Parliaments as Living Forums: Debate, Democracy and Change

Theme: Parliaments & Constitutions

Published: 1 July 2026

Summary
Historians Paul Seaward and Pasi Ihalainen discuss parliaments as dynamic forums where competing worldviews meet, debate, and shape public discourse. Rejecting the idea of parliament as a single agent, they trace how parliamentary roles evolved - from medieval petitions to modern legislative, judicial and communicative functions - and how representative democracy expanded through 19th–20th century reforms and suffrage. They examine participatory democracy, noting early internet optimism, later social-media backlash, and the differing uses of referendums. Looking ahead they stress teaching critical history, face-to-face deliberation, and clear definitions of liberal democracy. Major challenges include global problems that exceed national parliaments’ reach. Despite risks, both speakers are broadly optimistic about democracy’s resilience and value the Collegium’s interdisciplinary research environment and the ongoing importance of public engagement.

Keywords
Parliaments, democracy, participatory democracy, referendums, history of parliaments, debate

Suggested Link/s
About: Pasi Ihalainen External link, opens in new window.
About: Paul Seaward

Transcript of the Episode

Paul Seaward 00:08
My particular hobby horse is, perhaps, is the way in which we think of parliament, as if it's an agent. Historically, we do this a lot. We say parliament did this, parliament did that. Politically, we do it a lot too. Governments like to say parliament decided to do such and such. Of course, what they always mean is not that there is this mind called parliament, which decided to do something, but they mean that they themselves decided to do it. A government prime minister and their cabinet, or whatever, decided to do it. They got their party to back them, and they voted it through against opposition in parliament, so parliament is a channel through which all of this happens. It isn't an agent

Pasi Ihalainen 00:45
For me parliaments are an exceptional forum of debate, something that does not exist anywhere else in societies. It's a place where different world views and ideologies, their representatives come together at the same time in the same place and start to debate on the items in the agenda, which is often set by the government, of course. But they make their own interpretations of what has happened previously. Where are we? What is the state of affairs, and what should be done?

Natalie von der Lehr 01:22
Welcome to SCAS Talks, a podcast by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. My name is Natalie von der Lehr, and today I'm joined by Paul Seaward and Passi Ihaleinen. Paul Seawood is emeritus director of the History of Parliament Trust in London and a SCAS fellow during the spring of 2026. He has been looking into political assemblies across Europe - how different countries' assembly traditions grew, influenced each other, and adapted to different social and institutional settings. Pasi Ihalainen is Professor of Comparative European History at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. He was a fellow at SCAS in 2010 and is now visiting. As an Academy of Finland Professor he studies the history of representative democracy, especially the tensions between parliaments and the people from the 18th century to today. And this is the first episode on our theme "Parliaments and Constitutions". Very welcome to SCAS Talks and the studio.

Paul Seaward 02:23
Thank you.

Pasi Ihalainen 02:24
Thanks very much.

Natalie von der Lehr 02:25
Could you each say a few words about yourselves?

Paul Seaward 02:28
Thanks, Natalie. I'm Paul Seaward. I'm a Historian, originally of the 17th century, but I've, for a long time, I've been working much more broadly. My current big project is the history of British Parliament, the English British United Kingdom Parliament. It changes its name over time. It's a very famous history. It's a very traditional subject, but I want to approach it in a rather different way, not as, not as pure politics, but as looking at it as an institution, as something, as a body that has all sorts of different ramifications throughout a whole political community, so that's the current project. Here at SCAS I'm, I'm looking in a much more transnational way at some international comparisons with Sweden, with Poland, and so on.

Pasi Ihalainen 03:15
Hello, my name is Pasi Ihalainen. So I started with the 18th century, so I worked on 18th century political parties, how they emerged as a secular, slightly more modern phenomenon. Then I moved on to the concepts of democracy and popular sovereignty, which are already quite close to what I do today. Then I moved on to the 20th century already, started that work here at SCAS 16 years ago, analyzing how parliamentarians reacted to the Russian Revolution. How they redefined constitutions, the role of the people, democracy, and parliament in the late 1910s. And later on, I've worked a little bit on the concepts of internationalism as a counter concept or related concept to nationalism, on the concept of politician. And yeah, now I'm writing a book on the long term history of representative democracy as we understand it. So now I'm focusing mainly on how the British, French, and German parliamentarians have defined democracy since the 19th century, but also make some excursions to smaller states, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden, of course, and sometimes also Denmark and Norway.

