The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure

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Kari Palonen. The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure

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[2]Kari Palonen

The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure

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In January 1791 the preface, together with Chapters V and VI of the later editions, were printed and privately circulated. Etienne Dumont’s translation, published in 1816, Tactique des assemblées délibérantes, was the first published version of Bentham’s work, and a slightly revised version was published in 1822. Dumont’s 1816 French edition of Bentham’s Tactics was used as the basis for the procedure of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1824. According to the 1999 critical edition, Dumont carried out his work with almost no help from Bentham himself. The originals of Bentham’s drafts have been lost, and the 1843 Bowring edition in Bentham’s Works, provided by Richard Smith, probably relied on a back-translation of the Dumont edition. For the critical edition of 1999, the Dumont and Smith editions still served as the basis (see James/Blamires/Pease-Watson 1999: xii-xvi). For my purposes, the editorial differences between Bentham 1843 and Bentham 1999 are of secondary value, and I mainly stick to the 1843 edition.

If ‘theory’ refers to a criterion of generality that transcends commentary on existing British parliamentary procedure, Bentham’s style and ambitions certainly aim at such a theory. Bentham himself admits that the general rules and principles he proposes largely resemble Westminster practices:

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