Review
[1] If anyone wishes to describe the state of a discipline, one has to encounter the most bothersome issues tacitly regarded as settled during everyday routine in classrooms and of research activities. It is even more so in the case of political science, and especially after the fall of a regime called communism that deliberately broke with intellectual roots of traditional political knowledge in the name of radical progress. Both the theory and practice of communism, however, failed leaving an intellectually and morally disturbed landscape behind. Since communism had a new vision about what sciences should be like, and what they are good for, it is no wonder that social sciences in general may have lost the most in the communist regimes. It is certainly of utmost importance, therefore, to take stock of the current conditions of social sciences including political science in the post-communist world.
[2] I agree with Máté Szabó, as a starting point, that political science is one of the most recently established social sciences in Hungary, and „its pre-communist traditions are weak and forgotten”. Birth pangs may explain a lot of deficiencies. It is, however, only one of the problems of political science in Hungary. For there is a major contrast inherent in Szabó’s thorough and well-informed report, which highlights the most fundamental issue in Hungarian political science. Following very minutely the guidelines, he has to assume that there is something worthy the name of a „science”. On the other hand, he admits that „Political science in Hungary does not have much methodological innovation or consciousness”, and „the methodological issues are rather unreflected”. In my understanding it means that it is questionable if political science is a science at all in Hungary according to current scientific standards. Without reflections on where the demarcation line lies between science and non-science, one cannot be sure that what one is doing is scientific. I do not mean to say that under such intellectual circumstances no relevant works can be produced, but I do no think that a discipline without such reflections can have norms, standards, rules of academic procedures etc.
[3] It is closely related to another phenomenon, and it is the nature of regime change, or systemic change. Szabó also tacles this problem by pointing out that there are arguments stressing „the hidden continuation of Marxism” in political science, i.e. the Hungarian „negotiated transition” in 1989 had a lasting, blocking effect upon the intellectual development of this country. Many look upon contemporary political science as a transformed political activity, it cannot be objective, and it is in the service of political interests. Political knowledge is subservient to political action - a clear reference to surviving Marxism. And it is a general belief among representatives of other disciplines, let alone journalists. In this context Marxism should not be taken too narrowly, to the contrary, it is a broad category that covers all kinds of views, believes, assumptions about what politics and political science is. I would venture to describe post-communist intellectual landscape as somewhat chaotic, or eclectic, lacking measurements of social sciences to a varying degree in different disciplines. Needless to say that under such circumstances the authority of political science is extremely feeble, because many believe that it is impossible to verify political knowledge.
[4] Priority among the chief reasons affecting the newly evolving political science is to be given to the systemic change that created an almost absurd scene in social sciences. With the failure of communism and communist standards of science, one would expect that all scientists once representing those standards would have to drop out with the collapse of the Marxist scientific paradigm. But as politicians of the old regime survived, social scientists also managed to survive as scientists, although changing fields in a lot of instances. Thomas Kuhn was right in saying in the Preface of his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that in social sciences his theory of scientific paradigms cannot necessarily be applied.
[5] If it is so, one can look in two directions. Firstly, looking backwards to find out about the traditions of political science in Hungary, and secondly, looking outside one’s own scientific community, and learning from abroad. And thirdly, in an ideal situation, these two are accompanied by regular discussions and debates within the boundaries of home scientific circles, thus contributing to the institutionalization and consolidation to political science. All these issues have been profoundly tackled by Máté Szabó.
