The World of Political Science: A Critical Overview of the Development of Political Studies around the Globe: 1990-2012

Introduction

Michael B. Stein

A)  Origin and Development of the Book Series

The original initiative in establishing this IPSA RC 33 Book Series was taken by John Trent and me at the Quebec IPSA World Congress in August 2000. As executive members of RC 33, we invited the Chairs of other IPSA Research Committees to convene a panel session at that Congress on the topic of the development and current state of their respective sub-disciplines within political science. We also asked them and their Research Committee members to revise these panel papers and include them in separate volumes of a book series to be organized under our co-editorship, one which would be designed to represent prevailing global professional opinion among political scientists on the historical development and current state of political science at the beginning of the millennium. At the initial organizational meeting of RC Chairs, convened at the end of that Congress, about 15 of the approximately 50 IPSA Research Committees attended and expressed a strong interest in participating in our project.

Our goal, as we explained at that meeting, was not merely to review the state of the art in various subfields of political science which these Research Committees represent, but also to commission essays for each subdiscipline volume that would probe the development of the subfield, or why we are where we are in political science at this particular moment in time. We also hoped that by providing these subdisciplinary overviews, we would be able to summarize and evaluate current concepts and methodologies that have been developed in recent years in our discipline, provide an overview of findings and trends in it, and include critical evaluations and suggestions for the discipline’s future.

During the first 3-year post-Congress period (2000-2003), about 15-20 Research Chairs and their collaborators proceeded to revise the original essays presented at the Quebec panel session, commission additional essays, and plan the sub-disciplinary chapters for their volume under their editorship or that of one of their deputies. During the same period Barbara Budrich, a highly intelligent, imaginative and skilled professional in the field of publishing and founder of her own new publishing firm, Barbara Budrich Publishers, agreed to issue a contract to us for publication of our proposed book series. The first volume of the series, Democratization: the State of the Art was published in 2004 under the editorship of Dirk Berg-Schlosser, the Chair of IPSA Research Committee 13 on Democratization in Comparative Perspective. In the following three years, there were five further volumes published on Political Psychology (2006), RC 29, edited by Linda Shepherd; Business and Government: Methods and Practice (2006), RC 38, co-edited by David Coen and Wyn Grant; Pluralism: Developments in the Theory and Practice of Democracy (2006) (RC 16), edited by Rainer Eisfeld; The Comparative Study of Local Government and Politics: Overview and Synthesis (2006), RC 5, co-edited by Harald Baldersheim and Helmut Wollmann; and Governing Developments across Cultures: Challenges and Dilemmas of an Emerging subdiscipline in Political Science (2007), RC 4, edited by R.B. Jain. After that there was a brief hiatus until further volumes were published. These included Political Sociology: The State of the Art (2010), IPSA RC 6 and ISA RC 18, co-edited by Subrata K. Mitra, Malte Pehl and Clemens Spiess; The Study of Ethnicity and Politics: Recent Analytical Developments (2012), RC 14, co-edited by Adrian Guelke and Jean Tournon; Gender and Politics: The State of the Discipline (2012), RCs 19, 7, 52, edited by Jane H. Bayes; Political Power: the Development of the Field (2012), RC 36, co-edited by Mark Haugaard and Kevin Ryan; Electronic Democracy, RC 10, (2012) edited by Norbert Kersting; and this volume, the concluding volume of the series on The World of Political Science: A Critical Overview of the Development of Political Studies Around the Globe – 1990-2012 (2012), RC 33, co-edited by John E. Trent and Michael B. Stein.

B)  Content and Objectives of this Final Volume of the Series

In this twelfth and final series volume, we hope to present the accumulated findings and results that we have culled from the eleven previous published volumes. In fact, chapter 4 of this volume, entitled Issues and Trends in Political Science at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Perspectives from the World of Political Science Book Series, written by John Trent, consists of a careful overview and detailed synopsis of the major concepts and arguments contained in the earlier books of the series (section 1); a summary of Advances in Political Science (section 2); an analysis of Orientations and Trends in Political Science over the past Two Decades (3), a presentation of current Problems of Political Science, including critiques of its major orientations and explanations of its development (4); Proposals for Improvements in Political Science (5) and a Summation and Conclusion. Two other chapters, number 3 by Michael Stein entitled Is There a Genuinely International Political Science Discipline? An Overview and Assessment of Recent Views on Disciplinary Historical Trends and chapter 5 by John Trent entitled An Essay on the Present and Future of Political Studies 2012 convey most clearly the co-editors’ shared critical overall perspective on the past evolution and current state of international political science. We view the contemporary discipline as insufficiently relevant to the political concerns of the average citizen; too scientistic in its emphasis on generating quantifiable and empirically testable propositions; and too dominated by what has aptly been described as the "American cum Transatlantic European perspective or disciplinary approach and methodology, one that draws heavily on the natural sciences. We call for a more balanced approach to an understanding of the historical development and current state of the discipline that relies and draws on the competing paradigms, approaches and methodologies of both mainstream positivist-empiricist and critical political science, modern and post-modern" feminist, post-structuralist and post-colonialist ideas, normative and empirical analytical value perspectives, and regional-geographic and global political science communities.

