[1] Political science in Poland, like Polish history, has a complicated tradition. In the first half of the 20th century, it hardly followed mainstream political debate, its main areas of interest being the state, political philosophy, normative-driven cogitation on constitutionalism, and other issues related to the system of government. One can hardly claim the existence of a separate political science discipline in the modern sense of the term - by no means an odd situation in pre-war Europe. The first Chairs of Politics (to use the names then current) were established in 1902 and 1911, at Lwów and Wilno Universities.
[2] Modern political and social philosophy emerged in Poland at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Polish thinkers contributed treaties inspired by Enlightenment ideas and attempted to save the weakening Polish state. In the 19th century, after independent Poland collapsed and was partitioned, political philosophy did not, however, vanish. Polish political philosophy reflected broad intellectual trends emerging at that time in Europe, like romanticism, positivism (e.g. the Spencerian brand of evolutionary theory), and Marxism. Throughout the period of Poland’s partition (1795-1918), all Polish socio-political currents reflected the Polish intelligentsia’s great concern to keep Polish culture alive, to help peasants and workers become citizens of the nation, and to modernize the economy of the country. The ultimate goal, however, remained the restitution of an independent state. That is why the military or quasi-military issues and the reconstitution of the state dominated the political agenda. Nonetheless, several genuine socio-political ideas from thinkers like Abramowski, Brzozowski, Krzywicki, and Petrażycki have been widely praised and their work fruitfully debated.
[3] When Poland regained independence in 1918, the socio-philosophical orientations gave way to more pragmatic endeavors of party program construction and institutional state building. University professors of various political orientations had contributed to the constitution-making process and to the preparation of electoral law when Poland regained its independence after World War I. Virtually no attempt is recorded, however, to establish a university-based program resembling Western core "political science". Marginal initiatives to establish colleges oriented toward "teaching politics" emerged even before 1918, and similar attempts were pursued after 1918, but they proved insignificant. On the other hand, chairs of "History of Political Thought" appeared frequently at Faculties of Law at the reestablished Polish universities. In the inter-war period, they offered courses mainly on political doctrines, starting with Plato and moving up to modern times (with a clear emphasis on judicial political doctrines).
[4] In the 1918-39 period, four schools of Political Science existed, in Warsaw, Krakow, Łódź and Poznań, with an umbrella institution called the Academy of Political Sciences coordinating the activities of the four schools. Enrollment in these schools remained low, and the prestige of the Academy was moderate. During the period of independence (1918-1939), political science in Poland developed - as in other continental European countries - on the basis of the general theory of the state (Allgemeine Staatslehre) as well as of part of constitutional law. The University of Lwów had a Faculty of Law and Political Art. One significant contribution to modern political science was the book titled Political Parties in the Contemporary State, by Zenon Wachlowski 2 (Note2: Hesitation and long debates preceded our ultimate decision not to include references of prominent historical and contemporary works published in Poland separately at the end of the chapter. The titles of important "historical" books are in the main text; contemporary authors are mentioned only by name and fields of study. There are several reasons for this: First, meritocratic - it is a difficult task to do justice to the dozens of authors and decide whom to list and whom to omit. Second, technical - the limited space allowed for each country chapter does not permit the inclusion of all publications we consider worthwhile.) (University of Lwów), published in 1939, which anticipated Duverger’s law on the relationship between electoral and party systems. It is an example of the accomplishments of that time. In the mid-1930s, Aleksander Hertz (who lived in exile in the USA after World War II) contributed valuable and pioneering studies on "Führer-type", militarized political parties, particularly in Italy and Germany.
[5] Czesław Znamierowski fruitfully developed the sociological approach to the general theory of the state at the Faculty of Law and Economics, University of Poznań. Simultaneously, a new paramount initiative was created - the launching of a journal, Review of Law, Economy and Sociology. In addition, the Institute of Eastern Affairs, in Wilno, was one of the first scientific institutions focused on Soviet politics and more generally Soviet studies (Sovietology).
[6] The same period witnessed the publication of numerous works by prominent scholars on constitutional law, among them the seminal Polish Political Law by Wacław Komarnicki (1922). Apart from his affiliation with the University of Wilno, Komarnicki served as a professor at the private High School of Political Science, which was founded in Warsaw, upgraded in 1939 to an Academy of Political Science, reestablished for a short period right after World War II, subsequently taken over by the state in 1946, and ultimately liquidated in 1956.
[7] In the 1930s, prominent professors of constitutional law (Wacław Komarnicki, Konstanty Grzybowski, Wacław Makowski) published several studies on the weakness of parliamentary democracy and political parties, which contributed to the radical change of the Polish Constitution of 1935, its electoral law and, ultimately, its system of government.
