[H-verkko] CFP: RE-THINKING PARLIAMENTS: CONCEPTA INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH TRAINING SEMINAR

[agricola at utu.fi]

Agricolan Artikkelipyyntötietokantaan
( http://agricola.utu.fi/nyt/pyynnot/ )
on tullut seuraava ilmoitus:

RE-THINKING PARLIAMENTS: CONCEPTA INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH TRAINING
SEMINAR

RE-THINKING PARLIAMENTS
CONCEPTA INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH TRAINING SEMINAR

University of Jyväskylä, 13-14 June 2011
Venue: Villa Rana, Seminaarinkatu 15
http://www.jyu.fi/tiedotus/wwwkartat/maps/en.html (marked with ’V’)

Organised immediately after the Sixth Annual Jyväskylä Symposium on
Political Thought and Conceptual History, 10-11 June 2011, the topic
of which is European Conceptual History – Principles and Practices

Co-organised by

The Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and
Conceptual Change
Project The Politics of Dissensus: Parliamentarism, Rhetoric and
Conceptual History
Project Parliamentary Means of Conflict Resolution in
Twentieth-Century Britain
POLITU Finnish Doctoral School of Political Studies
University of Jyväskylä, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy
and Department of History and Ethnology

Main speakers
Frank Ankersmit (University of Groningen)
http://www.rug.nl/let/onderzoek/onderzoekcentra/cmg/members/frankersmit
Discussants Suvi Soininen (Jyväskylä), Tapani Turkka
(Tampere-Jyväskylä)
Cornelia Ilie (University of Malmö)
http://www.nav.mah.se/person/id/KSCOIL
Discussants Helge Jordheim (Oslo) and Tuula Vaarakallio (Jyväskylä)
Willibald Steinmetz (University of Bielefeld)
http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/wsteinme/index.html
Discussants Jussi Kurunmäki (Stockholm) and Claudia Wiesner
(Marburg-Jyväskylä)

Course practices:
The course will consist of lectures, comments and participants’
papers. International specialists in the field of parliamentary
studies will give the lectures, other advanced scholars present
comments on lectures and serve as discussants for participants’
papers. Applicants should send their paper proposals (an abstract of
200 words) to the course organisers Pasi Ihalainen, Kari Palonen and
Suvi Soininen (see email addresses below under heading
“organisation”) by 15 April 2011. The accepted participants should
then send their papers (max 20 pages) to all participants by 31 May
2011. The participants will receive online or paper copies of several
background texts related to the course, including an article by Pasi
Ihalainen & Kari Palonen, “Parliamentary sources in the comparative
study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations
of a research proposal”, Parliaments, Estates & Representation 29,
2009, 17-34. The extent of the course is 8 ECTS which includes course
reading, attendance and essay.

Participants (max. 30):
The participants need to arrange funding for their travel and
accommodation, using the resources of research projects, doctoral
schools etc. According to an old Concepta practice, a limited number
of scholarships for travel and accommodation of participants from
countries with scarce research funding will be available. A dinner,
coffee and refreshment will be provided by the organisers.

Organisation:
Concepta organiser: Suvi Soininen (suvi.m.soininen at jyu.fi)
Local organisation: Pasi Ihalainen (pasi.t.ihalainen at jyu.fi ) & Kari
Palonen  (kari.i.palonen at jyu.fi )
Practical organisation: Anitta Kananen (anitta.kananen at yfi.jyu.fi),
facilities, meals and refreshment, accommodation of the speakers and
discussants, university and media advertising
Sami Syrjämäki (sami.syrjamaki at uta.fi), accommodation and travel
advice for the participants and Concepta board members, Concepta
information

Recommended hotels:

Milton:
http://www.hotellimilton.com/etusivu-eng.html
info at hotellimilton.com

Aleksandra:
http://www.sokoshotels.fi/en/hotels/jyvaskyla/alexandra/
Alexandra.Jyvaskyla at sokoshotels.fi