Natalie von der Lehr 04:32
So this is the first episode in our theme "Parliaments and Constitutions" - why not dive a bit deeper into the concept of parliament. Paul, would you like to say a few words about that?

Paul Seaward 04:45
Pasi and I approach this subject slightly differently, and that will be interesting, I think. I think of parliaments as, from the point of view, perhaps, of political experience, a parliament is a very complex thing. Our idea of parliament is usually straightforward. The idea is usually about how it does legislation, how it makes our laws, and so on, and is about elections and government. But I want to deconstruct that and take the roof off, as it were, and look at all of these different little bits that are going on. My particular hobby horse is, perhaps, is the way in which we think of Parliament as if it's an agent. Historically, we do this a lot. We say Parliament did this, Parliament did that. Politically, we do it a lot too. Governments like to say Parliament decided to do such and such. Of course, what they always mean is not that there is this mind called Parliament, which decided to do something, but they mean that they themselves decided to do it. A government prime minister and their cabinet, or whatever, decided to do it. They got their party to back them, and they voted it through against opposition in Parliament. So, parliament is a channel through which all of this happens. It isn't an agent, and if you look historically over a long period, that has changed. What parliament does has changed. If you look at a medieval parliament, it's all about petitions, it's all about asking the king to do things, to change things, to give individuals particular benefits, and so on. It's often what we regard as judicial and legal functions are mixed up with these legislative and these functions about making the law. Applying the law, and making the law are far from easily divided. So I think a parliament is a much more flexible, much more complicated institution than we like to think now, and exploring those differences and those changes are certainly what I'm, I'm trying to do at the moment. Institutionally, of course, is another aspect of this. Is a parliament a corporate body? It's a very interesting question. The British case is very fascinating. Parliament doesn't really have a corporate identity. There isn't a sort of legal body that you can really call parliament that has the ability to be represented in court and all of those things. It's unlike any other body that I can think of.

Pasi Ihalainen 07:13
For me, parliaments are an exceptional forum of debate, something that does not exist anywhere else in societies. It's a place where different world views and ideologies, their representatives come together at the same time in the same place and start to debate on the items in the agenda, which is often set by the government, of course. But they make their own interpretations of what has happened previously. Where are we? What is the state of affairs, and what should be done? They conceptualize reality differently, and they express these views, and also try to influence, of course, influence their own group. So, there are certain common policy lines that is being followed, discursively constructed, then maybe trying to persuade the other parties, which is very difficult, of course, it rarely happens, but that's what you basically do when you speak in parliament, but importantly they also are communicating with extra parliamentary audiences, very different kind. So they are talking to, in modern times, they are talking through not just radio and TV, but also social media, and of course, conventional press to different potential voters, different groups. It's a kind of nexus, meeting place, of different discourses moving in societies, arriving at the same place, and then starting to debate. And of course it's recycling much of what's going on elsewhere in society, but these situations themselves open possibilities for being innovative. And it can happen, especially if it's a very creative parliament, which is very much the case in France. There's a lot of interjections. I mean, people are arguing against you and challenging the speaker, and that's of course not allowed in most Northern European countries, even though there are, I think, the most appreciated parliamentarian in Finland, he has been there since 79, so it's his 47th year. He is very talented in shouting, chanting, and he's appreciated. He's very, very good in that. It's not considered disturbance if you shout against, protest in a right way at a certain moment. But anyway, what I'm saying, that it's very, can be surprisingly dynamic process, this discourse debate, and can produce some, not just confrontation, sometimes perhaps even compromise, but anyway, that kind of linguistic innovations that then affect society outside. And what we are arguing, we are kind of challenging the conventional interpretation that parliament is somehow isolated from society, it's the elite debating, and it's just theater, because the decisions have been made elsewhere - that's the argument I often, often hear. But I'm totally opposed to that, because I think it's important to, not necessarily the decision only matters, but also the process. So, what is the kind of discursive process which reflects all this entire spectrum of views on this issue? And then it affects the way that policies are run and the policy discourse goes on. And it's surprisingly synchronic as well compared to public discourse. That's perhaps something that we have been able to show so ever since the 18th century in any country which has had a certain sufficient amount of freedom of speech and printing, parliaments have been quite well synchronous in these causes on democracy, for instance, compared to at least quality press and printed literature. And even I would say theoretical debates, even though in relation to theoretical debates there are certain time lags. For me, parliament is essentially a meeting place of different discourse. It's that kind of nexus in which we can get somehow a fuller picture on what is being thought politically in society.

