Radical Approaches to Political Science

Front matter

Rainer Eisfeld

Radical Approaches to Political Science Roads Less Traveled

Introduction:

Introduction

Klaus von Beyme

I. Political Science Taking Sides - Why, How?

How Political Science Might Regain Relevance and Obtain an Audience: A Manifesto for the 21st Century

Towards Creating a Discipline With a “Regional Stamp”: Central- East European Political Science and Ethno-Cultural Diversity

Pluralism and Democratic Governance: A Century of Changing Research Frameworks

Pluralism as a Critical Political Theory

II. Political Science and State Power

Political Science in Central-East Europe and the Impact of Politics:

Factors of Diversity, Forces of Convergence (with Leslie A. Pal)

German Political Science at the Crossroads: The Ambivalent Response to the 1933 Nazi Seizure of Power

II. Political Science and Ideology (1)

Germany’s “Peculiar Course”: Coming to Grips with Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thinking

From Hegelianism to Neo-Pluralism: The Uneasy Relationship between Private and Public Interests in Germany

‘Mitteleuropa’ in Historical and Contemporary Perspective

IV. Political Science and Ideology (2)

Another Peculiar Course: American ‘Gun- Mindedness’ — Some Origins and Consequences

Myths and Realities of Frontier Violence: A Look at the Gunfighter Saga

Projecting Landscapes of the Human Mind onto Another World: Changing Faces of an Imaginary Mars

V. Political Science and Policy Transfer International Pressures and Domestic Politics during Portugal’s Transition to Democracy

Portugal and Western Europe: Shifting Involvements

External Influences on the Portuguese Revolution: The Role of Western Europe

Sources About the Author

Index

241 261

263 265

Acknowledgments

Roads Less Traveled, the second part of this book’s title, derives from an inspired suggestion by my Canadian colleague and friend Leslie Pal (Carleton University, Ottawa), who suggested that it alludes to “...searching where others have not. Plus, it alliterates nicely with the title’s first part.” Les and I look back on a two-year experience of close cooperation in preparing the volume Political Science in Central-East Europe, which we co-edited and which was published by Barbara Budrich in 2010. Collaborating with Les has been a truly marvelous experience, for which I remain intensely grateful. Once again, I am deeply indebted to him for his resourceful ingenuity, as well as for his generous permission to include our jointly authored introductory piece to the aforementioned volume in this collection.

Klaus von Beyme, who wrote the book’s introduction, and I first met at the 1979 IPSA World Congress in Moscow — an exercise in “peaceful coexistence” held at Lomonosov University, whose students were not permitted to attend the sessions’ often spirited debates. When we stepped out of an elevator in the (since demolished) Rossija Hotel, Beyme’s tightly packed travel bag burst open and spilled its contents on the hotel lobby’s floor. Without further ado, we both knelt and started dumping his clothing back into the bag. I like to picture the introduction to the present book, which I very greatly appreciate, as a late sequel to that act of spontaneous collaboration. In his succeeding years, Beyme has been devoting an increasing amount of sophisticated thinking to ways in which political science relates to the social and cultural world around it. Whoever wishes to extend inquiries beyond the discipline’s traditional confines, may draw encouragement from him.

With his concept of “interest-group liberalism”, Theodore J. Lowi, who graciously offered the assessment printed on the back cover, deeply influenced my thinking while I was writing my dissertation. Hardly did I surmise at the time that, 35 years later, Ted and I would cooperate on a book reviewing pluralist approaches to democratic theory and practice, which I would edit for IPSA’s ‘World of Political Science’ series. The most moving moment, however, occurred in 1999 during the UNESCO World Conference on Science in Budapest, where Ted Lowi, then IPSA President, chaired a session on “Science and Democracy” and invited me as rapporteur. During our spare time, we traveled by tram to Budapest’s huge Räkoskeresztür Cemetery with its beautiful headstones and crypts (many now in need of restoration), where several of Ted’s ancestors lie entombed.