Yöpuu:
http://www.hotelliyopuu.fi/yopuu_en/
myyntipalvelu at hotelliyopuu.fi

Pension Kampus:
http://www.hotelrentukka.fi/en/pensionkampus
pensionkampus at kolumbus.fi

Alba:
http://www.hotellialba.fi/index.php?lang=englanti&
 info at hotellialba.fi

CALL FOR PAPERS

Concepta. International Research School in Conceptual History and
Political Thought (http://www.concepta-net.org/) organizes annual
“Introduction to Conceptual History” courses at the University of
Helsinki and more specialized courses for advanced scholars on
varying topic.  The courses provide a meeting place for established
academics and young scholars from various backgrounds and disciplines
to engage in conceptual explorations. From 2008 it has arranged
research courses in Odense, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo and the next will
take place in Budapest autumn 2010. The present proposal connects also
to the work of the upcoming book series European Conceptual History,
and to the long-term research on political thought, rhetoric and
conceptual history around the Finnish Centre of Excellence in
Political Thought and Conceptual Change (http://www.coepolcon.fi/). A
main topic of the Centre members in the recent years has been the
search and application of new perspectives on parliaments, discussed
from the points of view of conceptual history, rhetoric and political
theory.

In relation to the existing practices the course contains an
extension of the profile to several directions with conceptual and
rhetorical aspects of reading and analysing parliamentary debates,
documents and procedures. The conceptual and rhetorical perspectives
can produce new or complementary approaches and insights on a number
of existing fields of research, such as 1) the parliamentary studies
in history, constitutional law and political science related to the
institutions of parliamentary research in different countries, 2)
linguistic studies on parliamentary rhetoric and discourse in a
comparative perspective, 3) political theories of parliament,
representation and deliberative democracy. The course recruits its
participants among both parliamentary scholars (see the EuParlnet
website http://euparl.net/) and conceptual historians interested in
parliamentary themes and sources.

Why to study parliaments?

The parliaments are not very popular in the public debates of today.
Although they are key institutions of democratic politics, a fierce
polemic against their bavardage and culture of dispute has been
attended the parliaments since the late nineteenth century.
Populists, bureaucrats, business and media people, academics and
activists tend to share the anti-parliamentary sentiment.

Nonetheless, this critique also refers to the indispensability of
parliaments as a deeply rooted part of the West European political
culture. Politically considered, parliaments based on free and fair
elections can never be mere rubber stamps to confirm the governmental
decisions. On the contrary, parliaments provide an exemplary arena of
debating items pro et contra at the different stages of the
deliberations. In no other institution the search for alternatives
and the critique of proposals is so deeply embedded as in
parliamentary politics.

The wide contempt for parliaments has meant that outsiders have lost
insights into the singularity of parliamentary political culture.
Even new members of parliament have to learn its distinctive
practices and the procedural style of politics, indebted to the
rhetorical heritage of the parliament. However, the parliamentary
origins of the practices of conducting other assemblies, meetings and
associations are evident.

New types of parliamentary studies

The parliamentary studies have also been re-activated from different
perspectives. In this course the parliamentary politics is
re-connected to the studies in political thought, rhetoric and
conceptual history. A first aspect specifies the conceptual cluster
of parliamentarism as a key concept of European politics and
political theory. The second aspect connects to the tradition of
parliamentary rhetoric, not just to the speaking practices but also,
and above all, to the procedures and institutional practices of the
parliamentary form of deliberation pro et contra. The third aspect
links concepts to debates by regarding the parliament as an
institution in which concepts and debates are not understandable
without a reference to each other.

These new perspectives of parliamentary studies allow us also to set
new questions of analysis. How can we learn to read and analyse
better what parliaments are doing and judge their activities
politically? How can the strange practices, the specific
parliamentary procedures, mechanisms, rules and conventions be
rendered intelligible for the outsiders? What are the historical
origins and the political point of practices, such as the
parliamentary immunity or the rotation between speakers pro et contra
in a debate? How can we judge what is ‘unparliamentary language’ or
deal with parliamentary obstruction? What resources do individual
parliamentarians have today to mark their political point? Have the
reforms aiming at parliamentary efficiency led to an improper
advantage of the government over the parliament? What possibilities
would there exist for the empowerment of parliaments?

