Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Chapter One – Introduction: Max Weber as a Political Thinker 1

PART I – POLITICS AND POLITICIANS – WEBERIAN THEMES 15

Chapter Two – Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking and
Politicisation 17

Chapter Three – Politics or the Political? An Historical Perspective on a
Contemporary Non-Debate 29

Chapter Four – Sombart and Weber on Professional Politicians 39

Chapter Five – Max Weber’s Three Types of Professional Politicians:
A Rhetorical Approach 53

PART II – WEBER AS A CONCEPTUAL POLITICIAN 71

Chapter Six – Max Weber’s Reconceptualisation of Freedom 73

Chapter Seven – Was Max Weber a `Nationalist’? A Study in the Rhetoric
of Conceptual Change 89

Chapter Eight – Imagining Max Weber’s Reply to Hannah Arendt:
Remarks on the Arendtian Critique of Representative Democracy 103

Chapter Nine – The State as a Chance Concept: Max Weber’s
De-Substantialisation and Neutralisation of the Concept 119

PART III – A PARLIAMENTARY VISION 135

Chapter Ten – Max Weber, Parliamentarism and the Rhetorical Culture
of Politics 137

Chapter Eleven – `Objectivity’ as Fair Play: Max Weber’s Parliamentary
Redescription of a Normative Concept 153

Chapter Twelve – Max Weber’s Rhetoric of `Objectivity’:
The Parliament as a Paradigm for Scholarly Disputes 169

Chapter Thirteen – Was Max Weber Wrong about Westminster? 185

List of Abbreviations for the Weber Editions 201

Bibliography 203

Index 221

About the Author

Kari Palonen has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Helsinki. He is Professor of Political Science at University of Jyväskylä since 1983, with emeritus status since 2015. In addition he has been Academy of Finland Professor in two 5 years periods (1998-2003, 2008-2012), Director of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change (2006-2011), co-founder of the History of Concepts Group 1998 and co-chair of the ECPR SG Political Concepts since 2015. His research Interests include: the concept of politics and its history; political thought and methodology of Max Weber; principles and practices of conceptual history; parliamentary concepts, procedure and rhetoric.

Reviews

'In this very needed monograph on Max Weber's political thought, Kari Palonen engages through the work of this great theorist with some of the most urgent issues of our times, like the role of temporality in political deliberation, the relationship between ethics and politics, and the political style of thinking and acting politically. A tour de force and a challenging text for those who study and practice politics.' Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University