This paper focuses on argumentation the institutional context of debate in the European Parliament. A parliamentary debate is a distinct argumentative activity type. In the pragma-dialectical approach, argumentative activity types are defined as conventionalized argumentative practices in which the possibilities for strategic maneuvering are predetermined. What are the characteristics of the activity type of a debate in European Parliament that predetermine the possibilities for strategic maneuvering?

Studies focusing on debate as pedagogy have been gaining attention recently. However, most research has employed policy debate, which is a traditional debate style. Parliamentary debate, which is an impromptu debate style, has been recently gaining popularity worldwide. As minimal research exists on parliamentary debate as pedagogy, the present study examined the correlations between parliamentary debate participation, communication competence, communication apprehension, argumentativeness, and willingness to communicate. Moreover, this study aimed to (...) investigate the unique characteristics of communication variables and correlations with the experience of participating in a parliamentary debate in a Japanese context, an area that interests many scholars. The results showed some differences in correlations between Japanese and United States samples, which was explained by analyzing a trait of Japanese culture that is characterized as highly contextual. Regarding the correlations between communication variables and parliamentary debate participation, significant differences were found for all variables except for communication competence, where less communication apprehension, more argument approach, less argument avoidance, and more willingness to communicate were observed compared to non-debaters. Finally, the study findings revealed that those with parliamentary debate experience obtained lower scores for communication apprehension and higher scores for argumentative approaches compared with those who did not have such experience; the effect sizes were smaller in women than men. These findings suggest that parliamentary debate participation is an effective way to foster communication variables. (shrink)

The study is an attempt to understand the prevailing discourse in India on education as a right by closely reading the parliamentary debates on The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Educatio...

Throughout the 1980s, there was considerable public discussion in Britain about the legitimacy of scientific research upon human embryos and about the advisability of seeking to develop new science-based techniques that would further extend medical control over human reproduction. In 1990, legislation was passed permitting such research, but at the same time restricting its scope and specifying how the technologies of assisted reproduction were to be implemented. The present study examines how women contributed to, and were represented in, the final (...) phase of parliamentary debate over the proposed legislation. (shrink)

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) remains a controversial technique, one that has elicited a variety of regulatory responses throughout the world. On March 29, 2005, Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act came into force. This law prohibits a number of research activities, including SCNT. Given the pluralistic nature of Canadian society, the creation of this law stands as an interesting case study of the policy-making process and how and why a liberal democracy ends up making the relatively rare decision to use (...) a statutory prohibition, backed by severe penalties, to stop a particular scientific activity. In this article, we provide a comprehensive and systematic legal analysis of the legislative process and parliamentary debates associated with the passage of this law. (shrink)

Context is crucial in analyzing parliamentary debate, a field which has recently attracted attention from various perspectives. However, not many contributions focus on specific linguistic markers that shape and are simultaneously influenced by the context of production. The present article aims to partially fill in this gap by analyzing the demonstratives used in parliamentary debates and highlighting how they contribute to activating different aspects of context. After summarizing the features of parliamentary debate as a genre (...) and the importance and complexity of context considered as a subjective and dynamic mental construct, the pragmatic functions of demonstratives are presented and the most frequent uses occurring in two debates in the Catalan Parliament are illustrated, namely text deictic and discourse-context demonstratives. The analysis shows the discourse significance of the latter, which corresponds to noun phrases such as this Parliament, referring to the members of parliament as a body, or this statement, referring to the document under discussion. These uses of a proximal demonstrative pointing to the shared context of communication clearly differ from text deictics. They are similar to but also different from both situational demonstratives, which point to the perceived context, and recognitional demonstratives, which point to the shared knowledge between the participants, the penultimate. The overall analysis not only enriches the description of parliamentary debates, but it also contributes to a more complete description of the various uses of demonstratives and to a better understanding of the complexity and dynamicity of context in this genre. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning attributed to the national group as an entry point into how boundaries between the in-group and the out-group are formed. To do so, it focuses on the representation of the past of the group, taken as a symbolic resource able to produce a raison d’être for national groups, and does so within a dialogical framework. Using the transcripts of the French parliamentary debates on immigration from 2006, it proposes a qualitative analysis of collective narratives (...) of the past along three axes: 1) what meaning do they give to the nation, 2) how is such a meaning produced, and 3) how do the stories told by different groups reply or relate to one another. By identifying the main narratives found in the data and how they relate to each other – within and between groups – it proposes to see collective memory as itself the product of symbolisation processes and, therefore, as a cultural tool especially powerful to produce meaning about the present. This paper also argues that collective memory is a situated construction negotiated with – or contested by – others, made possible by the presence of common historical benchmarks to which different meanings may however be attributed. Finally, it proposes to understand “immigration talk” as potentially the product of the identity questions faced by the national group, rather than the other way around. (shrink)

