The 1770s witnessed an attempt by Parliament to control how it was represented in the press: questions of parliamentary reporting and parliamentary privilege quickly became a national political crisis. Key political figures such as Edmund Burke, John Wilkes, George Onslow and the Marquis of Rockingham were involved with printers and booksellers such as John Almon, Robert Wheble and Henry Woodfall. The British Enlightenment was effectively interrupted, and its fault lines highlighted, as politicians clashed with the book trade—and with (...) newspaper and periodical proprietors in particular. (shrink)

This book examines the conceptual contributions of constituent representatives in Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Spanish Parliament has been the stage for the political modernisation of the country. Constitutional debates have historically led to the gradual acknowledgement and broadening – usually unevenly – of citizens’ rights. At the same time, constitutional debates have created opportunities to design institutions and settle legal mechanisms to enforce rights and distribute state resources. The book identifies and analyses rhetorical and conceptual innovations (...) produced in such debates from a historical perspective. (shrink)

My analysis of political debate in the United Kingdom during the summer of 2016 unpacks the compression of two highly complex issues within an unprecedented moment in British politics: reinvestment in nuclear arms and nuclear energy during the EU referendum crisis. I recover unities and discontinuities across events in this period and throughout history both to examine the non-identity between the particular and the universal as a major trope in parliamentary rhetoric, which construed the universal sentiment of world (...) peace and denied this in terms of security, and to seek out the use of determinate negation, especially when it has bearing on the advancing of climate-related policies. From nuanced speeches in the House of Commons and House of Lords, I move tentatively outwards by gesturing to the moment of truth in reified concepts, seeking to pry them open in their non-identity with art objects of the Anthropocene that are understood within a context of ecological poetics. (shrink)

Scholarship in rhetorical political analysis and parliamentary studies devoted little attention to study how politicians employ intellectuals’ authority and theories in their discourses. We offer methodological directions to navigate this territory, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate the employment of Machiavelli’s figure in the Italian Parliament. We show that Machiavelli is regarded as a contested authority and that appeals to his arguments can perform different rhetorical functions, which are countered with different rhetorical tactics. In particular, we show that (...) the right appropriates the realist Machiavelli, especially in foreign policy, both as a national symbol and as a legitimate source of insights on political affairs, while the left and the centre resist these claims with alternative rhetorical tactics. Finally, we provide an original dataset and a new theoretical framework for future explorations of intellectuals and other authoritative figures’ rhetorical influence on politics. (shrink)

This article examines the anti-fascist rhetoric of the self-proclaimed `revolutionary liberal', Piero Gobetti, in Italy in the early 1920s. Gobetti is interesting from a rhetorical perspective for two reasons: first, for his efforts to redefine liberalism as an emancipatory ethic of struggle that extended to the revolutionary worker's movement; and second, for his rejection of fascism as essentially continuous with the anti-conflictual tendencies of the liberal parliamentary regime. An exemplary `ideological innovator', Gobetti's `paradiastolic' redescription of liberalism and his (...) metaphorical reading of fascism underscored a commitment to the value of rhetorical disputation over the meaning and form of liberty. This contrasts with contemporary approaches to fascism — and purportedly similar ideologies — which demonize or objectify in a way that forestalls such a debate. Yet, paradoxically, the cost of Gobetti's innovations was an inability to secure what Perelman calls the `universal audience', a task that preoccupied Gobetti's Marxist friend, Gramsci. (shrink)

This article employs the concept of respectability and the discursive representation of gender equality policies to discuss how surrogacy is represented in Nordic parliamentary debates and policy documents. The article’s objective is to study how respectability, problems and equality are represented and discursively and rhetorically produced through a comparative study of Finnish and Norwegian political discourses on domestic unpaid surrogacy and cross-border commercial surrogacy. The article uses rhetorical and discursive analysis to analyse the Finnish and Norwegian Parliaments’ bills, members’ (...) initiatives and proceedings from 2002 to 2018. Finland’s policy on surrogacy has evolved from an unregulated and permissive approach towards a more restrictive one, with discourses focusing on medicalisation, equality, altruism and safety concerning domestic surrogacy and problems and risks concerning cross-border surrogacy. Norway’s policy on surrogacy has been restrictive consistently, with discourses focusing on surrogacy as a transnational social problem involving exploitation of women and children, and biocentrism. Analysing surrogacy regulation in Nordic welfare states, the author concludes that policies and parliamentary debates in both countries have expressed expectations for inclusive health policies and social security for families. Cross-border surrogacy is characterised as an unwanted consequence of globalisation and marketisation of reproduction. Surrogate mothers’ respectability is constructed through rhetoric on differences in terms of nationality, class and binary representations of female caring and instrumentalism. (shrink)

