Politikon September-October

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Politikon September-October "I don't know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. " Albert Einstein Politikon September-October Dear Friends of IAPSS, at this moment everyone of you should be aware of what happened ye- sterday in the USA. It has been something unbelievable, astoni- shing, horrible. The gravity, ab- ————————————HIGHLIGHTS surdity and madness of the tero- è What is political science for?/2. A response to Graetsch and Theocharis ristic attack let everybody stop to By Andreas Warntjen and Arndt Wonka - University of Konstanz……..page 3 listen to news and reflect on è How to become a right-wing extremist what was happening. “Political By Bettina Engels and Florian Storm - Free University of Berlin...…...page 5 Science of all subjects, has to stand firm, since it is the first to —————————ABOUT GLOBALIZATION è The Case for Globalisation/2 be suppressed when freedom is By Marcus Graetsch - University of Bremen…..……...…………………..page 7 reduced” (by Halvard Leira). è The politics of humanitarianism: humanitarian intervention as “the Being political science students mirror of global politics” we have to assume a firm By Silja Sukselainen - Helsinki…………………..……...…………………..page 9 position, strongly condamning è Bridging the Global Digital Divide all kind of terror and especially By Giuliano Gennaio - ASP Roma Luiss……...…………...……………...page 13 this kind, making thousands and thousands of innocent victims. ————–—––———FROM GROUND ZERO We, as the leadership of IAPSS è The inquiry for the needle in the haystack and on behalf of the entire asso- By Benjamin Zyla - Goettingen………….…...………………………..…...page 16 ciation, express solidariety and è Media and War lots of sympathy to the American By Salvatore Nigro - ASP Roma Luiss………...…...…………...………...page 19 people. On this tragic day seems to us that the terrible terror e- —————————————OTHER è Transnational parties: what future?/2. A Reposne to Benjamin Zyla vents that just happened are di- By Giuliano Gennaio - ASP Roma Luiss……...……………...…………...page 26 rectly connected to the subject of è Civic partecipation in the development of the political institution in the dangers to liberty in the Central and Eastern Europe world. We are opening a forum Mihai Varga - APSS……...………………………………………...………..page 28 on the web site of IAPSS to freely discuss on this terrible event. Feel free to join the discussion. Politikon - the IAPSS Journal What has happened is a threat to Second Issue, September-October free peoples. Democracy may be at risk. Our task is to stand still Giuliano Gennaio (Rome) Alina Dragolea (Bucharest) to re-affirm the principle of li- Jan Zutavern (Bern) Andrea Theocharis (Marburg) berty. Allan Guldberg (Aarhus) Per Martin Martinsen (Oslo) Urs Wahl (Bremen) Taina Ahtela (Helsinki) Marcus Graetsch (Bremen) Silja Sukselainen (Helsinki) Alessio Sanguinetti, Benjamin Zyla (Goettingen) Mojca Nemgar (Ljubljana) IAPSS Chairman Claudiu Cracium (Bucharest) Juris Dubrovskis (Latvia) Benedicte Bruun-Lie Erla Tryggvadòttir (Rekjavik) Anna Rappe (Uppsala) IAPSS Supervisor Giuliano Gennaio IAPSS Vice chairman Graphic by —––Ottavio Di Bella, Francesco Cetraro Politikon September-October Luckmann’s idea of “The social construction of reality”. Berger and Luckmann focus their work on the “paramount reality” of everyday life. Their occupation is not with scientific knowledge, but with knowledge pro- A response to Graetsch and Theocharis duced in the “Lebenswelt” of everyday experience (Berger and Luckmann 1966: pp. 14, 26, 39). —Andreas Warntjen and Arndt Wonka According to Berger and Luckmann man is anthropologi- —University of Konstanz cally bound not to question the validity of his or her per- ception of reality. The decisions of everyday life are gov- Abstract: Central to Theocharis’ and Graetsch’s article in erned by pragmatism and routine action. This means that Politikon’s last issue is the question of whether today’s there is a direct link between knowledge acquired in the political science community is not only asking the wrong “Lebenswelt” and individual action. The perceived reality questions but also arriving at normatively doubtful an- is taken for granted as long as there is no misfit between swers. Needless to say, the authors of the article arrive at actual experiences and the expectations based on prior a positive answer to that question, based on their idea that knowledge (Luckmann and Schütz 1979: 254; Berger and a specific methodology necessarily leads to a certain set Luckmann 1966: 38). of answers. The methodology that Theocharis’ and In contrast to knowledge acquired and applied in every- Graetsch’s critique aims at, is the positivist approach to day life, scientific knowledge is not backed up by primary science, which, as they