Review
[1]
The work by and Pavel Pšeja represents a comprehensive attempt to cover the development of the Czech political science and to analyze its present status. Their uneasy task was even more difficult in regard of the limited number of pages the authors had at their disposal. It is evident from the text that the authors tried to carry out this task well, and their effort deserves to be appreciated.
Nevertheless, I have several comments on the text, both the general and factual ones.
[2] It followed from the presentation of the first version of the study that the authors had a decided opinion as to the conceiving of political science in the Czech Republic after 1989. Though I do not want to dispute the authors’ right of an original opinion, I suppose this purist view does not benefit the young political science, and the endeavour to delimit itself strictly in relation to congenerous social sciences impoverishes its opportunities. And it does not represent the main trend in the world political science either. The fact that “collection, selection, elaboration, and evaluation of huge quantities of different data is … costly and time consuming” is not the only reason why in the Czech political science “the quantitative analysis is seldom practiced”. Another factor influencing this situation is also a very narrow specialization of the studies as well as insufficient education of students of political science in empirical research. When authors strictly apply a criterion of political science education to classification in their analyses, they necessarily impoverish the Czech political science of some researchers or topics, which cannot manage without quantitative analyses (e.g. election researches).
[3] In part 2, one can have an impression that the authors identify Marxism as a scientific paradigm with Marxism-Leninism and acceptation of communist science. It is not quite clear whether it is the authors’ opinion or an accidental crosscut.
[4] I cannot agree with an opinion that nobody of the young generation of political scientists, who gained their qualifications in the West, works there permanently. In this relation I would like to mention as example Petr Kopecký, who works in Sheffield. (Publication “Parliament in the Czech and Slovak Republics. Party competition and parliamentary institutionalization. Ashgate 2001, and a number of papers and chapters in books). This may be caused by the fact that the authors neglect, with certain exceptions, books and articles in journals by Czech political scientists published abroad, though there are available information resources.
[5] In place where the authors speak about key topics, they give the models of mediation of interests (pluralism versus corporativism). I would recommend to mention the major representative of this issue (as they do it in the case of other issues) Lubomír Brokl and his book (Brokl L. (ed), Reprezentace zájmů v politickém systému České republiky, Praha: SLON; Interest Representation in the Political System of the Czech Republic), which is an isolated one dealing with this issue so far.
[6] I wish the authors did not ignore Sociologický časopis / the Czech Sociological Review. Even after 1996 a number of political scientists published their papers there without becoming sociologists (e.g. M. Novák). The reason why they did so could be found among others in the fact that the Czech Sociological Review is internationally annotated, unlike political science journals.
[7] When Jan Holzer and Pavel Pšeja list titles by Czech authors published in foreign languages, they should have also inserted in the list a publication Gabal I. (ed.): The 1990 Election to the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly. Analyses, Documents and Data. Berlin: Edition Sigma, 1996. Though the editor is not a political scientist, the quoted Petr Matějů and Jiří VečerníkJiří Večerník are not political scientists either. In addition, it is a part of a highly significant edition.
[8] I believe that the Czechoslovak Association for Political Science, founded in 1964, was originally called Československá politologická společnost in Czech.
[9] I would recommend verifying the data in note 7 via a query. What is Political Science Association? Do the authors mean the International Political Science Association? Prof. Michal Klíma is a member of RC 8 IPSA-Legislative Specialist (but he is not the only one), but he is not an individual member of IPSA. There are only three individual members of this Association from the Czech Republic, but Michal Klíma is not among them.
Bremen, 5.11.2002
