Overview

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.

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9781782389545

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Reviews

The focus on representation, sovereignty, responsibility and deliberation offers a lot: the book convincingly demonstrates how these concepts from as early as seventeenth-century Britain recur time and time again in political controversies over what parliament is or should be. Thanks to this specific approach, the quality of the case studies and the coherence between them are significant. Parliament, Estates and Representation

The great challenge for a book of this kind is to maintain cohesion among a multiplicity of authors and perspectives, and in this it has been entirely successful. Its overall framework of four principles that distinguish parliamentarism is clear and convincing, and its openness to different methodological approaches enables contributors to transcend traditional disciplinary limits. * Olivier Rozenberg, Sciences Po This collection offers an impressive historical and geographical sweep, covering a range of conceptual issues. The individual chapters provide both breadth and depth, and they are well situated within wider theoretical concerns. * Alan Finlayson, University of East Anglia

Author Information

Pasi Ihalainen is Professor of Comparative European History at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. His many publications include his most recent book The Springs of Democracy: National and Transnational Debates on Constitutional Reform in the British, German, Swedish and Finnish Parliaments, 1917-1919 (2017). He is a board member of the research network EuParl.net.

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