[8] Shortly after World War II, there was a chance to develop a new, modern approach to political science. Some prominent Polish scholars, among them Oskar Lange, Stanisław Ehrlich, and Adam Schaff, had created the Society of Political Science, which was admitted to the IPSA as the seventh national organization. The Society of Political Sciences, however, ceased to exist in the early 1950s. In the late 1940s, Konstanty Grzybowski, professor at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków published books on the Western democratic system of government. Zygmunt Gross and Feliks Gross published a book titled Sociology of political parties.
[9] Right after the war, there was no major institutional change except for one innovation. In 1945-50, a Political Science Academy aimed at preparing cadres for diplomacy was established and existed for a few years. It was dismantled, however, when Stalinist orthodoxy and Marxist ideology took over all aspects of political life in Poland in 1949. Generally, by the end of the 1940s, the political situation had changed radically. In the climate of a Stalinist totalitarian regime and intensive indoctrination, all social sciences, including political science, were barred from Western influences and ceased to develop.
[10] At the beginning of the 1950s, chairs of Marxism-Leninism were established at all universities, and the course in Marxism-Leninism (60 hours) was made obligatory for all students. However, after the 1956 events ("October Thaw"), Polish cultural and academic life witnessed a substantial change: a kind of controlled liberalization of intellectual life, though with some recurrence of tough orthodox politics, became the norm. Contacts and exchange between Polish and Western scholars were reestablished; many Polish scholars benefited from the fellowship programs of Western universities and other institutions. No doubt it was the first step toward the development of modern social sciences, and political sciences in particular. In 1956, a completely new society was founded, the Polish Association of Political Science. After its dismantling in 1949, the Polish Sociological Association was also reestablished in 1956; it had roots in the pre-war Polish Sociological Institute and the Polish Sociological Association of the1945-49 period).
[11] In 1957, the mandatory courses in Marxism-Leninism (with the "Short Course of the History of the Bolshevik Communist Party" as the basic textbook) were abolished. At the beginning of the 1960s, the academic community opposed the Communist Party authorities’ endeavors to restore them. A compromise was reached and, in accordance with the proposal by the Polish Political Science Association, compulsory courses in political science were introduced in the mid-1960s for all students at all universities. This crucial decision had its positive as well as negative consequences for the further development of political science in Poland. One positive effect was that political science was thereby acknowledged as a separate academic discipline. University political science departments were created with full four-year curricula. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Higher Education, the Central Methodological Unit was created, its aim familiarization with mainstream Western political science. The negative aspects were twofold. Communist Party propaganda treated the mandatory courses in political science as an instrument of ideological indoctrination. Students’ evaluations of these courses were consistently rather negative. On the other hand, with few exceptions and at the Warsaw and Jagiellonian University in particular, there was an acute lack of qualified lecturers on political science; the main body of the faculty was recruited among former lecturers of Marxism-Leninism and regional party apparatchiks from propaganda departments. This particular legacy is very likely the main factor explaining why political science in Poland did not flourish after 1990 as visibly as in some of the other former socialist countries of the region, where in many instances its development started from a scratch.
[12] In the 1960s, renowned sociologists carried out important studies that belong as much to the sociology of politics as they do to political science. As early as 1957, a seminal theoretical book by Stanisław Ossowski had appeared on theories and common perceptions of social classes. It contained a critical comparison of official ideology and real inequalities of class in the socialist system. Stefan Nowak contributed his empirical analyses of the socio-political attitudes of Warsaw students, Jan Strzelecki published essays on "human(istic) socialism", Jan Hochfeld wrote essays on parliament and its democratization, Jerzy Wiatr and his collaborators participated in international comparative projects on local government, Zygmunt Bauman wrote a historico-theoretical analysis of the working class political elite in Britain, and Włodzimierz Wesołowski published a book on class, strata, and power, to mention just a few. Stanisław Ossowski and Stefan Nowak represented an orientation of neo-positivism of the Vienna Circle type. Other authors mentioned above claimed to be "open Marxists"; a more common label for them was "revisionists".
[13] In academic research, the influence of institutionalism as a political science approach (represented mainly by constitutional lawyers) was balanced by political scientists of a sociological (functional) leaning. The former concentrated mainly on comparative studies of the political systems of Western democracies. Analyzing and teaching about the diversity of institutional infrastructures of world polities, they influenced the open debate in Poland and hastened the implementation of some institutions, e.g. the ombudsman and the constitutional court. The latter - political scientists with a sociological background - focused mainly on political culture, socio-economic and political attitudes, and the like. It is important to note that, in terms of political orientation, the majority of them clearly and openly opposed the ancien regime.
