Research Practices and Operations in Studying Debates and Documents

The chapter presents research practices and operations (or methods and techniques) that are useful in studying debates and documents as part, and as arenas and reflections, of political activity, political processes, strategies and actions. It contains first general considerations that are valid and helpful for most interpretative and textual analyses, with additional emphasis set on how to analyse political activity linked to texts: the research interest and research question target the moves, strategies, interests and actors involved in the political processes in question, rather than simply the contents of the text, and this in return crucially determines material selection, research que…

Dis-embalming Max Weber

Deliberative Rhetoric of Parliamentary Debate

The chapter deals with the parliamentary moves of debating. Parliamentarisation can be connected to practice of debate pro et contra. Parliamentary rhetoric is no merely eloquence or oratory in the classical sense, but parliamentary politics has modified the deliberative genre of rhetoric to a debate between multiple agents in line with the parliamentary procedure. Parliamentary politics is understood as the activity of all members participating in the debate and rhetoric then considers the styles of politicking as moves in the debate, in which the act of debating enjoys a priority over the final decisions. The chapter presents how different faces of rhetoric—genres, maxims, topoi, figures …

Kootut retoriikat : esimerkkejä politiikan luennasta

Degrees of Acting Parliamentarily

The chapter deals with the distinct chances to extend parliamentary thinking of politics beyond parliaments in ordinary sense and discuss its limits. The point of comparing the parliamentary paradigm with other types of politics, such as intra-party struggles or multilateral diplomacy, lies in constructing a spectrum from the parliament to other assemblies. To analyse parliamentary degree of politics for example the prefixes as proto-, semi-, quasi- or pseudo-parliamentary assemblies are analysed. A special case lies in the relationships between academic and parliamentary debates based on the recognition of the dissensus, but having for example different relationships to written and oral de…

Rethinking Politicisation

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something – an issue, an institution, a policy – that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion: Politicisation is a concept that is currently much used in the social sciences, and also a concept that is contested in its definitions and understandings. Several paths and subdisciplines contribute to the debate, but they are not necessarily connected to one another. Political theory or political economy discusses politicisation and also what can be termed t…

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 betwe…

Conceptual History as Political Theory

Politik der Debatte

Parliamentary Politics as an Activity

In this book, Kari Palonen undertakes a thought experiment to spell out key principles of the parliamentary ideal type of politics. Max Weber offers him the main intellectual inspiration, Westminster parliament provides the main historical reference and the author’s studies on parliamentary procedure and rhetoric provide the background. Parliamentary acting and thinking offers us the best example of politics as contingent and controversial activity. In parliament, the pro et contra debate on the motions and the dissensus between perspectives of judging as well as playing in time and with time are built into the institution itself. In this sense, parliamentary politics is more than parliamen…

Politiikantutkimus Jyväskylän yliopistossa : teach-in-puheenvuoroja 21.5.2010

Chances for Parliamentary Politics Today

In the final chapter, the contemporary situation of parliamentary politics is discussed. The chances and limits of the parliamentary ideal type are situated to the current horizons of Western European politics. The main point is to emphasise the priority of dissensus and debate over outcomes as the main advantage of parliamentary-style politics over the narrowly teleological forms of human activities. With different thought experiments we could imagine to parliamentarise procedures and practices. These themes are discussed in terms of Perelmanian conceptual pairs of rhetoric, from a perspective that first presents the obstacle to parliamentarisation and discusses chances for a revaluation i…

Rhetoric of academic applications : Perspectives from Quentin Skinner’s Forensic Shakespeare

The tools of classical and Renaissance rhetoric that Quentin Skinner uses in his Forensic Shakespeare (2014) are here applied to a contemporary context. Skinner’s discussion might have a fairly direct value for a genre of writing that most academics today must master, namely the rhetoric of applications. They have been seldom discussed from a rhetorical perspective, although knowledge of rhetoric is highly valuable for applicants, evaluators and those deciding between applications. Skinner’s book contains both advices for applicants and discussions on both the criteria of application and the possibilities of their revisions in case of innovative applications. peerReviewed

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 Weber's 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.

