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Political Science in Central-East Europe and the Impact of Politics: Factors of Diversity, Forces of Convergence

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Abstract

External forces have pushed Central-East Europe's nascent political science disciplines toward convergence: the European Union's educational policies, the funding and training activities of public and private Western players, most prominently the ‘Open Society’ institutes and organizations established by financier George Soros. However, considerable disparities persist regarding national and international cooperation, research quality, and representation of professional interests. These disparities are in large part explained by the fact that the institutionalization of political science has been stunted in places where ‘hybrid’, semi-autocratic political regimes have emerged.

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Notes

  1. For a contrary view, cf. Henderson (2004: 148–149 et passim).

  2. Cf. OSCE (2003) for the OSCE observation mission's report on monitoring the 2003 parliamentary elections (accessed 11/12/2009); see also the OSCE report after observing the 2004 presidential elections (OSCE, 2004). Because of Russian restrictions, the 2007 parliamentary and the 2008 presidential elections were boycotted by OSCE observers. Addressing the 11th ‘United Russia’ congress on 21 November 2009, Putin's successor Medvedev confirmed and criticized administrative manipulation of regional elections.

  3. Cf. Amnesty International (2008).

  4. For this and the following quotes, cf. Ilyin and Malinova (2008: 11).

  5. These developments would of course, in principle, not exclude both comparative and critical studies. For the absence of the latter, see below. Regarding the former, the article paraphrases the opinion of a leading Russian comparativist, who is ‘rather critical’ about the condition of his sub-field.

  6. An exercise in ‘peaceful coexistence’, held at Lomonosov University, whose students were not permitted to attend the sessions’ often spirited debates.

  7. The article quoted here refers to political studies of ethnicity as an example, but adds that difficulties deriving from stereotypes introduced by Soviet social studies ‘might be found also in the other sub-fields of political science’ (Ilyin and Malinova, 2008: 10).

  8. Cf. Bibič (1996: 426–428; 444). A section in Fink-Hafner (2002: 362) was captioned: ‘Redefinition of the discipline since 1990: from one periphery to another?’

  9. Prepared by Dovile Jakniunaite and Inga Vinogradnaite as an addendum to Chapter 12 in Eisfeld and Pal (2010). We are greatly indebted to both for their generous help.

  10. For the first two, cf. Hankiss (2002: 20, 22).

  11. Cf. Melville (2008: 56 et passim, and 2009). Among 192 countries, Russia comes off seventh in international influence and twenty-seventh on the state capacity index, but ranks only seventy-third in quality of life, ninety-third as to institutional democratic potential, and eighty-first on the index of threats (including AIDS, demographic decline, and undiversified exports). From the ‘institutional basis of democracy’ rating, Melville and his collaborators conclude that Russia is ‘leaning’ neither ‘toward manifest autocracies’ nor ‘mature democracies’ (Melville, 2009: 200).

  12. Commission of the European Communities (2009b).

  13. Cf. Kaufman (2002); also the earlier study by Slater (1997).

  14. For example, The Alchemy of Finance (1988), New York: Simon and Schuster; The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998), New York: Little, Brown; George Soros on Globalization (2002), New York: Public Affairs; The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (2008), New York: Public Affairs.

  15. www.ceu.hu/about/organization/missionhistory.

  16. To illustrate that foreign financial donors need not just have good intentions, but also tact, former Romanian Minister of Culture Andrei Pleşu commented, in his own particular way, on a certain apocryphal story. Both the story and the comment bear repeating: ‘Ava Gardner decided to leave one of her husbands and submitted “mental cruelty” as grounds for divorce. Asked to explain this in greater detail, she said Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain was the cause. “He forced me to read this damned book”’. Adds Pleşu: ‘Mutatis mutandis, Eastern Europe's intellectuals sometimes feel like Ava Gardner terrorized by “civilizing” spouses. And in this case, it's not even Thomas Mann …’ (Pleşu, 2002: 14).

  17. For reasons of space, a table highlighting persisting differences between the region's political science communities had to be removed from the present version. This table can be found in the introduction to Eisfeld and Pal (2010).

  18. See the introduction to Eisfeld and Pal (2010) for an elaboration of this argument and a summary table.

  19. Cf. also Rechel (2009), with its numerous country reports.

  20. That conclusion may be drawn from McGrath (2008: 360, 365). The same result emerged from an October 2009 workshop organized by Irmina Matonyte for the Vilnius University's Institute of International Relations and Political Science and the Lithuanian Political Science Association, attended by participants from seven Central-East European countries (Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine).

  21. www.cepsa.cz/index.php?page=about, 1, accessed 12/28/2009.

  22. http://ecprnet.eu/membership/member_countries.asp, accessed 12/28/2009.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, 49069, Germany

    Rainer Eisfeld

  2. Centre of Governance and Public Management, Carleton University, Ottawa, K1S 5B6, Ontario, Canada

    Leslie A Pal

  3. School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa, K1S 5B6, Ontario, Canada

    Leslie A Pal

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  1. Rainer Eisfeld
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  2. Leslie A Pal
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Eisfeld, R., Pal, L. Political Science in Central-East Europe and the Impact of Politics: Factors of Diversity, Forces of Convergence. Eur Polit Sci 9, 223–243 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2010.11

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