The Fate of Political Scientists in Europe

Front matter

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Political Scientists in Europe | ja

From Myth to Action t; _ Giliberto Capano - Luca Verzichelli ' a pO a e gp S ye

Preface

The story of this volume is a rather long one. We started writing about the quest for eclecticism and versatility in political science in the early 2010s. At that time, we mainly focused on the problem of political science’s internal borders: we basically followed an inductive line of reasoning, without any clear theoretical framework, in an effort to remove the obstacles to the growth of the discipline and to reduce the barriers separating generations and numerous tribes of scholars. Moreover, our empirical outlook was a rather narrow one in the beginning, since we only dealt with data concerning the community of Italian political scientists. Nevertheless, the critical nature of the challenges faced by political science was quite clear, and we continued to pursue our project and to develop a more systematic, broader comparative perspective.

However, so many things have changed in our professional lives in recent years. First of all, both of us have been engaged with a growing number of research activities and institutional duties at national and international levels, and this has somewhat slowed our project down. Nevertheless, these professional commitments have also strengthened our belief in the need to keep a keen eye on both the present and the future of our profession. The ideas and the report that we have discussed at international conferences, and the organizational responsibilities we have taken on within certain international political science and academic associations, have given us the opportunity to better refine our research questions and develop a broad framework, all of which lay at the core of a project previously presented to “COST—European Cooperation in Science and vii vill © PREFACE

Technology” during the course of 2016. Said project! included a number of activities concerning the problem of the professionalization of European political science from a multidimensional perspective. Four themes were engaged with by the network of scholars from 37 European countries. These themes were: the evolution of the academic community and its chosen subjects; the degree of visibility of the discipline in traditional and new media; the rates of international mobility and the international circulation of research findings; and the question of applicability and the actual application of political science’s products.

Things change. We know this. But the way things have changed during the few past years is certainly peculiar. During the preparatory period, the Proseps network suffered problems regarding the completeness and availability of data due to the financial crisis which had severely hit the academic communities, especially in Southern and Eastern Europe. When these problems had been resolved, and we were finally able to analyse large sets of data, collected thanks to systematic reviews and the launch of a broad survey conducted among more than 11,000 European political scientists, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, preventing us from meeting up during the last year of the project and forcing us to postpone the deadline for the final reports.

Once again, unforeseen events slowed our project down; but, once again, they also further encouraged us to reflect anew on the future of a discipline which, given the historical constraints and the effects of the present crises, looks particularly uncertain. Our doubts about the actual development of political science in Europe, and our desire to understand its potential future, were fed by several intervening factors connected to the aforesaid crises, ranging from the economic slump to the problem of mass immigration, and from the pandemic to the recent war in Ukraine of course. These events have produced considerable uncertainty about Europe’s economic stability, which in turn impacts the availability of funding for research and higher education. However, these recent crises have also led to concerns regarding certain specific aspects of the political scientist’s profession: for example, decreasing international mobility, the adaptation to changing teaching techniques and variations in the research

‘Cost Action CA15207, Proseps (Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science). The project started on September 2016 and lasted till March 2021 (the end date was postponed for 6 months due to the pandemic). An overall summary of the project can be found at the web page: http://proseps.unibo.it/

PREFACE ix agendas of several academic institutions, and these concerns need to be taken into account for the purposes of our interpretative endeavours.

Accordingly, we intend this volume to be a candid reflection based on empirical evidence and connected to the multidimensional discussion we have witnessed over the years. The findings of four Proseps working groups,” most of which have already been published, provide solid interpretative analyses of the phenomena at the core of the ongoing and future professionalization of political science. Here we wish to offer a comprehensive summary of this multidimensional process, to provide our views on future scenarios and finally to offer a few simple normative observations.

The point of departure of this volume can be summed up as follows: whatever we choose to define the boundaries of the discipline and the scope of the work of those who accept the label of “political scientists”, the fragile, uncertain nature of political science continues to threaten the future development of this scientific community. Consequently, we have to take such a threat into consideration. This is particularly true in the case of European political science, for several reasons.