Since my retirement in 2006, the University of Osnabriick has continued to provide resources which have proved crucial to my academic pursuits, and for which I remain deeply grateful. The decisive first step in arranging for such support was taken by Michael Bommes, who served as the department’s dean at the time. Michael, who held a chair in migration studies, and who played a key part in connecting German research with international scholarship on migration, sadly became afflicted with a severe illness and passed away much too early two years ago. I will continue to preserve his memory.

Finally, Vera Bröcker taught me again that, to paraphrase Sir Arthur C. Clarke, advanced computer know-how is indistinguishable from magic. I remain very much indebted to her for her sustained and good-humoured support.

Introduction

Klaus von Beyme

“Radical” in German sounds “more radical” than in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and in French ideologies because German liberalism since the 19" century was rarely radical. Radicalism as a characterization of a way of thought in political science implies two aspects:

e A normative position that is not satisfied with a focus on individuals’ political behavior and on institutions, as it has been predominating since the behavioral revolution in the United States.

e A rather moderate leftist position as an engaged political scientist.

After the Second World War, the critical Frankfurt School in the tradition of Adorno, Horkheimer and later Habermas was the incarnation of such a normative position of committed leftist social scientists. Not by chance, Rainer Eisfeld took his PhD in Frankfurt and wrote his first German-language books on “Pluralism between Liberalism and Socialism” (1972) and, dealing with the leftist experiment in Portugal, on “Socialist Pluralism in Europe”. Two of his shorter works on Portugal are included in this volume (Chapter V, 1 and 2).

In this tradition, Eisfeld is a “radical liberal” who never opted for one of the authoritarian branches of socialism or communism. Eisfeld had some sympathies for the “Praxis movement” in Yugoslavia. One of his articles on “Pluralism as a Critical Political Theory” was published in the journal Praxis International in 1986 — edited by Seyla Benhabib and Svetozar Stojanovié — which oriented itself towards “Marxist humanism” and “democratic socialism” (Chapter I, 4 in this volume). Eisfeld based his assumptions originally on Harold Laski’s ideas of a dynamic theory centering on the fundamentally associative character of society and aiming at an egalitarian basis for redistributing material advantages between social groups and classes.

Later Rainer Eisfeld moved closer to German versions of “neopluralism” in the tradition of Ernst Fraenkel who had developed his ideas as an émigré in the United States and later taught in Berlin. Neopluralism became the ideological opposition to authoritarian Communism in East Germany and in the Soviet Union. After the collapse of Communism, these ideas won relevance for the new systems in their transition to democracy. Eisfeld did not overlook the problem that an oligarchic structure of society may result in a “limited pluralism” as a consequence of the internationalization of capital. In his studies, Robert Dahl’s analyses of the “dilemmas of pluralist democracy” frequently emerge as a normative point of reference.

Eisfeld is a rather unorthodox representative of political science. His pluralism is proved already by his multidisciplinary approach. According to Mattei Dogan’s and Robert Pahre’s Creative Marginality (Boulder 1990), innovations mostly take place at the intersections of social sciences. This insight is pertinent to Eisfeld’s oeuvre: He has a strong interest in history and in the popular arts.

Great attention was paid by him to the development of German political science under the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime. Eisfeld’s book on those exiled German social scientists who in spite of their fate were quite right-wing-oriented, some even close to the Nazi movement, caused a vehement debate in Germany. “The ambivalent response to the 1933 Nazi seizure of power”, which derives from it, is included in this volume (Chapter 11.2). His historical interests are also demonstrated in his analyses “From Hegelianism to Neo-Pluralism” (Chapter III.1) and of the “Mitteleuropa” myth (Chapter III.2).

Finally, that part of the Frankfurt tradition which corresponds to Rainer Eisfeld’s interest in arts and literature, shows up in the book’s pieces on the myth of the Western, and on fantasies about Mars (Chapter IV, 1 and 2). Elsewhere, he has written about teenagers’ dreams in the 1950s.

