[1]

[2]Kari Palonen
The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure

[3]Kari Palonen

The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure

The Formation of the Westminster Procedure as a Parliamentary Ideal Type

Barbara Budrich Publishers
Opladen • Berlin • Toronto 2016

[5]Table of Content

Acknowledgements

1. A procedural perspective on parliamentary politics

1.1 Conceptualisation and transformation of the procedural ideal type

1.2 Max Weber on ‘objectivity’ as a procedural concept

1.3 The procedural character of ideal-typical parliamentary politics

1.4 Westminster procedural tracts on the parliamentary ideal type

1.5 Procedure and conceptual changes

2. History of Westminster procedural tracts

2.1 The genre of procedural tracts

2.2 A note on the origins of the English parliament and the Modus

2.3 Tracts from the Elizabethan era

2.4 The source-based tracts and their use in the struggle with the Stuarts

2.5 Procedural tracts after the Glorious Revolution

2.6 John Hatsell’s codification of procedure

2.7 Tracts for the French Revolution: Samuel Romilly and Jeremy Bentham

2.8 Thomas Erskine May: Treatise and minor works

2.9 Popularisation of procedure and comparative perspective

2.10 Westminster procedure for foreign audiences

2.11 Twentieth-century procedure: Gilbert Campion

2.12 Contemporary procedure: J. A.C. Griffith & Michael Ryle

2.13 The changing agenda of procedural controversies

[6]3. The agenda of parliamentary powers

3.1 Parliament vs. the crown

3.2 The parliamentary freedom of members

3.3 Procedural means for the parliamentary control of government

3.3.1 Impeachment and other legal tools

3.3.2 The publicity of debates

3.3.3 Parliamentary questions

3.4 Vote of no confidence

3.5 Procedure as a form of protection for parliament and its members

3.5.1 Procedure as a limit to arbitrary powers

3.5.2 Consequences of a lack of procedure

3.5.3 Protecting parliament against its own members

3.5.4 The priority of unwritten rules

4. Conceptualisation of parliamentary debating

4.1 Debate as a basic parliamentary operation

4.2 Concepts of Westminster procedure

4.3 Two styles of debate: House and Committee

4.3.1 The origins of committees

4.3.2 Two types of debates

4.3.3 Reforming the committee system

4.4 Regulating debates – forms and practices

4.4.1 The Speaker

4.4.2 Tactical uses of procedure

4.4.3 Parliamentary evils to be avoided

4.5 Unparliamentary language vs. fair play

5. Times of parliamentary debate

5.1 Separation of items of debate

5.2 The politics of amendments

5.3 Times of adjournment

5.4 The passage of motions through parliament

5.5 Times of debate and dissensus

[7]6. Times of parliamentary agenda

6.1 Pressure on parliamentary time

6.2 The parliamentary calendar

6.3 Time limits for parliamentary debates

6.4 Adaptation of debates to parliamentary government

6.4.1 Procedural limits to the government’s monopoly of initiative

6.4.2 Rhetorical limits to governmental powers

6.4.3 Two dividing lines in the House of Commons

6.5 Limits to the governmentalisation of parliamentary time

7. Temporal layers of parliamentary politics

7.1 The politics and history of procedural tracts

7.2 Conceptual changes in procedure tracts

7.3 Adversarial and dissensual concepts of parliament

References

Abbreviations

Parliamentary debates (consulted 2 August 2013)

Parliamentary documents (consulted 26 December 2013)

Parliamentary papers (University of Jyväskylä Library,
consulted 2 August 2013)

Other Primary sources
(online publications consulted 25 December 2013)

Literature

Index

[8][9]Acknowledgements

Twenty years ago I could not have believed that I would ever become a parliamentary scholar. Quentin Skinner’s Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996) has inspired a number of scholars to reinterpret British parliamentary politics, and this book with its procedural perspective is the latest one indebted to Skinner and his rhetorical work.

For ten years I have been delving into the strange world of parliaments from a scholarly distance. However, this study also manifests continuities with other major topics of my research profile: the concept of politics and its history, the principles and practices of conceptual history as well as Max Weber’s political thought and methodology in particular. While I am getting closer to political practice, in the study of procedural tracts I employ an indirect perspective on parliamentary politics. I take a historical approach to the study of politics, though I am not a historian by profession. Although the tracts studied concern the particularities of the British parliament, as a Weberologist I treat it as a historical approximation of the parliamentary ideal type.

Quentin Skinner has read the 2012 draft of the manuscript, and Suvi Soininen the first draft of the present version. I am also indebted to two anonymous reviewers, whose comments prompted me to revise the entire narrative of the work.

This work would not have been possible without Academy of Finland research grants. The project The Parliamentary Style of Politics (with Tapani Turkka, Suvi Soininen and Sarita Friman-Korpela) was followed by the Academy Professorship project The Politics of Dissensus. Parliamentarism, Rhetoric and Conceptual History (with Tapani Turkka, Taru Haapala and Hanna-Mari Kivistö as the core team; Anna Björk, Anna Kronlund, Jussi Kurunmäki, Anthoula Malkopoulou, Onni Pekonen, Suvi Soininen and Tuula Vaarakallio as part-time participants; and Ratih D. Adiputri, Marie-Christine Boilard, Sarita Friman-Korpela and Hanna Kallio in the wider PhD team). The Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change offered a broader range of cooperation opportunities (in particular, with Matti Hyvärinen, Pasi Ihalainen, Anitta Kananen, Kia Lindroos, Tuija Parvikko, Tuija Pulkkinen, Evgeny Roshchin, Henrik Stenius, Vasileios Syros and Claudia Wiesner).

[10]I am further indebted to the late Michael Th. Greven and to Jörn Leonhard for research periods at Warburg-Haus in Hamburg 2006 and at FRIAS, School of History, in Freiburg 2009, to José María Rosales and his research projects (an extensive volume by the Jyväskylä and Málaga teams, see Palonen/Rosales/Turkka (eds.), The Politics of Dissensus: Parliament in Debate, 2014) as well as to Pasi Ihalainen and Cornelia Ilie as co-editors of Parliament and Parliamentarism, forthcoming in the new European Conceptual Histories series. With Claudia Wiesner and Tapani Turkka I also co-edited the volume Parliament and Europe (2011). Among senior scholars, Frank Ankersmit, Pantelis Bassakos, Hubertus Buchstein, Alan Finlayson, Marcus Llanque, Kyösti Pekonen, Markku Peltonen, Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark, Willibald Steinmetz and Nadia Urbinati have also inspired this study.

Bill Hellberg has done a thorough job correcting my English. Anna Kronlund proofread the version before submission to the publisher, and Eleanor Underwood suggested the final linguistic revisions. Jakob Horstmann and Sarah Rögl have been responsible for the ease of the publication process with Budrich Academics.

Helsinki and Jyväskylä, May 2014

Kari Palonen