The parliamentary politics is a labyrinth. Skilled parliamentarians are seldom able to explicate their own politics. Outsiders do not understand that the parliamentary game is different from partisan and electoral politics, and scholars tend to see merely the government vs. opposition divide. The singularity of the parliament is easily lost. To enter to the parliamentary labyrinth, Quentin Skinner's rhetorical studies as well as on Max Weber's political theory and methodology have served as main inspiration.

The catchword of the project the research project The Politics of Dissensus. Parliamentarism, Rhetoric and Conceptual History  is 'dissensus'. Parliamentary politics presupposes a dissensus of perspectives and a debate on motions: without judging from opposing perspectives no motion can be properly understood. In no other institution dissensus is as deeply built in as in parliament, and in order to understand politics as debating and dissensual activity we shall direct the attention to parliaments. The point is not to 'apply political theories to parliaments', but to render intelligible the political theory of parliament as a dissensual assembly, study the procedural principles, conceptual commitments and rhetorical moves that are distinctive to parliamentary politics.

The attention to dissensus and debate allows us to rewrite the history of the concept(s) of parliamentarism, reactivate rhetorical studies on parliaments as a deliberative assembly and reconnect political theory with the interpretation of parliamentary procedures. The dissensual perspective also allows us to understand that not all politics in parliament is 'parliamentary' and the dissensual parliamentary style of politics can be conducted outside parliaments proper. Prof. Dr. Kari Palonen's study on Max Weber's reconceptualisation of "objectivity" also suggests a rhetorical and parliamentary paradigm that might enable open and fair academic controversies.

In the project, doc. Tapani Turkka writes a monograph on the changing relations between parliament, constitution and state in the context of European unification. Taru Haapala writes her PhD thesis on the relation to the 19th century Westminster parliamentary procedure and rhetoric in Oxford and Cambridge debating societies and Hanna-Mari Kivistö her PhD thesis on the rhetorical and parliamentary origins of the asylum paragraph in the West German Grundgesetz of 1949. Kari Palonen is currently writing on the politics of parliamentary procedure.

Several post-doctoral scholars and PhD students have served the project for shorter periods, and an active and multinational PhD team operates around it. A conference volume Parliament and Europe (ed. Wiesner, Turkka, Palonen) was published by Nomos in 2011, a joint volume of project members with the title The Politics of Dissensus is planned.

The project has co-organised annual rhetoric-related doctoral courses and other events with the PolCon Centre of Excellence. With with the Concepta network and Pasi Ihalainen's Academy project it organised an interdisciplinary research course Re-thinking Parliaments in June 2011. The 2012 VII Jyväskylä Symposium on Political Thought and Conceptual History will have as a topic Parliamentary and Civic Politics, combined with a research course.

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