I hope that this engrossing pluralistic volume may find the interested readers which it richly deserves.

I. Political Science

Taking Sides - Why, How?

When, in 1949, the inclusion of political science into the curricula of West Germany’s universities was first discussed, the discipline, for the Munich University’s rector, might be compared only to theology — “always a matter of belief”. Half a century later, prominent political scientists expressed their own severe misgivings. Giovanni Sartori, for one, contended that political science “is a largely useless science that does not supply knowledge for use”. Former IPSA Secretary General John Trent, in 2011, voiced the key question for the readers of European Political Science: “Is political science out of step with the world, and if so what might be done about it?” To the controversial debate in the same EPS issue, I contributed the following fairly unequivocal opinion.

How Political Science Might Regain Relevance And Obtain an Audience: A Manifesto for the 21” Century

In July 2009, at the IPSA World Congress in Santiago de Chile, John Trent (2009) raised a number of critical questions about the relevance of our discipline. About three months later, on 5 November 2009, the U.S. Senate rejected Coburn Amendment 2631 to the 2010 Commerce, Justice & Science Appropriations Act. The Amendment would have prohibited the National Science Foundation ‘from wasting federal research funding on political science projects’.! 62 senators voted ‘nay’; 36, though, voted ‘yea’. Among the reasons for his motion, Senator Thomas Coburn (R, OK) included the statement that scarce funds should be spent on endeavours ‘yield[ing] breakthroughs and discoveries that can improve the human condition’. The implication was evident.

The Coburn Amendment triggered a 19 October 2009 New York Times article. Writer Patricia Cohen (2009) quoted Joseph S. Nye to the effect that political science may be ‘moving in the direction of saying more and more about less and less’. She also cited Perspectives on Politics editor Jeffrey C. Isaac, who held that political scientists ‘should do a better job... of doing more relevant work’.

The Coburn Amendment and the U.S. Senate vote, the New York Times write-up and John Trent’s assessment all highlight a number of preoccupations about our discipline, among which are the discipline’s compartmentalization, its quest for relevance and for an audience, and — in the earlier instances at least implicitly — the continuing tension between normative and

1 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote; http:/coburn.senate. gov/ public/index.cfm?_FuseAction=RightNow, both accessed 5/27/2010.

empirical approaches. These challenges contrast conspicuously with the recent advances that political science has made in quantitative terms.

During the 1990s, as the discipline established its institutional footing across the European continent’s central and eastern regions, the total number of academic staff engaged in political science roughly doubled in Europe. The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), established in 1970 and easily the discipline’s most important European association in terms of promoting cross-national cooperation, acquired new institutional members from countries such as Albania and Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic and, not least, Russia. The European Confederation of Political Science Associations (ECPSA), founded in late 2007 to promote the discipline’s common interests in teaching, research and funding, consists of at present 19 member organizations, ranging from the Russian to the British, from the Hungarian to the German, from the Slovenian to the Spanish Political Science Associations. Regional and interregional cooperation is flourishing; numerous networks of political scientists are emerging across the continent.

Such progress stands at odds with the discipline’s modest contribution to addressing the highly relevant issues of regulating financial and economic globalization, of making the best of regional and global migration, of not just combating terrorism, but promoting the reduction of its underlying grievances and causes. Central and Eastern Europe’s nascent political science ‘cultures’ have been merging into an empirically-oriented ‘mainstream’ whose research has mainly focused on national political systems, comparative politics, European studies and international relations.

On the one hand, considerable advances have been made in these fields. On the other hand, however, political studies have largely been reduced to a functionalist science of ‘managing’ parliamentary and party government. Central and Eastern European political science is not alone in being been marked by an ‘almost total absence of critical theory’ (Hankiss 2002: 22).2 There has been no systematic reflection of the ‘state of the art’ after the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’. At the heart of politics — including democratic politics — are issues of power and authority, of participation and of control over agenda-setting. Unfortunately, these issues no longer figure at the centre of the discipline’s attention.

In a period of globalization-induced financial and economic crises, too few political scientists concern themselves with examining the political behaviour of business and the structural connections between business and government — in other words, with a renewed and reinvigorated political economy. In an era of increasing ethno-cultural pluralisation, there is a lack of studies which can blend political, psychological, cultural, and economic

2 See also Eisfeld and Pal (2010).

aspects, to advance integration and cultural cross-fertilization. In short, we lack a political science of recognition that can adequately address issues of cultural segmentation and ensuing socio-political cleavages. In a context of millennialist violence, the discipline needs to offer well-reasoned concepts against adopting anti-terrorist policies which, relying solely on repression, threaten fundamental democratic values without actually offering prospects of success. We need to develop concepts for a social defence against terrorism that can pay heed to the satisfaction of basic needs, to a more equitable distribution of political resources, to cultural recognition, and to broader civic participation.

Bringing these pressing regional and global challenges closer to their solution is a political project that involves many years (history), levels (structure), and players (agency). It is these challenges which any political science — not just European political science — now needs to address. That the discipline flourishes solely in a democratic environment bears repeating (even if authoritarian regimes have demonstrated a use for truncated versions, adapted to their purposes). Political science should, therefore, (re-) define itself as a science of democracy, as it did with particular emphasis subsequent to the Great Depression and World War II, to Fascism and Stalinism.

2009 Economics Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom has attested a ‘neglect of the citizen’ to the present discipline. In an interview, she illustrated her criticism with the following observation: ‘Once while waiting at a meeting of the Political Science Association I was asked why I was reading a book on peasants. Political science was about presidents, parties, and Congress’. (Toonen 2010: 197).3 As a science of democracy, political studies should redirect their principal concerns, addressing the afore-mentioned challenges not least in a determined effort ‘to help citizens prepare themselves for various possible futures’ (Hankiss 2002: 22).* Otherwise, ‘perplexity, distrust, fear and intol-

3 The political scientist who remains unconvinced by the mere reference to Professor Ostrom’s reading habits could do worse than glance at the following sentences: ‘Reading and writing letters for illiterate peasants made me understand that poverty takes many cruel forms other than occasional hunger... I sensed how my intrusion must have inhibited them and saw how inarticulate they were... I also remember the shock of discovering at an early age that illiteracy or semi-literacy were not a product of casual neglect but part of the established social order... As I ended an afternoon reading session in a gathering of pea-sants eager to listen to the speeches of President Roosevelt promising freedom, I was suddenly seized by a rural Republican Guard... He threatened to beat me up if I persisted in disturbing the minds of local people with that “Communist poison”, as he put it. I swore to myself that I would one day be able to explain the motivations and the power behind that rural guard’ (Figueiredo 1975: 10-12]. This report might spur the scholar to further peruse, e. g., Cutileiro (1971).

4 Cf. also Maxwell (1984:, 46, 51, 66) who defines the academic community’s ‘basic task’ as promoting rational thinking and problem-solving in ‘the rest of the human world’ so that it may, over time, become capable of ‘rational social action’. While I evidently consider this idea sound enough, some readers may find Maxwell’s extensive from-knowledge-towisdom argument a bit contrived.

erance’ may overwhelm large segments of society, (ibid.: 20),> making them strike out against democratic principles and practices.

Citizens grapple with a plethora of economic, political, and cultural challenges; it is vital that they understand public policies designed to provide solutions. Political science should support these citizens in their searches, acting ‘as an aid, refiner, extender’ of lay inquiry (Lindblom 1990: 216 — 17). Whenever necessary, it should play the uncomfortable part of a critical, even an oppositional force; it should be critical of power structures skewed in favour of economically-privileged minorities or culturally-privileged majorities. It should stand in opposition to prevailing socio-political ‘fads’.

