The Ideal of Parliament in Europe since 1800

Remieg Aerts, Carla van Baalen, Henk te Velde, Margit van der Steen, Marie-Luise Recker, Remieg Aerts, Carla van Baalen, Henk te Velde, Margit van der Steen, Marie-Luise Recker

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030277048
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030277055
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This edited collection explores the perceptions and memories of parliamentarianism across Europe, examining the complex ideal of parliament since 1800. Parliament has become the key institution in modern democracy, and the chapters present the evolution of the ideal of parliamentary representation and government, and discuss the reception and value of parliament as an institution. It is considered both as a guiding concept, a Leitidee, as well as an ideal, an Idealtypus. The volume is split into three sections. The establishment of parliament in the nineteenth century and the transfer of parliamentary ideals, models and practices are described in the first section, based on the British and French models. The second part explores how the high expectations of parliamentary democracy in newly-established states after the First World War gradually started to subside into dissatisfaction. Finally, the last section attests to its resilience after the Second World War, demonstrating the strength of the ideal of parliament and its power to incorporate criticism. Examining the history of parliament through concepts and ideals, this book traces a transnational, European exchange of models, routines and discourse.  

© The Author(s) 2019

R. Aerts et al. (eds.)The Ideal of Parliament in Europe since 1800Palgrave Studies in Political Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27705-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Ideal of Parliament in Europe Since 1800: Introduction

Remieg Aerts¹ and Joop Th. J. van den Berg^{2, 3}

(1)

Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

(2)

University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

(3)

University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Remieg Aerts (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Joop Th. J. van den Berg

End Abstract

No other political institution may have been the subject of criticism for so long as parliament. Official figures show that national parliaments in the European Union score low rates of political trust, a poor 30 per cent on average.¹ Yet no political institution seems so close to the heart of democratic government as parliament. As national assembly and popular representation, it has been the key political power in almost all modern states in the last two centuries. Parliaments come in all shapes and sizes: some adhere to the Westminster model, others belong to the consociational model, some have two large parties, while other parliaments host a number of smaller parties. There are parliaments with 50 or with 700 representatives, and with one Chamber or with two Houses. Some parliaments have more powers, others have fewer. But there hardly are modern states without some form of parliament. Even authoritarian or dictatorial states for the sake of formality retain a parliament of sorts.

This demonstrates the vitality and power of the idea of ‘parliament’. It is the symbol of political legitimacy as such. Parliament has become a Leitidee, a guiding concept. The idea of parliament is normative: it is actually an ideal, or an Idealtypus.² It is so in four different ways. In the first place, parliament stands for the political idea of popular representation as legislative power, in a constitutional state on a democratic basis. In the second place, parliament embodies both the ideal and the practice of politics as reasonable deliberation and careful consideration of opposing social interests on a higher level. It hosts the loyal opposition and represents the process of binding decision-making by means of a generally accepted protocol. Thirdly, many parliaments are closely related to national history, the formation of the national state or the self-image of the political class. Next to the monarch, or even in his place, they have become the symbolic centre or locus of national government.

The fourth aspect of the parliamentary ideal seems paradoxical. As a good deal of parliamentary tradition was formed in the nineteenth century, an ideal type of rituals , manners and style tacitly became a standard early on. In the process parliament became firmly associated with liberalism and bourgeois culture. This association nourishes a widespread ‘discourse of nostalgia’ that affects the evaluations of parliaments time and again. Each generation entertains the illusion that parliamentary life used to be loftier in bygone days. The ideal of parliament, however, always includes several inherent tensions, for instance that between the requirements of representation and those of proper deliberation. These and other innate tensions are a source of disaffection, which is essential to the ideal as such.