The concept of parliamentarism

Which kind of assembly counts as a parliament and which type of
political regime deserves to be called parliamentary? Parliamentarism
as a political principle refers, indeed, to a cluster of interrelated
concepts that serve as a mark of distinction: representation,
deliberation, responsibility and sovereignty. The historical and
conceptual relations between the dimensions of parliamentarism are
highly variable. Every parliamentary regime has its own nuances, and
sometimes it is difficult to draw a clear line between parliamentary
and other types of regimes.

The dimension of representation refers to the possibility of the
parliament to represent the entire citizenry of a polity, in
‘parliamentary democracies’ through the procedure of free and fair
elections based on universal suffrage. Deliberation refers to the
character of parliament as an assembly organised by the procedure of
debating items from opposite perspectives and based on the free
speech and free mandate of members. The responsibility of the
government to the parliament is a condition of a parliamentary
regime, enabling the parliament to overthrow the government by a vote
of no confidence and to control the administration. The sovereignty of
the parliament refers to the independence and finality of
parliamentary decisions over other powers (monarchy, government,
courts, referenda). The historical interplay and opposition between
these four aspects of parliamentary politics is a major topic of the
conceptual history of parliamentarism

Parliamentary rhetoric

Parliaments produce huge numbers of texts that are officially
documented for some 200 years. The online documentation of the
debates and documents further facilitates this kind of research. To
read the parliamentary debates and documents presupposes a rhetorical
competence that is not restricted to the analysis of the speaking
practices but refers also to the distinct parliamentary procedure as
a further mark of distinction of the parliamentary types of debate.

Since the late eighteenth century the parliament has been recognised
as a paradigm for the deliberative genre of rhetoric, of the debate
pro et contra. The procedure is the first thing that a newly elected
member has to learn when entering parliament. A new member of
parliament has to understand that one cannot make the same kind of
speech in the parliament as in the public platform, and to make a
proposal in the parliament is a different thing from making the same
proposal in the electoral campaign speech. Nonetheless, also the
tacit rules and conventions of electoral campaign are based on a weak
version of the parliamentary procedure. The parliamentarisation of
government also requires an acknowledgement of the superiority of the
debating over the administrative style of decisions.

Parliamentary concepts

The different traditions to study histories of concepts agree that
interesting concepts are always contested and controversial. The
existing histories of concepts have hardly studied the parliamentary
debates as sources of controversial debates par excellence. The
parliamentary debates provide, however, ample possibilities for
historical and comparative studies of both long- and short-term
conceptual changes worth a closer examination (see Ihalainen &
Palonen in Parliaments, Estates & Representation 29, 2009). Studies
of single concepts, exploratory or controlling studies based on other
sources can easily be conducted with parliamentary debates.

In parliamentary politics the links between concepts and debates are
inherent. In many parliamentary debates the concepts themselves are
at stake. Parliamentary, constitutional and electoral reforms concern
with the concepts of parliamentarism, universal suffrage, citizenship
and fair distribution of sets, that is, of debates on concepts
themselves. We can also notice that the parliamentary use of concepts
also differs according to the types of debates, such as debates on the
vote of no confidence, budget debates or question hours.

In the parliament concepts and debates refer to each other. In
debates on procedure or on the status of parliamentarians the
concepts refer to the conditions of debating themselves. In other
cases the concepts may be not on the surface of the debates still
present as implicit presuppositions of the parliamentarians. For
example in the context of debates on the limits of parliamentary
speaking time we can distinguish opposing interpretations of the
parliamentary principle of fair play. The debates on the fair
distribution of parliamentary time may transcend actual majorities
and express the concern for the conditions of parliamentary politics
as such.


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Ilmoituksen lähetti: Pasi Ihalainen <pasi.t.ihalainen at jyu.fi>
Ilmoitus vanhentuu: 14.06.2011
Lisätietoja WWW-osoitteesta:
http://www.concepta-net.org/research_training_seminar_rethinking_parliaments