Tapani Turkka, Ph.D
Researcher
e-mail: tapani.turkka@uta.fi
Postal address:
Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences
P.O. Box 35 (MaB)
FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä
Finland
The Possibilities of Parliamentarism
The research project deals with two phenomena. On the one hand it is a question of John Locke’s political thought in the Second Treatise, especially of the concept of political power. On the other hand the project is about parliamentarism.
In the project, these aspects are closely knit together. In my view, parliamentarism means, in fact, the political use of state power in the mode Locke envisaged, in the form of a definition, in the XV Chapter of the Second Treatise. This aspect of Locke’s political thought I have recently highlighted in my book The Origins of Parliamentarism: A Study of Sandys’ Motion (Nomos, 2007).
The research project is divided in to two parts. The first part (Political power and Rhetoric in Locke’s Second Treatise) deals with a neglected aspect in Locke studies, Locke’s resort to rhetoric in the Second Treatise. The second part is about the effects of contemporary developments in constitutionalism on parliamentarism, i.e. on political use of power in global, EU and national levels.