Natalie von der Lehr 11:37
Yes, so parliament, I mean, that's also, of course, then connected to democracy. I know that you, Pasi, have looked a lot at democracy and parliamentary participation, and these kind of things. Could you evolve a little bit on that?

Pasi Ihalainen 11:54
Yeah, it's the current topic of our research. So, to make a complicated story a little more simple, I would say that what I've observed, together with my team, is that in the earlier part of the 19th century we have kind of reaction to the French Revolution. So democracy is still seen as a dangerous word, because it includes the possibility of the masses somehow taking over, and that leading to the kind of catastrophes like the French Revolution, where you are, you end up with terror. So there is a strong reaction in most European countries, or in all European countries in the early 19th century. But then there are also reformist movements, which in different countries start to redefine democracy when they are striving for universal suffrage. At that stage mainly male universal suffrage, but in any case trying to reform representation, political representation somehow. And that's quite clear in some radical circles, in Britain, in France, less so in other countries at that stage. And then by the late 19th century there have been major parliamentary reforms already, so there are more voters in many countries, and then democracy starts to rise as a kind of future possibility for reformists. Still, conservatives are very reserved in most countries about it, because the kind of risk that there is, is that I mean, if everyone can vote, we can get chaos and anarchy and all that, was the very classical way of thinking. But then in the early 20th century, in many countries, we have the rise of the idea of considering the will of the people and having democratic government of some kind. Liberal parties talk about it, a moderate socialist parties talk about it, and it's interesting to see how this happens in kind of all the eight countries I've studied around 1910. Then the First World War pushes many countries to have full universal suffrage, including women, and then in the interwar period we do have that kind of clear wave of democracy. But that runs into trouble in some countries. Well, there are challenging economic and social circumstances in some countries that leads to the rise of authoritarian movements and totalitarian movements, and the contemporaries talk about crisis of democracy, crisis of parliamentarism. And what I argue that in many countries at that time there rises a reaction to totalitarianism, especially to Nazism in Germany, which leads to politicians, parliamentarians redefining, relabeling their political system as parliamentary democracy. And that happens in several countries by the end of 1930s. Then in the post-war period parliamentary democracy is the one that defines the system for Western Europe. The Soviets challenge it. They say at the Inter-Parliamentary Union that look, we have an alternative model of parliamentary democracy for the world. But anyway, that's the kind of identity for most, I would say, all political systems in Northwest Europe that I've studied. A nd then we have 68 we have student demonstrations, which are mainly rejected by the elite at that stage, but which have had a long-term effect, so that the idea of participatory democracy comes to the picture, so that people, citizens should be able to participate not just by voting every three or four or five years, but somehow participating at a grassroots level, and my argument is that it takes a long time before this breaks through, and it's the first wave of the internet in the late 1990s that makes this happen. I mean, parliamentarians are kind of forced to respond to wishes for participation, and now they see a medium to make that happen, and there's a hype in the early 2000s that, hey, we have the internet, so now digital communication makes it possible for everyone to participate. But then comes the second wave of the internet, social media, and the parliamentarians decide, hey, this was perhaps not such a good idea. And by the Brexit referendum in Britain in 2016 at least the moderate parties, and even many of the parties who supported direct democracy before, like the Greens, have concluded that it's actually better to maintain a representative parliamentary system where you can deliberate, you can reflect on very complicated issues instead of simplifying them to the form of a referendum in which you vote stay or leave or yes or no. That may work at the local level. Very clear question, whether we want to build something or not locally. I mean, it works there, but at the national level, issues are so complicated. For instance, Finns and Swedes did not have a referendum on NATO membership.

Paul Seaward 17:20
What Pasi's his research is also showing is the way in which the word itself, the use of the word itself, democracy, people avoid it, they talk round it, they don't really use it in the modern system until much later, really, and I think you sort of talked about the inter war period as where it essentially takes off. And and so when it's being used in reaction to the autocratic, the tyrannical regimes of Nazi Germany and Italy, Spain, and I think the fact that that's the catalyst is very interesting, the fact that you need a catalyst to move you into a different situation. What Pasi was saying about the reaction to the change, how Brexit has changed the approach to direct democracy is interesting, and of course it creates a dilemma for the British system, should they ever wish to go back into the EU.