Efforts at teamwork across sub-fields, across disciplines, and across countries are essential to make the most of existing specialization. Normative notions should emerge as an indispensable part of the discipline, though definitely not at the cost of empirical rigour.’ The discipline needs to go beyond theories of what ‘good governance’ should be (this ‘Bismarckian’ notion has more to do with administrative ‘efficiency’ and the pursuit of the Rechtsstaat ideal, than with parliamentary or other forms of democracy). Political science should develop ‘visions’ of how a ‘good society’ might be designed and politically attained — a society which recognizes ethno-cultural heterogeneity, which is able to defend itself socially against terrorism, and which can draw consequences from the insights of political economy. In the doing, it needs to incorporate history, structure and agency — historical changes and their dynamics;8 embedded socio-economic and political power relations; individuals, associations, parties, and social movements as players.

This brings up a second and related point. In trying to understand some of the deeper causes of the present financial and economic crisis, political scientists have begun to realize that the ongoing process of financial and economic globalization has not occurred without political intervention. Quite the contrary, it is precisely pro-market state intervention which has been on the increase. With regard to both public services — including welfare benefits — and regulation, governments have been restricting their performance in a determined fashion. Under the impact of an increasingly hegemonic neo-liberal discourse, administrations led by social democratic parties have joined their liberal-conservative counterparts in opting for privatization and deregulatory policies. Government and market players alike have offered competing

5 Cf. Theodor Geiger’s (1930) exemplary depiction of ‘desperation’ and ‘panic’ induced by the Great Depression that prompted Germany’s middle classes to largely vote for the Nazis. See also Geiger (1932: 118, 121).

6 See also Lupia (2000: 12).

7 A „regression’ to „more diffuse’ theories with „less empirical content’ [Feyerabend (1976: 212)] is not implied. ‘Removing intellectual rubbish’ [ibid.: 25] may, however, be part of the job.

recipes for the ‘slimming down’ of states; they are bent on cutting expenditures and supervision.

This is established wisdom;? I am not presenting any new insights. My point is that the trend of pro-market intervention needs to be reversed, and that political science needs to intervene in the debate. Capitalist economies, certainly including financial institutions, require tough regulation. To be effective, such supervision must be internationally coordinated and endowed with robust powers to enforce strict standards.

But, again, the political problems go deeper. If globalization has acted as a constraint on redistributive and regulatory policies, the downsizing of social security budgets and the reduction of resources available for allocation by representatives to constituents have weakened the legitimacy of democratic states. Due to the influence of multinational investors and of foreign competitive pressures, there has been a reduction in both the power and the accountability of democratic legislatures and administrations. The net result has been a weakening of citizen loyalty and of grassroots commitment to democratic processes.!0 The danger that more and more individuals might react against democracy is not the least reason why political science should be partisan in conflicts between business interests and democratic government.

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the ‘Roosevelt Revolution’ after 1933, did not restore, for the United States, prosperity in peacetime. But it did succeed (besides alleviating the suffering of millions of unemployed) in establishing organized labour and organized agriculture as political players alongside business in bargaining for political benefits. Capitalism, it appeared, might be reformed; democracy broadened.!!

We may be at another crucial juncture. By legislating New Dealish measures, democratically elected representatives need to demonstrate that business has not acquired veto power in economic and social policy-making. Political science must emerge visibly as their ally in this contest. Regulatory reforms may not be easy to achieve, but by making the case, our discipline will be meeting again, as stipulated above, ‘the needs of (those) ordinary

10 That is the sobering outcome of the studies conducted under the Norwegian Power and Democracy Project (1998-2003). Appointed by the government of Norway in early 1998, and headed by Øyvind Østerud (University of Oslo), the state-funded research group worked on the basis of a 1997 mandate by the Norwegian Parliament to compile a report on Power and Democracy within a period of five years. See Ringen (2004); Engelstad and Østerud (2004).

