da especialização ao trabalho em equipe: a ciência política hoje

Rainer Eisfeld (Osnabrueck University, Germany)

Keynote Lecture at the Inaugural Session of the joint IPSA RC 37/RC 02 Conference on Rethinking Political Development: Multifaceted Role of Elites and Transforming Leadership
Winter Park, Florida, USA, November 7, 2011

Earlier this year, in a process in which it was my privilege to participate, the IPSA Executive Committee agreed on the first mission statement in our association?s history, which you may now find on the IPSA website. The statement includes two visions: one of service to the community, and a second of organizing research in a way meant to assure the high caliber of that service. Let me quote from the first:

?Political science?(aims) at contribut(ing) to the quality of public deliberation and decision-making? Ultimately, IPSA supports the role of political science in empowering men and women to participate more effectively in political life, whether within or beyond the states in which they live.?

I am labeling this statement a ?vision?, not a description, because to a considerable extent it jars with Giovanni Sartori?s 2004 contention, according to which political science ? at least American-type, largely quantitative political science ? ?is going nowhere? Practice-wise, it is a largely useless science that does not supply knowledge for use?.[1] A more recent, but no less skeptical assessment by Joseph Nye has been quoted to the effect that the discipline may be ?moving in the direction of saying more and more about less and less?.[2]

In statements such as these, misgivings have peaked resulting from a debate about the compartmentalization, balkanization, fragmentation of political science that has continued to flare up. Reflecting preoccupations about how much relevant, stimulating, important work is being done in the discipline?s fields, that debate won unexpected media attention in November 2009, when a Republican senator?s motion, which would have prohibited the American National Science Foundation ?from wasting federal research funding on political science projects?, obtained 36 votes in the U.S. Senate.[3] While it might be argued that the motion says more about the current Republican Party than about political science, the vote and the reasons put forward for the motion nevertheless may serve as a caveat to the discipline. I will return to the issue in a moment.

Appropriately enough, IPSA in its mission statement aims at strengthening the discipline so that it may better cope with the envisioned purpose of serving democracy. Again, I quote:

?IPSA?s research committees encourage the world-wide pooling of skills and resources by working both together and in conjunction with specialist sub-groups of national associations? By linking scholars from North and South as well as East and West, IPSA seeks to strengthen the networks that underpin a global political science community.?

Some 40 years ago, at the VIII World Congress held in Munich in 1970, IPSA decided to institutionalize research activities throughout the world by setting up research committees. The immediate establishment of a large number of such committees signaled that our association had indeed responded to a growing demand for sustained cooperation among political scientists. Since 2006, IPSA has been pursuing a policy of strengthening already existing, and forging additional, links among Research Committees, as well as between these and the national political science associations which belong to IPSA as collective members. Efforts at teamwork across sub-fields and across countries are deemed essential for creating synergies and making the most of existing specialization. The present workshop furnishes a perfect example of what the IPSA Executive Committee hoped to achieve when it embarked on its policy. Again, I will enlarge on these considerations shortly.