[14] At departments of political science, some renowned scholars dealt with the history of political ideas (Konstanty Grzybowski, Jan Baszkiewicz), the fascist state and the treaty on Science of Politics (Franciszek Ryszka), pressure groups (Stanisław Ehrlich), and Western democratic party systems (Witold Zakrzewski, Marek SobolewskiMarek Sobolewski, Stanisław Gebethner, Wieslaw Skrzydło). All these authors utilized "Western" approaches and methodology in their studies. Still, orthodox Marxism dominated many departments of political science. Slowly, new trends emerged in these departments in the 1970s and after the "first" Solidarity period of 1980-81.
[15] In the 1970s (until 1980, the "Solidarity" period) and 1980s (after the imposition of martial law), numerous centers of political debate and publishing houses were established. Circles of political opposition spread to various social and academic milieus. Discussion Clubs of Catholic Intelligentsia (KIK) had existed in Warsaw and Krakow since 1958, publishing the monthlies Więź (The Bond) and Znak (The Sign) and the Tygodnik Powszechny(catholic weekly). Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Stanisław Stomma, and Jerzy Turowicz played the leading role in maintaining the publications’ high intellectual standards and political independence. In the late 1970s, Ruch Młodej Polski started its illegal activities in Gdańsk. Simultaneously, the Liberal Club started its debates in Krakow. At the end of the 1970s, several political underground journals were launched. The most prominent and systematically published were Krytyka (Critique, with Adam Michnik as editor-in-chief) and Res Publica (with Marcin Król as editor-in-chief). The activity of the political opposition was mostly intellectual, but for some longer periods practical-political as well (joining strikes or publishing protests and political declarations). Ultimately, in 1976, an organizational oppositional structure - the Committee for the Defense of Workers (Komitet Obrony Robotników - KOR) was established. The government and party imposed martial law in 1981, but were unable to suppress all these activities. For our purposes, one net result should be underlined. Discussions and publications of a Western-style of thinking about politics, democracy, and communism contributed to its appreciation among both the intelligentsia and politically minded workers. New generations of middle-aged and young scholars emerged as competent political commentators, critics of the communist system, and proponents of democratization within and outside of universities. But with few exceptions, departments of political science were not in the forefront of this development; it was the sociology, economics, and history departments (with all their specific biases) that were most active in the public debate about democratization and marketization. Nevertheless, an inter-university research project (coordinated by Franciszek Ryszka) on the functioning of the state and political culture is an example of endeavors of truly scientific, Western-style research undertaken despite political constraints during the post-martial climate in Poland of the 1980s.
[16] No dramatic programmatic changes were visible in political science departments in the 1980s, but several piecemeal changes toward democratic thinking and teaching were taking place in that "politically stormy" period. The differentiation of courses and curricula depended mainly on the scholars’ individual political preferences and competences. At this stage, almost all scholars and professors of political science already had access to the Western literature in the field. Scholars thus started relying more and more on Western concepts and approaches. The new ideas, theories, and paradigms came mainly from the sub-fields of liberal political philosophy, republican political philosophy, contemporary theories of democracy, politics, and the state, and political systems. Modern research designs were implemented on voting behavior and political party activities. Academics at Wrocław, Warsaw, Poznań, and Jagiellonian Universities played a leading role in this new trend.
[17] To summarize: the socialist period saw various phases in political science’s development, from almost complete nonexistence in the late 1940s and 1950s to a limited opening in the 1960s and development in the 1970s and 1980s. One caveat, however: unlike such disciplines as economics, sociology, or psychology, whose development and relative ideological independence in Poland is broadly acknowledged, political science proved much more vulnerable to political and ideological pressures from the communist regime. This does not mean that particular scholars or even departments did not develop interesting, academically sophisticated research; but this was rather limited and delayed, compared to other social science disciplines.
[18] As the collapse of communism approached, political science evolved toward new political theories and new methods of research. Of these, institutional analyses and statistical modeling to scrutinize new substantive issues like free elections, the role of elites, etc. have been broadly applied. The concept of change provided the general theoretical framework; and phenomena of modernization and democratization were at the fore.
[19] Since the breakthrough in 1989, many new analyses of the Polish political life have been developing, primarily in political sociology, but also in political science. Studies on "transition" spread to social and political psychology, contemporary history, social economics, public policy, and many branches of the humanities (including the study of language as a means of communication and public relations). The main paradigmatic change was the almost total abandonment of Marxism, to the extent that this theory definitely does not receive the "normal" attention paid to it elsewhere in the world.
[20] Formally, very little institutional change occurred during the period of transformation in the 1990s. Except for the 1991 organization of the Institute of Political Studies within the Academy of Sciences structure, virtually no significant change in mainstream political science took place, although numerous think tanks and public institutes mushroomed to cover a broad range of economic, social, and political issues of the day. On the other hand, departments and institutes within university structures developed at a "normal" pace and in a "normal" manner. That is, new universities were established, and consequently new chairs of political science or departments followed.