Firstly, European political science continues to be seen as Jess relevant than other disciplines; and in terms of its overall penetration in the academic environment, it remains less relevant than North American political science. Secondly, European political science continues to be labelled as less scientific, particularly when compared to other empirical social sciences such as psychology, sociology and, to some extent, anthropology. This seems to be due to the uncertain epistemological structure of the discipline, which has often been described as a residual mass of disorganized demands. Thirdly, European political science seems to suffer from the presence of other communities of scholars and stakeholders, who are more publicly visible and better able to impact public debate. There are reasons to fear that political science may be much Jess impactful than, for example, sociology, history or psychology. Several studies have already been made of this topic. Even in Europe, the problem of impact has been extensively discussed. However, we argue that this time, European political science has much more to lose if its recurrent problems of impact and social visibility are not dealt with adequately.

?The Proseps working groups were devoted to the state of political science in Europe, internationalization of European political science, social impact and media visibility and the advisory role of political scientists in Europe.

X PREFACE

Thus, a comprehensive discussion of the challenges and prospects of European political science seems to be particularly timely. It has been over 10 years since the advent of the recent global recession, and we are now in the middle of a delicate transformation of the political scenario within the European Union (EU) and in many European democracies, and thus we need to pay careful attention to the dynamics of the changes affecting not just the “objects” of our discipline but also its interaction with the surrounding world. Moreover, recent developments like the disastrous effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, and the Russia- Ukraine war, have created further inequality among and within European countries. This volume thus mainly focuses on three aspects of political science: (1) the boundaries (internal and external boundaries) and definitions of the discipline; (2) the individual characteristics of European political scientists (background, teaching fields, different experiences of the implementation of research and teaching approaches); (3) the attitudes and values of scholars and their perception of their roles and professional mission.

The underlying aim is to offer a comprehensive interpretation based on robust data and to develop a more realistic reflection on the future of the discipline. During these recent, troubled times, we have often reflected on the best way of addressing these issues; and we have concluded that the introduction of the concepts of fate—to indicate the criticality of the moment—and of heroes may help us offer a positive message and better connect the history of political science to the future goals we have in mind. These concepts are certainly not new. There is copious literature on the future scenarios employing similar ideas: for instance, the image of the potential tragedy of political science, or its demise to a state of irrelevance, has been recurrent, as has the definition of certain models of academic and intellectual profiles that can inspire our work. However, most of the classic works we have reviewed tend to analyse the fate of the discipline in terms of individual aspects (impact, visibility, academic strength, applicability etc.) or even focus on the role played by individual pioneers in the establishment of specific sub-disciplines or theoretical approaches.

In this volume, we have chosen to see Fate as a possible (hopefully positive) refoundation of political science on the basis of the many dimensions of professionalization we have explored, thanks to the Proseps project. Furthermore, we have chosen mythological heroes to portray the attitudes that tomorrow’s political scientists in Europe should adopt in their work. After all, while it is true that political science is old enough to boast at least four generations of scholars—and we should remember and celebrate the

PREFACE Xi efforts of the first generation of founders—it is also young enough to open a discussion among at least three generational cohorts of professionals. For this reason, we have selected 20 European political scientists with whom we have discussed the qualitative and quantitative data emerging from our project, and whose views on our future as a professional category we have listened to and analysed.

This book recounts this story. Chap. 1 summarizes where we are now through an analysis of the magnitude and the variance of European political science. Chap. 2 focuses on the explanations of this state of things. Chap. 3 examines the present transformations and challenges and ends with an initial analysis of the attitudes of European political scientists in the current health pandemic. Chap. 4 shifts from the interpretative to the normative level, identifying the quest for engaged eclecticism and a more specific idea of critical thinking to relaunch the professional role of political scientists.