[6] It is true that random attempts have been made to search traditions of Hungarian political science. This is, however, where I have to take issue with Szabó over his report about the traditions of Hungarian political science. Since Szabó tacitly presupposes that science is ultimately concerned with progress, he only mentions Hungarian political thinkers who fit into this pattern. Three names are particularly stressed: 1/ József Eötvös who also fought against the Habsburgs in 1848-9; 2/ Oszkár Jászi, „an activist in the 1918 republican revolution”; and 3/ István Bibó also „an activist both in the 1945 national and democratic renewal and in 1956 against Stalinism”. Bibó is also called „the Hungarian founding father of political science”. There are at least two flaws in this argument. First, I do not know any relevant proof or demonstration prescribing that the only scientific standard of a social science is that it serves some „progressive” goal. Only an obvious example is that of Carl Schmitt who was the crown lawyer of the Nazi regime, yet Raymond Aron, the French liberal political philosopher called him the only interesting thinker in post-war Germany, let alone the recent renewed interest in Carl Schmitt’s works in Western political thought. Second, Szabó seems to identify science with political effectiveness. In his description, he mentions almost exclusively authors contributing to the development of Hungarian political science whose activity directly affected some grand political aim, thus confusing two levels, that of political thought or rather ideology, and that of academic, mainly positivist political science as such. Few of us have already made efforts to reconstruct the history of Hungarian political science which can be interpreted as a degeneration process starting some time in the late 18th century, and ending with the Communist takeover. We have ample evidence to declare that Hungarian political science was keeping pace with the development of continental political science until WWI. Until then mainly German political science was considered the pattern, as it was pointed out very precisely by Szabó, but French impacts can also be seen, and other contemporary political science works were quoted as well. If someone is to be focused upon, I would mention Győző Concha at the turn of the century before WWI, who may be said to be providing the first synthesis of the development of Hungarian political science. A long list of other forgotten names can be provided. These names were forgotten, and this is the essence of the issue, not because their output is unworthy of being remembered, but because these names were forced to oblivion, i.e. they were not taught, their works were not reprinted due to aggressive dominance of Marxist ideology.
[7] By “degeneration” I mean a slow but steady closing process as a result of which Hungarian political science lost its vivid intellectual contacts with other political science. After WWI the idea of “national social sciences” was officially put forward, a conception that social sciences should directly serve “national needs”, thus rearranging priorities of the science policy, and willy-nilly separating Hungarian political science from outside influences, or at least narrowing the scope of its horizon. In this respect the Communist years continued and made this process more profound, reaching its climax by declaring political science, sociology, and naturally psychology “unscientific”.
[8] Looking at the traditions of the Hungarian political science from this perspective, I cannot agree with the focus of Szabó’s description about the developments of the 1970s and 1980s either. My objection is not related with the facts he presents, but again with the scientific standards of political science he tacitly applies. He may also have felt the need to make a distinction between political science as such, and research activities going on in the Party’s Institute of Social Science, when he wrote this: “political science related research was carried out in the 1970s by well-known political scientists”. The word “related” may be a slip of the tongue, but this is what I actually want to stress. There was no political science under communism unless we regard “scientific socialism” as science and not a particular form of ideology. It is true, I know it from hearsay, that (to put it in a simplistic way) Western political science books were translated and circulated in narrow party circles, but I doubt that this practice can be labeled as political science, or scientific practice. The internal intellectual erosion surely contributed to the collapse of communism, but I would not call it a scientific activity. I wonder which pieces of writing by the social scientists mentioned by the author can still be recalled and offered to political science students of today.
[9] Something similar goes for his description of the rise of the Hungarian dissident movement. I readily accept its contribution to the demise of communism, but I can hardly identify even a few political scientists among them. They extensively published about politics in samizdat, and they studied the history of political ideas very profoundly, but I doubt that what they were doing was political science. They were philosophers, historians, sociologists etc. by profession, but their roles and functions were those of public intellectuals. After the regime change most of them returned to their original professions, and most of them still publish about political issues. The problem is that even today a political scientist is perceived as a public intellectual, preserving its pre-1989 traits which predestine them to tell “what is wrong in politics”. And what is more, some of them cherish anti-political ideas, i.e. the mainstream political scientist is a contradiction in terms. The formative period of anti-political mentality dates back to the late 1980s, when György Konrád, the writer and essayist published a book entitled Antipolitics, in which he declared that politics and intellectual activity cannot go hand in hand. In other words, politics is worthy of contempt and derision.
[10] But politics returned after 1989, which is reflected by mostly ardent and sometimes duty-felt attempt to define what politics is. Most debates are directly (“identity discourse”), or indirectly concerned with this issue rather than what political science is. At this point Szabó does not spare harsh words like “political science is less educated in empirical sophistication, tends to verbalism, combines dreams and reality”, “uncritical borrowing and mixing up of Western theory fragments” does characterize current Hungarian political science. I wholly agree with these statements, all I want to do is to go little farther in searching for causes.
