131214840-Carl-Schmitt

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to a debate on the fundamental institutions of liberal democracy in the first German republic.
Schmitt's text was not an isolated example of the concern many Germans felt at the
instability of parliamentary government and the uncertain authority of Weimar's political
institutions. But Schmitt's analysis of these problems is distinguished from most
contemporary comment by the emphasis he placed on "the intellectual foundations of a
specifically intended institution." He aimed at an explanation of "the ultimate core of the
institution of modern parliament" and believed he had found it in discussion and openness. 92
Only on the basis of this knowledge could the crisis of parliamentarism be understood and
reform of parliamentary democracy undertaken. Richard Thoma thought this the book's
weakness, Rudolf Smend saw it as Schmitt's strength. Hermann Heller agreed that part of the
crisis of parliamentarism in Weimar was normative, but he disagreed with Schmitt on its
cause and cure. Yet all his readers and contemporaries agreed on one point: the radicalism of
Schmitt's approach, not just to the idea and institution of parliament, but to the assumptions
of liberal political thought as a whole.
Schmitt's political science broke apart the conception of liberal democracy by starting with
an apparently unpolitical theme, truth and reason. Following this thread through the history
of liberalism led Schmitt, as Rudolf Smend recognized, to see the "dynamic-dialectic" of
parliamentarism first in parliamentary institutions as the political agent of enlightened
opinion and, second, in the structure of public opinion that should check and inform political
decision. In the first, liberal theory sets a practical precondition for the attainment of truth
(and hence justice) in political life in the idea of a free mandate for the people's
representatives in parliament. If practice contradicts this idea—if representatives speak and
act on behalf of particular interests or as delegates of their parties—the legitimacy of
parliamentarism undergoes a fundamental change. The issue of parliamentary integrity and
the notion of free and open discussion that is bound up with it is a question not simply of the
incorruptibility of legislators (although
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