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The figure of the 'politician' occupies a central yet fraught position in the media landscape of contemporary Europe. A frequent source of criticism in everyday news bulletins, the term itself is loaded with an emotional significance that corresponds with prevailing perceptions of current political administrations. In this geographically wide-ranging assessment of the figure of the politician in modern and contemporary Europe, Pasi Ihalainen, Rosario López, Kari Palonen, and Henk te Velde re-examine the trajectory of terms like 'politician' and 'statesman', illuminating its correspondence with emerging, political trends. Drawing on a variety of data surveys from several European countries, this volume spotlights how profoundly the concept of representative democracy is shifting.
About the author
Pasi Ihalainen is Professor of Comparative European History at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His many publications include his most recent book The Springs of Democracy: National and Transnational Debates on Constitutional Reform in the British, German, Swedish and Finnish Parliaments, 1917–1919 (2017). He is a board member of the research network EuParl.net.
Rosario López is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Málaga (Spain), Editor-in-Chief of Global Intellectual History (Taylor & Francis) and board member of the History of Concepts Group. Her research concerns the fields of philosophy, history and politics, with a special focus on methodological approaches to parliamentarism and the histories of economic and political liberalism.
Kari Palonen is Professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has published extensively on the concept of politics and its history, principles and practices of conceptual history, and the political thought and methodology of Max Weber, among other topics. His latest monograph is Politik als parlamentarischer Begriff. Perspektiven aus den Plenardebatten des Deutschen Bundestags(Leverkusen 2021).
Henk te Velde is a Professor of History and the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University. He has published about the history of nationalism, liberalism, leadership styles and political traditions in the Netherlands, and of parliamentary and political rhetoric in Britain and France. He recently co-edited Continuities in an Age of Revolutionary Change: Political Practices in Europe and the Americas, c. 1750–1850 (Palgrave Macmillan 2022).
