Conclusions The Discipline of Political Science: (Re)Positioning between Naïve Objectivity and Self-Destroying Pure Partisanship Anton Pelinka Central European University, Budapest [email protected] Introductory remarks framework of Austrian and European universities as well as in the structure of a university like the Univer- This article is the result of some decades of experience: sity of Innsbruck, which has established curricula cen- based on the disappointment of a student at the Uni- tred around political science as the core discipline, based versity of Vienna’s law school, which offered a curricu- on an institute (department) named after that discipline. lum that – in the early 1960s – did nothing to satisfy the This privilege can be misunderstood as a final interests of a young Austrian, socialized in post-1945 achievement which allows complacency among political Vienna. Nevertheless, there are certain things from scientists, teaching and doing research in such an insti- the grey years of my law studies, for which I have to be tutionalized environment like a university department. grateful – the lectures of the sociologist August Maria This, of course, would be a complete misunderstanding. Knoll; and the seminar-style “Pflichtübung” the young Especially for political scientists in a country like Aus- assistant professor Konrad Ginther offered in Interna- tria, in which the discipline of political science has been tional Law. Yet, a true eye-opener was the lecture Heinz delayed and its breakthrough within a rather unfriendly Eulau gave about the meaning of democracy at the Vien- academic environment has been the product of political nese Institute for Advanced studies in 1965/66. In the fol- conflicts, the very existence of the – our – discipline in lowing years, conversations with many persons shaped the realm of undisputed academic disciplines, among my understanding of the discipline which became my the traditionally “privileged” disciplines like philosophy discipline: talks with Norbert Leser during my Salzburg or history or law, spares us not debating and discussing years, talks with American friends during my stays in the necessarily complex and sometimes not so comfort- New Orleans and Harvard, Stanford and Ann Arbor – able question: Why does our discipline exist? Which first and foremost with my special friend Andy Marko- intellectual, academic as well as political function does vits. I was also influenced during the years when, begin- political science fulfil? ning in 1975, I was privileged to establish our discipline Academic and especially intra-university autonomy at the University of Innsbruck. Permanent contacts with cannot ignore different systems of references forcing my Innsbruck colleagues were of significant importance any discipline to justify its doing. There is the competi- for my thinking about political science, and so were the tion within the university system – within one univer- 12 years in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Central sity, and within the national (and European) system of European University Budapest. All this can be summa- universities. And there is the necessity to be – formally, rized in one sentence: Political science is based on life- and perhaps even more important – informally evaluat- long learning. ed and judged by international standards, by the results of international competition. “Peer reviewing” may be seen as self-evident or as bureaucratic burden – but it Self-Determination: Privilege and Challenge is the necessary help to prevent falling into the trap of academic routine. Political science is what political scientists say – and We permanently have to answer the question of what what political scientists do. It is the privilege of any es- political science is and, even more important, what it is tablished academic discipline to enjoy the right of self- not. We have to be aware of the permanently shifting determination. This privilege is enshrined in the legal border lines between different disciplines as well as the December 28, 2018 I innsbruck university press, Innsbruck OZP – Austrian Journal of Political Science I ISSN 2313-5433 I http://oezp.at/ Vol. 47, issue 3 I DOI 10.15203/ozp.2762.vol47iss3 OPEN ACCESS 82 A. Pelinka: The Discipline of Political Science I OZP Vol. 47, Issue 3 ongoing significant developments within the discipline. start even immediately after 1945, when the Austrian And we cannot ignore the question: What is the surplus universities were freed from the authoritarian and to- value of our discipline – the value for academia and for talitarian restrictions. This debate started – looking back the society at large? How can we justify the very exist- – surprisingly late. ence of political science? Political science paid a price for this delay: From its Can we rightfully argue that Austria’s university start, in the 1960s and 1970s, political science’s position would be of lesser quality without political science? Can was as at the periphery of the periphery. At the very cen- we really argue that our discipline has to offer something tre of our discipline was political science as defined by of an improvement for the society? My answer tends to the standards set by US-universities. Electoral research be “yes”. But we should not take this answer automati- had to follow what had been developed at Columbia Uni- cally and permanently justified. versity or the University of Michigan. The standards of the study of international relations were defined by Johns Hopkins University and at Stanford University, The Delay of a Discipline and what Political Theory had to include followed the path of Universities of Harvard, Yale, and Chicago. Political science in Austria has been delayed. One reason At the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, was the “conservative backlash”, Martin Senn and Franz where – beginning in 1963 – the Ford Foundation (fol- Eder (2018) describe in their contribution; a backlash lowing Paul Lazarsfeld’s recommendation) sponsored which had prevented the development of what Senn the first systematic curricula in political science, US- and Eder call political science’s “pre-disciplinary phase”. American professors like Heinz Eulau or Dwaine Mar- With the authoritarian rule, beginning in 1934, and the vick influenced the first generation of Austrian political totalitarianism between 1938 and 1945, the academic scientists, their first research and their first academic realm has lost the freedom any social science needs for publications (see Stiefbold/Marvick 1966; Gerlich/ its very existence. Kramer 1969). What US-political scientists said defined After 1945, the vested interests of the traditional Austrian political scientists. When, at the beginning of academic establishment tended to bloc a discipline the political academies of Austrian parties in the early seen as a newcomer. The specific Austrian roots of the 1970s, the ÖVP inaugurated its academy it invited Karl political science – e.g. Joseph Schumpeter’s approach Deutsch – one of the most prominent political scientists to understand politics (and democracy) as a market or of his time and an American with Austrian roots – as Maria Jahoda’s, Paul Lazarsfeld’s and Hans Zeisel’s keynote speaker for this opening. Austrian political sci- Marienthal-study which followed more or less a concept ence started on the periphery of a global discipline or- of social psychology to understand the political conse- ganized around a centre – US-political science. quences of an economic and social crisis – had been ex- But there was another centre, a centre in the periph- tinguished for years from academic and intellectual life ery: (West-) Germany’s political science offered career in Austria. And, in a marked difference to post-1945 Ger- opportunities for Austrian political scientists. In the many, the liberating and occupying forces of the allies 1970s (and the years to follow), German universities be- did not command and control – at least not directly (as came the starting point of careers for Austrians; and the they did in Germany) – a new academic beginning. For newly established discipline at Austrian universities was that reason, there was not much of a new beginning at shaped, already beginning with the end of the 1960s, by Austrian universities in 1945. German political scientists teaching in Austria. (West-) As it can be seen from its “pre-disciplinary phase”, German political science, earlier developed due to the Austrian political science developed out of academic ac- direct influence of the educational policies of the allies, tivities from academic researchers not educated as polit- had an immense impact on Austrian political science. ical scientists. The authors of “Die Arbeitslosen von Ma- Among the first systematic analyses of Austrian pol- rienthal” were trained as psychologists. Joseph Schum- itics were books written by US-American (Powell 1970, peter had started his academic career as professor of Steiner 1972, Bluhm 1973) and by West-German politi- economics in imperial Austria’s easternmost university, cal scientists (Lehmbruch 1967, Nassmacher 1968). And in Czernowitz, before he became republican Austria’s the career of Gerald Stourzh offers an excellent example first minister of finance – and before he, as professor at of that fruitful transnational and trans-disciplinary in- Harvard University, published his famous “Capitalism, terdependence: Stourzh graduated with a PhD in history Socialism, and Democracy”, one of the most important from the University