The Politics of Limited Times: The Rhetoric of Temporal Judgment in Parliamentary Democracies

Politics is inherently a play with time. The Politics of Limited Times offers a temporal reading of politics, combining ideal typical, rhetorical, and historical approaches. The study continues the author's work on the history of the concept of politics with a rhetorical analysis of the institutions [...]
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Politics is inherently a play with time. The Politics of Limited Times offers a temporal reading of politics, combining ideal typical, rhetorical, and historical approaches. The study continues the author's work on the history of the concept of politics with a rhetorical analysis of the institutions and practices of playing with time. The parliamentarization and democratization of politics render the temporal horizons of politics shorter than in monarchic and bureaucratic regimes. The temporal layers of regular and recurrent occasions for change can be divided into individual lifetime, momentum, time-span, and calendar. This book contains chapters dealing with the democratization of suffrage, the alternation in government, parliamentary procedures and rhetorical practices, and the times politicians illustrate the interplay and opposition these layers have with each other. The concluding chapters connect the temporal layers to the play with the scarce time and to a defense of the short temporal horizons as the main advantage of parliamentary democracies. If a proverb says "statesmen think about next generations, politicians about next elections," this book encourages its readers to think like politicians.