Kari Palonen

The Struggle with Time

A Conceptual History of 'Politics' as an Activity

A 2006/6103

LIT
Table of Contents
1. Politics as a concept « 9
1.1. Toward a historization of the concept of politics 9
1.2. The horizon shift 11
1.3. Drawing the conceptual horizons 15
1.4. The temporalization of politics 17
1.5. The rhetorical redescription 19
1.6. A repertoire of topoi 21
1.7. Conceptual change and political practices 26
1.8. The practices of conceptual reading and interpretation 28
1.9. The plan of this book 31
2. Three concepts of politics:
discipline, sphere and activity 33
2.1. Politics-as-discipline 33
2.1.1. The polis, the city-republic and the state 33
2.1.2. The vernacularization of the polit-vocabulary 35
2.2. The dissolution of the discipline-concept 38
2.2.1. The differentiation of'the political' 39
2.2.2. The formation of a political sphere 44
2.2.3. Indications of the political aspect 46
2.2.4. The character of the horizon shift 52
2.3. Politics-as-sphere , 54
2.3.1. References to spatial thinking 54
2.3.2. The rhetoric of differentiations 56
2.3.3. Demarcating the political in the legal discourse 59
2.4. The origins of the activity-concept 61
2.4.1. Conditions of a temporal understanding of politics 61
2.4.2. The formation of the activity-concept 64
3. Changing practices as conceptual challenges 73
3.1. Democratization and the professionalization of'politics' 73
3.1.1. Politicians in democracy 73
3.1.2. Numbers, machine and time 75
3.1.3. Organization and oligarchy 78
3.2. The end of gentleman-style politics 81
3.3. Differences between political cultures 83
4. Irregularity 88
4.1. Politics vs. laws 89
4.2. The oddity of politics 94
4.4. The contingency of politics 95
4.5. The ambiguity of politics 100
4.6. Conceptualizing politics via negationis 102
5. Judgment 104
5.1. The reformulation of an old topos 104
5.2. The political capacity of voters 105
5.3. The competence of politicians 110
5.4. Political sense 115
5.5. From prudence to judgment 122
6. Policy 124
6.1. Policy as politics 124
6.2. Policy as a normative regulation 128
6.3. Realpolitik and the criteria of a policy 132
6.4. Policy as regulated politicking 137
6.5. Policy as an abstraction from politics .144
7. Deliberation 147
7.1. Politics as discussion 148
7.2. Persuasion in elections 154
7.3. The rhetoric of the persuasive situation 161
7.4. Performative politics 165
7.5. Deliberation, persuasion, performance 171
8. Commitment 173
8.1. Politics as willing 174
8.2. The binding decision 181
8.3. Division 186
8.4. Choice 190
8.5. Commitment and contingency 196
9. Contestation 199
9.1. Conflict as a precondition of politics 200
9.2. Provoking controversies 205
9.3. Change 208
9.4. Politics from below •. 211
9.5. The moment of contestation 213
10. Possibility 216
10.1. The art of the possible 217
10.2. The art of the impossible 219
10.3. Opportunism ; 224
10.4. Chance 229
10.5. The horizon of the possible 234
11. Situation 238
11.1. The scarce time ofpoliticians 238
11.2. Seizing the moment 241
11.3. The utilization of the occasions 246
11.4. Times ofpolitics 251
11.5. Thinking in terms of situations 259
12. Play & game 262
12.1. The decline ofpolitics into a game 263
12.2. The ambiguities of game : 266
12.3. The fascination of the game 271
12.4. The politics of playing 276
12.5. The devaluation of the seriousness 282
13. The time-spectrum ofpolitics ". 285
13.1. Politics - a concept of low intertextuality 285
13.2. Intra- and intertopical conceptual shifts .287
13.3. The temporalization of scarcity 294
13.4. Politics - a spectrum of activities 298
References
1. Primary sources 300
2. Literature 322
Index of authors 329