Recently there has been interest in examining how language is involved in the phenomenon of ‘manipulation’. This paper suggests that investigators, rather than treating ‘manipulation’ as an entity, should examine how communicators might engage in discursive acts of manipulating. To this end a distinction is made between manipulating information and manipulating people. Examples of both types, taken from the Portuguese Parliamentary Celebration of the April Revolution of 2004, are examined in depth to show how acts of manipulating can be (...) performed in different ways. By focussing on acts, we show that supposed ‘cognitive control’ over the audience's minds is not necessarily involved in manipulating; it is shown how investigators can provide evidence that manipulators act ‘knowingly’ when they mislead. We argue that the study of manipulating, and the distinction between manipulating information and people, provides a critical approach to the topic of political oratory. (shrink)

This paper draws on Cox and McCubbins’ comparison of floor and cartel agenda models and adapts it to the context of multi-party parliamentary regimes with the goal of clarifying some important differences between the legislative consequences of cohesion and discipline, on the one hand, and the effects of agenda setting, on the other. Internal party discipline and/or preference cohesion receives the bulk of emphasis in comparative studies of empirical patterns of legislative behavior, generally without considering the role of the (...) agenda. In a series of stylized models, this paper highlights important differences between having more unified parties and/or coalitions as a result of discipline and/or cohesion and the successful use of agenda control. We show that cohesion or discipline - understood as the ability to achieve voting unity - does not produce the same patterns of legislative behavior as negative agenda control. Data on legislative voting in the Polish Sejm are used to illustrate some points. (shrink)

Not much has been written on the foreign assistance policy of Belgium, but work that focuses on it singly or in comparison with other cases tends to charge that Belgium lacks a coherent foreign assistance policy. This study examines the rhetoric of Belgian decision makers and the policy behavior of the state, utilizing a framework of four national role conception profiles, each bringing together a set of perceptions regarding the role decision makers perceive their state to play in this (...) issue area.Parliamentary debates for the period 1975-90 are coded for mention of themes associated with these profiles, white OECD data regarding the foreign aid expenditures for the same period provide insight into the policy behavior. It concludes that Belgian decision makers do not perceive foreign assistance as a separate issue area, but as inextricably linked with foreign policy. (shrink)

Organizational transgressions cause recurring scandals. Often disclosed by whistleblowers, they generate public outrage and force organizations to respond. Recent studies have tried to answer the question: “What happens after a transgression becomes publicly known?” They highlight organizational responses marked by recognition of the transgression, penance and reintegration of the organization. However, that research only deals with transgressions involving illegal organizational practices. This article broadens the field of study to include legal but unethical organizational practices. It is based on the case (...) study of a recent scandal: LuxLeaks (2010–2018). This scandal concerns tax avoidance practices that were advised by the international audit and consulting firm PwC to hundreds of companies and made public by whistleblowers. The case data result from cross-comparisons of several organizational (PwC) and governmental (Luxembourg) communication documents as well as parliamentary, judicial and press documents. The article’s results highlight a legalistic organizational response that is so far under-explored in the literature. This response is marked by a rhetoric of denial, reformism and self-victimization and by judicial retaliation against the whistleblowers. It reveals the paradoxes of “legalization” in contemporary organizations, and its role in the perpetuation of unethical corporate practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 453-471 [Access article in PDF] Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire Richard Bourke When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the Seven Years' (...) War, a reconstituted militia became a focus for patriotic enthusiasm, uniting national sentiment against France and effectively eradicating the remnants of Jacobite rhetoric and aspiration. Traditional opposition between Tory and Whig became irrelevant, while Court and Country jointly came to the support of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry. However, in due course the Old Corps disintegrated as George III succeeded to the throne with the promise of an end to factional strife and the beginning of a patriotic alliance in government. But while competing ideologies and interests on the domestic political scene were undergoing comprehensive realignment, the pursuit of a blue-water policy in tandem with strategic continental campaigns brought Britain's struggle against France into North America, the Caribbean, and India. Trade continued to expand into Asia and West Africa, but the principles of commercial advantage were continually brought into open conflict with the exigencies of war. The division of power in Europe became embroiled in a substantial redivision of empire, and by 1763 British territorial expansion had reached its zenith.When Burke was appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, with the national debt standing at an all time high and the demands of imperial defense unlikely to diminish, the politics of empire called for urgent attention from all sections of the political establishment. In particular the Rockinghamites, adopting a posture of aloofness from venality and petty interest, were obliged to advance policies for imperial government on the solid basis of political principle. 1 Coming into parliament as a member for Wendover in the wake of [End Page 453] Grenville's Stamp Act, at a time when the East India Company was assuming control of the revenue in Bengal, Burke set about formulating a doctrine of imperial sovereignty which would be serviceable to the party either in power or in opposition and which would be adequate to the complex reality of detached and extensive empire. The immediate reception of that inquiry, both in Britain and on the Continent, into the fraught world of post-Revolutionary political debate has had the long-term effect of distorting the order of emphasis in terms of which his career as a whole ought properly to be understood.The vigorous elaboration, in opposition to the Jacobin experiment in France, of the conditions under which moderate government could be exercised within the context of an absolute sovereignty was expressed in terms which had originally been invoked as part of a sustained attempt to reconcile civility with empire. As we shall see, that attempt involved a process of delicate coordination by means of which the interests of freedom would be brought into harmony with the demands of public power. In that sense the effort to make liberty and authority mutually responsible can be said to constitute the core ambition of Burke's political rhetoric. In this context responsibility defines the optimally beneficial relation between government and people on the one hand and national sovereignty and the extended empire on the other. This article outlines the practical and theoretical exploration of those relations within the frame of Burke's intervention in the world of eighteenth-century political discourse.Burke was of course well placed in 1765 to evolve a theory of imperial government that was at once ideologically compelling and politically viable. In his capacity as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton in the early 1760s he had already examined the corruption of legitimate empire as represented by the introduction of penal legislation into Ireland after 1694. The Tracts Relating to Popery Laws set out to convict the Irish Parliament in Dublin of flagrant misrule. A subordinate legislature within the empire is charged with having employed... (shrink)

So, on 22 July 1865, under the title ‘Philosophy and Punch’, did England's premier comic weekly greet the election of J. S. Mill as MP for Westminster. Mill held his seat for only one term, until the general election of 1868, when his Whig-Liberal colleague Robert Wellesley Grosvenor was re-elected, but Mill was replaced by the loser in 1865, the Conservative W. H. Smith, Jr., who, though he never went to sea, became the ruler of the Queen's navy. The reasons (...) for that reversal have engaged the attention of many, including Mill himself; I should like to introduce into the discussion material from an ignored source, the comic weeklies, which took a continued and close look at Mill's behaviour during his parliamentary years. While this evidence generally does not disconfirm earlier judgments—including my own— it does more than merely add to the induction. First, it shows how different political stances led journals to focus on different aspects of Mill's parliamentary career, and to adopt different rhetorical strategies in portraying him in picture and word. Second, it demonstrates how the hardening of party allegiances during the parliament of 1865–68, which accelerated in the preparatory campaigns for the general election of 1868, affected Mill adversely. Third, it suggests strongly that it was not his ‘crotchets’ or ‘whims’, especially women's suffrage and proportional representation, that damaged his chances for re-election, but his advocacy of causes unpopular with the majority of Liberals as well as with Conservatives. (shrink)

During the last decades there has been an upsurge in research on xenophobic populist parties, mirroring their political successes. In the Swedish context, characterised by neoliberal restructuring, issues of ‘race’, citizenship and belonging have been important elements of the public debate. These issues have unfolded in parallel with the presence of a neo-Nazi social movement and the emergence of two new parliamentary parties in which cultural racism has been central. Research has especially focused on the xenophobic content and how (...) to relate these parties to the wider research on party politics in western liberal democracies. While there have been some studies focusing on gendered differences in voting and activism highlighting the peripheral role of women, there are still very few studies analysing the worldview of women active in these parties, and the role of gender as metaphor, identity and policy within these parties. Inspired by feminist, postcolonial and Marxist research, the authors of this article are interested in analysing the worldview of women activists. The material is composed of 20 in-depth interviews with female Sweden Democrat politicians complemented by party texts and participant observation. The aim of the article is to explore how women within a Swedish version of these parties, the Sweden Democrats, name and reflect upon their experiences, especially focusing on how a care rhetoric is used in their narratives. These women have chosen to represent a racist party. What inspires them? What visions of gender evolve from their worldview? (shrink)

This paper examines the ways in which the group of people now known as the Windrush generation, who moved to the UK in the period 1948–1971, have been represented in public discourse. This group has been adversely affected by the current ‘hostile environment’ policy in the UK regarding immigration. As I show, in the ensuing and highly critical debate, the government repeatedly positioned them as ‘good’ migrants and placed them in a binary opposition with ‘undesirable’ migrants, who they cite as (...) the intended target of their policy. Using diachronic corpora of parliamentary debates and national media, I compare this contemporary rhetoric with (a) Windrush representations in the 1940s and 1950s, and (b) contemporary representation of those the government constructs as unwanted migrants. Taking metaphor as a key for the comparison I show that there is very little continuity or overlap in how the Windrush migrants were discussed at the time of their arrival and in the current period. Instead, there is a much greater proximity in the past representations of the Windrush migrants and the current representations of ‘undesirable’ migrants. This mismatch in actual and perceived representation at the time of arrival indicates how nostalgia functions in migration discourses, even facilitating anti-immigration arguments. (shrink)