Understanding Debate as Politics

The book’s core idea is to present and explain how different actual and virtual debates can be understood and analysed as political actions. We want to provide tools and ways for grasping the complex phenomenon of politics by concentrating on debate, including debates carried out in, or reflected by, documents. The approach proposed allows for a nuanced and detailed understanding of politics, as it does justice to the aims of political actors, taking into account their actions, interests, moves and strategies, and situating them in relation to the different contexts in which their contributions make a difference. The first chapter presents the theoretical and methodological background by an…

Book Review: The Palgrave international handbook of football and politics

Parliamentary and Electoral Decisions as Political Acts

Aspects of Conceptual History of Parliamentary Politics,

Junalla matkustaminen on todellista vapautta

Käsittelen tässä kirjoituksessa matkustamista koskevia valintoja poliittisina, pelivaraa sisältävinä ja kiistanalaisina tekoina. Niiden poliittisuus ei rajoitu ympäristö- tai elintapakysymyksiin, vaan analysoin niitä tässä ensisijaisesti matkustajan vapauden näkökulmasta, erityisesti Quentin Skinnerin esiin nostaman ”uusroomalaisen” vapauden ja riippuvuuden vastakohtaa korostavan näkemyksen kannalta. nonPeerReviewed

Reading Debates Politically

This chapter focuses on the concept of debate, taking the concept of ‘political literacy’ as point of departure. The concept of political literacy means that it is crucial to be willing and competent to judge actions, situations, practices and institutions in terms of political struggle. What kinds of aims can we identify in various utterances, arguments or topoi, and how may we assess their consequences? Based on this idea of political literacy, our leading thesis in this chapter is that parliamentary debate, as it was formed and is practised in the British parliament at Westminster, forms an approximation to the ideal type of debate. The ideal type allows the classification of the structu…

A Lost Opportunity to Parliamentarize The European Commission : Bagehot, Weber and a Debate in 1960

The article emphasizes the significance of EU studies for political thought and concepts. It deals with the seemingly technical topic of the membership of cabinet ministers in parliament. This practice arose in eighteenth-century Westminster and has been discussed since the mid-nineteenth century, Walter Bagehot's and Max Weber's writings being landmarks. When the European Parliamentary Assembly in 1960 interpreted the Treaty of Rome, it took the view, by a narrow margin, that membership of the Parliament was incompatible with membership of the Commission. The debate on the compatibility of dual membership could have been a way to promote the parliamentarization of the EU. peerReviewed

Transforming a common European concept into Finnish: Conceptual changes in the understanding of ‘<i>Politiikka</i>’

Politics of Parliamentary Government

The chapter takes up the powers of the parliamentary government, its historical formation in Westminster and the parliamentary control of administration by rhetorical means. The parliamentary polity includes the various power struggles both in parliament and of parliament with government and administration of a polity. The vote of no confidence and a wider repertoire of tools for parliamentary control and oversight of both government and the bureaucracy around it will be discussed. This aspect illustrates the relevance of procedure and rhetoric as inherent to the parliamentary type of government. Reducing parliamentarism to the government vs. opposition divide tends to alter the rhetorical …

Redescriptions : 2012/2013, vol. 16 yearbook of political thought, conceptual history and feminist theory

Contents Editorial, Paul-Erik Korvela, 5 Johan Strang, The rhetoric of analytic philosophy. The making of the analytic hegemony in Swedish 20th century philosophy, 11 Esther Abin, Political Realism, Contingency and Philosophy, 39 Annabel Herzog, Representing Political Subjectivity: Cameron’s Avatar and McCarthy’s The Road, 61 Benoît Godin, The Politics of Innovation:The Controversy on Republicanism in Seventeenth Century England, 77 Mika Ojakangas, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Liberty and Slavery of Conscience in the Context of Christian Political Theology, 106 Henk te Velde, Parliamentary Obstruction and the “Crisis” of European Parliamentary Politics around 1900, 125 REVIEW…