[21] In taking up new scholarly issues and adopting new theories and methods, departments of sociology and departments of political science at major Polish universities both played an important role. Equally important were endeavors initiated at two institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The first, the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, had had some tradition in analyzing socio-political phenomena in the 1970s and 1980s (cf. longitudinal project "Poles ’80, ’81, ’84, ’88, ’90"). The second was the newly established Institute of Political Studies, whose faculty was recruited among prominent sociologists, political scientists, historians, and specialists in international relations (for details, see next section).
[22] The beginning of the 1990s witnessed a specific division of labor between universities and institutes of the Academy. Scholars of the political science departments were mostly engaged in modernizing and restructuring curricula for teaching. They were also preparing new textbooks, lexica, and "readers" that presented and elaborated new subject matter. Political sociologists, found more frequently in the Academy structure, were much more involved in empirical research. Recently this division of labor has been shrinking, due to the growing engagement of political scientists in research projects of various kinds, on the one hand, and scholars of the Polish Academy of Sciences launching teaching activities, on the other.
[23] The description that follows is based on both self-reporting from the chairs of departments of political science at major Polish universities and our own assessment. Overall information on courses introduced to curricula and research programs can be summarized as follows.
[24] In political philosophy, traditionally a strong area of study at Polish universities, new themes embrace above all liberalism and republicanism - American and European. The theory and practice of contemporary constitutionalism is visible everywhere. A new wave of debate within the framework of the "theory of justice" has been opened.
[25] In political theory, system analyses, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice theory have been widely introduced. Many of the efforts, however, have been limited to a presentation and discussion of Western political science, mainly of the last 30 years or so, which, of course, is an important task at the beginning.
[26] Almost all departments and political science institutes claim to harbor comparative politics. One general caveat is appropriate, however. What is meant by comparative politics usually comes close to the descriptive approach characteristic of area studies. Numerous publications and articles on particular (French, German, and so on) political or party systems is the core of what is considered comparative analysis. But to our knowledge, there is almost no real comparative analysis based on comparative methodology and cross-national multiple-N comparisons of several political systems that employs statistical techniques to synchronically or diachronically test systematic relationships between variables.
[27] Political economy is a rare domain among political science curricula. Moreover, those departments that claim such courses in fact offer basic courses in "economics for political (social) scientists". That is to say, the main paradigmatic edge of this subdiscipline, well-established in the Western world, is missing, if we mean the political economy sub-field aimed at answering the two basic questions: First, how institutions evolve in response to individual incentives and decisions, and, second, how institutions affect the performance of political and economic systems. Such an approach is likely to be found taught and discussed (but again, not perfectly applied) mostly at the Warsaw School of Economics, while research is carried out at the numerous economist-dominated think tanks. To be sure, there has been no serious attempt to analyze the political economy of Polish legislature and government formation. In a broader sense, however, works examining the impact of economic choices on the political process or, alternatively, on political behavior in the marketplace are topics of investigation among Polish scholars as well.
[28] Things are similar with public policy. The dominant theoretical and paradigmatic tendency of the curricula offered and research being done at Polish universities falls within the "social policy" approach, focusing mainly on the expenditure side of welfare state policies, etc. A more holistic approach, resembling what is usually found under this heading in the West, covering both the "demand and supply" side of the socio-economic relationship and alternatives that real public policy deals with, has been developed at a "branch" institute affiliated with the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, and - again - with the Warsaw School of Economics.
[29] Paradigms for analyses of party systems and electoral behavior resemble mainstream Western political science approaches and have been exploited. And again, the greater part of the scholarly effort has concentrated on interpreting the formal, official data on elections and parties, whereas few innovative methodological, empirical accomplishments are available.
[30] Some of the academic centers and university departments systematically study political attitudes of the Polish public, although to a large extent the numerous reasonably well functioning public opinion institutes have captured this domain. The problem with this data is that it is never subjected to enough theoretical scrutiny. Never in the last decade has the abundance of empirical data been systematically and theoretically consumed and utilized, but it remains an impressive potential source of knowledge.
[31] Political elite studies are usually approached within theoretical frameworks developed in the West, with a strong sociological angle.
[32] Theory of democracy follows the mainstream debate likely to be found anywhere in the world. In this respect, most of paradigmatic approaches to democracy are scrutinized. However, Polish innovative contribution to the debate and literature of the topic is modest, at best.
[33] The issue of nationalism and ethnic conflicts has emerged as an important subject of study at some research centers.
[34] The relationship between democracy and the market economy is a common subject of investigation by economists and sociologists, as well as political scientists.
[35] Finally, we would like to mention the great expansion of studies dealing with European integration, globalization, and new geopolitics.