Bologna, Italy Giliberto Capano Siena, Italy Luca Verzichelli

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It has been a long journey towards the completion of this book, but one we have travelled in the company of a great many others. Consequently, we need to thank a lot of people who have helped us substantially in this lengthy endeavour. First of all, there are our colleagues who have been part of the Proseps project and have made a key contribution in terms of their analytical suggestions, data collection and fruitful contribution to our many meetings. More than 100 people have contributed, in different ways, to the Proseps project’s activities, and so we cannot thank all of them by name. However, we would like to offer our warmest and sincerest thanks to those who have helped us manage the project, namely Vladimira Dvorakova, Isabelle Engeli, Christpophe Roux, Gabriella Ionszki, Dobrinka Kostova, Marleen Brans, Arco Timmermans, Josè Real Dato and Claudius Wagemann. Without their passion, commitment, patience and expertise we would not have been able to guide the Proseps project in the direction of its expected goals.

Our gratitude also goes to Giulia Vicentini, Proseps project assistant, for her invaluable assistance with all the logistical and scientific aspects of the project; Mickael Pero, our Cost Officer, for his continuous support and his ability to understand and help resolve all the problems arising from the multifaceted Proseps team; Linda Basile for her help with data presentation; and Cristina Maltoni for her support with the editing of the different sections of this book.

Several chairs and executive members of the European Consortium for Political Research—among them, Simona Piattoni, Kris Deschouwer and David Farrell—have been involved in our activities, providing their xiii xiv © ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS invaluable support and cooperation. Simona and Francesca Longo, who have chaired the Italian Political Science Association, have encouraged and supported us in many ways.

A special thanks also goes to the colleagues we interviewed (see the list in Appendix B), since they significantly contributed to our understanding of the past, the present and the future of the discipline.

Finally, we are indebted to all of the young scholars we have met in recent years, during the course of the PhD programmes we teach in and at the many conferences we have attended. They may not be aware of the fact, but their enthusiasm for the discipline, and their desire to become “good” political scientists, has genuinely fuelled our work and been pivotal to its completion.

Contents

European Political Science: The Magnitude, Heterogeneity and Relevance of a Divided Discipline d

Premise: Political Science—The Youngest Discipline for the

Study of Politics in Europe

Chapter 1

European Political Science: The Magnitude, Heterogeneity and Relevance of a Divided Discipline

1 PREMISE: POLITICAL SCIENCE—THE YOUNGEST DISCIPLINE FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICS IN EUROPE

The study of politics goes back a considerable length of time and is deeply rooted in the evolution of human societies and their beliefs, preferences and worldviews. However, political science, as a specific discipline anchored to theory-driven empirical analyses of political phenomena, is still in its youth.

While the genetic phase of modern political science dates from the turn of the nineteenth century, and principally concerns the USA and Europe, there is no doubt that this discipline is characterized by its subsequent non-linear development: while in the USA it began to be established between the First and Second World Wars, in Europe its developmental path has been more complicated due to diverging political contingencies. In particular, account must be taken of the asymmetric timing of democratization in European countries, and of the difficult process whereby political science has gradually freed itself of the legacy of other forceful disciplines which have traditionally been considered legitimated to a greater degree when it comes to the study of politics. These vary somewhat from one country to another, although in most cases the predominant disciplines have been public law, sociology, history and philosophy.

To be honest, every European country has attempted to anchor the national development of political science to the idiosyncratic evolution of

© The Author(s) 2023 1 G. Capano, L. Verzichelli, The Fate of Political Scientists in Europe, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24643-2_1 the country’s academic, scientific and cultural history. For example, in Italy the elitist tradition of Mosca, Pareto and Michels is very often considered a pivotal factor in the evolution of the discipline. In France and the United Kingdom, it was the emergence of an inter-disciplinary set of educational programmes that provided the window of opportunity for the new subject. Indeed, references are frequently made to the establishment, in 1871 and in 1895, of two rather different models of “advanced school” specialized in the study of politics (Favre, 1989; Hayward, 1991). Swedish scholars often proudly point out that the Johan Skytte chair of eloquence and politics had already been established way back in 1622. Finally, even in those countries where long-lasting authoritarian and totalitarian regimes had somehow colonized the space of political science, these traditions somehow influenced the subsequent polyarchic experiences (Berndtson, 2012). Key examples of this include the former Soviet Union, where Marxist Leninism was taught as “political science” for decades, and Spain, where the Francoist regime introduced courses in political law (derecho politico) that were to impact the re-establishment of the discipline after the political transition in the 1970s.

