Abstract <p>The author recalls the reveries at the time when the journal “Polis” was created. He critically assesses three decades of attempts to nurture world political science locally. He admits that the results of these efforts are far from expectations. The reasons are the haste to act and our myopic vision of the standards of world political science, as well as the cumbersome backwardness of the standards themselves. The generic trauma of the newly emerging political science goes with the reductive adjustment of evolving practices of political goal-attainment to the straitjacketing models of jurisprudence, philosophy, and history. As Charles Tilly has shown, the corresponding pernicious postulates were questioned only during the glorious twenty years of political science revival in the 1960s and 1970s. These pernicious postulates are related to the reduction of evolving political phenomena to simplistic mechanistic schemes and abstractions. They continue to dominate mainstream political science. As for the alternative possibilities of political science, they require that it should take into account the spatiotemporal variability of political phenomena and use an expanding and increasingly complex research apparatus. The author gives a number of examples of such sophisticated renewal, including the treatment of the existence of nations as everyday referendum (Renan), of diverse polities as <i>mestorazvitiya</i> (evo-localizings, lit. place-developments) (Savitskii), of political institutions as conceptual variables (Nettl), of crises as alternating phases of dissynchronization and resynchronization (Almond et al.), and of center–periphery polarization (Rokkan). The article also mentions the efforts of R. Dahl and F. Schmitter to “save” modern democracy from various kinds of reductions by reinterpreting it in terms of polyarchy and accountability. It refers to the geochronopolitics of G. Modelski and further similar ventures of V.L. Tsimburskii. It also cites efforts of A. Melville and his colleagues in correcting the reductive rendering of the global community of states by extending the factual scope and multidimensionality of its analysis. Further cases include the fuller and more multidimensional consideration by G. Tsebelis and R. Putnam of alternative policies and aspirations in terms of nested, two- and multidimensional games, and finally, the efforts by W. Patzelt to instigate an evolutionary morphology of politics.</p>

A Fundamental Challenge. Are the Opportunities of Political Science Being Wasted?

期刊论文
发表日期：

2025年10月1日

查看全文

M. V. Ilyin

摘要

Abstract

The author recalls the reveries at the time when the journal “Polis” was created. He critically assesses three decades of attempts to nurture world political science locally. He admits that the results of these efforts are far from expectations. The reasons are the haste to act and our myopic vision of the standards of world political science, as well as the cumbersome backwardness of the standards themselves. The generic trauma of the newly emerging political science goes with the reductive adjustment of evolving practices of political goal-attainment to the straitjacketing models of jurisprudence, philosophy, and history. As Charles Tilly has shown, the corresponding pernicious postulates were questioned only during the glorious twenty years of political science revival in the 1960s and 1970s. These pernicious postulates are related to the reduction of evolving political phenomena to simplistic mechanistic schemes and abstractions. They continue to dominate mainstream political science. As for the alternative possibilities of political science, they require that it should take into account the spatiotemporal variability of political phenomena and use an expanding and increasingly complex research apparatus. The author gives a number of examples of such sophisticated renewal, including the treatment of the existence of nations as everyday referendum (Renan), of diverse polities as mestorazvitiya (evo-localizings, lit. place-developments) (Savitskii), of political institutions as conceptual variables (Nettl), of crises as alternating phases of dissynchronization and resynchronization (Almond et al.), and of center–periphery polarization (Rokkan). The article also mentions the efforts of R. Dahl and F. Schmitter to “save” modern democracy from various kinds of reductions by reinterpreting it in terms of polyarchy and accountability. It refers to the geochronopolitics of G. Modelski and further similar ventures of V.L. Tsimburskii. It also cites efforts of A. Melville and his colleagues in correcting the reductive rendering of the global community of states by extending the factual scope and multidimensionality of its analysis. Further cases include the fuller and more multidimensional consideration by G. Tsebelis and R. Putnam of alternative policies and aspirations in terms of nested, two- and multidimensional games, and finally, the efforts by W. Patzelt to instigate an evolutionary morphology of politics.