11 In the 1970s, Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom, after having turned more skeptical and radical in their assessments, explained their earlier commitment to the ongoing political system thus: „The New Deal was not a remote historical episode. It provided grounds for thinking that reform periods would again occur with some frequency’; cf. Dahl and Lindblom (1976: XXX).

citizens’ who should be the ‘intended beneficiaries of (its) professional inquiry’.12

In other words, political science must address the public—the citizens whom it needs to win as an audience — and it must take sides in the doing. As a science of democracy, it is inevitably partisan. It should opt for acknowledging partisanship, explaining aims and implications.

Cerny, P.G. (1997): ‘Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization’, Government and Opposition 32, 251-274.

Cerny, P. G. (1999): ‘Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy’, European Journal of Poli- tical Research 36, 1-26.

Cohen, P. (2009): ‘Field Study: Just How Relevant Is Political Science?’ New York Times, October 19; http:/www.nytimes.com/2009/books/20poli.html, accessed 5/27/2010.

Cutileiro, J. (1971): A Portuguese Rural Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dahl, R. A., and C. E. Lindblom (1976):‘Preface’, in: Re-Issue of Politics, Economics and Wel-fare (1953), Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. xxi-xliv.

Eisfeld, R., and L. A. Pal (eds.) (2010): Political Science in Central-East Europe: Diversity and Convergence, Opladen: Barbara Budrich.

Engelstad, F. and Ø. Østerud (eds.) (2004) Power and Democracy, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Feyerabend, P. (1976): Wider den Methodenzwang, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Figueiredo, A. de (1975): Portugal: Fifty Years of Dictatorship, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Geiger, T. (1930): ‘Panik im Mittelstand’, Die Arbeit 7: 637-654.

Geiger, T. (1932): Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes, Stuttgart: Enke.

Hankiss, E. (2002): “Brilliant Ideas or Brilliant Errors? Twelve Years of Social Science Research in Eastern Europe’, in Max Kaase and Vera Sparschuh (eds.): Three Social Science Disciplines in Central and Eastern Europe, Berlin/Budapest: GESIS/Collegium Budapest, pp. 17-24.

Lindblom, C. E. (1990): Inquiry and Change. The Troubled Attempt to Understand and Shape Society, New Haven/London: Yale University Press.

Lupia, A. (2000) ‘Evaluating Political Science Research: Information for Buyers and Sellers’, PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (1): 7-13.

Maxwell, N. (1984): From Knowledge to Wisdom, Oxford/New York: Basil Blackwell.

Ringen, S. (2004): ‘Wealth and Decay. The Norwegian Study of Power and Democracy’, Times Literary Supplement, February 13, pp. 3-5.

Smith, R. M. (1997): ‘Still Blowing in the Wind: The American Quest for a Democratic, Scien- tific Political Science’, Daedalus 126 (1): 253-278.

Toonen, Theo (2010): ‘Resilience in Public Administration: The Work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom from a Public Administration Perspective’, Public Administration Review 70 (2): 193-202.

Trent, J. E. (2009): ‘Political Science 2010: Out of Step with the World? Empirical

Evidence and Commentary’, paper presented at the 21” Political Science World Congress, 12-16 July, Santiago de Chile.

Is political science “with a regional stamp” a concept which makes sense? Maybe not in exactly the same way as American Studies or, closer to the topic, European Studies do. Still, the suggested focus on ethno-cultural diversity in Central-East Europe would tackle one of the region’s perennial key issues on which, according to Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka, there is “a great need for new work”. As subsequently set out in more detail, the proposal was inspired by one of the major findings of Leslie Pal’s and my co-edited 2010 book on the discipline’s state of the art in Central-East Europe — that institutional cooperation and research networks are decidedly underdeveloped in and among the region’s countries. A thematic focus might be needed, around which a major part of research efforts in several countries could crystallize. I expounded the idea at a conference held in Vilnius on the “Baltic-Black Sea Intermarum” as a “New Region of Europe”, and the Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review elected to publish my remarks in its No. 25 (2011) issue.

Towards Creating a Discipline With a “Regional Stamp“: Central-East European Political Science and Ethno-Cultural Diversity!