This article explores the different uses of forms of direct verbal quotes in follow-up utterances delivered during the parliamentary debates after the inaugural speech of a new chancellor in the Austrian parliament and investigates their positioning effects for members of parliament who have the first opportunity of publicly ‘doing being a government or opposition MP’ in the new legislative term. Representing the first public confrontation between government and opposition MPs, the debates foreshadow topical and interpersonal aspects of the political (...) frontstage communication in the beginning legislative term. The main purpose of this article is to investigate the relations between formal properties of direct verbal quotes, recontextualization practices, their pragmatic function, and the specific aspect of the public personae speakers foreground by their use in the inaugural debates. Although direct quotations in follow-up utterances of MPs do not occur very often, the analyses demonstrate that this specific form of discourse representation deserves attention not only because it is mainly opposition MPs who use direct quotations in uptaking discourse units, but also because of the different semiotic aspects of direct quotes which are foregrounded in the investigated recontextualization practices. These practices result in MPs’ different public self-positionings toward their role of ‘being an opposition MP’, namely, either as policy-oriented arguers or as ironic evaluators. (shrink)

This corpus analysis of linguistic and semantic features in French parliamentary debates concerning online hate speech regulation, highlights tensions between state powers and private rights. Two key themes are identified: first, the _problem of definition_: how such online content is defined in the debates, and second, the _problem of regulation_: how the debates negotiate the supra-jurisdictional and individual jurisdiction issues involved, in regulating both the global online content and the responsibilities of the owners of the platforms who manage the (...) content. For this analysis, the authors created a corpus of French National Assembly Examination Committee discussions and public sessions between July 2019 to January 2020 discussing the _Loi Avia _(Avia Law). The corpus was analysed using quali-quantitative methods. Overall, the study combines a top-down (global) and a bottom-up (local) analysis of the data, applying corpus semantic approaches (Lecolle et al. in Langages 210(2):35–54, 2018; Rastier in The Routledge handbook of semantics, Routledge, pp 507–522, 2015) to contextualize the analysis of the meta-discourse (Hyland in Meta-discourse: exploring interaction in writing, 1st ed. Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350063617 ). The analysis highlights the linguistic features revealing the power dynamics inherent within the discourse and counter-discourse of the dominant and opposition political parties respectively. (shrink)

This article employs the concept of respectability and the discursive representation of gender equality policies to discuss how surrogacy is represented in Nordic parliamentary debates and policy documents. The article’s objective is to study how respectability, problems and equality are represented and discursively and rhetorically produced through a comparative study of Finnish and Norwegian political discourses on domestic unpaid surrogacy and cross-border commercial surrogacy. The article uses rhetorical and discursive analysis to analyse the Finnish and Norwegian Parliaments’ bills, members’ (...) initiatives and proceedings from 2002 to 2018. Finland’s policy on surrogacy has evolved from an unregulated and permissive approach towards a more restrictive one, with discourses focusing on medicalisation, equality, altruism and safety concerning domestic surrogacy and problems and risks concerning cross-border surrogacy. Norway’s policy on surrogacy has been restrictive consistently, with discourses focusing on surrogacy as a transnational social problem involving exploitation of women and children, and biocentrism. Analysing surrogacy regulation in Nordic welfare states, the author concludes that policies and parliamentary debates in both countries have expressed expectations for inclusive health policies and social security for families. Cross-border surrogacy is characterised as an unwanted consequence of globalisation and marketisation of reproduction. Surrogate mothers’ respectability is constructed through rhetoric on differences in terms of nationality, class and binary representations of female caring and instrumentalism. (shrink)

In this paper I shed light on the multi-purposive nature of debates in the European Parliament. As a case in point, I examine a debate on immigration in the wake of a migratory crisis in the Italian island of Lampedusa in early 2011. I analyze the points of view argued for by MEPs, aiming at identifying the different institutional goals that are typically pursued and characterizing the ways in which these goals shape the argumentative exchanges. The link between the (...) multiple goals communicators have and the discourse choices they make can be assumed on the basis of previous research. In line with the pragma-dialectical view of argumentative discourse taking place in the context of more or less institutionalized argumentative activity types, institutional goals are understood as those goals that can be attributed to arguers on the basis of the type of activity in which they are engaged. In identifying the institutional goals, I follow Craig and consider not only goals which are intentional, formal, and directly responsible for a certain discourse choice, but also goals which are functional, strategic, and only indirectly responsible for discourse choices. The analysis shows that the MEPs pursued three kinds of goals: goals that are 1) assigned to them by the occasion of the debate; 2) related to the powers of Parliament; and 3) associated with the different identities they assume in Parliament. While the pursuit of the occasion-related and powers-related goals gave rise to multiple simultaneous discussions, the pursuit of the identity-related goals guided the MEPs’ choices and formulations in these discussions. (shrink)

This book examines the conceptual contributions of constituent representatives in Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Spanish Parliament has been the stage for the political modernisation of the country. Constitutional debates have historically led to the gradual acknowledgement and broadening – usually unevenly – of citizens’ rights. At the same time, constitutional debates have created opportunities to design institutions and settle legal mechanisms to enforce rights and distribute state resources. The book identifies and analyses rhetorical and conceptual innovations (...) produced in such debates from a historical perspective. (shrink)

Recently, Australia became the second jurisdiction worldwide to legalize the use of mitochondrial donation technology. The Mitochondrial Donation Law Reform (Maeve’s Law) Bill 2021 allows individuals with a family history of mitochondrial disease to access assisted reproductive techniques that prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. Using inductive content analysis, we assessed submissions sent to the Senate Committee as part of a programme of scientific inquiry and public consultation that informed drafting of the Bill. These submissions discussed a range of bioethical (...) and legal considerations of central importance to the political debate. Significantly, submissions from those with a first-hand experience of mitochondrial disease, including clinicians and those with a family history of mitochondrial disease, were in strong support of this legislation. Those in support of the Bill commended the two-staged approach and rigorous licencing requirements as part of the Bill’s implementation strategy. Submissions which outlined arguments against the legislation either opposed the use of these techniques in general or opposed aspects of the implementation strategy in Australia. These findings offer a window into the ethical arguments and perspectives that matter most to those Australians who took part in the Senate inquiry into mitochondrial donation. The insights garnered from these submissions may be used to help refine policy and guidelines as the field progresses. (shrink)

Continuous deep sedation at the end of life is a practice that has been the topic of considerable ethical debate, for example surrounding its perceived similarity or dissimilarity with physician-assisted dying. The practice is generally considered to be legal as a form of symptom control, although this is mostly only assumed. France has passed an amendment to the Public Health Act that would grant certain terminally ill patients an explicit right to continuous deep sedation until they pass away. Such (...) a framework would be unique in the world. In this paper we will highlight and reflect on four relevant aspects and shortcomings of the proposed bill. First, that the bill suggests that continuous deeps sedation should be considered as a sui generis practice. Second, that it requires that sedation should always be accompanied by the withholding of all artificial nutrition and hydration. In the most recently amended version of the legal proposal it is stated that life sustaining treatments are withheld unless the patient objects. Third, that the French bill would not require that the suffering for which continuous deep sedation is initiated is unbearable. Fourth, the question as to whether the proposal should be considered as a way to avoid having to decriminalise euthanasia and/or PAS or, on the contrary, as a veiled way to decriminalise these practices. The French proposal to amend the Public Health Act to include a right to continuous deep sedation for some patients is a unique opportunity to clarify the legality of continuous deep sedation as an end-of-life practice. Moreover, it would recognize that the practice of continuous deep sedation raises ethical and legal issues that are different from those raised by symptom control on the one hand and assisted dying on the other hand. Nevertheless, there are still various issues of significant ethical concern in the French legislative proposal. (shrink)

Continuous deep sedation at the end of life is a practice that has been the topic of considerable ethical debate, for example surrounding its perceived similarity or dissimilarity with physician-assisted dying...

Analysing parliamentary references to the people, this book provides a more nuanced interpretation of eighteenth-century re-evaluations of democracy. It shows how interaction between parliamentarians and the public sphere in different political cultures produced more modern conceptions of the legitimacy of political power.