[36] To summarize, the substantial change that came about consisted of a switch from the dominant Marxism to theories derived from the roots of liberal-democratic political philosophy. Broad implementation of Western methods of research has been steadily expanding. The growing research activities have contributed significantly to the quality of teaching. In consequence, political science departments currently put less emphasis on the general theory of the state. Political science conceived as teaching the fundamentals of political life has been complemented by many specific subdisciplines.
[37] On the other hand, no paradigmatic switch to a more "econometric" political science (as seen in the West during the last three decades) has surfaced. The field’s dominant paradigm is still rather a sociological one (among the empirically oriented political scientists) or a philosophical/juridical one (among theoretically oriented political scientists).
[38] Let’s now move to depict the situation at universities, colleges, and schools, both state-run and newly established private, non-profit ones. First, on the state-run universities: All established Polish universities offer an MA diploma in political science. To be sure, in most of them this is the only option, since no BA degree has yet been envisaged. The normal practice is to have a 5-year program in political science that concludes with an MA degree. Only recently has the situation changed; currently, the previous 5-year period is usually broken down into a 3-year BA curricula and an additional 2-year supplementary masters program.
[39] In the following, we base our analyses on the eight Political Science Departments of the universities listed in Table 1. Today there are two more universities (established in the 1990s). One is Białystok, founded on the basis of the previously existing University of Warsaw branch in that city, and the other is Mazurian University in Olsztyn. Geographically, the whole country is more or less evenly covered, e.g. departments of political science are spatially evenly distributed.
[40] The average number of full and associate professors does not vary as much as one might expect from the age of a given university or department (Table 4). There is a positive trend toward an increase in teaching staff. What varies substantially across universities is the number of specializations (subdisciplines) offered at each of them (see Table 4). One caveat is appropriate, however, at this point: Specialization differs in its depth and breadth, depending on the department.
[41] Now let us focus on the main research and teaching areas and on dominant theoretical approaches. Details about each individual department are presented in Tables 6, 1, and 2. The overall picture reveals that the dominant areas of studies are methods and research, political sociology, and international relations.
[42] The variance between preferred theoretical approaches (as listed in the Thematic Network Questionnaire) is even greater. Among the virtually nonexistent theoretical approaches at Polish universities one finds cybernetics, existentialism, and Marxism (!). At the other end of the continuum are historical approaches and phenomenology.
[43] A more detailed glance at political science departments’ curricula shows many changes in the last decade, the general trend being Westernization - or universalization, if you will. Analysis of the titles reveals substantial broadening of the field; fewer areas remain uncovered than ten years ago. In parallel, there is an increase in publications that help students learn, including monographs and textbooks written by Polish authors. Several collections of foreign "readers" have appeared in Polish as well, including major contemporary texts by Western scholars. Polish scholars have started elaborating and publishing political science "dictionaries". The new intellectual and political interests of the reading public and students have been satisfied by several publishing houses that relatively quickly translated the most important books on liberalism, republicanism, and their varieties, as well as a number of approaches to liberal democratic theory and various aspects of the functioning of a contemporary democratic system (Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel Huntington, Robert Dahl, Giovanni Sartori, John Gray, and Robert Putnam, to name just a few). Several prominent Polish specialists in the history of political philosophy have published books on the history of ideas.
[44] On the other hand, a search for Polish translations of or debates on such political science milestones as Elinor Ostrom’sGoverning the Commons (1990), Mancur Olson’sThe Logic of Collective Action (1965), James G. March and Johan P. Olsen’s Rediscovering Institutions (1989), Morris Fiorina’s Retrospective Voting in American Elections (1981), and many others must end in disappointment, since these go virtually unmentioned in Polish-language literature. Two major methodological contributions, Charles Ragin’sThe Comparative Method (1987) and Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba’sDesigning Social Inquiry (1994), remain "undiscovered". References to Anthony Downs’ seminal An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) are extremely rare, and these few omit the essence of the message and are usually found among sociologists, rather than political scientists.
[45] The official data on the fields of research and specialization at most important departments of political science in Poland are reported in the publication "Polish Science". Reporting on this issue is not an easy matter, since the structures of officially designed sections as well as their grouping in larger units is not uniform at universities. To illustrate the case: the political science faculty may offer international relations as a mere subject for study within the department, or the field may be represented by an independent department of international relations under the administration of the larger, say, Faculty of Political Science and Journalism. As a consequence, international relations as a subject of study and teaching may be somewhat underestimated in all reports on "political science" activities. In reality, it is a sister discipline. The same applies to public policy, which at some universities is simply a subdiscipline within a variety of departments at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism. Quite often, however, public policy is a huge independent department (institute) with its own course curricula and research. In this report, we mention public policy sections located within departments of political science.