In our view, the two essays by Takashi Inoguchi (chapter 1) on political science in East Asia and Erkki Bendtson (chapter 2) on political science in Europe reflect this more balanced geographic, cultural and conceptual perspective. They also provide useful quantitative and qualitative information and data that give a regional perspective on the theoretical and methodological orientations of the series and volume co-editors.

In short, in this volume we invite our readers to consider our call for improvements in our increasingly global political science discipline, one that in our view better reflects pluralism in paradigms, approaches and methodology, and a more open and creative future path of inquiry. We view this as the most desirable direction for our discipline to take at the beginning of this new millennium.

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Political Science in Three Democracies, Disaffected (Japan), Third-Wave (Korea) and Possibly Fledgling (China)*

Takashi Inoguchi

1.  Is Political Science an American Social Science?

It was Stanley Hoffmann (1987) who once rhetorically asked a question, Is International Relations an American Social Science? Yes, it has been at least for the last half a century – is a standard answer to the question. The same question must be asked of political science. Has political science been dominated by Americans? Yes, it has been for the last half a century – is a standard answer to the question. In terms of amount and variety – and some say in terms of quality as well, it is undeniable that American political science has led political science for the last half a century in the rest of the world. Just as Midland, Texas has brought up George W. Bush and Tommy Franks and thus shaped United States war policy in Iraq, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for one, has exemplified and thus arguably shaped quintessentially American political science. It is this trinity of robust academic professionalism, solid positivism and heavy methodological armory that has been a trademark of American political science (Gunnell 2004; Farr and Seidelman 1993; Easton et al. 1995, Oren 2002).

In political science journals in other countries, one can easily discern the creeping influence of American paradigms and authors just by looking at the uniformly comprehensive and catholic citation practice and the plain and clear style of presentation, even if it is often unabashedly American biased. However, one can discern a robust non-American citation practice in many other countries. What is called the three stage citation style in one’s academic career still exists in most countries (Inoguchi 1985). In the early stage, you normally aspire to become a great academic and express it in the form of citing great scholars shamelessly frequently as if you were becoming on a par with Karl Marx and Max Weber, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Dahl and Karl Deutsch. In the middle stage when one perceives she or he has established her/his foothold among great scholars, at least in one’s areas of expertise, one starts citing one’s own works as if he or she had become a primus inter pares in the area concerned. In the twilight stage, everything looks so self-evident that she or he stops citing others as well as one’s own works. One’s article even starts with a phrase like, As everyone knows, which renders the whole undertaking of writing an article sound worthless. In other words, the cycle of others-citation, self-citation, and no citation in this order seems to be a universal truth governing every academic’s citation practice. A casual and self-critical glance at my own writings for the last four decades after my Ph.D. enables me to say that I have been unintentionally and thus dangerously following the three stage cycle, now seemingly heading toward the third stage (http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~inoguchi). But Americans are different. Americans are an exception. They have overcome this life-cyclical pattern, says Peter Katzenstein (2006). Indeed, the multiple anonymous reviewing system plus the use of the social science citation index linked to higher salaries, positions and prestige in one way or another seems to discipline many American political scientists sufficiently to surpass the seductive three-stage citation cycle of many academics of the world.

What does the above observation have to do with the question: is a genuinely global and universal political science possible? From the above episode I am implying that the style of writing that prevails in the American political science community conveys somewhat surreptitiously the presupposition of American political science, being global and universal.

But I will not, in this article, try to argue about whether the question should be answered either positively or negatively. Instead I will try to examine three political science communities in East Asia in terms of their key features and structural conditions that sustain those features. In this sense, this study is a modest attempt to indirectly suggest that no genuinely global and universal political science is possible.

