Pasi Ihalainen

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parliamentary procedure was registered in the contested parliamentary vocabulary and how parliamentary debate gradually superseded the ancient examples of deliberative rhetoric.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.

Agents of the People

Analysing parliamentary references to the people, this book provides a more nuanced interpretation of eighteenth-century re-evaluations of democracy. It shows how interaction between parliamentarians and the public sphere in different political cultures produced more modern conceptions of the legitimacy of political power.

The Springs Of Democracy: National and Transnational Debates on Constitutional Reform in the British, German, Swedish and Finnish Parliaments, 1917-1919

During the First World War, conflicts between the people’s sacrifices and their political participation led to crises of parliamentary legitimacy. This volume compares British, German, Swedish and Finnish debates on revolution, rule by the people, democracy and parliamentarism and their transnational links. The British reform, although more about winning the war than advancing democracy, restored parliamentary legitimacy, unlike in Germany, where Allied demands for democratisation made reform appear treasonous and fostered native German solutions. Sweden only adopted Western political models after major confrontations, but reforms saw it embark on its path to Social Democracy. In Finland, competing Russian revolutionary discourses and German- and Swedish-inspired appeals to legality brought about the deterioration of parliamentary legitimacy and a civil war. Only a republican compromise imposed by the Entente, following a royalist initiative in 1918, led to the construction of a viable polity.

Towards an Immortal Political Body: The State Machine in Eighteenth-Century English Political Discourse

Excerpt Towards an immortal political body: the state machine in eighteenth-century English political discourse save format_quote email    share

The 18th-century traditions of representation in a new age of revolution: History politics in the Swedish and Finnish parliaments, 1917−1919

What happened to shared historical experiences in the discursive processes of constitutional reform in Sweden and Finland? This article examines the use of 18th-century history in early 20th-century politics. Building on a long-term survey of Swedish and Finnish estate and parliamentary debates, it analyses the political implications of differing national historiographies in the two successor states of the 18th-century Swedish realm, focusing on how the ancient past and collective (and often selective) memories of the Age of Absolutism, the Age of Liberty and the Gustavian Age were used by parliamentarians in constitutional debates. The analysis demonstrates how the Finnish polity continued to be profoundly influenced by these 18th-century constitutions even after the Russian Revolution, while Sweden took the post-French Revolution constitution of 1809 as its point of departure. In both countries, interpretations of the long 18th century were ideologically motivated in an age of the parliamentarization of government and the democratization of the representative system. This leads us to a discussion of the history-political significance of the common and differing understandings of representative government in the two interconnected countries.

The British Parliament and Foreign Policy in the 20th Century : Towards Increasing Parliamentarisation?

This article demonstrates the complexity of the foreign policy involvement of the British parliament during the 20th century. Parliamentary government as such provides some procedural means for involvement in foreign policy debate, in Britain as well as in other countries. Researchers have, nevertheless, often argued that parliaments play a limited role in foreign policy. Approaching our topic by combining the analysis of policy documents with more discourse-oriented analysis of parliamentary debates, we argue that noticeable, but not straightforward, parliamentarisation of foreign policy took place in the course of the 20th century. The aftermath of the First World War led to reconsiderations of the degree of parliamentary supervision of foreign policy. The emergence of international organisations, and, recently, European integration, have also complicated parliamentary participation in foreign affairs. The parliamentary oversight of foreign policy is no longer limited to the national level, which has, in the British case, led to calls to reinforce the sovereignty of the national parliament. On the domestic level, parliamentary debates on foreign policy need to be contextualised with extra-parliamentary public discourse. The relation of parliament to civil society at large, especially non-governmental organisations and the media, has created multi-sited debates, further strengthening democratic control of foreign policy.

REFORM AND REVOLUTION IN SCANDINAVIA, 1917–1919: Entangled histories and visions of the future

The articles in this special issue, entitled Reform and Revolution in Scandinavia, 1917–1919: Entangled Histories and Visions of the Future, deal with the political turmoil in Scandinavia in the late 1910s, accelerated by the First World War and the revolutions in Russia in February/March and October/November 1917 and eventually in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Their special focus is on the political debates about reform and revolution and the related visions of the future of political order and social structures in national contexts and across borders. The articles examine how actors with different agendas in different contexts exploited the opportunities opened up by a window of change. None of the Scandinavian countries were directly involved in the theatre of war, but the whole of Scandinavia was associated with the hostilities in many other ways. The revolutionary processes in Russia affected Finland directly but – reflecting the events spreading from Petrograd – the debates about the legitimacy of the established political order intensified in all Scandinavian countries. The articles demonstrate how the debates and political processes took diverse forms in varying national contexts but were often more dependent on international relations, transnationally interconnected and entangled, than has traditionally been recognized in nation-state-centred historiographies.

TRANSNATIONAL CONSTRUCTORS OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY IN SWEDISH AND FINNISH CONSTITUTIONAL CONTROVERSIES, 1917–1919

During the First World War, the legitimacy of established polities was challenged everywhere in Europe. Not only the combatant great powers but also smaller states witnessed a resurgence of constitutional disputes and competing ideological conceptualizations of revolution and reform, the will of the people, democracy, and parliamentarism. While these controversies primarily focused on the future of the national polities concerned, historical experiences and discourses accelerated by the war and the Russian Revolution were transnationally interconnected and contributed to discursive transfers between political cultures. Swedish and Finnish socialists were linked by their internationals, liberals were connected by transnational debates for and against ‘Western’ democracy and parliamentarism, and conservative politicians and academics were involved in ideologically oriented networks. This article reconstructs transnational links and discourses in order to understand the exceptionally confrontational dynamics (which, in Finland, partly led to a civil war) and the outcomes of the Swedish and Finnish constitutional debates in 1917–1919. It examines the nature of the transnational connections of eight Swedish and Finnish conservatives, liberals, revisionist socialists, and far-Left socialists, analysing their argumentation on constitutional questions in published works and parliamentary speeches as illustrative examples of the political groups they represented.

Internationalization and democratization interconnected: the Swedish and Finnish parliaments debating membership in the League of Nations in 1920

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the First World War, constitutions of European states were widely democratized and parliamentarized, and similar turns were expected in international relations as a consequence of the creation of the League of Nations. This comparative analysis of Swedish and Finnish parliamentary debates on the League membership focusing on conceptualizations of the national versus international demonstrates how democratization and internationalization merged discursively. This happened to a greater extent than in the British parliament or the First Assembly of the League. Such entanglements followed from the interconnectedness of constitutional and foreign policy questions during preceding disputes on constitutional reform when Britain and Germany had provided competing models, the determination of the ministries to reconfirm national constitutional compromises by joining an international organization of democratic nations, an exceptional possibility for parliamentarians to debate foreign policy and willingness among the leftist oppositions to extend the democratization and parliamentarization of the constitutions to the field of foreign policy. After a turn from German to British political models and under a Bolshevik threat, British internationalist arguments found a positive reception among the Swedish Liberal–Social Democratic coalition and the Finnish bourgeois coalition as well as half of the redefined Finnish Social Democratic Party. Rightist and far-leftist opponents of the League were left to the margins as the membership was used to redefine the polities as internationally oriented democracies.

Variations In British Parliamentary Conceptions Of The People, 1734–1771

This chapter begins with the era that preceded the troubles in America. It discusses what kind of continuities and transformations took place in language referring to the people before the constitutional challenge from across the Atlantic. The author divides his analysis of eighteenth-century British parliamentary debates into three parts: debates before the American crisis, debates during and after the American Revolution, and debates in the 1790s during and after the French Revolution. The majority of the Commons, by contrast, underlined the shared interests of the monarch and his people, avoiding all challenges to the King and his ministry. The majority of the Commons similarly aimed at appeasing the public by emphasizing the unity of the interests of the Crown and the people.Keywords: British parliamentary debates; eighteenth-century; French Revolution; transformations