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Travelling is today an important aspect of the European political agenda-setting of both individual actors and institutions. The paradigms of car and air travel are contested in terms of climate change; I continue the contestation from the perspective of political liberty. Three paradigms of personal travel – by car, by flight and by train – are confronted with two concepts of liberty: the freedom from interference versus the freedom from dependence. Three ideal types of travel – travelling to, travelling away and travelling around – are judged from the perspective of the two freedoms. Train travel by Interrail is a political innovation that links the freedom of movement to the freedom from dependence on the national states. The EU could offer, with systematic and coherent pro-railway support, travellers' freedom from dependence, and I suggest some simple pro-railway measures and steps towards parliamentarisation of travel politics. The conceptual point of the article is that freedom of movement can also be regarded as a part of freedom from dependence. In the Postscript I dispute the closing of borders under the corona lockdown and speculate how to retain the freedom of train travel under the condition of keeping the necessary distance from others. ; peerReviewed

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. ; peerReviewed

This article is a thought experiment. It constructs ideal types of
political representation in the sense of Max Weber. Inspired by Quentin
Skinner and others, the aim is to give a rhetorical turn to contemporary
debates on representation. The core idea is to claim an 'elective affinity'
(Wahlverwandschaft, as Weber says following Goethe) between forms
of representation and rhetorical genres of their justification. The four
ideal types of political representation are designated as plebiscitary,
diplomatic, advocatory, and parliamentary, corresponding to the epideictic,
negotiating, forensic, and deliberative genres of rhetoric as the
respective ways to plausibly appeal to the audience. I discuss historical
approximations of each type of representation and apply the combination
of representation and rhetorical genres to the understanding of the
European Union's unconventional system of 'separation of powers'. I
conclude with supporting parliamentary representation, based on dissensus
and debate, with complements from other types.

Max Weber analysed politics from the perspective of Chancen for actors, and he never separated world politics from domestic politics. The 'Westphalian balance' between great European powers shaped Weber's views on the international polity. However, he also regarded Western individualism, human rights, and parliamentary democracy as necessary qualities to possess in order to be recognised as a great power. This vision provided the basis for his wartime critique of the expansionist tendencies of in German foreign policy and for his demand for the parliamentarisation of German politics. After the end of WWI, Weber used Woodrow Wilson's idea of the League of Nations as the basis for a proposal on new treaty legislation on war guilt. By doing so, he also identified chances for introducing supranational elements to world politics. The final part of the article applies a Weberian political imagination to the interpretation of the United Nations and the European Union as supranational institutions. ; peerReviewed

The article offers a rereading of Weber's Politik als Beruf as a conceptualisation of politics contingent and controversial activity in terms of the four aspects of politics: politicisation, polity, politicking and policy. Weber discusses politics as a concept abstracted from its content. All four aspects can be found in his exposition of the concept. Weber mentions first policy as the direction of politics and demarcates his focus on the state-type polities. Then, he presents the formula on politics as striving for power, consisting of chances to politicise its distinct shares, and discusses historical types of professional politicians and their styles of politicking. Weber illustrates the opposition between independent politicking and its result as a policy that the officials must execute. His triad passion for a cause, sense of responsibility and detached judgement among politicians correspond to the references to politicking, polity and politicisation, whereas the ethic of responsibility refers to situational politicking, but the ethic of conviction to a strict policy, which in some cases contains chances to politicise the situation. Weber's final metaphor of politics as slow and patient drilling of hard board can be read in a way containing all the four aspects of politics. ; peerReviewed

