‘congress of ambassadors’ or federal presidency. Parliamentary and non-parliamentary aspects in the European Council's rules of procedure

SUMMARY The development of the European Union (EU) regime, with the frequent changes of institutions and their competencies by treaty revisions, allows for new opportunities for parliamentary studies. This article discusses the role and competencies of the European Council (EC) in the EU regime, using the heuristic and methodological resources of procedural commentaries, parliamentary rhetoric, conceptual history and political regime analysis. This study is a textual analysis, based on the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and especially on the ECs rules of procedure. The Lisbon Treaty and the respective rules of procedure serve as key documents that fix the rules, the framework and the margin of manoeuvre for the EUs institutions. This is particularly relevant in the European Union as a ‘polity in the making’, as continuous changes in institutional competencies are the rule. These changes both leave room for and are shaped by acting politically between and within the institutions. Taking Quentin Skinners thesis that ‘political life itself sets the problems for the political theorist’ as a point of departure, it is suggested that these ongoing challenges in power relationships between the EU institutions also lead to interesting theoretical and conceptual moves. From this perspective the authors discuss possibilities to extend the conceptual apparatus of parliamentary studies to such quasi-parliamentary institutions focusing especially on the EC.

From Oratory to Debate

Recent studies manifest a new interest in the politics of internal parliamentary practices. The book presents a thesis that a shift from oratory to debate characterises the parliamentarisation of deliberative rhetoric. Parliamentary speeches are intelligible only as political interventions pro et contra to debates on motions on the agenda and the agenda-setting itself. Scholars of rhetoric and parliaments have been slow to recognise this shift and its political implications. The book analyses the rhetoric of Westminster-related writings from late 18th century to WWII among scholars and others outsiders in contrast to parliamentary insiders (officials, journalists, members). A special attention is given to John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot as the most prominent British parliamentary theorists and to cases studies on actual parliamentary debates. With its procedures and ways of dealing time the Westminster-style parliament is an exemplary political assembly of debating pro et contra. Bibliographische Daten  From Oratory to Debate

Towards a history of parliamentary concepts

The aim of this article is a conceptual historical analysis of parliamentarism with a focus on intra-parliamentary concepts, their origins, changes and the disputes around them. The formation of a distinct parliamentary vocabulary helps us to distinguish parliaments from other assemblies. Neither conceptual nor parliamentary histories, however, have directed any attention to the concepts by which parliaments operate for conducting and regulating their deliberations, using ordinary language concepts but giving them a specific parliamentary meaning. The procedural tracts for Westminster from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth century provide strategic sources for the politics and history of intra-parliamentary concepts. In this article, four types of parliamentary concepts of action and debate are distinguished, namely those referring to parliamentary moves, to parliamentary order, to parliamentary time and to parliamentary agenda. They refer to different aspects of parliamentary debates; they have different histories in terms of intentional or tacit conceptual changes, and explicit disputes around the concepts. In terms of classical rhetoric, moves refer to elocution, their regulation by order and time to two forms of disposition, and the agenda to the invention. The opposition between ‘parliamentary’ and ‘unparliamentary’ uses of concepts can be understood in the sense of Reinhart Kosellecks distinction between symmetric and asymmetric use of political concepts.

Reinhart Koselleck on Translation, Anachronism and Conceptual Change

For Reinhart Koselleck, the difference between the present and the past time itself requires translation as a condition of understanding the past. He turns the awareness of the role of conceptual history into a skill required of every translator or interpreter. Koselleck was initially concerned with those concepts whose meanings had changed during the Sattelzeit , which is also reflected in the structure of the articles of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe . The critique of anachronism and the consciousness of the limits of this criticism are crucial points about which Quentin Skinners and Kosellecks views. The chapter discusses the Koselleckian category of politicization, confronting it with the conceptual history of politics and on the distinct history of the expression Politisierung within the German history of the concept of politics. Keywords:anachronism; Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe ; history of politics; politicization; Reinhart Koselleck; translation

REHABILITATING THE POLITICIAN ON A NEGLECTED GENRE IN POLITICAL THEORIZING

The relatively rare defences of politicians, responding to commonplace denounciations, form a neglected genre of political theorizing. Max Webers famous ‘Politik als Beruf’ (1919) serves here as a point of departure for the analysis of the examples of Louis Barthou, F.C. Oliver, J.D.B. Miller and Jean-Paul Sartre. The rehabilitation signifies a conceptual change through rhetorical redescription, as suggested by Quentin Skinner.