Political Science » Research » Jussi Kurunmäki

Jussi Kurunmäki

Dr. Soc. Sc., Associate Professor

E-mail: jussi.kurunmaki@statsvet.su.se

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Jussi Kurunmäki (b. 1964) is a political scientist, working in the fields of political ideas, conceptual history and political rhetoric. He has written on parliamentary democratisation in Sweden and Finland, the rhetoric of democracy in the Nordic countries and the rhetoric of patriotism and nation, as well as the methods of conceptual history and rhetorical analysis. Kurunmäki has been Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, since 2008. During 2001 – 2007, he worked at the same department as a visiting fellow, having his position at the Centre for Nordic Studies (CENS), University of Helsinki.

Kurunmäki earned his doctoral degree in political science from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in 2000. His dissertation Representation, Nation and Time: The Political Rhetoric of the 1866 Parliamentary Reform in Sweden (2000) examined conceptual commitments in the Swedish debate over parliamentary reform within a European political and conceptual context. A special focus in the dissertation was on the uses of the concept of national representation, as formulated in the French Revolution. In his other works he has studied, among other things, the wake of parliamentary life in Finland in the 1860s as well as the breakthrough of universal suffrage in Finland in 1905-1906. The Finnish cases have been discussed within a European political and intellectual context and vis-à-vis the situation in Sweden, in particular.

In his latest work, Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy (2010), co-edited with Johan Strang, Kurunmäki has analysed the interwar discussions on the crisis of democracy and the attempt to launch particularly Nordic version of democracy, in order for the Nordic countries to defend the existing parliamentary democracy against fascism, the Nazis and communism. Moreover, the book discusses a series of efforts to rhetorically produce and reproduce a particular Nordic version of democracy. It shows that the rhetorical figure “Nordic democracy” was a product of the age of totalitarianism and the Cold War, pointing out that the promoting of “Nordic democracy” was to a large extent linked with a geopolitical profiling of the Nordic countries as the sphere of a middle way between East and West after the Second World War. The book also notes a change of this rhetoric, as the emphasis was successively turned to welfare policies. Consequently, the book explores the ways in which “Nordic democracy” was used, mainly by the Social Democrats, to provide the welfare politics with cultural and historical legitimacy and foundations, thus acknowledging the ideological and geopolitical context in which the “Nordic welfare state” was conceptualised and canonised. 

Kurunmäki’s current project, financed by Swedish Research Council (2008 - 2011), is entitled Universal Suffrage and Democracy in Finland and Sweden: Rhythms of parliamentary democratisation in an international context. He has been the leader of the projects Representation and Democratisation in Finland and Sweden, 1809-1921: An analysis of Key Political Concepts in a European Context (Academy of Finland, 2005-2007) and Democratisation and Welfare State as Political Struggles in Finland and Sweden: The reception of political ideas and concepts (Kone Foundation, 2004-2006).

Kurunmäki is one of the founders of the international network Concepta – International Research School in Conceptual History and Political Thought, as well as a board member since 2007. He is a member of the network The History of Political and Social Concepts Group (HPSCG) since 1998, and he belongs to the planning group of the European Conceptual History Project (ECHP). He is also a member of The Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic Welfare State – Historical Foundations and Future Challenges (NordWel), funded by NordForsk. During 2003 to 2005, he was selected as member of the scientific network Politics and History of European Democratisation (PHED), funded by the European Science Foundation. The network’s end result was the book The Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratisation in Europe: Concepts and Histories, Farnham: Ashgate (2008). Kurunmäki is also a member of Academy of Finland Professor Kari Palonen’s project The Politics of Dissensus. Parliamentarism, Rhetoric and Conceptual History.

His teaching experience includes lectures and seminars in Finnish universities (Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere) and in Stockholm University. He has taught at all academic levels. As the board member of Concepta, he has a possibility to plan international teaching for students who prepare their doctoral theses as well as for young and experienced scholars. The topics of the courses and lectures he has given cover methods of conceptual history, nationalism and patriotism, Swedish constitutional history, parliamentary democratization and the breakthrough of universal suffrage, as well as democratic theory, political theory, comparative European politics, and the methods of political science. He has been teaching in Swedish, Finnish and English.

Links

• Concepta: http://www.concepta-net.org

• CENS: http://www.helsinki.fi/cens/fin/index.html

• Kari Palonen’s project: https://www.jyu.fi/ytk/laitokset/yfi/en/research/projects/dissensus

• NordWel: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/

Publications

Monographs

Representation, Nation and Time: The Political Rhetoric of the 1866 Parliamentary Reform in Sweden. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. (2000) (Diss.) 253 pp.
(ISBN 951-39-0825-9)

Edited Books

Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang (eds): Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society (2010). 294 pp. (ISBN 978-952-222-228-2)

Jussi Kurunmäki & Kari Palonen (Hg./eds): Die Zeit, Geschichte und Politik; Time, History and Politics: Zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Reinhart Koselleck. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä (2003). 310 pp. (ISBN 951-39-1496-8)

Matti Hyvärinen, Jussi Kurunmäki, Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen and Henrik Stenius (eds): Käsitteet liikkeessä. Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsitehistoria [Concepts in Motion. The Conceptual History of Finnish Political Culture], Tampere: Vastapaino (2003). 617 pp. (ISBN 951-768-130-5)

Articles and Book Chapters

”’Nordic Democracy’ in 1935: On the Finnish and Swedish Rhetoric of Democracy”, in Kurunmäki, Jussi and Johan Strang (eds): Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society (2010), pp. 37-82.

“Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of Tensions” (co-authored with Johan Strang), in Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang (eds): Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society (2010), pp. 9-36.

“The Breakthrough of Universal Suffrage in Finland, 1905-1906”, in Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen and Jose Maria Rosales (eds): Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratisation in Europe: Concepts and Histories, Farnham: Ashgate (2008), pp. 355-370.

“Different styles of parliamentary democratisation in Finland and Sweden: An analysis of two debates over parliamentary reform in 1906”, in Suvi Soininen & Tapani Turkka (eds): Parliamentary Style of Politics, Helsinki: Finnish Political Science Association (2008), pp. 106-128.

”Kan en nation byggas på politisk vilja? Om debatten mellan J. V. Snellman och August Schauman 1859-1860” [Can a Nation be Built on Political Will? On the Debate between J. V. Snellman and August Schauman], Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 1/2007, pp. 63-89.

“A parliament for the unity of the people: On the rhetoric of legitimisation in the debate over Finnish parliamentary reform in 1906”, in Lars-Folke Landgrén & Pirkko Hautamäki (eds): People, Citizen, Nation, Helsinki: Renvall Institute (2005), pp. 116-131

“Begreppshistoria” [Conceptual History], in Göran Bergström and Kristina Boréus (eds): Textens mening och makt. Metodbok i samhällsvetenskaplig textanalys, Lund: Studentlitteratur (2005), pp. 181-217.

”Ulkomaiset mallit ja poliittinen traditio 1860-luvun alun suomalaisessa keskustelussa valtiopäivistä” [Foreign Examples and Political Tradition in the Finnish Debate over Parliamentary Meeting of the Landtdagen in the Beginning of the 1860s], in Hänninen, Sakari & Palonen, Kari (eds): Lue poliittisesti. Profiileja politiikan tutkimukseen, Jyväskylä: SoPhi (2004), pp. 193-236.

”Kansankoti ja hyvinvointivaltio – ruotsalainen nationalismi” [The People’s Home and the Welfare State – the Swedish Nationalism], in Pakkasvirta, Jussi and Pasi Saukkonen (eds): Nationalismit, Helsinki: WSOY (2004), pp. 166-184.

”Redescribing the Political Past. National rhetoric in the Swedish debate concerning the Parliamentary Reform of 1866”, Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought,vol. 7, 2003, pp. 90-112.

“The Reception of Political Concepts in the Wake of Finnish Parliamentary Life in the 1860s”, in Jussi Kurunmäki & Kari Palonen (Hg./eds): Die Zeit, Geschichte und Politik; Time, History and Politics: Zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Reinhart Koselleck. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. (2003), pp. 291-310. 

”Johdanto” [Introduction] (co-authored with Matti Hyvärinen, Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen and Henrik Stenius), in Matti Hyvärinen, Jussi Kurunmäki, Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen & Henrik Stenius (eds): Käsitteet liikkeessä. Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsitehistoria [Concepts in Motion: Conceptual History of the Finnish Political Culture], Tampere: Vastapaino. (2003), pp. 9-17.

”Käsitehistoria: Näkökulma historian poliittisuuteen ja poliittisen kielen historiallisuuteen” [Conceptual History: A perspective to the political character of history and the historical character of politics], Politiikka 2/2001, pp. 142-155.

”Ruotsalaisen kansankodin taustoilla. Tulkintaa ruotsalaisesta 1800-luvun nationalismista” [A Background for the idea of the People’s Home in Sweden. An Interpretation of the Swedish Nineteenth-Century Nationalism], Tiede & Edistys 4/1997, pp. 329-341.

”Politisoiva ja epäpolitisoiva patriotismin retoriikka 1860-luvun Ruotsin valtiopäiväreformikeskustelussa” [Politicising and de-politicising rhetoric of patriotism in the Swedish debate over parliamentary reform in the 1860s], Politiikka 2/1997, pp. 92-107.

”Patriotismin käsite 1860-luvun poliittisessa radika­lismissa Ruotsissa” [The Concept of Patriotism in the Swedish Political Radicalism in the 1860s], in Jari Hoffrén and Kari Palonen (eds): Vai pelkkää retoriikkaa?2. Jyväskylä: Department of Political Science, University of Jyväskylä (1994), pp. 78-97.