Editorial

This special issue of Parliaments, Estates & Representation investigates parliamentary debates with a focus on controversies from historical and political science perspectives.¹ Controversy is a major dimension of parliaments – both as an arena and a ‘method’ of dealing with political conflicts in democracies. Different authors, from Carl Schmitt to Jürgen Habermas,² have lamented that modern parliaments are ineffective at consensus-building. Such an argument overlooks the very nature of parliamentary politics. In parliament, the debate is the major method of doing politics, involving more than just a preparatory phase to reach a decision. Although a debate might end up with a foreseeable decision, the process has ramifications beyond a terminal vote. Moreover, the parliamentary way of treating conflicts does not reduce controversies to unchangeable party constellations; sometimes, parliamentary debate opens up the opportunity of altering conflicting constellations and topics.

Analysing parliaments from the perspective of debates differs from considering them as a part of the ‘political system’, a perspective that has dominated post-Second World War research on parliaments in political science, history, constitutional law and related fields. The focus on debates relates back to older studies of parliamentary rhetoric, procedure, political thought and political culture, as found in the works of Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Erskine May, Walter Bagehot, Harold Laski and Max Weber.³ Their studies focus on what parliaments are doing, on the parliamentary quality of politics, on procedural rules, rhetorical moves and practices of conducting debates. In this sense, they investigate the distinct parliamentary way of acting politically.

The parliamentary form of politics transcends the systems of government, party constellations and the methods of election (although these aspects do frame parliamentary debates). However, the dominant view presented by modern media regularly misses many of the characteristics of the parliamentary style of doing politics. This becomes obvious, for instance, when parliamentary newcomers are surprised at what they have to learn in order to work effectively within parliamentary politics. The research perspective on debates the authors are offering in this special issue comes closer to the real-life experience of parliamentarians – the actors in parliamentary democracy.

The debate perspective also points out that parliaments are not mere reflections or projections of the popular will or public opinion.⁴ Citizens do not have spontaneous political opinions on all possible matters; rather, their views are formed or changed in relation to the controversies that arise alongside the parliamentary agenda, or in electoral campaigns between the parties or within the governmental bureaucracy. This insight contradicts the mimetic, or mirror, theory of representation, which leaves no space and time for debate, viewing parliamentary decisions as mere registrations of the citizens’ attitudes towards the issues on the agenda. Indeed, parliamentary politics has always understood, to borrow Frank Ankersmit’s words, that the act of representation involves both the represented and the representatives.⁵ Therefore, parliamentary debates do not simply reflect external conflicts, they hold the potential to embody, or at least symbolize, those conflicts within a system of political controversies.

In a democracy, parliamentary debate is not a single event but consists of several rounds of deliberation in the parliamentary plenum, in committees or subcommittees and so on. Although the dominant view on democratic deliberation focuses on the final result (the decision or vote), we want to emphasize that an equally important characteristic of parliamentary democracy is the debate itself. Debating is the essential political competence of parliamentarians. This insight is in sharp contrast to popular rhetoric that posits final action as superior to deliberation. Actually, deliberation is political action in parliamentary democracy. Therefore, it is important to analyse and interpret parliamentary rhetoric when studying modern democratic politics.

The existence of a parliament does not guarantee the democratic condition of a political system. Even totalitarian, authoritarian and dictatorial regimes seldom attempt to rule completely without parliament-like institutions. In such cases, they often serve as mere decorative façades designed to legitimize the regime. The collapse of Soviet Communism illustrates, however, that such pseudo- or quasi-parliaments can rapidly learn to act as proper democratic institutions. In other cases, the democratization process hardly effected any real empowerment or internal reform of the parliament, and instead strengthened the dictatorial regime. In any case, the status and powers of the parliament are part of the political struggle around democratization, even if the parliament is finally limited to a protest voice that remains powerless in the face of an iron-fisted government and administration.

Although there are different institutional designs in various democracies, some core tasks of parliaments remain. One of them is to oversee political administration. These democratic powers of parliament are often limited by the non-elected authorities and bureaucrats who implement the polity – the ones who make daily decisions and direct subordinate actions without a debate in a deliberative assembly. Every modern state, regardless of the type of political regime, has a governmental and administrative apparatus that rules the everyday life of its citizens. The bureaucratic form of decision-making relies on specialized knowledge of experts and office-holders.⁶ Therefore, modern state bureaucracy tends to use its factual and official knowledge to exercise de facto authority over politicians. The parliamentary principle of debate offers, and even constructs, alternative systems of authority, action and points of view, which can serve to contest bureaucratic authority. Any parliamentary control of bureaucracy relies on a methodological principle practised in the debate. The central focus of debate consists of control, oversight and examination of the politics and the policies of the government, which the parliament subjects to deliberations pro et contra. Consequently, the distinctly parliamentary modes of proceeding and the rhetorical culture of debate can be signs of strong parliaments.