Indeed, it is always possible to find predecessors of the discipline accounting for some kind of national tradition in every European country. However, the fact is that being a scientific discipline, political science has specific (albeit variegated) principles that are widely shared by an international community. These principles first emerged in the USA, and have since been strengthened thanks to the work of a few major European thinkers, including Stein Rokkan, Maurice Duverger and Giovanni Sartori. This was inevitable: in the United States a complete set of conditions favourable to the development of an empirical approach to the study of politics had emerged well before this happened in other countries. These conditions were: the political conditions (basically, the establishment of a solid democracy); the cultural condition (the prevalence of a pragmatic view, also from the philosophical point of view); and a less constraining State tradition (whereas in Continental Europe the lengthy evolution of the State meant that the juridical perspective had been adopted as the main analytical lens for the study of political phenomena) (Easton et al., 1991; Almond, 1996)

In Europe, these principles were introduced and subsequently supplemented not only through a complex process that was intrinsically linked to national legacies, but also through a process of adaptation the outcome of which was not just a faithful reproduction of the American template, but something different due to the variegated intellectual roots and institutional legacies present in Europe (Schmitter, 2002; Meny, 2020). We can safely assume that these differences may be exaggerated: as we will show below, there are significant divisions in the discipline that cut across the European and American contexts; what is undisputable in the case of European political science, however, is that the fragmented context in which it developed, the different timing of democratization of diverse European countries, together with their differing academic traditions, has meant that European political science is a latecomer and is definitively the newest social science to achieve a sufficient level of academic legitimation and a certain degree (not particularly high, unfortunately) of social recognition.

However, even if European political science seems to have an independent life of its own, its youthful character, together with the epistemological problems associated with the discipline, may represent an insurmountable limitation in the present (and future) turbulent times (Ansell et al., 2017; Ansell & Trondall, 2018). Continual crises and global challenges (the 2008 financial and economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, global climate change and so on) provoke recurrent upheaval in the academic and scientific world, since they trigger continuous demands for advice, knowledge and evidence-based guidelines. Such turbulent dynamics can represent a significant peril for European political science, which is required to overcome its traditional myths, epistemological divides and institutional weaknesses in order to provide such answers.

2 POLITICAL SCIENCE: ITs DIVISIONS AND WEAKNESSES

2.1 The Epistemological Weakness of Political Science

As a matter of fact, while the (several) European political science communities have their own unique features (due to their history and context), they also share some significant common traits, in terms of their scientific status and social relevance, that have been attributed to the discipline as a whole. The status of political science is still fragile in many places, not only from the viewpoint of its relevance to the academic system, but also in terms of its public image. This fragility may depend on a multitude of reasons, but first and foremost it is embedded in the epistemological status of the discipline. In fact, while political science is undoubtedly a legitimate academic discipline, meaning “the primary unit of internal differentiation of the modern system of science” (Stichweh, 1992, p. 4), its epistemological status and its methodological and theoretical borders fluctuate and are very often affected by internal disputes and external pressures. An academic discipline is characterized by preserving the following characteristics to a certain degree (Krishnan, 2009):

l. A particular object at the core of its research (e.g. law, politics, society, natural world), although the object can be shared with other disciplines.

2. A body of accumulated specialist knowledge, that is specific to one discipline and should be not shared with others.

3. A set of common theories and concepts, which allows the systematization of a comprehensive corpus of cumulative knowledge.

4. A specific technical language.

A set of specific methods.

6. A structured presence in the teaching and research of higher education institutions (institutionalization).

n

Leaving the institutionalization dimension aside for a moment (see the following section), we shall now focus on the other fundamental dimensions. Political science suffers from a series of problematic issues due to its characteristics and to the significantly different ways that political scientists define their own jobs.

To better understand these problems, it is useful to conceptually treat the concept of discipline in accordance with certain well-known classifications (Biglan, 1973a, 1973b; Becher, 1989; Becher & Trowler, 2001), thanks to which academic disciplines are categorized according to their cognitive attitude (the nature of knowledge) and their social attitude (the nature of disciplinary culture). A discipline’s cognitive attitude can be treated by focusing on the epistemological/theoretical dimension and on the grade of applicability. Thus, academic disciplines can be divided into hard and soft, and pure and applied, thus giving a four-cell matrix (see Table 1.1). Hard disciplines hold well-developed, shared theories and

Table 1.1 The cognitive attitudes of academic disciplines

Soft Hard

Pure History Physics Sociology Political science

Applied Education Engineering

Law Economics methods, universal laws and causal propositions; they are cumulative and have generalizable findings, and are highly competitive. Soft disciplines, on the other hand, have unclear boundaries, a plurality of theories, different definitions of explanation, loosely defined problems. Pure disciplines are self-regulating and have little concern for practical application. Applied disciplines are to some extent regulated by external influences (e.g. by professional bodies such as the ones regulating lawyers or engineers) and are focused on the practical application of scientific concepts.

The social attitude of a discipline can be conceptually treated according to a distinction made based on the characteristics of the level of disciplinary identity, and of the way of doing research. According to the former criterion, disciplines can be either convergent or divergent. Convergent disciplines possess uniform standards of research and a stronger sense of cohesion and identity within the group; thus, their boundaries are much more clearly defined. Divergent disciplines, on the other hand, sustain greater intellectual deviance and display a propensity to adapt across boundaries from other disciplines. According to the latter criterion, a discipline can be classified as either rural or urban. Urban disciplines are characterized by a detailed disaggregation of the research problems in small unities, with a great number of researchers studying the same problem. Rural disciplines cover larger fields of research, involve less interaction, and the ratio of researchers to each research problem is lower. Table 1.2 presents the resulting typology.

By adopting these classificatory lenses, political science can at first sight be characterized as soft and pure from the cognitive point of view, and as rural and divergent trom the cultural/social point of view. As a matter of fact, we may define political science as a soft discipline, since we are all perfectly aware that there is no paradigmatic consensus within the community, while our theoretical bases remain highly diversified. Analogously, we may say that it is a pure discipline since traditionally there has been very

Table 1.2 Social attitudes of the academic disciplines

Convergent Divergent

Rural History Education Economics Modern languages

Sociology

Political science

Urban Physics Mechanical engineering little concern regarding its practical application. Indeed, the original attitudes of political scientists and the broad majority of current research topics tend to exclude the practical application of our knowledge.

As far as the focus on the social construction of disciplinary identities is concerned, we may define political science as a divergent discipline. Indeed, its levels of identity and cohesion remain very low or generic due to the lack of a common core of discourse-argumentation-theories-methods. Moreover, we may define political science as a rural discipline in the sense that there are still few researchers dealing with the same topics, and thus there is limited competition among them (unlike physics, e.g., which is considered an “urban” discipline since there are many researchers working on the same topics).

This lack of a common core in the modes of discourse and argumentation structurally drives high disciplinary fragmentation. Furthermore, there is the vastness of the topics studied by political scientists (ranging from electoral behaviour to public policy, from political institutions to international relations, from political communication to political theory and so on). As a result, political science resembles a kind of confederation of research sectors: its internal borders are often more pronounced than its external ones. Consequently, competition among researchers is relatively low (Capano & Verzichelli, 2016).

The significant fragmentation and division of political science is widely acknowledged. The discipline has always been divided into schools and factions. For decades, there has been a clear methodological divide “between those who view the discipline as a hard science-formal, mathematical, statistical, experimental-dedicated to the cumulation of tested ‘covering laws’, and those who are less sanguine and more eclectic, who view all scholarly methods, the scientific ones as well as the softer historical, philosophical, and legal ones, as appropriate and useful” (Almond, 1990, p. 7). This divide is still present right now: it is highly probable that many political scientists would not recognize themselves in our classification of the discipline. There are those who embrace rational choice theory or a strongly quantitative approach, who would argue against our classifying political science as a soft discipline. They would consider it to involve sufficiently hard academic endeavour, and probably as more convergent than rural. However, this argument can be easily confuted by the presence of so many other scholars belonging to different theoretical schools, who are more interested in qualitative analysis.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the abovementioned classifications try to embrace a general trend, and this has become something ofa challenge. In fact, we are perfectly aware that in recent years, political science has also been subjected to considerable pressure to modify its inherited cultural and cognitive features. As far as regards political science’s cultural features, the rural dimension has been challenged by the substantial pressure on scholars to publish as a result of internal academic dynamics. This phenomenon is linked to the evident transformation of research practices, which are now of a much more collective nature. The increasing number of scientific articles co-authored by more than two scholars is the most emblematic indicator of this pattern (Metz & Jackle, 2017).

Moreover, the divergent dimension has also been affected by the attempt to reduce theoretical variety as well as methodological diversity. This is shown by several elements, two of which merit attention here:

l. the increasing prevalence of quantitatively significant items of research, based on large numbers of cases, published by the most prestigious journals (especially American ones);

2. the increasing propensity to adopt multi-method, increasingly sophisticated, research designs.

These characteristics do not radically change the rural/divergent nature of political science: in fact, qualitative analysis is still relevant, at least in the European scenario. However, if we take a closer look at the development of the discipline, we discover that there are dynamics that are working towards loosening the borders and partially changing the inherited legacy.

As far as regards the cognitive dimension, this has also been undermined by external actors. For example, in the USA a concerted effort has been made by the Republican Party to significantly reduce National Science Foundation funding to American political science departments. The arguments of the leading supporter of this strategy, Senator Tom Coburn, clearly dispute the social relevance of the discipline: “Studies of presidential executive power and Americans’ attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American’s life from a threatening condition or to advance America’s competitiveness in the world” (Coburn, 2013). At the same time, the new EU research framework for the periods 2014-2020 and 2021-2027 clearly calls upon all social sciences, including political science, to radically shift towards applied research.

Thus, the lack of any strong, unified theoretical paradigms (such as those that economists apparently seem to have), the fragmentation of research topics and the lack of large-scale joint research projects make the discipline very weak not only in epistemological terms but also from the professional point of view. The consequence is the risk of a weak public image, with the discipline being perceived as socially irrelevant (Flinders, 2013).

2.2 The Weak Social Relevance of Political Science

This almost intrinsic nature of political science also facilitates specific patterns of behaviour, which in turn can contribute to political science succumbing to the vicious circle of social and political irrelevance. As Gerry Stoker has pointed out (2010), there are four possible factors underlying the low esteem afforded to political science, which we believe to be closely linked to the aforementioned intrinsic hegemonic cultural and cognitive dimensions of the subject:

l. the temporal de-alignment of the logic of political scientific discovery and its political timing. In the world of real politics, there are very few windows of opportunity for political scientists to play a genuine advisory role (Brans & Timmermans, 2022), and these rare opportunities are often wasted since, owing to their “pure” mission, political scientists want to obtain accurate results from their research, which requires a timescale that the rapid, often erratic nature of political decision-making seldom affords. At the same time, its nature as a “soft” and “divergent” science does not offer policymakers any potential widely shared solutions.

2. the organizational incentives of academic work. Within pure subjects, these incentives are particularly oriented towards peer reputation, and little or no consideration is given to its value by social and political actors. This means that, unlike most of the so-called applied sciences, political science is almost totally internally driven, with little attention paid to the external environment.

3. the problematic relationship between facts and values, and the prevailing rhetoric of the neutrality of research, that lead the majority of political scientists to pursue description and explanation rather than prediction, prescription and evaluation. From this point of view, there is an evident contradiction between the historical conditions which have allowed the development of political science (in one word: the consolidation of democratic regimes) and the embarrassment of political science when perceiving itself as a science of democracy, as suggested by Harold Lasswell (1956, 1963) and Lasswell and Lerner (1951).