claim, dominates current political socialization and its everyday verification (Berger and science discourse. From the authors perspective, the posi- Luckmann 1966: 162). Thus, scientific knowledge is tivist approach leads to short-sighted and normatively prone to be questioned! In accordance with Berger and doubtful results. The inherent logic of Theocharis’ and Luckmann, Popper claims that the production of – in his Graetsch’s argument is that there is a genuine link be- case scientific - knowledge starts with the appearance of tween theoretical or scientific knowledge and the subse- problems (Popper 1969: 104). In scientific discourses quent behaviour of decision-makers in the actual realm of different solutions should be proposed to one problem, politics. The baseline of the argument is that economi- due to a plurality of methodological approaches as well as cally biased methods inevitably lead, viaeconomi- a plurality of possible answers from within the same cally biased theories, to economically biased poli- met hodology. tics. In a nutshell we will argue, that while it is true The plurality of that there are people abusing (pseudo-scientific) answers thereby theories to justify their personal dogmas – e.g. a produced should supply -side neo-liberal worldview -, this does not generate enough mean that certain results are inherent to a specific critical potential methodology. for dissenting Starting from the term political science we ask our- opinions to com- selves what the difference between science and pete for the most politics is? We will argue that wrong answers and plausible solu- misleading questions do not derive from a specific tion. The central methodology, but rather from the uncritical applica- idea of positiv- tion of any scientific methodology. We want to em- ism is the non- phasize that, in our view, there is a difference be- acceptance of tween scientifically gained knowledge and the para- any one answer mount reality of everyday life, acquired through as “the truth”. everyday experience. An idea which is We share Theocharis’ and Graetsch’s view that critical manifested in reflection is central to science and that a critical disposi- the principle of falsification. Thus, positivism in itself is a tion should be adopted towards any scientific theory. Af- critical enterprise! Exactly because scientific knowledge ter all, science should built a common ground on which must be constantly questioned, we assume that solutions various theories compete for plausible answers - ideally generated by a scientific discourse cannot be directly in a non-dogmatic way. transformed into political programs, without raising nor- Having said this, political science should aim at explain- mative questions. Therefore the realm of political science ing specific aspects of human behavior. This is to say that and the realm of politics should be seperated. Of course, its task is not to promote certain ideologies. It should this is an ideal-type illustration of how science should rather enable us to seperate the identification of mecha- work. But leaving this firm ground endangers us to be nisms operating in a given society from the normative lured away by the truth-claimers of political ideologies. evaluation of these mechanisms. Political Science, there- This brings us back to Theocharis’ and Graetsch’s cri- fore, should not introduce politics to science, but science tique of the empirico-analytical approach to political sci- to politics. ence. They claim that human beings cannot be reduced to Theocharis and Graetsch heavily draw on Berger and figures and rational actors. Politikon September-October This is definitely true. But does this tell us anything about somewhat reduced representation of reality longing for the explanatory power of rational choice theory and sta- interpretation. So, the GDP can be interpretated as the tistical analysis, when applied to certain problems? overall welfare of a society, or the performance of the To be sure, neither of them can tell us the whole story economy of a given country. This leaves us enough room about human behavior in all its aspects and in every situa- to, on the one hand, criticize the meaning of the construct tion. But what these methods can do is to provide a struc- “GDP” in terms of its adequacy for the question we are turing framework, which, as an analytical tool, is an in- dealing with and on the other hand discuss the way the dispensable precondition for any empirically informed variable “GDP” is measured statistically. Therefore, sta- discussion. Thus, a certain reductionism is helpful to tistical analysis provides us with the facts that are the sub- grasp reality and to identify basic mechanisms and pat- ject of our discussion. The abstract character of statistics
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