The distribution of voting rights in the UK is an artefact of history rather than a product of clear legal or philosophical principles. Consequently, some resident aliens have the right to vote in all UK elections; others can vote in local elections but are excluded from national elections; still others are excluded from all elections. In England and Wales alone, roughly 2.3 million immigrants are excluded from voting in national elections. This exclusion is inconsistent with the founding principle of democracy (...) and distorts political discourse. What if all immigrants could vote in national elections? We estimate that up to ninety-five parliamentary seats could have been won by a different party in the 2015 general election. More substantially, enfranchising all immigrants would require re-drawing UK constituency boundaries. The new electoral map would increase the relative power of urban constituencies and would incentivise some political entrepreneurs and parties to temper anti-immigration rhetoric. (shrink)

For the past 300 years and more the inhabitants of Great Britain (or perhaps more accurately of England) have been content to be "godly and quietly governed" under unique arrangements, which may, if they must, be classified as a parliamentary monarchy. The course of being so governed has been characterised by oscillations between, on the one hand, governments whose appeal to their fellow countrymen is to conserve existing institutions and, on the other, governments whose appeal is their call for (...) innovation. The rhetoric in which the two appeals are couched has been correspondingly contrasting. (shrink)

The concepts of judicial independence and the separation of powers are used more as terms of political rhetoric than legal concepts in the British constitution. Responsible government significantly merges the executive and the legislative while parliamentary sovereignty has meant that judicial independence has had a peculiar British meaning, rarely unpacked. In practice, in England, (and presumably in the other UK jurisdictions), individual judges are accorded a high degree of independence, while there is no effective independence of the judiciary (...) collectively as a branch of government. This article then asks what impact current constitutional changes will have on this state of affairs. Adherence to the EU, the growth of judicial review and other factors have already had an important impact; devolution, the Human Rights Act and the reform of the House of Lords may have impacts that will be different in both quality and degree. Coupled with other political changes the end result may well be a more effective separation of powers and more real independence for the judges as a branch of government; but that in turn may call for more open and meaningful democratic control over the appointment of judges. (shrink)

Post–World War II developments concerning citizenship and access as one of the dimensions of citizenship are examined through the prism of noncitizenship and rights, using the drafting of the asylum paragraph of the 1949 Grundgesetz of the Federal Republic of Germany as a specific case study. The aim of this article is to look into the creation of the right to asylum in West Germany, to examine its political history by exploring its development and by searching for its conceptual, political, (...) and rhetorical origins. The article investigates the birth of the unique conceptualization of asylum in the debates of the Parliamentary Council, the constitutional and quasi-parliamentary assembly responsible for the writing of the postwar Basic Law, and examines the political choices, motivations, and compromises behind its creation. To connect the matter of asylum to a wider problematic related to noncitizens and rights, the article benefits from the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt, with reference to her writings on human rights and refugees in the immediate post–World War II period. (shrink)

Times of heightened risk to the physical safety of their citizens inevitably cause democracies to recalibrate their institutions and processes and to reinterpret existing legal norms, with greater emphasis on security, and less on individual liberty, than in "normal" times. This article explores the ways in which the American courts have responded to the tension between civil liberties and national security in times of crises. This history illustrates that courts have rejected both of the two polar positions that characterize public (...) discourse on these issues. Civil libertarians argue that political bodies are too easily gripped by passions, hysteria, and self-interest in these times and that courts therefore ought to play a central role in protecting liberty. Executive unilateralists argue that the qualities that uniquely characterize the executive branch, such as decisiveness, access to information, and efficiency, must become so dominant in these moments that few checks, if any, should constrain executive prerogatives. Oddly, civil libertarians and executive unilateralists find implicit consensus in the view that, in times of war, courts have tended not to play a significant role in overseeing executive power. We argue to the contrary: historically, a significant constitutional tradition of judicial scrutiny in the United States during times of war does exist. But this scrutiny does not take the form of courts making first-order substantive judgments about the content of liberty or other claimed constitutional rights. Nor does it take the form of judicial assessment of how significant or credible the national security claims of the executive branch might be. Instead, judicial oversight has been focused on preserving the institutional structures and processes through which decisionmaking on these issues takes place. The judicial role has centered on the second-order question of whether the right institutional processes have been used to make the decisions at issue, rather than on what the content of the underlying rights ought to be. This approach has historically rejected or resisted most claims of executive unilateralism. When courts have upheld the government's actions, they have done so only after a judgment that Congress, as well as the executive, has endorsed the action. This approach has also rejected the civil libertarian framework. When courts find bilateral institutional endorsement, they have typically accepted the joint political judgment of how liberty and security tradeoffs ought to be made. By focusing on congressional endorsement of emergency measures, the courts have created a broad-based political accountability for the actions taken in the name of national security. We suggest that even if congressional endorsement is more apparent than real in some of these contexts, the judicial maintenance of this structure of rhetorical justifications sustains desirable understandings of political structure. Because the President and Congress draw from different political constituencies in a presidential rather than a parliamentary system, we also raise questions about whether the American judicial approach to these questions should be limited to political systems with separated executive and legislative powers. (shrink)

