Kari Palonen

The Civic Constellation Project Members’ Website

Kari Palonen

Professor of Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä since 1983, Director of the Finnish Centre of Political Thought and Conceptual Change and Editor-in-Chief of Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory. Along with Melvin Richter, founder in 1998 of the History of Political and Social Concepts Group. Academy of Finland Professor from 1998 to 2003 and from 2008 to 2012, and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, he has been, among other international appointments, the Aby Warburg Professor at Warburg Haus, Hamburg, in 2006. Between 2003 and 2005, he chaired the European Science Foundation Scientific Network The Politics and History of European Democratisation (PHED).

His research interests focus on the fields of the conceptual history of politics, Max Weber’s political theory and methodology, principles and practices of conceptual history (Quentin Skinner, Reinhart Koselleck), and concepts, procedures and rhetoric of parliamentary politics.

Since 1980 he has studied the history of the concept politics on the basis of German, French, English and Finnish primary sources and articulated an interpretative perspective with special emphasis on the activity of politics. Besides the synthetic work The Struggle with Time: A Conceptual History of ‘Politics’ as an Activity (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006; second edition with new Preface 2014), Palonen has published Politik als Handlungsbegriff. Horizontwandel des Politikbegriffs in Deutschland, 1890-1933 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1985) on German conceptions; Die Thematisierung der Politik als Phänomen. Eine Interpretation der Geschichte des Begriffs Politik im Frankreich des 20. Jahrhunderts (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1989) on French conceptions; Das ‘Webersche Moment’. Zur Kontingenz des Politischen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998) and Eine Lobrede für Politiker. Ein Kommentar zu Max Webers “Politik als Beruf” (Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 2002) on Weber; Rhetorik des Unbeliebten. Lobreden auf Politiker im Zeitalter der Demokratie (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012) on defences of politicians and Re-Thinking Politics (2007, a compilation of essays from 1983 to 2006).

On the principles and practices of conceptual history, a research line began in the 1990s, he has published, most notably, Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), Die Entzauberung der Begriffe: Das Umschreiben der politischen Begriffe bei Quentin Skinner und Reinhart Koselleck (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004) and Politics and Conceptual Histories. Rhetorical and Temporal Perspectives (Baden-Baden: Nomos in cooperation with Bloomsbury, London, forthcoming 2014).

Regarding the concepts, procedures and rhetoric of parliamentary politics, his most recent work line, initiated in the 2000s, he has published, among many papers and edited volumes, The Politics of Limited Times: The Rhetoric of Temporal Judgment in Parliamentary Democracies (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008), the methodological essay “Objektivität” als faires Spiel. Wissenschaft als Politik bei Max Weber (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010), and The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure. The Formation of the Westminster Procedure as a Parliamentary Ideal Type (Leverkusen: Budrich 2014).

E-mail: kari.palonen (at) jyu.fi

Web: https://www.jyu.fi/ytk/en/faculty/staff/opetus-ja-tutkimushenkilokunta/palonen-kari