The Future of Political Science

2012

Criticisms of academics, particularly of political scientists, have dominated recent academic and media debates amid claims that the professionalization of the discipline has led to the subject becoming detached from public life. However, Peter John challenges the notion of a long-lost golden era and argues that in fact engagement is improving and has benefited from new digital tools.

European Political Science, 2002

European Political Science, 2017

Political science has for some time been afflicted with an existential and empirical angst concerning impact and relevance. This is by no means a new or unique disciplinary pathology, but it is one that has intensified in recent years. The reasons for this intensification have been explored in a burgeoning literature on 'the tyranny of impact'. The central argument of this article is that a focus on the 'relevance gap' within political science, and vis-à-vis the social sciences more generally, risks failing to comprehend the emergence of a far broader and multifaceted 'expectations gap'. The core argument and contribution of this article is that the future of political science will depend on the politics and management of the 'expectations gap' that has emerged. Put slightly differently, the study of politics needs to have a sharper grasp of the politics of its own discipline and the importance of framing, positioning, connecting vis-à-vis the broader social context.

2002

DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), 2018

UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD he Tragedy of Political Science is the title of a 1984 book by David Ricci that made a bold argument concerning the evolution of the discipline. Ricci's thesis, put simply, suggested that as political science had become more 'professionalised' throughout the twentieth century so it had also become less relevant, more verbose, less engaged, more impenetrable, increasingly distant from practitioners of politics and the public. The discipline had simply not lived up to the high hopes of C. Wright Mills for the social sciences-as set out in The Sociological Imagination (1959)-but had, if anything, become ensnared in a trap of its own making. In 1967 the Caucus for a New Political Science (CNPS) was created in the United States in order to encourage social engagement and activism amongst political scientists in direct rejection of the American Political Science Association's (APSA) commitment to political neutrality and refusal to engage in major social debates. The 'tragedy' as both David Ricci and the CNPS argued was that at a historical point when American society desperately needed the evidence and insights that political science could deliver the discipline apparently either did not want to engage or had little to say. Political science-to paraphrase C. Wright Mills-had failed to deliver on its early promise. To offer this disciplinary narrative is to offer little that is novel or new. The flaying of political science has emerged into a popular intellectual pastime in recent years and there are clear exceptions to this broad account in the form of individual scholars or subdisciplines that have retained a clear social connection. Engaged scholars, however, arguably became very much the exception rather than the rule in a profession that incentivised sub-disciplinary balkanisation, methodological hyper-specialism, theoretical fetishism and the development of esoteric discourses. This is, of course, an account of American political science that came to a head with the emergence of the Perestroika Movement in 2000 with its demands for greater methodological pluralism (within the discipline) and greater social engagement (beyond the discipline). While political science beyond the United States was never quite so seduced by the promises of rat-choice, quantitative, largen, mathematical methodologies to fuel a 'raucous rebellion', the issue of whether and how the discipline should be required to demonstrate its non-academic relevance, social impact or public value has become a global challenge for the discipline. This, in turn, has spawned a growing pool of scholarship on the structural and contextual factors underlying T

2020

The relevance of political science and the public responsibility of political scientists Political scientists face increasing demands to demonstrate the relevance of their research beyond the academy (the so-called 'impact agenda'). Matthew Flinders argues that this should be seen less a threat to the discipline's autonomy than an opportunity to rise to public responsibilities that have always accompanied a political science career. The 'noble science of politics' has changed a great deal through the 20th and 21st centuries. It has also rather (in)famously been 'a discipline divided', with tensions between warring factions and sub-fields too often dominating discussions, to the detriment of complementarity and pluralism. The 'tragedy of political science' is that it has spent too much time and energy fighting internal schisms and too little nurturing its position within the broader social context. This assertion might be challenged by some as a generalisation, yet the lively debates in the past two decades, prompted by books on the relevance of political science and making political science matter, suggest that the problem still persists. We are still waiting for 'punk political science' to explode onto the scene The 'raucous rebellion' in political science occasioned by the Perestroikan movement never actually seemed that raucous, and appeared more concerned with increasing methodological pluralism within the discipline than forging a new political science for the twenty-first century. We are still waiting for 'punk political science' to explode onto the scene.

Political Insight, 2012

usual suspects' are engaged with officials, politicians and select committee clerks), within the public sphere (where the public visibility of the profession is arguably nonexistent), and within the academic sphere (where a number of leading academics -including Gerry Stoker and Colin Hay -have made similar arguments to my own). So to respond to Peter John's riposte, I offer three defences before reflecting on political science in the 21st century.

Policy Press eBooks, 2014

The relationship between social scientists and the broader social sphere is changing as greater pressure is placed on academics to demonstrate the social relevance and public impact of their research. This pressure is creating widespread concern-intellectual, professional and moral-about the direction of many disciplines and what can be done to thwart what some academics view as the 'tyranny of relevance'. It is in exactly this context that this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach in order to offer a more sophisticated and informed account of 'the politics of engaged scholarship'. keywords impact • engagement • relevance • Perestroika Just now, amongst social scientists, there is widespread uneasiness, both intellectual and moral, about the direction their chosen studies seem to be taking. This uneasiness, as well as the unfortunate tendencies that contribute to it, is, I suppose, part of a general malaise of contemporary intellectual life. Yet perhaps the malaise is more acute among social scientists, if only because of the larger promise that has guided much earlier work in their fields, the nature of the subjects with which they deal, and the urgent need for significant work today… Not everyone shares this uneasiness, but the fact that many do not is itself a cause for further uneasiness among those who are alert to the promise and honest enough to admit the pretentious mediocrity of much current effort. It is quite frankly my hope to increase this uneasiness, to define some of its sources, to help transform it into a specific urge to realize the promise of social science, to clear the ground for new beginnings… my conception stands opposed to social science as a set of bureaucratic techniques which inhibit social inquiry by 'methodological' pretensions, which congest such work by obscurantist conceptions, or which trivialize it by concern with minor problems unconnected with publicly relevant issues. These inhibitions, obscurities and trivialities have created a crisis in the social studies today without suggesting, in the least, a way out of that crisis. (Wright Mills, 1959) The publication of the first edition of Policy and Politics in 1972 (the ampersand was inserted some time later) was very much in line with C Wright Mills concerns (set out above) about the direction of the social sciences and the need to retain a sense of interconnectedness, accessibility and vision.

Political Studies Review, 2013

This essay will present the impact that political theory has made and the opportunities for future contributions. It will consider the contributions made by leading political theorists to policy debates, the lessons learned from their successes, and how political theorists might further pursue existing and new opportunities to develop impact. The discussion will close with consideration of several potential threats that theorists should become more aware of in order to best avoid them. The growing importance of impact in British higher education policy represents important challenges that may help promote the field of political theory. Political theorists should welcome these developments.