In contemporary political science, parliamentary research primarily focuses on legislative decision-making. When analysing parliamentary politics, neither rational choice theorists nor those following a deliberative democracy approach give to the debate an independent political significance. Both traditions tend to miss what is distinctive for the parliamentary mode of acting politically. A debating parliament is one that is ready and willing to deliberate on both the items on the agenda and the agenda-setting itself. Consequently, agenda-setting is crucial. Agenda-setting in parliament is, on one hand, the ways and means of governmental rule, and on the other hand, an embrace of oppositional politics. The parliamentary members cannot just stick to their electoral promises or follow the programme of their own party. In order to participate in parliamentary debates, they must either deliberate on the issues on the agenda or set their own initiatives on the agenda. The innate parliamentary trait of oppositional agenda-setting is a key democratic feature of parliamentarism. It illustrates that a once-elected government still does not have a monopoly on politics, but is always confronted with oppositional or minority pressures.

In this special issue, we start from the premise that parliamentary debates can be analysed as a controversial activity, as expressions of politics par excellence. From this perspective, we view parliamentary debates as a style of democratic politics. Moreover, parliamentary debates are well-documented and publicly accessible sources for analysis of contested issues in politics and specific controversies related to democracy.

The focus on the debate perspective raises theoretical questions concerning the status of parliaments and parliamentarism. Although parliaments are widely considered core institutions of representative democracy, current theories of democracy tend to neglect parliamentary institutions and debates. The first four articles of this special issue aim at reconnecting parliamentary studies with political theorizing. They focus on such questions as different conceptions of parliaments, the politics of procedure, the relevance of plenary debates in democratic theories, their status in political science research as well as the importance of parliamentary reform for the process of democratization.

Kari Palonen uses Max Weber’s concept of ‘ideal type’ in order to illustrate how the very concept of parliament can be understood in three different ways: as a representative, a legislative or a deliberative assembly. He takes up the differences between these three conceptions of parliament along with the issues of political legitimacy, key events and time orientation of the parliament, and then considers the ideal types of parliamentary politicians.

Nicolas Bechter analyses the history of the relative neglect of parliaments and of parliamentary debates in post-war West German political science. Although German political science emphasized its role in the democratization process as a ‘science of democracy’ (Demokratiewissenschaft), studies discussing the status and powers of the Bundestag and the regional parliaments (Länder) as core arenas of democratic political debate have remained rare.

Marion Löffler takes up the work of Jacques Rancière, who has been one of the major defenders of a controversial conception of politics among contemporary political theorists. Löffler wonders why Rancière has had very little to say on parliaments in his defence of politics. She focuses on Rancière’s key division between la police and la politique and notes that Rancière seems to include parliaments in the category of ‘police’ as part of the established political order, although his concept of politics could well suit the aspects of debate, contestation and controversy that have shaped the parliamentary style of politics.

Ratih D. Adiputri discusses the powers of parliament in the democratization process, citing the case of Indonesia after the fall of its authoritarian regime in 1998. Although parliament played a major role in the fall of Suharto, and the non-elected parliamentary seats were abolished, the internal procedures and practices have remained largely unchanged. Consequently, the Indonesian parliament has no real controlling powers within the presidential system, the members of parliament do not understand themselves as independent politicians, and vigorous plenary debates on alternatives are still lacking.

Parliamentary debates serve as a central arena where conflicting understandings of democracy can be rejected, integrated or refined. A content-oriented perspective on parliamentary debates offers an in-depth study of historically specific struggles over democratic beliefs and values in parliament. The subsequent five articles within this special issue present historical and contemporary country case studies of Great Britain, Austria and Germany. Each article examines strategies and practices of parliamentary rhetoric by reviewing specific historical scenarios, such as the parliament’s engagement with European integration, its coping with fascist legacies in post-fascist democracies, and the parliamentarian’s struggles over the concepts of democracy and democratic plurality.

Teemu Häkkinen investigates the British parliamentary debates on a supranational European parliament and the subsequent debates in the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe in 1948–49. The issue of European democratization revealed controversial positions of British MPs. While the governing Labour Party was reluctant, the Conservative opposition and a few Labour backbenchers succeeded in forcing the government to participate in the creation of the Council of Europe. The initial debates in the Consultative Assembly finally discussed the notions of parliament and parliamentarism and were fundamental controversies about the appropriate parliamentary model.

Siegfried Göllner addresses the politics of denazification in post-war Austria as part of the democratization process. His analyses of plenary debates on denazification laws and measures in the National Council (Nationalrat) from 1945 to 1957 identify three phases, which differ in their dominant (rhetorical) strategies. Although the issue illustrates controversy in parliament, the consensual narrative of the Austrian victim status vis-à-vis Nazi Germany prevailed and facilitated the political reintegration of former Nazis.

