Thinking Parliamentary Politics as an Ideal Type

Abstract

The chapter discusses in detail Max Weber’s concept of ideal type, as a modus of knowledge that connects the contingent and controversial activities of scholarship and parliamentary politics. Weber regards the constantly changing reality as inexhaustible by any concepts. However, concepts offer competing ideal-typical perspectives on the interpretation of the changing realities. For Weber, the research process is a contingent and open-ended practice in which new perspectives contain chances to provoke conceptual revisions, whereas the absence of new perspectives would lead to stagnation. Understanding realised histories presupposes speculation with ideal types. The procedures and practices of Westminster parliament serve in this book as the historical approximation of the parliamentary ideal type of politics. When discussing specific topics, Westminster principles and practices are frequently quoted as the main ‘real world’ connection, around which the ideal type will be formed.