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Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2019

William Selinger
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

I begin the Conclusion by considering the widely felt crisis of parliamentarism that unfolded at the turn of the twentieth century as the rise of electoral democracy led to the rise of a plebiscitary executive, upending previous presumptions about the centrality of parliament to political life. But despite these transformations, the classical liberal theory of parliamentarism persisted, most notably in the writings of Max Weber, who defended a constitutional ideal that was strikingly similar to that of Benjamin Constant. In the decades since Weber, political institutions have evolved even further away from the liberal parliamentary model. Yet the values and concepts of liberal parliamentarism continued to persist in twentieth-century democratic theory. Recent political crises reveal that the liberal constitutional structures put in place during the second half of the twentieth century have by no means overcome the enduring problems of modern representative government, which an earlier tradition of liberal theorists sought to answer through parliamentarism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Parliamentarism
From Burke to Weber
, pp. 194 - 206
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Conclusion
  • William Selinger, University College London
  • Book: Parliamentarism
  • Online publication: 05 July 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108585330.008
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  • Conclusion
  • William Selinger, University College London
  • Book: Parliamentarism
  • Online publication: 05 July 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108585330.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • William Selinger, University College London
  • Book: Parliamentarism
  • Online publication: 05 July 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108585330.008
Available formats
×