This book examines this intrinsically complex, multifaceted and contested ideal of parliament. The chapters collected in this volume present the evolution of the ideal of parliamentary government, or the ‘parliamentarization’ of politics in Europe since 1800. They also discuss the reception and valuation of parliament as an institution, in particular the ambivalent dynamics springing from the intricate ideal type of a parliament, which is supposed to be reasonable, deliberative, representative and efficient to the utmost and simultaneously. In more than one way, parliament is a complex institution per se. The ideal of parliament itself brings forth a great deal of disillusion about the practice of parliamentary government.

This volume is based on the papers delivered at a conference on the ideal of parliament in The Hague in 2013, which was convened by the European Information and Research Network on Parliamentary History (EuParl.​net).³ It is the mission of EuParl.​net to bring together initiatives and results of research in the field of parliamentary history. In recent years, a good deal of innovative research has been done on parliament as an institution and on parliamentary culture. Political scientists study numerous aspects of the system of parliamentary government. In particular the German ‘Studien zum Parlamentarismus’ constitute a steadily growing series of monographs and collections of articles from political science, law and contemporary history.⁴ In the present volume, however, the focus is not on parliamentary history in the traditional sense, or on the study of the powers and workings of contemporary parliaments. Instead, its subject matter is parliament as an idea, as a specific culture of doing politics and as a practice of representation, deliberation and procedure . This book is about parliament as an historical institution, its culture, public perception, evaluation and resilience.

This approach fits in with the volumes of the German series ‘Parlamentarische Kulturen in Europa’, published by the Kommission für Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien.⁵ In a way this book forms the mirror image of the recent volume Parlamentarismuskritik und Antiparlamentarismus in Europa, about the repertoire, the media, the theatres , the actors and the practices of criticism, rejection and denunciation of parliamentary government.⁶ A Europe-wide and in-depth historical analysis of parliamentarism as a key concept in modern political cultures also was the subject of the volume Parliament and Parliamentarism. A Comparative History of a European Concept (2016).⁷ As the French verb ‘parler’ indicates, language, deliberation and rhetoric lay at the heart of parliamentarism. Discursive practices received due attention in recent literature, in particular in Parliament and Parliamentarism (2016) in Das Parlament als Kommunikationsraum (2012) and in Parliamentarism and Democratic Theory (2015), about the important role of parliament and parliamentarism in the history of modern democracies as ‘cultures of political debate’.⁸ Taking the Westminster model as his ideal type, the eminent Finnish social scientist Kari Palonen, in his Parliamentary Thinking. Procedure, Rhetoric and Time (2018), amply discusses such key elements of parliamentarism as representation, procedure , deliberation and the rhetorical repertoire.⁹

It has become clear from the above-mentioned publications that parliamentarism is a common European legacy, which as a matter of fact also includes the United States. It emanated from classical, mediaeval and early modern forms and traditions of power sharing, separation of powers, deliberation and representation. From the late eighteenth century, four aspects or functions of parliamentarism evolved: representation, deliberation, sovereignty and the relation with the government, the head of state or the executive power.¹⁰ Actually, not all these four aspects were part and parcel of the concept or of the institution per se. Deliberation and procedure were never absent, but the discussion about representation , the meaning of sovereignty and the aspiration to attain a balance with or an ascendancy over the executive were part of the ongoing ‘project’ of parliamentarism. This was a nonlinear process, with ruptures and drawbacks. Its pace and its results differed widely in all the parts of Europe.

Be that as it may, it still was a common European development. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ideal of parliamentarism even spread to other parts of the world, in the wake of western colonialism and decolonization. The history of parliament and parliamentarism is an outstanding example of political and cultural transfer. The architecture and design, the powers, the procedures and the evaluation of parliaments are transnational phenomena. In many ways the British and French parliaments served as an example to other polities. In this volume they are given due attention, without being the main substance. Instead this book shows which part smaller polities and parliaments in Central, Eastern and Southern Euro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Ideal of Parliament in Europe Since 1800: Introduction
• Part I. Establishing Parliaments
• Part II. Crises of Expectations
• Part III. Resilience of Parliamentary Ideals
• 14. Postscript
• Back Matter