Kari Palonen

Essays from a Quarter-century

Re-thinking Politics

Pasi Ihalainen

Cornelia Ilie

Parliamentary theory, practices, discourses, and institutions constitute a distinctively European contribution to modern politics. Taking a broad historical perspective, this cross-disciplinary, innovative, and rigorous collection locates the essence of parliamentarism in four key aspects—deliberation, representation, responsibility, and sovereignty—and explores the different ways in which they have been contested, reshaped, and implemented in a series of representative national and regional case studies. As one of the first comparative studies in conceptual history, this volume focuses on debates about the nature of parliament and parliamentarism within and across different European countries, representative institutions, and genres of political discourse.

A Comparative History of a European Concept

Parliament and Parliamentarism

Hubertus Buchstein

The concepts and rhetoric of democracy are once again the main focus of this volume of Redescriptions volume. The book's contributions take up: the claim of representative democracy as an elective aristocracy, the past and present of the British parliament, the media's dealing with gender in the US presidential campaign, and the reactivated debate on obligatory voting. Two articles deal with the legal language of politics, namely with the German tradition of international law and with the unproblematic concept of human rights today, and a further article looks at the politics of languages. (Series: Redescriptions. Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory - Vol. 15)

Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory

Redescriptions

The author presents in this volume a synthesis of his long-term studies on the conceptual history of politics. He offers a rhetorical history of the horizons of conceptualizing politics an activity in terms of nine topoi: irregularity, judgment, policy, deliberation, commitment, contestation, possibility, situation and play & game. He both constructs a schema for conceptualization of the spectrum of activities that are called politics and applies it to British, French and German debates on the concept since the nineteenth century.

A Conceptual History of 'politics' as an Activity

The Struggle with Time. 2nd edition

das Umschreiben der politischen Begriffe bei Quentin Skinner und Reinhart Koselleck

Die Entzauberung der Begriffe

Aspects of studying the politics of the past are thematized through feminist historians discussion on war and the role of the worker in communist regimes. One article and two comments deal with contemporary theories of democracy. One of the included articles discusses the chances of democratization in the EU, and one carries out a fictional analysis of an undemocratic regime. Three articles propose rhetorical redescriptions of key political concepts, namely, objectivity, decision, and patriotism.

Claudia Wiesner

Taru Haapala

This book explicates how debates and documents can be understood, interpreted and analysed as political action. It offers the reader both a theoretical introduction and practical guidance. The authors deploy the perspective that debates are to be understood as political activity, and documents can be regarded as frozen debates. The first chapter discusses what is to be understood as politics and political. The second chapter explains the concept of debate as an exchange of arguments in speaking pro and contra. The third chapter presents concrete approaches, research practices and experiences that help analysing debates and documents as politics. The fourth chapter consists of a number of case studies that demonstrate how researchers can proceed in analysing parliamentary debates, documents, laws, and media articles. This book will be of use to all students and scholars interested in analysing texts and documents, as well as in political rhetoric and parliamentary debates. &n bsp;

Kari Palonen

Books

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