Parliament as a Conceptual Nexus

Eduskunnasta puhekunnaksi? : parlamentarismi retorisena politiikkana

Conceptual Explorations around “Politics”

Abstract This article discusses the ways of conceptualizing politics in parliamentary debates. When the politics-vocabulary is ubiquitous in them, which kind of speech act lies in emphasizing the political aspect? Focusing on thematized uses allows us to identify conceptual revisions in the politics-vocabulary in digitalized plenary debates of the German Bundestag from 1949 to 2017. My fourfold scheme for conceptualizing politics (polity, policy, politicization, politicking) provides the analytical apparatus. The units of analysis in this study are compound words around politics written as single words, a German language specialty. Their frequency has remarkably risen in the Bundestag debat…

Rethinking the Westphalian Order During WW I : Max Weber on the Timeliness of the European Polity

The publication of the Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe volumes, including his letters and a recent study of Hinnerk Bruhns, have revised the canonical view on Weber as a German nationalist. With a conceptual and rhetorical analysis of his essays Deutschland unter europäischen Weltmächten (1916) and Zum Thema Kriegsschuld (early 1919), I offer an alternative view on Weber’s relationship to European politics. He defended the ‘Westphalian’ system of balance between great powers, to which he wanted after the end of the War to incorporate Woodrow Wilson’s plans for a new League. Weber was a critic of German wartime policy, maintained his Anglophile sympathies, and saw in tsarist Russia the main threat b…

Four aspects of politics in Max Weber’s Politik als Beruf

The article offers a rereading of Weber’s Politik als Beruf as a conceptualisation of politics contingent and controversial activity in terms of the four aspects of politics: politicisation, polity, politicking and policy. Weber discusses politics as a concept abstracted from its content. All four aspects can be found in his exposition of the concept. Weber mentions first policy as the direction of politics and demarcates his focus on the state-type polities. Then, he presents the formula on politics as striving for power, consisting of chances to politicise its distinct shares, and discusses historical types of professional politicians and their styles of politicking. Weber illustrates th…

Redescriptions : 2004, vol. 8 yearbook of political thought and conceptual history

Parliamentarisation as Politicisation

Understanding politics as a contingent and controversial activity, politicisation refers to those activities that create or make visible the political quality in the phenomena in question. Parliamentarisation is a distinct strategy of politicisation. In this chapter, parliament refers to a certain procedural and institutional ideal type of acting politically. The parliamentary way of politicising acting and thinking forms a Gedankenbild, a mental image. It is an ideal type that one-sidedly accentuates and intensifies the political way of thinking. The parliamentary way of proceeding politically transcends the given polity: ‘parliament’ is not primarily a parliament ‘of’ a unit, such as the …

A Lost Momentum of Parliamentary Democracy?

Kun kaikki on politiikkaa, miten sitä voi tutkia?

Jean-Paul Sartre - un philosophe du politique

Finnish political scientists Kari Palonen and Leena Subra each contribute two articles on aspects of their research on the concept of politics in the thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre. In addition, the volume contains a French translation of an interview of Jean-Paul Sartre conducted by Jörn Donner during the World Peace Congress in Helsinki 1955 previously published only in Finnish. In the Introduction, Kari Palonen and Leena Subra remark on the reception given to Sartre's thinking which, only since the seventies, has received greater attention in Finland. The authors emphasize the thoroughgoing political character of Sartre's whole philosophy of man, and criticize the dominant trends in "Sartr…

Parliamentary Procedure: Politics of Dissensus

The chapter deals with parliamentary procedure as a dissensual conceptual horizon. Parliamentarisation marks a form of politicisation by opening up parliamentary controversies, and the formation of the parliamentary procedure can be read as a history of the struggle on the successive politicisations, which partly is related to the growing powers of the parliament, partly to the formation of a specific procedural profile for the parliament. The procedural rules for parliamentary agenda-setting and debate create chances for the parliamentary style of acting politically. The procedure indicates how to deal with dissensus without eliminating it. It consists of rules, conventions and practices a…

Parliamentary Actors as Politicians

The chapter discusses the horizon of chances of elected parliamentarians as politicians. Parliamentary representation is based on the freedom from dependence with its four classical faces: free speech, free mandate, freedom from arrest as well as free and fair elections. Special attention is given to the dualism between the partisan commitment as the basis of electing members and the freedom from dependence as the basic of parliamentary operations of members. The professionalisation of parliamentarians provides a condition to master the rules of procedure and rhetoric of debate in order to control government and bureaucracy.