[46] One can nevertheless list the core subject matters and subdisciplines present almost everywhere. This core includes history of political philosophy and political institutions; theory of politics; political systems; political sociology; and international relations.
[47] Among the more specialized subjects one usually finds: parties and party systems, local government, political representation, political communication, contemporary political systems of particular countries (most often the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany), globalization, ethnic conflict, and regional studies.
[48] But there are still severe gaps and deficiencies that have to be overcome before it can be claimed that real, full-blown political science exists in Poland. Advanced statistical methods, the comparative approach and method, and rational choice theory are not being taught adequately, to say the least. Debate and analyses within the framework of contemporary political theory, most notably utilizing behavioral approach and neo-institutionalism, are missing. Too much emphasis is still placed on old-style constitutionalism and descriptions of cases like the "French party system", the "German party system", etc. This is not easily detected by focusing solely on the self-assessments of the main areas of teaching and research and the major theoretical approaches revealed in the responses to the questions asked in the Thematic Network Questionnaire.
[49] Though at some universities we have specialists in several areas of study, on the whole political economy, electoral studies, comparative political systems, internal party politics, voluntary political activity, and empirical democratic theory are not covered satisfactorily.
[50] "Methods (and theory)" are claimed to be the most popular area of study. We have to admit that the concept of methods is used in an extremely vague way here. As far as we can guess, its meaning here is closer to the concept of "paradigm" than to refined formalized or quantitative modeling.
[51] It should be reiterated that some subdisciplines within the social sciences have a longer and stronger national tradition, and some others are weaker and less sophisticated. Political science has its roots in prewar studies of social work, unemployment studies, work conditions, patterns of consumption, and the like. During communist times, these problems were studied too, but the ideological constraints limited the depth of their study. Today some of them, for example public administration, have regained their impetus and intellectual independence as subdisciplines.
[52] There are several specific courses taught in the public policy domain: on industrial sociology and work conditions, on unemployment, on welfare policies and the functioning of institutions of social redistribution, on feminism, on juvenile delinquency, on family incomes, and on patterns of spending and the division of labor within the family. Such interests have a longstanding tradition in Polish "domestic economics" or sociology.
[53] The rapid development of European studies is among the most important recent developments at the departments of political science at Polish universities. They cover at least six relatively distinct areas: 1. general problems of economic, political, and cultural integration of European states - and the intricacies of the enlargement process; 2. the emergence of regions that cut across state boundaries; 3. relations between specific countries or groups of countries, e.g. Polish-German and Polish-Ukrainian, which have both historical and contemporary dimensions; 4. the individual psychological level of the integration, meaning the study of the value system and social-national identity; 5. Polish idiosyncrasies in the socio-economic adjustment process; and 6. the institutions of the European Union.
[54] The last decade witnessed a real mushrooming of new, non-state higher educational institutions in Poland. Their formal status is differentiated; some of them are clearly private enterprises, others non-profit, still others are sponsored and run by foundations. Their common denominator is that they are totally independent of the state (except for formal stipulations on professional requirements), so the state budget does not contribute to their existence. Many of them are still in a state of becoming, and so are their curricula and degree-granting accreditation. Most offer vocational curricula only up to the BA level; others are already entitled to award MAs; still others, though still only a few, award even PhDs. Relevant provisions of the 1990 Law on Higher Education stipulate that the diplomas of these non-state schools are formally equal to those of the state-run universities. Currently there are approximately 150 such institutions, some of them attracting celebrated scholars and numerous students.
[55] The general picture of these non-state schools and colleges is not easy to summarize, since they continue to adjust to labor market conditions and to stabilize their curricula and faculty. Most of them are business, banking, and management schools. Political science is present at some of them as a separate discipline.
[56] The existence of an institutional peculiarity, an Academy of Sciences, a characteristic feature of the academic landscape of post-communist Eastern Europe, proved resistant to change, mainly in terms of organization, structure, and finances. In the first half of the 1990s, the Polish Academy of Sciences institutes entered the educational arena (earlier, only a few of these academies offered doctoral level education). In 1972 the Committee of Political Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences was established as a consultative body, elected by the Polish community of political scientists.
[57] Within this structure, a new entity - the Institute of Political Studies- was established in 1990. Its development indicates the problems raised above; even though its accomplishments are hard to overestimate, negligence of certain core political science domains is visible as well. Apart from several areas covered by recognized scholars, such as area studies, transitions to democracy, electoral behavior, elite studies, contemporary history, international relations, and political philosophy, many other substantive subdisciplines are missing (political economy, public policy, public administration, and contemporary theory and methodological problems). The institute serves as a home institution to the Polish National Election Study, launched in 1997, a multi-approach initiative aimed at explaining the phenomenon of Polish elections. On the other hand, systematic research in comparative politics and constitutionalism lags behind as well. This state of affairs is partly due to the Institute's paradigmatic capture by sociologists and historians - in a nutshell, a rather interdisciplinary community. At the Institute of Political Studies (PAS) at the end of the 1990s, there were two dominant, should we say, "branches": contemporary history and sociology of transformation.