Natalie von der Lehr 18:13
Will you have a referendum about that?

Pasi Ihalainen 18:15
Do you dare?

Paul Seaward 18:16
Well, it's very difficult to exit something on the basis of referendum and then try to go back without one, so you can see the course of how that debate might play out.

Pasi Ihalainen 18:26
Yeah, I was talking about 68 and these calls for participation, so it's interesting to see how parliaments actually start to react to the societal change, calls for participation by extending democracy as a concept. Democracy since the 1970s was extended to various areas of life, so you can find democracy almost everywhere, at school, at working place, in churches, in the army, in the Swedish case, for instance. And also the concept itself expanded in a way that it became more abstract, so it was applicable in different areas of life, and this participation - I think, what's interesting about it is that the politicians in different parliaments, also the European Parliament, saw it as a solution to different challenges of European integration. So it seems to me that EU bureaucracy saw there was an easy solution, so that now we have participation. There were different ideas on how that would be realized, and they ended up with the solution of European Citizens Initiative, which was adopted in 2010 and which has been adapted in various countries thereafter, in Finland, for instance. And Finn's interestingly they followed a lot that kind of EU policy, so by 2010 we have Prime Minister defining Finnish political system as representative participatory democracy. That was the aim. And participation remains, at least rhetorically, a thing that everyone is supportive of. I mean, it's almost a synonym of democracy. So, still, after that kind of rising doubts about dark democracy and referendum, so participation has remained. But there's a participatory paradox. So, how do you make it happen in practice? It may happen locally, the cities taking civil society associations together to reflect on city strategy. It may work there, but how make it happen at the national level?

Paul Seaward 20:35
Actually, in the British experience, what has driven referenda is not a sense of wanting, positively, wanting participation. It's because a political party in power is unable to decide itself, has factions which are deeply - the lines are very deeply drawn. It's clear that the party is likely to split over it, so you delegate the, as it were, the decision to the population as a whole, and so, and you know, which is in some sense the very opposite of public participation. At least the initiative is coming from above, very much not from below. So, in both of our cases, 1975 and the one in 2016 that that was the initiative, and it was a solution to an internal political problem rather than a particular enthusiasm for direct democracy. I think I have to say,

Natalie von der Lehr 21:23
You have both looked at a long time period and have been dependent on historical sources to be able to do so. If you, instead of this, could time travel to experience a certain event or a period of time, when and where would you go?

Pasi Ihalainen 21:40
Well, thank you. I've never had a time machine before. First of all, actually I would like to go to a site which is exceptional in a way that I can't think of the Finnish Parliament having made world history any other time than in 1907 when the reformed unicameral parliament met in autumn 1907 for the first time. There had been a very radical parliamentary reform. The early modern estates had been established, and there was universal suffrage, including women, and there were 19 first female women MPs attending the Finnish parliament in 1907. And actually also the largest socialist party, parliamentary socialist party, with 80 representatives out of 200. That's the place I would first like to go to, and I would like to hear how the value conservative Finnish party and the social democrats agreed on forbidding sale of alcohol, so they agreed on that, but in a month or so they were totally divided ideologically about most other issues. So that would be my first site. Then I would like to travel to Madrid in autumn 1933 to a conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union after Hitler's rise to power half a year previously, and I would like to hear the Danish and the Swedish ministers of education, both from social democratic parties, coming to the conference and explaining how we have had democracy since the Vikings, and Lutheranism is a further element that has strengthened democracy in Scandinavia, and offering it as model for others, and especially distinguishing these countries, Scandinavia from Germany. So, German has problems, but we have Native democracy, which is 900 years old. And interestingly, it must have been deliberately designed, because in both cases we have a bourgeois party reconfirming that through their delegates, we have a liberal, we have a conservative member rising that this is this is the case. And that's history, politics, that's redefining your political system in the front of international audience. We are the pioneers. Well, the British are kind of as well, and the Swiss are, and the Dutch are, but we had it already since the Vikings. Then I would like to get to the Bundestag in Bonn in the mid of 1980s when the Greens had entered the Parliament. That happened in Sweden, Finland, in the Netherlands at that time, maybe not in Britain quite yet. I would like to see them entering in a dress that was not appropriate, and I would like to see the Green women MPs knitting during the debates, I would like to hear them challenging the entire system as representative despotism. That's what they said. I would like to hear another member to suggest that we should invite the leader of the demonstration outside of parliament to speak to parliament. Well, the Greens have changed a lot, but I mean that was the beginning, that was the radical start of grassroots democracy, particapatory democracy.