Max Weber ja Euroopan Unioni

Emeritusprofessori Kari Palonen avaa Max Webein yhteyttä Euroopan Unioniin. Koska Weber kuoli espanjantautiin kesäkuussa 1920, hänellä ei kuitenkaan voinut olla mitään käsitystä Euroopan unionista, sellaisena kuin me sen tunnemme. Palonen lähestyykin Euroopan Unionia Weberin ajatusten kautta, joissa esimerkiksi ymmärretään toteutuneita mahdollisuuksia vertaamalla niitä toteutumattomiin. Palonen ei myöskään ole ainoa Weber-tutkija, joka on pohtinut Weberin suhdetta Euroopan integraatioon.
 Artikkeli on revisioitu versio Jyväskylän yliopiston politiikan opiskelijain ainejärjestötapaamisessa 5.10. 2019 pidetystä esityksestä.

Aika ja kieli politiikan tutkimuksen kohteena : aspekteja Ilmari Susiluodon tutkimusagendasta

Parliamentary Time as a Medium of Politics

The chapter deals with parliamentary time that underlies all the other aspects as a temporal ‘subtext’ of parliamentary politics. The temporal aspect is built into the parliamentary procedures, debates, regimes and actors. It is not only a play in time but also a play with time. The parliamentary debate requires sufficient time but at the same time recognising that parliamentary time is always scarce, and a fair distribution of it between both items and members is necessary. Parliamentary politics shows therefore an extraordinary sensitivity for time. Parliamentary time is based on multiple rounds of debate as well as on a time order of parliamentary moves of different types. When used in p…

Thinking Parliamentary Politics as an Ideal Type

The chapter discusses in detail Max Weber’s concept of ideal type, as a modus of knowledge that connects the contingent and controversial activities of scholarship and parliamentary politics. Weber regards the constantly changing reality as inexhaustible by any concepts. However, concepts offer competing ideal-typical perspectives on the interpretation of the changing realities. For Weber, the research process is a contingent and open-ended practice in which new perspectives contain chances to provoke conceptual revisions, whereas the absence of new perspectives would lead to stagnation. Understanding realised histories presupposes speculation with ideal types. The procedures and practices …

Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking, and Politicization

There is just one noun corresponding to the adjective political in French, German, Swedish, Finnish and so on, while the English language has three: policy, polity, and politics. Here, I shall take the tripartite division of the English polit-vocabulary as a point of departure for rethinking politics in a "de-centering" mode. The English vocabulary provides us with a glimpse into the linguistic possibilities for the formation of different perspectives from which to conceptualize politics. I have modified the tripartite division by taking into account two linguistic novelties, politicking and politicization.1 My intention is to take each of these nouns as an allusion to four aspects of conce…

Paradigms for Political Action. A Draft for a Repertoire

Whether politics is a separate sphere or an aspect of human action is a subject of academic controversy. I focus here on the political aspect of action, which is not exclusive of other aspects. There are no ‘naturally political’ issues nor is there anything completely devoid of a political aspect. I am now taking a step backwards to discuss the seemingly simple ‘political or not’ question, as compared to the ‘political in which sense’ question, which I have discussed elsewhere. In this article, I stay on the ideal–typical level, as I want to discuss alternative ways of marking the criteria for the political aspect, without discussing the views of other scholars in detail. I call the procedu…

A ‘Discipline of Reading’

Poliitikko, tiede ja arvostelukyky : tieteen arvovapaus politiikan puolustuksena

The public realm & the public self. The political theory of Hannah Arendt

Quentin Skinner's rhetoric of conceptual change

Speaking of politics in parliament : experiences of writing a book on the digitized Bundestag debates, 1949–2017

This article consists of ex post methodological reflections on the procedures and practices that I applied in my monograph Politik als parlamentarischer Begriff: Perspektiven aus den Plenardebatten des Deutschen Bundestags (Leverkusen, 2021). The book analyses through 18 parliamentary terms the conceptualization of politics in German Bundestag plenary debates from 1949 to 2017. The book was an illustration of my long-term aim of combining political theorizing with the empirical analysis of debate. In writing the book, my guiding idea was to apply Ludwig Wittgenstein’s point, that the meaning of a concept lies in its use, to an analysis of how parliamentary debates open a perspective on the …

Imagining Max Weber's Reply to Hannah Arendt: Remarks on the Arendtian Critique of Representative Democracy

The distant present

Introduction, Tuula Vaarakallio & Taru Haapala, 4 Taking Distance as a Condition of the Study of Politics, Kari Palonen, 12 Anti-Parliamentarism of the French Front National Party, Tuula Vaarakallio, 28 The Rhetoric of National Emergency: 9/11 versus Weimar Republic, Anna Kronlund , 48 The Mockery of Adbusters Magazine in the Classical Tradition of Political Rhetoric, Taru Haapala, 71 “Time to be heard”: The Rhetorical Strategies of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, Anna Björk, 90 ‘Dubliners’ in the European Union – A Perspective on the Politics of Asylum-Seeking, Hanna-Mari Kivistö, 106 Notes on Contributors, 129

Politiikkaa on luettava luovuuden kielellä. Ilkka Heiskanen in memoriam

Tässä numerossa Politiikka haluaa erityisesti muistaa professori Ilkka Heiskasta  (1935–2019). Kunniotamme muistoa neljän kollegan yhteisellä muistikirjoituksella. 

Vaalien parlamentarisointi - Uusi tulkinta kahden käsitteen välisistä suhteista

Tämä kirjoitus on ajatuskoe vaalien ja parlamentin välisistä suhteista. Ideani on kääntää tämän suhteen ymmärtämisen siten, että parlamentti, sen asialista ja debatit, tuodaan (takaisin) mukaan puhumiseen vaaleista. Pohdin toisin sanoen mahdollisuuksia ”parlamentarisoida” vaalit kahdessa eri merkityksessä, nimittäin parlamentin itseorganisoinnin laajentamisena sen valitsemisen prosessiin sekä vaalien, siis ehdokkuuden, kampanjan ja itse äänestämisen, kytkemisenä parlamentin esityslistaan. peerReviewed

The Palgrave international handbook of football and politics

The Palgrave Handbook is so far the most extensive effort to write a comparative political science of football. A programmatic introduction is followed by case studies on the history and politics o...

An Application of Conceptual History to Itself: From Method to Theory in Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschifte

Examples of Analysing Debates as Politics

This chapter presents eight concrete but different examples of research into the presence of politics or the political in texts and debates. They illustrate that politics can be examined in the various forms it takes and using a variety of approaches. First, politics is related to different actors, strategies, issues and media, all of which can be researched. Second, the researcher can develop different research questions and interests, and choose different material types. And third, the interpretative tools and strategies used will differ from study to study, and from researcher to researcher. The examples highlight how the interpretative analytical tools can be used with regard to differe…

Rieke Trimçev, Politik als Spiel. Zur Geschichte einer Kontingenzmetapher im politischen Denken des 20. Jahrhunderts. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2018, 398 p. ISBN 978-3-8487-4469-5

The Supranational Dimension in Max Weber’s Vision of Politics

Max Weber analyzed politics from the perspective of Chancen for actors, and he never separated world politics from domestic politics. The “Westphalian balance” between great European powers shaped Weber’s views on international polity. However, he also regarded Western individualism, human rights, and parliamentary democracy as necessary qualities to possess in order to be recognized as a great power. This vision provided the basis for his wartime critique of the expansionist tendencies in German foreign policy and for his demand for the parliamentarization of German politics. After the end of World War I, Weber used Woodrow Wilson’s idea of the League of Nations as the basis for a proposal…

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

SUMMARYThe 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 EC's 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 manoeuvr…

Book Review: Das Jahrhundert der Politik. Eine Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts im Lichte ihrer Politikbegriffe by Friedbert Rüb, Nomos, 2020, 682 pages. ISBN: 978-3-8487-6613-0

Politicisation as a Speech Act: A Repertoire for Analysing Politicisation in Parliamentary Plenary Debates

This chapter analyses the actual speech acts of politicisation among parliamentarians, which also makes it possible to set the current debates among European Union (EU) scholars in a wider context. My aim is to sketch a scheme for distinguishing different aspects of politicisation, referring to concepts of politics (sphere or activity and its specific aspects), to the politicisation of topics or persons, to its time dimensions (past, present, and future), to different activities of politicisation (adversaries, unintended changes, the actors themselves), as well as to opposing evaluations of politicisation. The data set consists of the plenary debates of the UK House of Commons, the (West) G…

Les trois types d’hommes politiques professionnels chez Max Weber: Une approche rhetorique

Le texte qu’on va lire se propose d’analyser la question de la professionnalisation du politique à partir d’une approche rhétorique ; je reviendrai pour ce faire sur trois idéaltypes historiquement avérés : le fonctionnaire de parti, le président et le parlementaire – trois figures attestées dans l’œuvre de Max Weber. Si chacune de ces figures renvoie à l’interprétation wébérienne de la tendance dominante de l’époque, elles ressortissent toutes trois à des genres rhétoriques dissemblables. Ces trois types de politicien renvoient en outre à différents aspects de l’histoire de la démocratisation et de la parlementarisation du politique. peerReviewed

Submitting “Alternative Facts” to Debate: A Weberian Perspective on Post-truth Politics

'Oxford Dictionaries' chose “post-truth” as the “Word of the Year 2016”, while the association of German linguists (Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache) did the same for '“postfaktische Politik'”. “Alternative facts”, launched by Kellyanne Conway concerning the attendance at Donald Trump’s inaugural, was a third variant in this cluster. In this article, I shall discuss Max Weber’s parliamentary perspective on the critique of given facts and of the powers of science in relation to the debates around post-truth politics. A critical assessment of Leo Strauss’s critique of Weber as a nihilist and relativist introduces the problematic. One aim of the article is to illustrate how even trivial sloga…

The Latest Return of Sartre

The Life and Work of Reinhart Koselleck

Rethinking Political Representation from the Perspective of Rhetorical Genres

This article is a thought experiment. It constructs ideal types of political representation in the sense of Max Weber. Inspired by Quentin Skinner and others, the aim is to give a rhetorical turn to contemporary debates on representation. The core idea is to claim an ‘elective affinity’ (Wahlverwandschaft, as Weber says following Goethe) between forms of representation and rhetorical genres of their justification. The four ideal types of political representation are designated as plebiscitary, diplomatic, advocatory, and parliamentary, corresponding to the epideictic, negotiating, forensic, and deliberative genres of rhetoric as the respective ways to plausibly appeal to the audience. I dis…

Parlamentaarinen valta ja vapaus

Äärimmilleen pelkistettynä parlamentaarinen politiikka on ajalla peluun politiikkaa. Jarrutus, jota perussuomalaiset harjoittivat EU:n elvytyspakettikeskustelussa, muuttaa puheet pelkäksi ajan kuluttamisen välineeksi ja latistaa politiikan debattiluonteen. nonPeerReviewed

Political science as a topic in post-war German Bundestag debates

The conceptual history of politics in post-WWII (West-) Germany is connected to the history of academic political science. From the Bundestag plenary debates (beginning in September 1949) both the controversies on the political science itself and the contributors of both contemporary scholars and the ‘classics’ of the understanding of politics can be studied. The digitalisation of parliamentary debates opens up new chances for conceptual research in this regard. The article studies the conceptual commitments in the use of the discipline titles (Politikwissenschaft, Politische Wissenschaft, Politologie, Politikforschung, Politische Theorie, also political science) and actors (Politologe, Pol…

Muutosten aikoja : juhlakirja Tapani Turkalle

Politics, rhetoric and conceptual history : studies on modern languages of political theory

The parliamentary momentum

Democracy, participation, deliberation and representation have been the leading slogans of recent decades in academic political theorising. Remarkable studies have been written in terms of each of ...

