Parliamentarism: A Politics of Temporal and Rhetorical Distances

Abstract

Frank Ankersmit has revised our understanding of political representation in terms of an aesthetic distance between the represented and representatives. The advantage of the parliamentary politics lies also in a rhetorical and temporal distance between the practices of MPs and those of the citizen-voters. The parliamentary democracy is constituted temporally through its procedures and practices. The parliamentary time is rhetorical, based on speaking for and against, in utramque partem, and the parliamentary procedure consists of temporal units aiming at guaranteeing that opposed points of view can be heard. To speak in the presence of the adversaries in the parliament alludes to the omnipresence of alternatives in parliamentary politics. The citizens, occasional politicians (Weber), can liberate themselves in the ballot box from their everyday ›being‹ and vote as if they were MPs. So we could give a rhetorical redesciption to Rousseau’s dictum that Englishmen are free only on the election day.