Natalie von der Lehr 25:12
What a trip.

Paul Seaward 25:13
Yes, I mean it's a fascinating question, and I'm not one that I've, I've thought of before. I think my, my choices involve trying to get into the inside of something that has happened and try to work out what are the internal dynamics that you wouldn't have seen even at the time if you were an ordinary person but you know the fly on the wall. One moment is in 1641 when the English parliament is engaged in a huge crisis about trying to reform the way in which Charles the First government works. And there's a caucus, if you like, of politicians who are leading this attempt, and to seriously reform the government, and trying to build majorities within the House of Commons in order to do so, trying to intimidate the House of Lords into following it, coordinating mobs, you might call them, in the City of London and outside Parliament itself. So, doing all of that coordinating work, trying to manipulate lots of different people in order to support what they're doing. I think that sort of level of organization, sophisticated level of organization, and thinking strategic and tactical thinking is, is what would be fascinating to watch going on. I think another moment in the 1880s when you have a small group of Irish politicians who are determined to secure home rule for Ireland. They're obviously a very small minority, because Ireland contributes a 100 MPs out of 650 to parliament, and not all of them are the sort of extremists who are determined to go for home rule at all points, at all costs. But very fascinatingly, very engagingly, very successfully disrupt the whole proceedings of parliament for essentially two or three years before the government and the opposition, the main opposition, managed to agree on a way of neutralizing this problem and producing new rules, which still exist and are at the foundation of the way in which government tries to manage time within the House of Commons. Being able to watch both the Irish politicians, who are curiously quite popular in a way within parliament, you know that they're very gifted at speaking, manipulating the rules of the House, and so on, watching that and how they, how they manage it would be fascinating, and also looking at the way in which the government, Gladstone, William Gladstone, the great Liberal Prime Minister in particular, react, and how they manage what is actually under appreciated conservative coup d'etat in 1881 to change the rules of the house in order to stop this permanent disruption from upsetting all government finance legislation, and so on.

Natalie von der Lehr 28:11
You're historians, you look at the past, but anyway, would you like to say a few words about the future of democracy?

Pasi Ihalainen 28:19
What happens next? Well, what I think is essential is that in order to understand the present and also to somehow imagine the future, we should know something about the past. And I think that's one of the greatest challenges of today is that people, students, pupils, don't necessarily have any concept of, let's say, history of parliaments or history of democracy. In order to secure democracy, we should first secure critical history teaching at schools, and unfortunately, I think that has happened in every country that it's been somehow reduced to the minimum. Otherwise, I think that what's essential is that we historysize, we somehow also relativize our concerns about democracy today. I'm not questioning, there are many reasons to be worried today with this autocratic tendencies - king's madness in the form of Putinism or Xism or Trumpism, so certainly there are great reasons to be worried. But also to be aware that the democracy has been challenged throughout its history, it's been in crisis at every moment of history, in a way or another, and to some extent it's a healthy thing, in a sense that in order to develop it needs to be challenged, so that it can be rethought, re-envisioned, re-imagined. And also I mean the public needs to be critical about the government, about parliament, about representation, the current system to keep it running. That's also participation being critical as a citizen. One more thing I would like to say about the future of democracy is I don't believe in participation or dialog through technical means, we have to have proper meetings where we face each other and talk to each other. Don't necessarily agree, but at least we learn to a little bit better understand on what we disagree and why we disagree. So that kind of debate belongs to democracy, and that is the way forward. I would be rather more optimistic on the resilience and on the adaptability of democratic system to renew, instead of just raising our hands and giving up. As a historian, I'm rather an optimist. There has been a lot of evolution to the better direction. I mean, freedom of expression and rights for minorities, and the kind of pluralism that is part of our societies, and I mean we actually should be quite happy with what we have.