'Deliberative politics' refers to the role of conversation and arguments in politics. Until recently discussion of deliberative politics took place almost exclusively among political philosophers, but many questions raised in this philosophical discussion cry out for empirical investigation. This book provides the first extended empirical study of deliberative politics, addressing, in particular, questions of the preconditions and consequences of high level deliberation. Using parliamentary debates in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States as an empirical base, the (...) authors measure the level of deliberation by constructing a 'Discourse Quality Index'. As deliberative politics moves to the forefront of political theory, this book makes an important contribution to deliberative democracy. (shrink)

In representative democracies, referendum voting and parliamentary elections provide two fundamentally different methods for determining the majority opinion. We use three mathematical paradoxes – so-called majority voting paradoxes – to show that referendum voting can reverse the outcome of a parliamentary election, even if the same group of voters have expressed the same preferences on the issues considered in the referendums and the parliamentary election. This insight about the systemic contrarieties between referendum voting and parliamentary elections (...) sheds a new light on the debate about the supplementary value of referendums in representative democracies. Using this insight, we will suggest legal conditions for the implementation of referendums in representative democracies that can pre-empt the conflict between the two methods for determining the majority opinion. (shrink)

The present study explores the interplay of evaluation and transitivity in an American and Spanish parliamentary debate by President Obama and PM Rajoy aiming at legitimizing their actions and at convincing candidates to vote for them in the upcoming elections. A further objective is to investigate whether the transitivity and appraisal analyses illustrate the politicians’ ideological positions. Within the general framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), we use the results obtained for Appraisal following Martin and White’s appraisal scheme (...) [Cabrejas-Peñuelas, A. B. (2020). Metaphor, metonymy and evaluation as political devices in American and Spanish parliamentary political discourse. Ibérica, 40, 75–99] and add a study of the interplay with transitivity [Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar. Routledge]. The results reveal that both politicians used transitivity differently: Obama used mental desiderative processes for expressing desires and showed the active role of ‘us’ to bring about positive changes. In contrast, Rajoy preferred relational, verbal and existential processes. These contribute to his particular picture of reality, which is ideological in nature. Also, the results show that evaluation and transitivity were used as an ideological tool for persuasion and legitimization of the politicians’ economic decisions. (shrink)

Jeffrey Goldsworthy's book, Parliamentary Sovereignty: Contemporary Debates, offers a modern defence of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. But it fails to offer a sufficiently clear interpretation of the statement that Parliament can do anything except limit its powers, a statement open to many different interpretations. In 1972, during the passage of the European Communities Bill, law officers declared that it was logically impossible for Parliament to abridge its sovereignty. In consequence of the European Communities Act 1972, the doctrine (...) has undergone a subtle alteration of meaning. The European Union Act 2011 also poses problems for Goldsworthy's position since it imposes a referendum requirement on any significant future transfer of power to the European Union. Such legislation cannot be understood in terms of the manner and form interpretation of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty; and the question of whether the courts can disapply legislation infringing human rights remains open. Questions of the sort, ‘Can Parliament do x?’, are better replaced by questions of the sort ‘What are the rules which regulate Parliament?’. Goldsworthy's work constitutes a brave attempt to rescue the essentially metaphysical doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Nevertheless, the doctrine seems to obscure rather than clarify constitutional issues. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe the way in which argumentative patterns come into being in plenary debate over legislative issues in the European Parliament. What kind of argumentative patterns are to be expected within this macro context? It is shown that the argumentative patterns that come into being in legislative debate in the European Parliament depend for the most part on the problem-solving argumentation that is put forward in the opening speech by the rapporteur of (...) the parliamentary committee report. This argumentation can be pragmatic problem-solving argumentation or complex problem-solving argumentation. The most important prototypical argumentative patterns are investigated in the argumentation put forward by the Members of parliament. This investigation is based on an inventory of the arguments that can in principle be used to support or attack the initial problem-solving argumentation put forward by the rapporteur. (shrink)