In the early 1990s Israel underwent a so-called constitutional revolution. According to the champions of this revolution, Israel has essentially become, as a result of this momentous event, a constitutional democracy, upholding individual freedom and liberties and allowing for judicial review of parliamentary legislation. Despite the congratulatory rhetoric, it is generally agreed upon that the constitution is still in need of some essential supplements before Israel can qualify as a fully constitutional democracy. The main question addressed in this (...) paper is the following: is it ‘reasonable’ that Israel take the further necessary steps that qualify it as a fully constitutional democracy? The doubts raised in this regard stem from the very concerns that lead political philosophers (mainly Rawls) to stress the unique value of liberal democracy. As they argue, liberal democracy provides deeply divided societies with the best means to secure their legitimacy and political stability. Israel's political realities, I argue, defy this claim. Moreover, Israel's political realities may also carry a valuable lesson to other states, even to seemingly robust liberal democracies. It is not the purpose of the paper, of course, to argue that Israel's existing rule of government should be embraced by other states – far from that. Israel should undergo some radical changes so that it can protect the rights and interests of all its citizens. Yet, to achieve this purpose, it should transcend, I will argue, liberal democracy. As matters stand, simply strengthening its liberal character, Israel's political system may be exposed to a growing challenge to its legitimacy and stability. It should, therefore, reject liberal democracy and especially the principle of neutrality that is intimately connected with a liberal rule of government and embrace, instead, the ideal of multicultural democracy. This ideal, I argue, is better equipped to answer the need of deeply divided societies to secure their legitimacy and stability. (shrink)

The article aims at analyzing the case of Beppe Grillo and his Five Stars Movement in terms of social, cultural and linguistic phenomenon that – initially as a virtual party without a structured organization – seems to conquer both right-wing and left-wing Italian citizens notwithstanding generational and ideological differences. The success of grillini in the parliamentary election of 2018 as a consequence of Matteo Renzi’s constitutional referendum failure, represents a clear sign of the leadership crisis as well as the (...) drifting apart of the ruling class that ignored the problems of ordinary people for several years. The analysis is focused on both form and content: on the one hand, the artistic expression characteristic of Grillo, his gestures, mimicry and direct language plenty of verbal hyperboles, rhetorical figures, swearwords and blasphemous obscenities that build his uncompromising charisma, on the other modern technologies and social media that are used to communicate efficiently with the electorate, create an image of an open-minded politician keeping up with the outer world. All the aforementioned circumstances demonstrate an innovative approach based on political communication that devolves some level of decision-making power to the party supporters being active web users: bloggers and influencers at the same time. Such paradigm is followed by other representatives of the Italian political scene nowadays. (shrink)

This article analyses the concept of people in language, as a collective identity and as a subject of political representation in the crisis of the Hispanic monarchy from 1808 and throughout the constituent process that culminated in the promulgation of the Constitution of 1812. Based on the discursive uses of pueblo in chronicles, essays on political philosophy, press articles and parliamentary speeches, it points out the relevance of the semantics of pueblo in the political language of the time until (...) its displacement by that of nation. This semantic shift is related to the problems of constitutional engineering derived from the crisis of the privileged nobility in the context of the Napoleonic invasion. The view reinterprets the urban juntas of 1808 by stressing changes in the foundations of sovereignty, and puts into question the conventional characterisation from social history. It also traces the persistence of a rhetoric about the people in the wake of the Cadiz Constitution. Finally, the proposal claims the need to recover the category of people for the narrative of contemporary history. (shrink)

