Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal
Ihalainen, P., & Palonen, K. (2009). Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal. Parliaments, Estates & Representation, 29, 17-34.
Published in
Parliaments, Estates & RepresentationDate
2009Copyright
© Taylor & Francis. This is an author's final draft version of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the journal Parliaments, Estates and Representation by Routledge, part of Taylor & Francis.
Summary: This article proposes that historians and political theorists should exploit parliamentary sources to move from the writing of national histories to the comparative study of the conceptual history of European political cultures. Complementing the German lexicographical approach to conceptual history, the authors argue that parliamentary debates in several European countries provide more reliable sources for the past use of the language of politics. They emphasize the possibilities for the study of political history and the rhetoric of parliamentary institutions offered by the use of parliamentary debates side by side with the study of archival sources and published literature. Rhetorical studies and historical analyses of the use of key concepts emphasize speaking as a major form of political action and the value of parliamentary debates independently of the results of the final votes. Parliamentary debates in themselves, as a part of the decision-making process and with their increasing links to extra-parliamentary publicity, promoted change in political language and culture. The debates allow us to identify precisely the actual speaking situations in which the key political concepts were used. They also show how the emerging codification of parliamentary procedure was registered in the contested parliamentary vocabulary and how parliamentary debate gradually superseded the ancient examples of deliberative rhetoric. Finally, the authors address the methodological challenges involved in the use of parliamentary sources for the study of a comparative conceptual history of politics. The examples provided focus on the British Parliament and the Swedish Diet, particularly in the eighteenth century.
...
![showless](/themes/JYX2//images/showless.png)
![showmore](/themes/JYX2//images/showmore.png)
Publisher
Routledge, part of Taylor & FrancisISSN Search the Publication Forum
0260-6755Keywords
Original source
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rper20/29/1Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
Related items
Showing items with similar title or keywords.
-
Between context and comparability : Exploring new solutions for a familiar methodological challenge in qualitative comparative research
Kosmützky, Anna; Nokkala, Terhi; Diogo, Sara (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020)Finding the balance between adequately describing the uniqueness of the context of studied phenomena and maintaining sufficient common ground for comparability and analytical generalisation has widely been recognised as a ... -
Kicking off a Dialog on the Methodological Advancement of Comparative Higher Education Research
Nokkala, Terhi; Kosmützky, Anna; Blanco Ramirez, Gerardo; Cantwell, Brendan; Suspitsyna, Tatiana; Torres-Olave, Blanca (2020) -
Aspects of Conceptual History of Parliamentary Politics
Palonen, Kari (Edward Elgar, 2020) -
Building and Testing a Comparative Interface on Northwest European Historical Parliamentary Debates : Relative Term Frequency Analysis of British Representative Democracy
Ihalainen, Pasi; Janssen, Berit; Marjanen, Jani; Vaara, Ville (RWTH Aachen, 2022)Tensions between the people and parliament over representation are a normal feature of representative democracies. In this paper, we demonstrate how digital humanities analysis tools help in answering questions about the ... -
Reconstructing social work research : Finnish methodological adaptations
Karvinen, Synnöve; Pösö, Tarja; Satka, Mirja (Jyväskylän yliopisto, 1999)