[58] The Institute of Political Studies and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology are the best-known contributors to political research conducted within the Polish Academy of Sciences. However, we would like to mention at least three additional institutes located within the framework of the Academy that also have contributed systematically to political analyses. The first is the Institute of Psychology, where important empirical projects were accomplished in the late 1980s and in the 1990s, covering themes as diversified as attitudes toward democracy, authoritarianism, youths’ political attitudes, etc., all falling under the rubric of political psychology. The second is the Institute of Law Sciences, where studies on constitutionalism, international relations, and European integration prevail. The third is the Institute of History, where projects covering contemporary Polish history and research on intelligentsia have contributed significantly to the understanding of the Solidarity revolution phenomenon, among other things.
[59] The academic interests and practical needs that have arisen in the field of European integration influenced the expansion of European Studies at many academic, private, and governmental organizations. The Institute of European Studies working under the auspices of two institutions - the University of Łódz and the governmental Committee on European Integration - is considered one of the most competent on this problematic. Similarly, the Center of European Studies was established in the 1990s at University of Warsaw. Groups of scholars affiliated with these institutions started addressing the European issue well ahead of the l989 breakthrough. Currently they work both for the academic community as well as for the government.
[60] At the University of Warsaw, the Institute of Sociology and the Institute of Applied Social Sciences have also contributed to significant research programs’ accomplishments on socio-political phenomena since 1956. In addition, an interdisciplinary research unit was established in the early 1990s - the Institute of Social Affairs, (within the University of Warsaw structure) - which participates in many international research programs and systematically conducts the Polish General Social Survey. This longitudinal, in part internationally comparative initiative serves as a reliable empirical source of data for many political scientists as well.
[61] Outside the Academy and universities, there are several public opinion institutes. Of these, the Center of Public Opinion Research, established as early as the late 1950s, affiliated at the time with the Polish Radio and TV, is the oldest; it was a phenomenon unusual in the whole socialist camp. There, Polish sociologists of the then-young generation were able to start the practice of empirical analysis. Surveys based on national samples covered many political themes. Currently in Poland, at least 5-6 major public opinion institutes regularly monitor our political life and serve as the "empirical-technical" arm for many academic projects. Their data archives are already very rich and are being utilized by many scholars, sociologists, economists, psychologists, and political scientists.
[62] There are also numerous independent institutions, NGOs, foundations, and the like that cover broad areas of our contemporary socio-economico-political phenomena. Among the most active is the Institute of Public Affairs (established in the mid-1990s), an independent think tank focusing its analyses on several issues of the day (European integration, Polish agriculture, constitutionalism and the rule of law, etc.) and contributing to broadening the public debate and gathering data that well serves the purposes of many scholars.
[63] Materials of great historico-political value are collected at the center called KARTA Center Foundation, which started as a private group for collecting material on Soviet atrocities inflicted on Polish citizens. Now it has public status and a new second function. It has published documentation of congresses and other meetings of the Solidarity Trade Union since the latter’s first formal recognition in 1980. It started publishing monographs on selected events during the martial law period.
[64] The Center for Social and Economic Research (Centrum Analiz Społeczno-Ekonomicznych- CASE) is at the fore of classical political economy analyses of contemporary Polish life. Its expertise proves crucial to the ongoing political debate in the country. Predominantly oriented toward macro-economic issues, it serves the political science community very efficiently as well.
[65] To sum up the issue of research and public debate, departments of political science at universities and research institutes affiliated with the Polish Academy of Sciences are the largest institutions that for years have been conducting basic research and providing expert knowledge to public agencies, the government in particular. They have contributed, especially in the 1990s, to the elaboration of numerous new political science projects and curricula, especially at the graduate and doctoral level. However, the signum temporis of the 1990s is the proliferation of public and private research and political analysis institutions that are collecting materials, participating in academic analysis, and making political knowledge available to the citizens.
[66] The paradox of Polish political science life may be summarized as follows: although several professional journals exist, the main exchange and the most heated politico-public debates in Poland take place on the pages of the prominent dailies (mainly Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita) and weeklies (mainly Polityka, Wprost), which systematically publish longer, in-depth articles on political issues: historical-comparative, theoretical, international. Problems tackled in these articles usually have general and current significance. Among monthly journals, the following have the most intellectual/academic profile: Res Publica, Znak, Więź, Przeglad Polityczny (Political Review), and Krytyka (which existed up to 1996).