SummaryThis article offers a novel and comprehensive account of Walter Bagehot's political thought. It ties together an interpretation of Bagehot's liberal commitment to norms of discussion and deliberation, with an analysis of Bagehot's extensive arguments about the institutions of representative government. We show how Bagehot's opposition to American-style presidentialism, to parliamentary democracy, and to proportional representation were profoundly shaped by his conceptions of government by discussion, and the rule of public opinion. Bagehot's criticisms of English parliamentarianism, both of its (...) pre-1832 and post-1832 varieties were also motivated by those principles, as was his own proposal for parliamentary reform. By examining the whole range of Bagehot's writings on representative government and by connecting his institutional recommendations to his liberal principles, we are also able to better clarify Bagehot's position in Victorian political thought. The article concludes with a discussion of the debate leading up to the Second Reform Act, in which we elucidate Bagehot's disagreements with other prominent exponents of liberalism including John Stuart Mill, the “university liberals,” and Robert Lowe. (shrink)

In 2000, the Netherlands became the first European country to legalize prostitution, a policy supported by Dutch feminists. It distinguishes forced from voluntary prostitution, defining the latter as ‘sex work’, in contrast to feminist positions viewing it as ‘sexual domination’. This article examines the discourses used by parliamentarians in the debates since the 1980s and charts the shift from a traditional moral view to the sex-work frame, creating new meanings of ‘ prostitutes’, ‘clients’ and ‘brothel keepers’ in the process. The (...) new discourse allows for an active female sex worker but desexualizes the nature of the prostitution exchange. Neither does it offer an account of why it is mainly men buying sex from women. The analysis also highlights the contradictions created by the forced/voluntary distinction when speaking of the trafficking of women from poor countries and current anti-migration discourse, as well as the near obliteration of the racial differences between ‘clients’ and ‘workers’ in parliamentary discourse. (shrink)

Taking into account recent pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to irony, the present study investigates irony as a discursive resource Greek parliamentarians employ to fulfill their institutional roles and to negotiate verbal rules of conduct in highly institutionalized and confrontational debates. It is suggested that, besides criticism, parliamentary irony is used to sharpen attacks against the Opposition, to elicit vivid reactions from the audience and disaffiliate from, or align with, participants, to restore parliamentary order, and to establish cohesive ties (...) between successive parliamentary speeches. Moreover, the recorded reactions to irony reveal that irony is considered a common and ‘legitimate’ discursive practice in the Greek parliament and is not negatively evaluated by Greek MPs. Such findings highlight the significance of contextual parameters for the sociolinguistic analysis of pragmatic phenomena and lead to a critical evaluation of those previous results which are based on the study of decontextualized and/or fictional ironical utterances and exchanges. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAfter the revolutionary storm, which had exported Jacobin democracy on the tips of its bayonets and after the epic deeds of the Napoleonic era, which, in the midst of remarkable contradictions, had asserted a number of principles and values of the French Revolution, the moderate or conservative liberal thinkers who wished for the introduction of a representative government and of personal freedom in France and in Italy were faced with the return of the old regime and with attempts of the (...) Restoration to eradicate the reforms of the previous period. The only way these thinkers could save or restore parliamentary institutions and civil rights was to link their efforts to the destinies of the ruling dynasties. In both countries, this move was fiercely opposed, especially by reactionary writers. Hence, this essay will deal with the structure and contours of a debate which set two alignments in opposition, from the time of the Congress of Vienna to the Revolutions of 1820-21 and hinged on the principle of monarchic legitimacy and on the foundations of political authority which, for the first time, were being openly questioned in the midst of the American and the French revolutions. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of historical references and arguments in the current policy debate on non‐invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in Germany. It analyses major documents and opinion statements, including the recent parliamentary debate (2019). The implementation of NIPT is accompanied by concerns and strong criticism, particularly in Germany. Many perceive the new test to be a problematic step that facilitates selective practices and is reminiscent of eugenics. Analysis of the German policy discourse shows that ‘eugenics’, and (...) even more strongly, ‘selection’, are pivotal terms for rejecting NIPT and its coverage by public health insurance. They touch on a historical dimension in public deliberation, namely the fundamental distancing from the inhuman practices of the National Socialist period and anything that resembles them. However, using these terms to criticize prenatal genetic testing is controversial, and recent discourse demonstrates their avoidance as well, with many supporters of a limited coverage by public health insurance contrasting their approach with more widespread screening. Here, ‘screening’ has a negative connotation, and functions to demarcate the debate in a way that may reflect distance from certain modes of historical reasoning, but still expresses a special need to reconcile prenatal testing with the principles of dignity, inclusion and diversity. This article aims to elucidate the concerns involved in the national debates on prenatal testing and to increase awareness of the historical dimensions of the language and reasoning with which such methods are negotiated today and in future. (shrink)