The purpose of this article is to describe how political science has been developing in the East Asian countries of Japan, Korea and China for the last quarter of the 20th century and to show that their development has been proceeding in ways that are definitely associated with American political science (often with some lags). But their development has also been inexorably grounded in the nature and dynamics of their society and politics. It is especially grounded in the nature and dynamics of their democracies: a disaffected democracy in Japan, a third-wave democracy in Korea and a possibly fledgling democracy in China. Therefore, the dominance of American political science is not a key feature of these three political science communities. Before going into these three disciplinary communities, I will first compare the three democracies that characterize the three regimes in East Asia (Inoguchi 2002). Then I will describe each of the three political science communities one by one, focusing on the kinds of subjects popular during the last quarter of the last century in relation to the nature and dynamics of each regime. Lastly, the conclusion will be drawn that points to the need to closely examine the rise and fall of topics in relation to regime self-transformation.

2.  Disaffected Democracy, Third-Wave Democracy and a Possibly Fledgling Democracy

A disaffected democracy (Pharr/Putnam 1999) is a democracy which has become mature and established, but in which distrust and indifference to politics have become a key feature. Robert Putnam has famously published Bowling Alone (2000) in which the associational propinquity of Americans has been long lost. Instead of enjoying bowling together with friends and with the family, bowling alone has become a normal phenomenon symbolically showing how the vibrant democratic spirit has been reduced. Most visibly, popular trust in political institutions has been at its nadir, with political parties accommodating members and supporters without much interest (Dalton/Wattenberg 2001, 2003; Wattenberg, 2002). A disaffected democracy is also called an established or mature democracy in which critical citizens play a key role of voicing dissent and demanding correction of wrongs (Norris 1997, 2002; Norris & Inglehart 2003). Whether a democracy had better be called a ‘critical’ democracy depends on one key feature; whether citizens demonstrate a robust commitment to democratic norms and values. Citizens’ distrust in politicians and political institutions may not automatically constitute a strong evidence of its being a disaffected democracy. Rather, as long as the basic core commitment to democratic norms and values is robust, it is positive, argues Pippa Norris. Is Japan a critical democracy? Yes, it is. I can offer two forms of evidence. Confidence in political parties, the parliament, the civil service, political leaders and the elected government are uniformly low (Pharr 1997; Inoguchi 2003). However, electorates overwhelmingly prefer democracy to authoritarianism, thus demonstrating robust commitment to democratic norms, values and institutions (Inoguchi 2002).

I have said that two adjectives, ‘disaffected’ or ‘critical’, make a difference in characterizing the nature of democracy among what are called established or mature democracies. Doh Chull Shin (2006) argues and empirically demonstrates that the distinction between critical views of democratic institutions and strong commitment to democratic values and norms was able to differentiate the durable from the fragile democracies. His deft use of survey data enables him to argue that the increasing prevalence of the procedural definition of democracy and its institutional outcomes causes the number of fragile democracies to grow after the initial phase of democratization.

Distinguished from a disaffected or established democracy is a third-wave democracy (Huntington 1993; Rose/Shin, 2001). Third-wave democracy is so called because it was born in the third wave of democratization in the twentieth century (the first was after World War I, the second after World War II and the third in the last quarter of the last century). Its key features are its focus on the procedural definition of democracy, on the electoral aspects of democracy, on the manipulative nature of democratic regimes, and on the fragile nature of democratic commitment. But democracy is normally defined in terms of substance, not just in terms of procedure. Hence we speak of government by the people, of the people, and for the people. And this politics and power are defined as getting things done, or as A’s ability to get B to do what B would not otherwise do. But in third-wave democracy its definition focuses on how leaders are selected in terms of free and fair elections among a number of political parties, sometimes under the monitoring of the United Nations. East Timor was a good example. It was Joseph Schumpeter (1947) who highlighted the procedural definition of democracy. He presented the somewhat cynical view of democracy, new rascals in, old rascals out, as the essence of democracy. As long as democracy moves the power of people (democracy), not the things of people (republic), the circulation of power among competing elites is inevitable. The dramatic shift from the substantive to the procedural conception of democracy has accelerated the increase in the number of democracies in the latter half of the 20th century, especially in its last quarter. With the accession of Montenegro to the United Nations, democracies have numbered 125, whereas the UN member countries have amounted to 192. Also salient are the manipulative aspects of regime design and construction, such as those found in southern Europe, East/Central Europe, Latin America and East and Southeast Asia (Huntington 1993). Sartori’s notion of crafting democracy aptly describes this spirit. It is like democratic engineering following Karl Popper’s phrase, social engineering. Democracy is designed and fabricated. By whom? It is a good question. Normally it is by agreement of ‘interested powers’ and the United Nations. A regime in a peripheral country has often been fabricated by big powers’ interventions. It is not a new thing. Different now from before is the idea of a democratic regime. As long as norms and values are shared by both promoters and recipients of democracy, a democratic regime is designed and manufactured accordingly. Democratic diffusion is a phrase often used to obfuscate the blunt nature of fabricated democratic regimes. A no less important key feature is its fragility and volatility. Some regimes manifest more of this than others. In Korea, for instance, citizens’ commitment to democratic norms and values is manifestly lower than in other established democracies, for instance, Japan (Shin 2001; Inoguchi 2002).