Paul Seaward 31:18
Pasi was telling me a little while ago that all Finns are pessimists, so it's good, it's good to know that there's optimism. But I think one important thing that we have to keep in mind is to be clear about what we mean by democracy. Democracy, as your work has shown, can mean all sorts of different things, and I think when we think about democracy, we mean liberal democracy, we mean societies like Sweden, where there is a rule of law, there are responsive political parties, and there are free and fair elections, and all of those things. So we have to be very clear about what sort of democracy we're trying to defend, and I think we also have to try to, I sort of agree with Pasi that there have been challenges before they've been confronted, and democracy ultimately has won through, though there has often been quite a lot of trouble in the meantime, which is not something that any of us would want to repeat. So, I think I think there are some huge challenges now. I think just the sheer complexity of the world and its its problems now, and the way in which national democracies find it very hard to coordinate internationally is the biggest problem I think of now, and it's a challenge that I don't think has been faced before. These tricky global problems, global warming, the international financial system, the globalization of trade and so on have become beyond the ability of individual parliaments to understand and really to offer individual solutions. We have some very creative international systems that you know they struggle hugely against the pushback and often justified pushback of national political systems. Do we want our rules imposed by Brussels or from international trade organizations, and so on? I think those sort of complexities are ones that haven't really been faced by democracy to that same same extent, and we need to find some ways of integrating a global approach with the national approaches of national parliaments. I don't have an answer to that, but, but we do need to develop them. I think it's crucial that there remains an open and an effective forum. You use the word forum right at the beginning of the conversation, Pasi and I think that's right, an open, effective forum to discuss and address society's problems, and that is naturally parliament. It should be parliament. It's a complex future. We should remain optimistic that parliaments, our political systems can approach them properly and sensibly and manage them, but they're certainly, as you say, not to be downplayed either.

Natalie von der Lehr 34:00
Thank you for these outlooks. Just to round off with now, let's talk a little bit about SCAS. Paul, you're a fellow now, Pasi, you've been a fellow 16 years ago, and you're visiting now. What is your experience of the multi- and interdisciplinary research environment at the Collegium?

Paul Seaward 34:20
It's a great place to be. It's great to be in Sweden. It's great to be at SCAS. It's wonderful to be within a relatively small community of scholars who are pursuing their own projects, but who have the time and space to talk about them, to talk about lots of things. I've learned a lot about skiing, the playing of bandy, and all sorts of Swedish things, but that interaction, especially for me, as a now retired, I'm afraid, scholar, to interact with younger scholars who are developing new projects. The sense of renewal, I think, in terms of one's own approaches and one's own thought, is really, really important. It's also a beautiful place to be. And particularly today, now the sun is shining, and we're in this, in the middle of a wonderful garden, and one has wonderful space to work in and access to a proper European grade university library, so it's been a great experience.

Pasi Ihalainen 35:15
Well, I'm rarely nostalgic, but I'm nostalgic about SCAS in 2010. It is kind of safe haven, even heaven on earth, for a while, and it's very nice to come back to this. I mean, physically, this is exceptionally in many ways, the location, the hospitality here, and the services. I haven't seen anything like that, and we Finns are sometimes jealous about what Sweden has, and I can say that I'm a bit jealous about the SCAS, but happy to be able to enjoy that. So, it has been very motivating for me. I set this visit as a deadline for myself, so that I had to have the second draft for my book, and that happened. It's extremely motivating to get feedback from people on that, and now move on to literature, reading literature, and that's what I'm going to do this afternoon as well.

Natalie von der Lehr 36:16
Thank you very much to both of you for joining me on the studio and talking to me and our listeners, of course.

Paul Seaward 36:21
Thank you.

Pasi Ihalainen 36:22
Thank you.

Natalie von der Lehr 36:28
And thank you for listening to SCAS Talks, a podcast by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. In this episode, you have heard Paul Seaward, emeritus director of the History of Parliament Trust in London, and Pasi Ihaleinen, Professor of Comparative European History at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. They have shared some of the research on parliaments, democracy, and participatory democracy. And this was the first episode in our theme "Parliaments and Constitutions". SCAS Talks features a broad variety of topics, which is a reflection of the multi- and interdisciplinary research environment at the Collegium. We are sure that there is something of interest for everyone. Tune in, find your favorite topic, or surprise yourself with something new. And, as always, we are very happy if you can recommend SCAS Talks to your colleagues and friends. Subscribe to us, and you won't miss any new content. SCAS Talks is available on Podbean, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and most podcast apps. I would like to thank Paul Seaward and Pasi Ihalainen once again for talking to me, and thanks to you for listening. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai