Conceptualising Inter-Parliamentary Politics

Abstract

To understand the past, present and future of parliamentary style of politics it is important to cut down the historical link between parliament and nation-state. The panel highlights parliamentary politics as a procedural form of political action with its core in rules and practices of debating and examining questions from opposing points of view. In no other institution the contingent and controversial aspects of politics are built into the rules of the game than in parliaments. Understanding parliamentary politics in this way brings into focus the inter-parliamentary transfers and relationships. First, the panel examines how parliamentary style of politics has been applied in different assemblies, from national parliaments to the city councils and the European Parliament, and in associations and institutions, from student unions to the UN General Assembly. What makes parliamentary style and its variations a useful means to deal with political conflict and disagreement? Do procedures matter and how? How have transfers of parliamentary concepts and practices taken place? Secondly, the panel is interested in parliamentary assemblies as arenas for political transfer. How have, for example, anti-parliamentary discourses and ways of doing politics been transferred and perhaps benefited from the procedures of parliamentary assemblies? Thirdly, the panel explores new ways of examining and developing inter-parliamentary relationships. How are, or could, the relations between different parliamentary assemblies be organized? How could, for example, the inter-governmental styles be complemented and controlled by inter-parliamentary ones in supranational institutions; could the diplomatic rhetoric of negotiation be subordinated to the deliberative genre of parliamentary rhetoric of debate?