The use of voluntary assisted dying as an end‐of‐life option has stimulated concerns and debates over the past decades. Although public attitudes towards voluntary assisted dying (including euthanasia and physician‐assisted suicide) are well researched, there has been relatively little study of the different reasons, normative reasoning and rhetorical strategies that people invoke in supporting or contesting voluntary assisted dying in everyday life. Using a mix of computational textual mining techniques, keyword study and qualitative thematic coding to analyse public submissions to (...) a parliamentary inquiry into voluntary assisted dying in Australia, this study critically examines the different reasons, normative reasoning and rhetorical strategies that people invoke in supporting or contesting voluntary assisted dying in everyday life. The analysis identified complex and potentially contradictory ethical principles being invoked on both sides of the debate. These findings deepen our understanding of the moral basis of public reasoning about end‐of‐life matters and will help to inform future discussions on policy and law reform. The findings underscore the importance of sound normative reasoning and the use of caution when interpreting opinion polls to inform policy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Malaysia’s 13th general election in 2013 was the final election where the longest-serving elected government in the world, Barisan Nasional, regained power, before it was ousted after over six decades of authoritarian rule in 2018. In a country that practises parliamentary democracy but simultaneously observed close cooperation between the then ruling coalition and the mainstream press, this paper shows the micro-politics of the driving force of the coalition, United Malays National Organisation – specifically, how anxiety regarding the maintenance (...) of their privileged and empowered Malay position dominated the national narrative during the GE13 campaign. Focusing on editorial journalistic genres in four paid-for Malay-language newspapers, I illustrate the typical politics of fear that characterises much of Malaysian right-wing rhetoric – the ways in which racial and religion issues are provoked. The in-depth representational analysis, via the Discourse-historical Approach’s nomination and predication strategies, also suggests the normalisation of nationalistic and racist rhetoric, which primarily works with ‘fear’: fear of change, of loss of privilege, of the future, of other races; in principle, almost anything can be constructed as a threat to ‘Us’, an imagined homogenous people inside a well-protected territory through the discursive construction of such in-groups and out-groups. (shrink)

A passionate indictment of the major political parties in Britain today for their failure to face the biggest issues on the British political agenda. -/- These are issues of survival / not just of ourselves or our families, not just of the immediate environment or of our own country, but of the world itself. Politicians of every tradition have let us down, They offer the superficial appeal of a temporary prosperity. They make no promise for the future. -/- This book (...) brings together prominent people from socialist, liberal and green traditions together with those from whose experience lies in pressure groups. What they have in common is more remarkable than what divides them despite the fact that they have been candidates for opposing political parties. The empty rhetoric of the twentieth century politics has proved of no worth. This book explores the opportunities for a new and green parliamentary politics which will take us beyond the politics of Thatcher and Kinnock and into the 21st century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:J. H. Hexter 1910–1996Donald R. KelleyJ. H. Hexter, one of the leading intellectual historians of this century and a close associate of this Journal, died on 8 December 1996. Jack Hexter was a great scholar, talented writer and polemicist, devoted baseball fan, and authentic American humorist, who made wit and facetiousness part of his historiographical tool-kit. He was also an American character, as he made insistently clear in his (...) writings, especially his autobiographical account, “By Any Other Name,” which explained (among other things) why he came to be called “Jack,” why he resisted advice to change it, and other onomastic adventures.Jack taught at Queens College (N.Y., not, he pointed out, the one in South Carolina), 1939–57; Washington University (St. Louis, not Seattle or George Washington U.), 1957–64 and again 1978–86; and Yale University (one did not have to add, “New Haven”) 1965–85, where he was Director of the Center for Parliamentary History. At Washington University he was founding Director of the Center for the History of Freedom, which was devoted to a collaborative, multi-volume study of the history of liberty in the West that would realize the dream that Lord Acton called his “madonna of the future”—the difference being that Jack’s vision is already on the way to fulfillment, with the publication of the volume edited by him on Parliament and Liberty from the Reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War (1992), followed by seven more volumes up to 1996, with more to come.Hexter published books and articles in a variety of fields, finding notoriety especially in his essay of 1958, “Storm over the Gentry,” and later in public jousts with Christopher Hill and others and more retrospective censures of (among others) A. W. Pollard and R. H. Tawney; and he was a master of the Macaulayan art of the review-essay (collected in On Historians, 1979). His article on “Braudel and le monde braudelien” was a mischievous masterpiece of satire which, according to a private communication to Jack, Braudel himself enjoyed in his Olympian way, including the good-natured charge of excessive appetite for facts—“Je vais me dire: ne joue pas trop au Rabelais, sois sage, ne mange pas tout, n’aie les yeux plus gros que le ventre!” (personal letter, 8 February 1973). Several generations of graduate students learned what was involved in doing history from his “The Historian and his Day” (1954), which (like “Storm”), he enjoyed recalling, was rejected by the AHR. He was amused, too, at learning that his article on “The Rhetoric of History” (written for the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences) was a harbinger of the rhetorical turn taken a few years later signalled by the historiographical work of Hayden White and others. He was a pioneer, too, in the intensive study of political languages (Visions of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation, 1973), though he lamented the fact that his work on Machiavelli’s and Seyssel’s political vocabulary had to be carried out before the age of computer technology.My first contact with Jack came through my mentor Garrett Mattingly, who was the contemporary historian Jack “most admired” (as he made plain in his contribution to Mattingly’s festschrift). In 1962 Mattingly told me that the plan to publish Hexter’s translation of Seyssel’s Monarchy of France for the Columbia Records Series had to be abandoned because of the first (I think) of Jack’s several heart attacks. I was able to use the mimeographed version for some years before Jack asked me to take over this project, originally visited on him by C. H. McIlwain. It was his suggestion that [End Page 349] we dedicate the collaborative volume, with nice ambiguity, to both McIlwain and Mattingly (who had also been a student of McIlwain) from “two of their deeply devoted students.”In this brief and perhaps overpersonal note (though nothing could be “too personal” for Jack) I will not add further to the store of Hexterian anecdotes, which I began collecting at Queens College, where Jack had already left the makings of a legend in the 1950s. I would just add... (shrink)