Is Korea a third-wave democracy? Democratization took place in Korea, with the military dictatorship following the tide of democratization already underway in Southern Europe, Latin America, and East and Southeast Asia. Korean democracy has been exhibiting a volatility of public opinion, as exemplified by the dramatic anti-Americanism during the December 2002 Presidential election (Kim 2005). Furthermore, a fairly sizable number of voters prefers authoritarianism to democracy (Shin 2001).

China’s possibly fledgling democracy is, in other words, a semi-democracy or a democracy-in-the-making. Although the basic nature of the regime is doubtlessly authoritarian, one can find some features that may transform themselves into a democratic form. They include the increasingly inclusionary nature of the nomenklatura, village level democratic elections, and increasing attention to transparency and accountability. In China, for instance, Jiang Zemin’s three representations doctrine sought to enhance the membership of the communist party by admiring those who are capitalists and those advanced in science and technology as well as those committed to the party. Increasingly, village elections allow multiple candidates directly chosen by popular votes, although most candidates are from the communist party. Hu Jintao, the President, proclaims the three weis, meaning power used for people, sentiments shared with people, and interests promoted for people. In other words, it is not quite government by, but somewhat of, and increasingly for, people.

The inept and non-transparent handling of the SARS infection in China in the spring of 2003 has reinforced the low level of transparency of the political system. Although President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao replaced the health minister of the Central Government, they were not able to do anything either about the Guangdong Provincial Government or the People’s Liberation Army, both of which were suspected at being more directly responsible.

Given the above admittedly cursory review of a disaffected democracy, a third-wave democracy and a possibly fledgling democracy, I shall describe the development of political science in Japan, Korea and China in the same order, with the different democratic characteristics kept in mind. As Japan has been a forerunner of the three in terms of democratic and disciplinary development (Easton et al. 1995), I will first examine the development of political science in Japan in good detail. Then I will turn to Korea and China.

3.  Political Science in Japan

3.1.  Historical Background of Political Science in Japan

Japanese political science started as staatslehre, adopted from Germany, a branch of study which is meant to provide the skeleton of major subjects deemed necessary for adequate knowledge and skills for young aspirant political leaders serving a modernizing Japanese state in the late 19th century (Inoguchi 1997). They included history, philosophy and economics. After dismantling feudal class distinctions in the 1870s, the modernizing government built schools to train future leaders. The primary purpose of building seven imperial universities was to generate key professional personnel in agriculture, engineering, medicine, science, law, economics, and foreign languages in order to quickly build a strong army and a rich country on the basis of enlightenment and entrepreneurship in Japanese society. The governing elite corps of the previous Tokugawa era (1603-1868) was exclusively recruited from the warrior class which comprised some 3-7 per cent of the population. After the medieval warring period which ended with the ascension of Ieyasu Tokugawa to power, the warrior class was first concentrated into urban castle towns of 300 odd semi-autonomous domains, and then disarmed to metamorphose themselves into bureaucrats. The suddenly disemployed former warrior class families were given a number of possibilities. A substantial number of their children assumed either academic or bureaucratic careers. Even in the 1920s one half of the Imperial University of Tokyo’s students were identified as originating from warrior class families. The warrior class’s distinctive features were (1) high levels of literacy including Chinese classics, (2) high level of self-discipline. These traits were regarded as essential for the new governing elite corps. It is remarkable that major universities set up schools and departments according to key applied professions such as medicine, agriculture, engineering, law and economics at the undergraduate level. It is even more remarkable that Japan continues untill today with a structure that was first created then in the new universities (Inoguchi 2005a).

Political science was submerged by staatslehre, the primary purpose of which was to train and nurture future cadres of the modernizing state. Staatslehre encompassed topics that served the state. The school of law at the undergraduate level comprised law, history, philosophy, economics and all other relevant courses such as public administration, diplomatic history, international law, colonial studies and military science. It was only in the 1920s that course of political science was installed in the curriculum of the Imperial University of Tokyo. During the period of fledgling democracy called Taisho democracy, a remarkably well developed academic discipline of political science was born. Glancing, for instance, at a political theory book of Prof. Kiheiji Onozuka, a founder of political science in Japan, one marvels at how quickly political science in Japan was able to advance in tandem with its American and European counterparts, which were then also at an incipient stage (Onozuka 1903).

Political science in Japan had another more traditional stream called historicism. This tradition became predominant in that researching historical documents and describing events