A comparison between three ideal types of parliamentary politics : representation, legislation and deliberation

Representative, legislative and deliberative assemblies are commonly called parliaments. The three types of assemblies share many procedures and practices, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union includes all three types among its members. Nonetheless, as ideal types in the Weberian sense, the three kinds of political assemblies do differ in their modes of acting and thinking politically. This article is a thought experiment to sketch the three ideal types by working out a number of key aspects of their distinctive political features. The political action that characterizes representative assemblies is pre-parliamentary elections, legislative assemblies are judged by their post-parliamentary resu…

Der Begriff des Parlamentarismus bei Max Weber

In den Texten Max Webers finde ich immer wieder Aspekte, die in der Weber-Forschung und bei den Spezialisten des Themas kaum thematisiert werden. Dies gilt nicht zuletzt fur das Verhaltnis Webers zum Parlamentarismus, ein Thema, das unter anderem aus der Sicht von Michael Grevens jungst veroffentlichtem Buch zur Systemopposition und des dort behandelten Antiparlamentarismus der Systemoppositionellen (Greven 2011) durchaus relevant ist.

Parliaments and the Rhetorical Languages of Politics

Max Weberin lukutapoja

Max Weber on tämän päivän akateemisessa keskustelussa ajankohtaisempi kuin muutama vuosikymmen sitten. Aikaisempaa historiallisempi ja kriittiseen editioon nojaava tutkimus on muuttanut sovinnaista kuvaa Weberistä. Tässä julkaisussa muutamat suomalaiset politiikan ja lähialojen tutkijat pohtivat omaa suhdettaan Weberin ajatteluun. Lisäksi teoksen toimittajat esittävät katsauksen suomalaisen politiikan tutkimuksen tapoihin kirjoittaa Max Weberistä.

Politicisation of Travelling : Interrail and Freedom

Travelling is today an important aspect of the European political agenda-setting of both individual actors and institutions. The paradigms of car and air travel are contested in terms of climate change; I continue the contestation from the perspective of political liberty. Three paradigms of personal travel – by car, by flight and by train – are confronted with two concepts of liberty: the freedom from interference versus the freedom from dependence. Three ideal types of travel – travelling to, travelling away and travelling around – are judged from the perspective of the two freedoms. Train travel by Interrail is a political innovation that links the freedom of movement to the freedom from…

Mielipidedemokratiasta menettelytapademokratiaan

Parlamentaarinen demokratia on vastakkainen ajattelumalli omalle ehdokkaalle taputtamiselle, josta on sosiaalisen median aikana tullut virtuaalista ”tykkäämistä”. Parlamentaarinen politiikka pitää sisällään vapautta, joka voi parhaimmillaan voimaannuttaa ja vahvistaa riippumattomuutta erilaisista sidonnaisuuksista. nonPeerReviewed

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. Rheto…

The Politification and Politicisation of the EU

Publication date: March 1, 2016 In this article, we suggest a novel conceptual framework for understanding and analysing EU politicisation. Recent studies on EU politicisation argue that the post-Maastricht era led to the politicisation of EU integration via an increasing citizens' dissatisfaction. Contrary to this account, we argue that European integration has been from the beginning linked to politicisation, but in an unusual way. To capture its uniqueness we introduce the concepts of politisation as a precondition of politicisation and of politification as a depoliticised modality of politicisation. Politicisation is then not something new to EU integration but rather it is constitutive…

Rhetoric of Debate : A Parliamentary Innovation

Zeit, Geschichte und Politik = Time, history and politics : zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Reinhart Koselleck

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. Rhet…