Böcker av Kari Palonen

The parliamentary style of politics has been formed over centuries; In the last two chapters, the book outlines the possibilities of extending parliamentary judgment to politics beyond parliaments proper and the chances for parliamentary politics succeeding today.

The essays set Weber's political thought in relationship to his predecessors (Constant, Bagehot, Nietzsche), contemporaries (Sombart, Schmitt, Benjamin), later (Arendt, Sartre) or contemporary scholars (Skinner, Koselleck) and current Weber studies (Hennis, Scaff, Ghosh).

This book explicates how debates and documents can be understood, interpreted and analysed as political action. The authors deploy the perspective that debates are to be understood as political activity, and documents can be regarded as frozen debates.

The authors deal with the place of parliamentary politics in democracy. Apparently a truism, parliamentarism is in fact a missing research object in democratic theory, and a devalued institutional reference in democratic politics. Yet the parliamentary culture of politics historically explains the rise and fall of modern democracies. By exploring democracy from the vantage point of parliamentary politics, the book advances a novel research perspective. Aimed at revising current debates on parliamentary politics, democratization and democratic theory, the authors argue the role of the parliamentary culture of politics in democracy, highlighting the argumentative, debating experience of politics to recast both some of democratic theory's normative assumptions and real democracies' reform potential.