This article is a thought experiment. It constructs ideal types of political representation in the sense of Max Weber. Inspired by Quentin Skinner and others, the aim is to give a rhetorical turn to contemporary debates on representation. The core idea is to claim an 'elective affinity' (Wahlverwandschaft, as Weber says following Goethe) between forms of representation and rhetorical genres of their justification. The four ideal types of political representation are designated as plebiscitary, diplomatic, advocatory, and parliamentary, corresponding to the epideictic, negotiating, forensic, and deliberative genres of rhetoric as the respective ways to plausibly appeal to the audience. I discuss historical approximations of each type of representation and apply the combination of representation and rhetorical genres to the understanding of the European Union's unconventional system of 'separation of powers'. I conclude with supporting parliamentary representation, based on dissensus and debate, with complements from other types. ; peerReviewed

Oxford Dictionaries chose "post-truth" as the "Word of the Year 2016", while the association of German linguists (Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache) did the same for "postfaktische Politik". "Alternative facts", launched by Kellyanne Conway concerning the attendance at Donald Trump's inaugural, was a third variant in this cluster. In this article, I shall discuss Max Weber's parliamentary perspective on the critique of given facts and of the powers of science in relation to the debates around post-truth politics. A critical assessment of Leo Strauss's critique of Weber as a nihilist and relativist introduces the problematic. One aim of the article is to illustrate how even trivial slogans can be situated in the history of political concepts, political theory and rhetoric.

Representative, legislative and deliberative assemblies are commonly called parliaments. The three types of assemblies share many procedures and practices, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union includes all three types among its members. Nonetheless, as ideal types in the Weberian sense, the three kinds of political assemblies do differ in their modes of acting and thinking politically. This article is a thought experiment to sketch the three ideal types by working out a number of key aspects of their distinctive political features. The political action that characterizes representative assemblies is pre-parliamentary elections, legislative assemblies are judged by their post-parliamentary results, while deliberative assemblies are characterized by their parliamentary debates pro et contra. Whereas the parliamentary studies of recent decades have largely concentrated on the representative and legislative aspects, this article focuses on parliamentary procedure and rhetoric, revaluating from this perspective the intra-parliamentary aspect of parliamentary deliberation. ; peerReviewed

The publication of the Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe volumes, including his letters and a recent study of Hinnerk Bruhns, have revised the canonical view on Weber as a German nationalist. With a conceptual and rhetorical analysis of his essays Deutschland unter europäischen Weltmächten (1916) and Zum Thema Kriegsschuld (early 1919), I offer an alternative view on Weber's relationship to European politics. He defended the 'Westphalian' system of balance between great powers, to which he wanted after the end of the War to incorporate Woodrow Wilson's plans for a new League. Weber was a critic of German wartime policy, maintained his Anglophile sympathies, and saw in tsarist Russia the main threat both to the balance between powers and also to the European Kultur, to which he did oppose barbarism, not the Francophone Zivilisation. Weber supported the parliamentarisation of German politics and sketched in the 1919 article a proposal for new regulations of warfare in international law. Although Weber could not imagine the EU's supra-national Parliament and Commission as new elements in the balance of European powers, it would be plausible to advise, in the Weberian spirit, the small member state to strengthen these supra-nation institutions. ; peerReviewed

Parliamentary politics is inherently procedural. The parliament debates and decides only questions that have been put on its agenda. Two famous tracts on the British parliamentary procedure, Jeremy Bentham's Essay on Political Tactics and Thomas Erskine May's A Treatise upon the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament provide an inventory of controversies for competent parliamentarians. Both tracts regard parliamentary procedure itself as controversial, and both discuss how to deal with the controversies in a fair manner. The tracts differ in style: Bentham, relying on his own parliamentary imagination, is able to identify possible items of dispute, whereas May's interpretation of parliamentary procedure includes the history of parliamentary controversies. For both, playing with time is an inherent part of the Westminster procedure, based on a combination of spending and saving time, in linking the parliamentary itinerary of the motions to the parliamentary calendar. Both strongly defend the Parliament as an exemplary deliberative assembly. May, however, thematises the increase of agenda items and the increasing scarcity of parliamentary time as well as ways of preventing parliamentary paralysis due to obstruction. This leads May to revise the fair play principle to include the fair distribution of parliamentary time.