[11] Outside influences are also treated in detail. These influences have various forms and channels. The one is developing scientific networks and creating personal contacts. Máté Szabó left out one very important channel of developing Hungarian political science. For Fulbright Commission and American Political Science Association (APSA) have also played a role in establishing modern political science in Hungary, the Fulbright Commission through offering scholarships, sponsoring John Marshall Chair at the Budapest University of Economics, department of Political Science between 1990 and 2000, and APSA by offering membership and approving panel papers at the annual meetings in the 1990s.
[12] The other form of influence was exerted by translating books by foreign authors. It is not simply a matter of translation, but a new language had to be created, since American political science terms were not ever common in Hungary. In addition there were no handbooks or reference books, textbooks for college teaching, and we cannot still be content with what we have achieved so far in this respect. In order to avoid conceptual confusion, we should be more aware of the problems that have arisen as a consequence of a complete change of scientific point of reference. This is also part of the issue whether Hungarian political science has developed methodological sensitiveness.
[13] Under this heading I cannot help mentioning that Máté Szabó keeps referring to “Western methodology” and the like. I suggest that we should make it more precise, because there is no such thing as “Western methodology”. There are various methods used in political science from the normative political science down to rational choice, qualitative methods and experimental methods. Each field has its own history of methodology, what matters, however, is a need for more epistemological consciousness that cries out for philosophical education. Philosophy, which is outside the field of present discussion, is in a profound crisis, too, and the reasons are to be looked for in the communist years. But without philosophical or epistemological foundations no science can meet scientific standards, for methods do not speak for themselves if we are ignorant about the limits of our specialized knowledge.
[14] A considerably large segment of Szabó’s report is devoted to trying to categorize major topics and debates of the new Hungarian political science. This is a very difficult job, and I think a good job was done by Máté Szabó. At first sight the lists of debates and fields of research cover good many things, but one has to understand two points of reservation. The one is that due to the underdeveloped character of Hungarian political science, there is not “much differentiation among the very few members and groupings of the discipline” (p.21). It is crucial in order to understand the present state of Hungarian political science, because without sizeable research communities there cannot be scientific control, and thus objectivity will be limited, no scientific communication links can be formed. My other reservation is concerned with the needs of the Hungarian polity. Real needs mostly appear or take shape in newspapers. Journalists and editors are forced to turn to political scientists without any knowledge of political science. Some political scientists are always ready to express their views on various political events or developments. In this gray zone, where journalism meets political science, a very strange genre has evolved. Judging this mutual satisfaction of needs, those of the journals on the one hand, and those of political scientists on the other, I am convinced that political science can only lose if the political scientists mistake science for interfering with political issues in the name of political science. Do not get me wrong. I am not against writing newspaper articles, but the political scientist’s role should be cleared up while practicing journalism. He cannot assume the position of knowing better than anyone else, and should be modest. He must bear in mind all the time what the real needs are in his political community, and should not let him be taken away by his sentiments or political commitments.
[15] As for the institutions where teaching of political science takes place and researches are conducted, it has to be noted that political science has only second rank among other social sciences. It is no wonder because we have not got ample evidence for the number of positions available for political science majors in the job market. Hungary is certainly not, say, Denmark, where political scientists are welcome in civil service or public administration. Until political scientists are considered the representatives of a suspicious profession, no breakthrough is likely in political science teaching with the possible exception of international relations. The underestimation of political science is perhaps connected with democratic illiteracy, contempt for politics, and a disoriented political culture in Hungary.
[16] This plight of political science is reflected in the allocation of academic resources, and the auxiliary role it is forced into. It means that political science is usually combined with law and/or economics in various academic commissions and committees, and this mingling places political science always in an inferior role in terms of decision-making and allocation of resources. A further indication of the discipline’s unsettled conditions is the lack of national training standards that would prescribe the minimum training requirements mandatory for political science majors. Partly this deficiency is responsible for a practice in Hungary that anyone may call himself “a political scientist”, and many do so without consequences. On the whole I regard Máté Szabó’s report an important contribution to the better understanding of the state of political science in Hungary.
Budapest, 2002
