Dept. of Political Science

Faculty of Social Sciences Stockholm University 1964 – 2014 Eds. Dahl and Danielson 175 Department of Political Science Olof Ruin A PICTURE OF Herbert Tingsten is hanging the number of students was little above one on the wall of the seminar room of the Depart- hundred annually. The PhD dissertations ment of Political Science on the 7th floor in the approved were not more than nine before 1960. F building at Frescati. In 1935 he was appoint- My own inside view of the development at ed the first holder of a newly established pro- the Department covers more than fifty years. In fessorship, the Lars Hierta chair of govern- the early 1960s, I became associated with Stock- ment, devoted solely to research and teaching holm University with a PhD from Lund. From in political science. This branch of learning had 1976 until 1994 I was the permanent holder of existed as an independent discipline for many the Lars Hierta chair and thereafter I have been centuries at Uppsala University. In the begin- allowed to occupy a desk in a corner of Skogs- ning of the present century, it had also been torpet (the Forest Cot), situated on campus, as introduced at the universities in Lund and Go- a professor emeritus. From the early 1970s un- thenburg. The appointment of Herbert Ting- til my retirement I also served as head of de- sten in 1935 also marks the beginning of polit- partment, alternating with my colleague Gun- ical science as a distinct discipline at Stockholm nar Wallin. This overview of the development University College (Stockholms högskola). of political science will deal mainly with the The growth of this new social science com- consequences of the rapid expansion of student munity was fairly slow up to the 1960s. Her- enrolment in the very beginning of these fifty bert Tingsten himself resigned in 1945 and was years but also, more briefly, with the research succeeded first by Elis Håstad and thereafter by pursued during the whole period. Gunnar Heckscher. Besides the holder of the Most social science departments grew Lars Hierta chair, the staff remained limited; during the 1960s due to free access to higher 176 Department of Political Science The reality of national election campaigns reaches also into Campus – here to the site of the Department of Political Science at Building F of Södra huset. (Photo: Mats Danielson) studies still being in force. The development at This exceptional expansion was due to many our department was, however, exceptional. In circumstances. One of these applied to all the the fall of 1964, the same year as our faculty Departments of Political Science in the country. was formed, 508 new students were registered They all benefited from an interest in matters for courses on the elementary (A) level. During political that was increasing among young peo- the following years, the number increased by ple. One was special for us in Stockholm, and almost 200 students annually. At the end of the consisted of the fact that many of our teachers 1960s, the Department of Political Science at were involved in a popular course in political Stockholm University was for a short time the science, broadcast on the national radio. In or- second largest university department in Sweden. der to handle these enormous crowds, large Faculty of Social Sciences – Stockholm University 177 premises had to be rented in town for lectures raised for studies to be structured differently and examinations. I remember that I often had and for students to have more of a say in run- to lecture to new students in the main hall of ning the Department. For a few days the media the Norra Latin secondary school in downtown coverage of our department was intense. Even Stockholm. Still, the seats did not suffice and Olof Palme, who at that time was Minister of listeners had to crowd along the walls or in the Education and whom I knew from the time we doorway. The office of the Department was lo- both had been active in student politics, called cated at various addresses during the 1960s, at and was worried about what was going on at Kungstensgatan, Observatoriegatan, Drottning- the Department of Political Science in Stock- gatan, Ynglingagatan and Haga gatan, before holm. we moved out to Frescati among the first of the The turmoil at our place calmed down after downtown departments. two weeks. The revolutionary students moved on and joined other dissatisfied groups at the Unrest at the University University. The idea came up that they should A few years earlier, the Department had been occupy their own union building at Holländar- the first in Sweden to be hit by the student un- gatan. Among those we saw on TV mounting rest that swept through the Western world. Our the rostrum and later flocking through the overcrowding was partly the reason. Every- streets down to Gustav Adolfs Torg and the thing had started on the 10th of May 1968, at an Opera House, we recognized quite a number of international politics lecture for undergradu- students from our own department. In the mid- ates. A group of students interrupted the lectur- dle of the occupation, Olof Palme unexpectedly er and accused him vehemently of having been turned up and, among all the shouting, gave his partial in his definition of ‘subversive activities’ passionate speech – often referred to later – and in his illustration of how Soviet authorities about the meaning of democracy and how to tended to take advantage of this kind of activi- express opinions in such a democracy. ty. After the accusations were made, the pro- The way the Department of Political Science testers left the room and demanded that the reacted to the unrest that it had triggered off lecturer himself be removed from further teach- was, I venture to say, rather pragmatic. This ing. This criticism grew rapidly into a harsh applies both to the dramatic days in May 1968 criti cism of the teaching at the Department as a as well as the more quiet months thereafter. whole and of the literature required for reading. The stormy days in May were promptly Mass meetings were organized. Demands were recorded and analysed by a student who pre- Police178 gather at the entry of the Student Union building at Holländargatan at the occasion of the legendary occupation by leftist students in May 1968. (Photo: Gösta Glase, ©Nordiska Museet) Faculty of Social Sciences – Stockholm University 179 sented his results in the form of a graduate in the country. The Department of Political Sci- paper the following year. The student was An- ence in Stockholm was, however, expressly al- ders Mellbourn, who later became a well- lowed to continue its own work, which was known journalist. He showed that the Depart- strongly suffused with principles of representa- ment leadership was willing to listen to all tive democracy. The policy-making mass meet- complaints, talk to the dissatisfied and not ings of the kind that the revolutionary students take strong action. The leadership at the time had demanded in May were regarded as ana- consisted of Hans Meijer, who was the holder thema. of the Lars Hierta chair after Gunnar A central element for us in making new rules Heckscher, and myself, who had obtained a for running the Department was to construe a permanent associate professorship. At the representative assembly, similar to a miniature same time as we tried to listen to grievances, parliament. It consisted of all members of the we also strongly emphasized that demands for departmental staff and of student representa- central changes must be attended to in accor- tives who were elected with courses and semi- dance with “the constitution in force”, a polit- nar groups as constituencies. Individual pro- ical science line of talk that some of us tended posals put forward were given in the form of to use. The student body had two elected rep- motions on which an executive committee, resentatives present at staff meetings. Their elected by this assembly, was to make pro- role was to forward complaints, function as an nouncements. Proposals from the executive intermediary and to participate in the deci- committee were in turn drafted by different sion-making process regarding changes. Of committees on which teachers and students were course we understood that this was a very dif- equally represented. To accommodate all, the ficult position to hold. Therefore, immediately rooms in which we met had to be fairly large, after the hectic May weeks, the Department especially as the student representatives initial- embarked upon framing a new constitution, ly demanded gallery accommodation for fellow which was to give students more of a say in the students who were not part of the assembly. running of the Department. Of course this new decision making proce- dure took time. Demands were, for example, Efforts at democratic representation constantly being made for the guillotine and Our initiative coincided with attempts of a sim- for a final list of speakers. Furthermore, meet- ilar kind instigated by the central educational ings were often adjourned because of insuffi- authorities as a reaction to the student unrest cient attendance. Teachers brought up in an 180 Department of Political Science Our special constitution was abolished during the 1970s. In principle, the same decision making model was adopted as in most other university departments. The attempts to practice ideas taught in courses on constitution in daily departmental life remained vivid in the memory of the staff for many years. For some, these memories were rather painful; for others, filled with a certain nostalgia. For the staff, the unrest of 1968 and its immediate consequences continued, for a long time, to be looked upon as fairly recent events, while for Trophies of academic work exhibited at the new waves of students, often expressing differ- elevator exit.

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