The Parliamentary Government as a Trope

My paper proceeds from the supposition that rhetoric is not only what takes place in a parliamentary government but the how of it as well, that is, parliamentary government is the form of government that is founded on a rhetorical logic. Courtesy of recent developments, it is hardly conceivable to omit rhetoric (discussion, discourse and deliberation) from any consideration of parliamentary government. However, rhetorical approaches to parliamentary governments still reduce the role of rhetoric to the level of an intra-parliamentary agency without considering it in relation to the institutional design itself. My paper offers a way to re-conceptualise parliamentarism as a form of government not only as the locus of rhetoric but as a polity that is structured in line with certain elements of rhetoric. Building on the pars pro toto principle formulated by Robert Michels in 1927 (however, preceded by Bryce and followed by Schmitt and Sartori), I will argue that the very logic of parliamentary governments is structured as the trope often described by the above mentioned principle. Parties (or a coalition of parties) winning the majority of mandates are always confronted with the task of redefining themselves not as parts anymore but as the whole of government. It is a task that needs to be solved and can be solved through rhetorical practice only, exemplified in debates on a new government (and in some countries explicitly related to the vote of investiture). In my paper, I will argue that it is no coincidence that such redefinitions are frequent in debates, but it is rather the very consequence of that form of government. Aside from offering examples from the parliamentary practice, the paper discusses the definitional problem of the trope in question analysing whether parliamentary government is structured more like a metonymy or a synecdoche.