Schedule
30.10.—1.11.2024, Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ (Jyväskylä, Finland)
30 October (Wednesday)
Arriving to Jyväskylä
Check-in to Hotel Alba
31 October (Thursday)
Morning session (D209)
Chair: Hugo Bonin
9 – 9:30: Welcoming words (Zachris Haaparinne & Anne Engelst Nørgaard)
9:30 – 10:30: Piotr Kuligowski, Petitions within Sub-Imperial Entanglement: The Case of Polish-speaking Representative Assemblies, 1815-48
10:30 – 11:30: Anne Engelst Nørgaard, Petitioning and Representation—Petitioning the Different Danish Parliaments in the Long 19th century
11:30 – 12:45: Lunch at Tilia
Afternoon session (D209)
Chair: Cesare Cuttica
12:45 – 13:45: Karen Lauwers, Algerian petitions to the French Lower House (1880s–1930s)
13:45 – 14:45: Henry Miller, Petitions and Parliamentary Representation in Twentieth-Century Britain
14:45 – 15:15: Snacks and coffee
15:15 – 16:15 Zachris Haaparinne, Negotiating Representation through Petitioning—A Discursive Approach
16:15 – 17:15: Neal Allen, Petitioning their Government in the 1960s – Citizen Letters to Members of Parliament about the 1968 Race Relations Act and the Politics of Democratic Accountability
18 – : Dinner at Hotel Alba
1 November (Friday)
Morning session (H501)
Chair: Zachris Haaparinne
9 – 10: Roraima Estaba Amaiz, Race, Citizenship, and the Rights of Free Black People in the individual Petitions of the Late Spanish Atlantic in America (1795—1825) (Zoom)
10 – 10:45: Pasi Ihalainen, Merging Conceptual and Computation History to Study the Transnational Evolution of Parliamentary Democracy
10:45 – 11:30: Discussion and closing words
11:30 - : Lunch
Call for Papers:
This workshop focuses on the tensions and transformations of the relationship between the people and their representatives by discussing how people across Europe (including colonial settlements and territories) have used petitions to approach parliaments from circa 1700 to the present. From the eighteenth century onwards, parliaments consolidated as powerful decision-making bodies, taking centre stage in most representative systems. As institutions whose power is often legitimised in their claim to represent the people, this workshop seeks to investigate how that relationship has developed alongside the development of parliaments in modern political history. More specifically, how have people approached these central institutions over the past three hundred years, how have the practices of doing so changed in the long run, and how are patterns of petitioning related to broader societal changes? What do these changes reveal about the changing conceptions of parliamentary representation?
To understand how these practices evolved across time and space and how different societal conditions have influenced them, we welcome papers on cases across the continent, including the colonial settlements outside 'geographical Europe.' Contributions are encouraged (but not restricted) to address some of the following questions:
- What sort of language and practices did petitioning involve, and which audiences did they seek to address? What means were used to convince parliamentarians?
- How were petitions received and treated in parliament? What institutional transformations resulted from the 'rise of petitions'?
- How has petitioning influenced how actors outside parliament perceive their relationship with 'their representatives' and vice versa?
- How was petitioning related to the emergence of other participatory practices, such as electioneering, voting, and party activism? How was it related to and influenced by the emergence of mass-parties and new social movements?
- How do transnational petitioning practices intersect with national political cultures? What do the differences in petitioning practices tell us about the broader differences between the political cultures of European states?
Paper proposals (250 words) and short biographies (250 words) are to be submitted to zachris.e.haaparinne@jyu.fi and anne.e.norgaard@ntnu.no by 1 September 2024. Applicants will receive a confirmation of acceptance by 9 September. For further information during summer (21 June – 31 July), please contact hela-harjoittelija@campus.jyu.fi.
The organisers will cover travel and accommodation expenses.
Pending on participants' interest, we hope the workshop will be a stepping stone towards producing a special issue on the theme in an academic journal.