Techniques for resolving some types of inherited mitochondrial diseases have recently been the subject of scientific research, ethical scrutiny, media coverage and regulatory initiatives in the UK. Building on research using eggs from a variety of providers, scientists hope to eradicate maternally transmitted mutations in mitochondrial DNA by transferring the nuclear DNA of a fertilised egg, created by an intending mother at risk of transmitting mitochondrial disease, and her male partner, into an enucleated egg provided by another woman. In this (...) article we examine how egg providers for mitochondrial research and therapy have been represented in stakeholder debates. A systematic review of key documents and parliamentary debates shows that the balance of consideration tilts heavily towards therapeutic egg providers; research egg providers have been ignored and rendered invisible. However, mapping the various designations of therapeutic egg providers shows that their role is so heavily camouflaged that they have only an absent presence in discussions. We explore this puzzling ambivalence towards egg providers whose contributions are necessary to the success of current mitochondrial research and proposed therapies. We suggest that labels that diminish the contributions of egg providers serve certain governance objectives in managing possible future claims about, and by, therapeutic egg providers. We demonstrate that the social positioning of research egg providers is entangled within that of therapeutic egg providers which means that the former can also never receive their due recognition. This article contributes to the wider literature on the governance of new technological interventions. (shrink)

Germany since 1990 has one of the strictest human embryo protection laws, yet according to the Stem Cell Act of 2002 allows, under strict conditions, the import and use of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) for high priority research goals. The author tries to show how this is taken to be coherent by the parliamentary majority (though not necessarily by the general public) in Germany. In doing so, he firstly looks into the chronicle of the debate in Germany (...) showing its different stages since 1999, then dwells upon the relation between the law and the role of ethics in this issue, and thirdly presents the two fundamentally different positions of the German debate, that is, that the human embryo created for IVF purposes is a human being and stands from its very beginnings under the constitutional principles of respect for, and protection of, human life versus the position that before being implanted the human embryo may become a human being and therefore belongs to the human species only potentially, so that its right to life protection may be assessable over against other high priority goals, such as research aiming at possible help for patients with life-endangering diseases. In spite of the Stem Cell Act of 2002, the debate of the German general public goes on, especially due to the recent EU 6th Research Framework Program which plans to also fund hESC research. (shrink)

The factual existence of deep disagreements has an unclear status in the lite-rature. On the one hand, some authors claim that deep disagreements exist in practice, arguing that the parties involved will use non-rational persuasion tactics to resolve the disagreement. On the other hand, some argue that deep disagreements are only theoretically possible because practical constraints will push the parties to find rational ways to resolve the disagreement. This article empirically investigates the factual existence of deep disagreements by analyzing (...) class='Hi'>parliamentary debates on abortion. The analysis results do not allow us to determine whether the debates examined are cases of deep disagreement but rather question whether the distinction between rational argumentation and non-rational persuasion tactics is explanatorily relevant for investigating deep disagreements. (shrink)

In this paper we propose that the concept of mediatization should be used not only in the narrow sense to analyze the impact of media on the operational modes of the political system, but also in more general terms to capture the transformation of the public sphere and the changing conditions for the generation of political legitimacy. More specifically and with regard to the role of political communication on the internet, we focus on the transformative potential of online media in (...) terms of a) publicity: the capacity of the online media to focus public attention on the political process of the EU; b) participation: the capacity of the online media to include plural voices and activate the audience; and c) public opinion formation: the capacity of the online media to enable informed opinions. We test our mediatization model on the online debates that took place during the 2009 EU elections in 12 member-states and at the trans-European level. The findings confirm the mediatizing impact of online political communication on the generation of the political legitimacy of the EU. Online media constitute a virtually shared forum for political communication that political actors and users increasingly occupy developing homogenous patterns of evaluating European integration. Furthermore, the stronghold of offline media in the EU e-sphere and the tendency to discuss the EP elections within the frame of domestic politics reaffirm the key role of national political and media cultures. (shrink)