Matthias Falter analyses the parliamentary strategies of those parties in Austria that integrated former National Socialists (Verband der Unabhängigen, VdU, and Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), examining how they managed to present themselves as a legitimate democratic force. Although their political origin and ideology can be located at the far-right end of the political spectrum in Austria, parliamentarians successfully claimed to represent the political centre. Their argumentative strategies contributed to parliamentary disputes over the meaning of democracy and over the populist claim of the FPÖ that they represent the real needs of the population.

Kathrin Braun examines the activities in and by the German parliament (Bundestag) related to the victims of Nazi persecution, and questions whether they were sufficient. The so-called ‘asocials’ are the only group of victims who have not received an official apology. In most cases, it was the task of the oppositional parties to place on the agenda the controversial issue of seeking justice for this group of Nazi victims. The only marginal success, however, reveals a consensus: the productivist logic that underlaid the Nazi persecution of ‘asocials’ is still intact and complicates the distinction between legitimate exercises of statecraft on the one hand and the abuse of state power on the other.

Miina Kaarkoski deals with a further aspect of the German democracy. The anti-nuclear movement raised the question whether civic protest should be regarded as an integral part of democracy. Kaarkoski examines the plenary debates in the Bundestag as disputes over the meaning of democracy. All factions sought to protect the democratic state after the anti-democratic experience of Nazi Germany and the GDR, at times viewing representative democracy as a tool to prevent the rise of populism and fascism. However, some opposition MPs argued for complementing representative government with grassroots democracy. In so doing, they realized a central feature of parliamentary democracy: a workable oppositional minority that critiques and oversees the government and eventually even influences governmental decisions.

Our proposal to emphasize the aspect of debate in parliamentary research – rather than a narrow focus only on final votes – aims to avoid the limited perspective of merely accepting the winners’ point of view. Even if a debate did not convince the majority to change their position, the final decision should not be taken as a sign that there were no realistic alternatives or that the arguments of the winning side were intrinsically better than those of the losers. On the contrary, in historical studies, it is not uncommon to remember the stance of the losing side.⁷

We hope this special issue on the value of parliamentary debates will encourage further interdisciplinary research that connects divergent studies on democracy and parliamentarism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marion Löffler

Marion Löffler, Dr. Mag., is researcher and lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna. Her research focus is on contemporary political theories, democracy and parliamentarism, political gender studies and the contribution of fictional literature to political theorizing. Recent publications include: ‘Restitution: Wiedergutmachung übersetzt in die Sprachen der Alliierten. Antisemitische Konnotationen einer Begriffsdebatte’, in K. Prager and W. Straub (eds), Bilderbuch-Heimkehr? Remigration im Kontext (Wuppertal, 2017), pp. 203–16; ‘Transformationen männlicher Herrschaft. Symbolische Gewalt, Geschlecht und Staatlichkeit bei Pierre Bourdieu’, in M. Hirsch and R. Voigt (eds), Symbolische Gewalt. Politik, Macht und Staat bei Pierre Bourdieu (Baden-Baden, 2017), pp. 145–66.

Kari Palonen

Kari Palonen is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä. He has published books in English and German on the concept of politics and its history, on the political thought and methodology of Max Weber, the principles and practices of conceptual history, and on parliamentary politics: concepts, procedures, rhetoric.

Notes

1 The contributions to this issue were first presented at the international conference ‘Democratic and Undemocratic Language. The Parliament as Democracy in Action?’, held in Vienna in 2015. The conference took place in the framework of the project ‘Antisemitism as a Political Strategy and the Development of Democracy’, funded by FWF, the Austrian Science Fund.

2 C. Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (Berlin, 1979 [1923]); J. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Neuwied, 1962).

3 J. Bentham, Political Tactics, M. James, C. Blamires and C. Pease-Watkin (eds) (Oxford, 1999 [1791/1843]); T. Erskine May, A Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 9th edn (London, 1883 [1844]); W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (Cambridge, 2001 [1867]); H.J. Laski, Parliamentary Government in England: A Commentary (London, 1938); M. Weber, Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland (Tübingen, 1918).

4 N. Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured. Opinion, Truth and the People (Cambridge, 2013).

5 F.R. Ankersmit, Political Representation (Stanford, 2002), p. 115.

6 This argument was first elaborated by Max Weber. For a detailed discussion see the essays by K. Palonen, A Political Style of Thinking. Essays on Max Weber (Colchester, 2017).

7 See R. Koselleck, ‘Erfahrungswandel und Methodenwechsel’, in C. Meier and J. Rüsen (eds), Historische Methode (Munich, 1988), pp. 13–61.