How to model relevance in argumentation is an important problem for informal logic. Dialectical relcvance is determined by the use of an argument for some purpose in different types of dialogue, according to the ncw dialectic. A central type of dialogue is persuasion dialogue in which one participant uses rational argumentation to try to get the other participant to accept a designated proposition. In this paper, a method for judging relevance in persuasion dialogue is presented. The method is based on (...) using the technique of argument diagramming. (shrink)

The article discusses the concept of progressive and degressive proportionality of the distribution of parliamentary seats. In the first part are presented axiological sources of the principles of proportionality and progressive and degressive proportionality and the history of degressively proportional apportionments of seats in the European Parliament. The main part of the article is devoted to the formulation of proposals for strict formal definition of degressive and progressive proportionality, and a description of the method of apportionment of seats in (...) the European Parliament based on the strict definition of degressive proportionality and maintaining maximum compatibility with former apportionments adopted in multilateral negotiations. The last part of the article consists of a discussion of the possibilities of adopting the concept of progressive proportionality in the analysis of the functioning of parliamentary electoral systems. (shrink)

One of the fields of protecting human rights within the framework of standards of the Council of Europe is the protection of national minorities – with the special issue of their linguistic rights. An intensification of actions aimed at adopting legal measures in this field happened in the 1960s. The concern for a proper range and level of regulation was expressed at the level of the Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of Ministers. National experts formulated detailed resolutions to include (...) the goals of international organizations such as CSCE and the United Nations concerning this matter. The fact that the framework convention was chosen as the means bears witness to a significant provision that the guarantee of rights were realized in the most flexible manner, including the designations and capacities of State parties. This article includes an analysis of three stages of work connected with ensuring linguistic rights for national minorities, with a special emphasis on the linguistic rights in the education system. On the one hand, actions which resulted in the acceptance of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities are shown. On the other hand, the goals and details of this Convention are described. The third section concerns the analysis of mechanisms for monitoring the realization of the rights included in the Convention. Due to limitations in the terms of reference for this work, the analysis of the convention guarantees, and their realization, was limited to linguistic rights in the education system. The practice of these actions was shown through examples in Poland and Lithuania. The right to education for national minorities including knowledge about their culture, traditions, and their input into the development of the society of a given country is one of the rights clearly stated in the Framework Convention. By the same token are linguistic rights in an education system – the right to teach the language of a national minority or to teach in the language of a minority. As practice in Poland and Lithuania shows, the situation of education of national minorities is different, although some of the problems are common: an example for that would be access to proper coursebooks in the languages of national minorities, or properly trained teachers. (shrink)

In the debate on the European Union’s problems, the concept of “democracy deficit” has been present from its very beginning. This term is applied in a quite vast manner and, apart from the asymmetry of the relation between the European Parliament and the Council, it also concerns the overly limited role of national parliaments in the European Union. In this regard, inadequacy in the national position of individual parliaments is observed. On the other hand, it is necessary to emphasise their (...) uneven activity on their European aspirations. At the time when the European dispute on the rule of law in Poland has polarized attitudes and language in statements on both sides – despite irresponsible trends – it is worth to examine the participation of national parliaments (including the Polish parliament) in the European inter-parliamentary dialogue and, consequently, to determine whether and how its constructive impact on the European Union and its law functions. (shrink)