I

On our continent, political science has recently made conspicuous advances in quantitative terms. During the 1990s, with the discipline’s institutionalization across Europe’s central and eastern regions, total academic staff engaged in political science in Europe approximately doubled. The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), established in 1970 and easily the discipline’s most important European association in terms of promoting cross-national cooperation, acquired new institutional members from Albania and Bulgaria through Croatia and Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania to Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. The European Confederation of Political Science Associations (ECPSA), founded in late 2007 to promote the discipline’s common interests in teaching, research and funding, at present consists of 22 member organizations, including 8 from Central-East Europe.

However — and this may serve as a first caveat, — the ECPSA Executive Committee more than mirrors the numerical preponderance of Western European groups, with just two of its seven members coming from Central-East

1 This is the revised version of a paper read at the academic conference “A New Region of Europe: Regional Development Paradigms in the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarum”, Vilnius, November 26-27, 2010.

Europe — more precisely, from Hungary and Slovenia. Similarly, engagement in CEPSA, the Central European Political Science Association established as early as 1994, has remained restricted to a core group of 8 organizations. The simple reason is that, in a number of Central-East European countries, either no political science association has formed, or existing associations are largely inactive. The degree and effectiveness of professional representation indicate considerable intra-regional disparities in our discipline’s evolution. A discussion of the problem will follow below.

The considerable quantitative progress which, nevertheless, has been visible is at odds with the discipline’s modest contribution to addressing the salient contemporary issues of regulating financial and economic globalization, of making the best of regional and global migration, of not just combating terrorism, but promoting the reduction of its underlying grievances and causes. In summing up the country reports, which Canadian political scientist Leslie Pal and this author have recently compiled in a book, it may be safely stated that the influence of university departments and foundations from Western Europe and the United States has encouraged the merger of Central and Eastern Europe’s nascent political science “cultures” into an empirically oriented “mainstream” focusing on national political systems, comparative politics, European studies and international relations. Across the region, the discipline’s dominant approach is institutionalist, with emphasis on current policy-making and on applied research. This tendency has been favoured by the emergence of numerous non-governmental research institutes and analytical centres (“think tanks”), often financed by Western foundations, with the professed mission of contributing to the consolidation of democracy.

On the one hand, considerable advances have been made in the fields just mentioned. On the other hand, political studies have largely been reduced to a functionalist science of “managing” parliamentary and party government. In a way, that is hardly surprising. Establishing a new political system means that, once institutionalized, political science will rather automatically turn to explaining the workings of that system. To a certain extent, political science in any country with new political institutions will be descriptive and institutionalist. The problem, obviously, is to what extent, and how can it grow beyond that focus?

In post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe, political science has been marked by an “almost total absence of critical theory”.2 No systematic reflection of the “state of the art” occurred after the collapse of “actually existing socialism”. Instead, the discredit wrought upon Marxist-Leninist ideology and its anti-empirical normativism was rather automatically extend-

2 Hankiss E., “Brilliant Ideas or Brilliant Errors? Twelve Years of Social Science Research in Eastern Europe”, in Kaase M., Sparschuh V., eds., Three Social Science Disciplines in Central and Eastern Europe, Berlin/Budapest: Social Science Information Centre (IZ)/Collegium Budapest, 2002, p. 17-24, quote on p. 22.

ed to normative conceptions of any kind. The baby was thrown out with the bath-water.

In large parts of the region, political science has been facing an additional problem: more often than not, the discipline is suffering from extreme theoretical and methodological fragmentation, accompanied by low research standards. In almost half of the 19 post-Communist societies included in Pal/Eisfeld’s collected volume, the authors — without exception experts from the countries under survey — found individual and institutional cooperation deficient, research networks underdeveloped, professional interests insufficiently represented.3

Absence of internal cohesion has its analogy in a lack of sustained regional cooperation. By reason of the earlier transfer of resources and conceptual approaches, international links established by Central and East European political scientists are typically East-West. The sort of fragmentation just referred to often implies a divide between a minority of internationally connected and a majority of inward-looking academics.