This study uses evidence from the press and from the parliamentary record to examine the extent to which, and the ways in which, people involved in the public debate over laboratory experiments on human embryos in Britain during the 1980s drew on images from science fiction. It is shown that negative images from science fiction were used in the debate, but that these images could be transformed into resources for defending, as well as attacking, this form of (...) scientific endeavor. It is also shown that other fictional structures were present in the debate and that both sides relied heavily on fictional components to justify their competing appraisals of embryo research. (shrink)

The conceptual history of politics in post-WWII (West-) Germany is connected to the history of academic political science. From the Bundestag plenary debates (beginning in September 1949) both the controversies on the political science itself and the contributors of both contemporary scholars and the ‘classics’ of the understanding of politics can be studied. The digitalisation of parliamentary debates opens up new chances for conceptual research in this regard. The article studies the conceptual commitments in the use of the discipline (...) titles (Politikwissenschaft, Politische Wissenschaft, Politologie, Politikforschung, Politische Theorie, also political science) and actors (Politologe, Politikprofessor, Politstudent etc), and looks at who is mentioned in debates, for example, political scientists in early West Germany (Dolf Sternberger, Theodor Eschenburg, Wilhelm Hennis), and political theorists (Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt), Formulae from Weber’s Politik als Beruf seem to be most frequently evoked in the Bundestag. (shrink)

This article traces the way autonomy has become a recognised value in health care in France. In a country that based its social fundamentals on the very idea of solidarity for many years, autonomy has long been considered a foreign ‘Anglo-American principle’. Taking the example of the end-of-life debate, the article shows, however, how the use of the French term ‘accompagnement’ allowed autonomy to be redefined and to be associated with the concept of solidarity. Exploring the arguments used over (...) the past 25 years in professional guidelines, parliamentary reports, ethics committee reports, and legal texts, the authors describe the shift that took place in public and legal discourses on end-of-life care. The analysis demonstrates how the scope of autonomy has been limited by other social values, such as the protection of the dying person, in order to become an accepted social value in its own right. The example of the French end-of-life debate shows that depending on how the concept of autonomy is adapted and applied in a specific context, it can be compatible with the idea of solidarity. Such compatibility has been challenged previously in the international bioethics debate. By demonstrating the possibility of combining autonomy and solidarity, this article makes an important contribution to the international bioethics debate and to the dialogue between countries that are often perceived as significantly different. (shrink)

We contribute to the scientific debate by studying the storylines, discourses and related normative judgments in parliamentary motions by private members of the Swedish parliament from the time period 2010–2019. The paper makes use of an ecofeminist theoretical framework to problematize these storylines, discourses and normative judgments. We conclude that the focus in the material is on economic and technical issues, while issues of justice play a marginal role. None of the important dimensions of energy justice are adequately (...) considered and many of the dominant storylines and discourses are based on the implicit assumption that issues of justice are insignificant. (shrink)

In the early 1990s Israel underwent a so-called constitutional revolution. According to the champions of this revolution, Israel has essentially become, as a result of this momentous event, a constitutional democracy, upholding individual freedom and liberties and allowing for judicial review of parliamentary legislation. Despite the congratulatory rhetoric, it is generally agreed upon that the constitution is still in need of some essential supplements before Israel can qualify as a fully constitutional democracy. The main question addressed in this paper (...) is the following: is it ‘reasonable’ that Israel take the further necessary steps that qualify it as a fully constitutional democracy? The doubts raised in this regard stem from the very concerns that lead political philosophers (mainly Rawls) to stress the unique value of liberal democracy. As they argue, liberal democracy provides deeply divided societies with the best means to secure their legitimacy and political stability. Israel's political realities, I argue, defy this claim. Moreover, Israel's political realities may also carry a valuable lesson to other states, even to seemingly robust liberal democracies. It is not the purpose of the paper, of course, to argue that Israel's existing rule of government should be embraced by other states – far from that. Israel should undergo some radical changes so that it can protect the rights and interests of all its citizens. Yet, to achieve this purpose, it should transcend, I will argue, liberal democracy. As matters stand, simply strengthening its liberal character, Israel's political system may be exposed to a growing challenge to its legitimacy and stability. It should, therefore, reject liberal democracy and especially the principle of neutrality that is intimately connected with a liberal rule of government and embrace, instead, the ideal of multicultural democracy. This ideal, I argue, is better equipped to answer the need of deeply divided societies to secure their legitimacy and stability. (shrink)