La question de ce petit livre est simple : peut-on aller au-delà du constat de crise et d'impuissance dont le philosophe se fait le prophète depuis plus d'un siècle? Peut-on parler de la science sans complexe d'infériorité, de Dieu sans obscurantisme, d'existence sans tomber dans la banalité du café du commerce, de politique sans consacrer le cynisme, de morale sans faire dans le sermon? Bref, la philosophie peut-elle aider à faire comprendre et à dépasser les apories du temps présent qu'elle (...) a fait siennes, comme un malade ressasse sa propre maladie pour se donner le sentiment qu'ainsi il peut la mettre à distance à défaut de la vaincre? Toutes ces questions sont aujourd'hui les nôtres, et il ne faut pas avoir peur de parler des grands problèmes qui agitent les hommes depuis l'aube des temps, car si la philosophie a un sens, c'est bien en ce qu'elle envisage les questions ultimes dans une plus ou moins grande systématicité selon les époques. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the Convention’s “democracy clause,” that is Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, which provides for the right to free elections. Why should it be described as a “democracy clause” and what is its significance for today? The paper first sketches out the drafting history, which reveals that while the framers were keen to preserve their inherited domestic institutions, they also thought it crucial to promote democracy. The Convention invokes but does not define democracy. It is (...) within the Court’s competence to elucidate its meaning. The Court holds that pluralist democracy is the only system compatible with the Convention. This paper argues that Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 further presupposes a representative legislature. It does not require member states to introduce a specific system of elections and representation, but it obliges them to conform to parliamentary democracy. Thus, the Court’s model of democracy rests on two pillars: pluralism and parliamentarism. It subscribes to pluralist democracy theories but contradicts the monolithic conception endorsed by Carl Schmitt. The Court’s model has the potential to offer a robust account of democracy. Yet, Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 has never lived up to its potential. The Court’s relevant jurisprudence is inadequate to address the contemporary antidemocratic shifts that are underway in certain member states. Hence, the paper suggests that the Court’s power to apply this clause is not limited to general elections but also extends to presidential elections and referendums. (shrink)

This work approaches texts in the history of philosophy as the repository of a kind of literature that brings together rational thought and rhetorical principles.

Parliamentary privilege immunises certain activities of legislative bodies and their members from the ordinary law and judicial scrutiny. The rule of law, on the other hand, insists that everyone - including public officials - is subject to the law. Moreover, the rule of law is usually understood to involve judicial review of executive rather than legislative action. Thus, parliamentary privilege seems to establish a public sphere that is beyond the rule of law. Notwithstanding the tension that appears between (...) these two ideas, I argue that parliamentary privilege and the rule of law, properly understood, support rather than oppose one another. However, the ideas can be reconciled only if we reject the jurisdictional and categorical approach to parliamentary privilege adopted recently by the Supreme Court of Canada in Canada (House of Commons) v. Vaid [2005] 1 S.C.R. 667, 2005 SCC 30. This approach should be rejected because it trades on an unsustainable distinction between review of the scope of an asserted privilege and review its actual exercise, with the Court finding that only issues of scope are subject to review, even if important human rights are at stake. (shrink)

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty of the United Kingdom parliament is often presented as a unique legal arrangement, one without parallel in comparative constitutional law. By giving unconditional power to the Westminster parliament, it appears to rule out any comparison between the Westminster Parliament and the United States Congress or the German Bundestag, whose powers are limited by their respective constitutions. Parliament in the UK appears to determine the law unconditionally and without limit. Nevertheless, a fuller understanding of (...) class='Hi'>parliamentary sovereignty as a legal and constitutional doctrine shows that this first impression is false. The nature of the British unwritten constitutional order is entirely similar to the written one prevailing in the United States or Germany. This is because the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, contrary to Dicey’s classic view, does not consist in a single dominant idea but in a number of related and mutually supporting principles that constitute higher law. The way in which these principles interact is parallel to the interaction of the main clauses of the United States Constitution or the German Basic Law. This analysis shows that the constitution, written or unwritten, never requires a ‘pouvoir constituent’. The constitution emerges from the law as the result of moral and political principles that breathe life into our public institutions. (shrink)

_Rhetoric_ is the sixth volume in The New Hackett Aristotle series, a series featuring translations, with Introductions and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve, Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The series will eventually include all of Aristotle's works.

Party cohesion is crucial in parliamentary proceedings, for the strength of parties is determined by it. However high levels of party unanimity, parliamentary party cohesion is under no circumstances to be taken for granted. It is the outcome of a persistent struggle. From a rational choice point of view, the monitoring and sanctioning of recalcitrant MPs by the parliamentary party leadership is the condition sine qua non for party cohesion. Yet, rewards and punishments do not seem the (...) cement that holds parliamentary parties together. Preliminary findings for the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, show that ministerial appointment, committee transfers, nor party list compilation are used systematicallyto this purpose. (shrink)