[67] The three major academic political science journals are Studia Polityczne (Sociological Studies), Politologia, and Studia Politologiczne (Politological Studies). Political scientists and political sociologists tend to publish also in sociological journals, such as Kultura i Społeczeństwo (Culture and Society), Studia Socjologiczne, and Ekonomista (The Economist). Specialists in international relations publish mainly in the quarterly Studia Miedzynarodowe (International Studies), financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[68] Almost every department of political science at universities edits "working papers" or "series" in political sciences. These publishing activities are a very important means for disseminating research results on the particular accomplishments of a given local academic community. In the last decade, university publishers have released dozens of textbooks and readers.
[69] On the other hand, the quality of these publications is, frankly speaking, very uneven. Numerous publications, even ones with famous university logos, call for real peer reviewing and remain highly "improvable". This is a result of their institutional location - publications are financed by a given department, publish mainly their own faculty’s work, and have other local faculty serving as reviewers - a solution certainly not conducive to warranting academic quality. Still other works employ strange habits toward quotations, requiring Western publishing houses to inspect them closely to assess whether copyrights have been violated. Finally, the substantial part of these publications comprises purely descriptive, uninventive works bordering on journalistic and anecdotal quality, hardly useful even for junior students. In a nutshell, the quality of political science publication indeed calls for substantial improvement. To be sure, this seems to be an idiosyncrasy of political science and does not apply to other social sciences, sociology and psychology in particular, in Poland.
[70] Since its beginning in the late 1950s, the Polish Political Science Association (Polskie Towarzystwo Nauk Politycznych - PTNP) has been very active in Polish academic life. Quite early it became a member of the International Political Science Association. Many Polish scholars served as deputy chairman or as a member of the Executive Board of IPSA.
[71] On the domestic front, political scientists have organized many academic events - workshops, seminars, or conferences - on a variety of topics. Over three decades, the programs of these conferences have been moving toward topics discussed elsewhere: local government, the distribution of political power, political attitudes, parties, various aspects of East-West relations, etc. At the very beginning, conferences were dominated by Polish participants, who were closely linked with the orthodox version of the official ideology. With the passage of time, their attitude and that of the newcomers was replaced by an "open Marxism" approach and later by a great variety of eclectic, more liberal approaches. International conferences served extremely important functions. They allowed Polish participants to get closer to Western political ideas, theories and methods. Domestic conferences served mostly other functions. They provided a forum for learning and improving standards of scientific investigation; political science has gradually been shedding its ideological function, though more slowly than other social science disciplines have.
[72] In the early 1990s, another new Polish Society of Political Studies (Polskie Towarzystwo Studiów Politycznych - PTSP) was established, but it limits its role to a kind of liberal-leaning discussion club. Hardly any serious political science debate takes place in the new association. Among numerous other organizations, private foundations (e.g. the Batory Foundation, CASE), private universities, and private research organizations (like the Institute of Public Affairs discussed above) serve the exchange of political ideas and the development of research in political science.
[73] No periodicals in the Polish core political sciences are published in any of the world languages. Some of them (e.g. Studia Polityczne), however, include English-language articles. The English-language periodical that (partly) covers political science topics is Sisyphus - Social Studies; some of its monographic volumes have been completely devoted to Polish transformation, emerging political representation, democracy, and the like. Still, although incidentally, politological issues are present in the Polish Sociological Bulletin. The Polish Political Science Association and the Committee of Political Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences jointly publish the Yearbook of Polish Political Science. And that’s basically all.
[74] Books in world languages are numerous; needless to say, English dominates among these. Polish scholars publish in English either with Polish or with internationally renowned publishing houses or join Western scholars in co-authored or co-edited volumes.
[75] Slowly but consistently, both bilateral and multilateral links are becoming part of the everyday reality of Polish political science. Polish political science departments and institutes are present mainly in international bilateral activities; some of them have already a longstanding tradition. It is hard to enumerate even the most important ones. Such themes as "political culture" (in Poland and West Germany), comparative research on "local government", or - in more recent initiatives - on "electoral and party systems" are among the most prominent.
[76] Polish political science activities in multilateral projects are less visible; but this is not to say that Polish political scientists are not active. Many of them play an important role in these initiatives, but usually as persons invited to cooperate and serve as national specialists. Rarely are they found among the initiators or directors of these important projects. They are equally unlikely to be found among winners of grants from the European Union Fifth Framework Program, the European Science Foundation, or similar institutions. Notwithstanding a few exceptions, the probability that a Polish political scientist will win a grant from a major internationally recognized foundation is rather slim, as well.
[77] This poor international research performance is due to limited activity in the international disciplinary organizations - the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), the American Political Science Association (APSA), and the [British] Political Science Association (PSA). Members of the Polish Political Science Association (PTNP) traditionally dominate visible presence in the International Political Science Association (IPSA). The first all-European ECPR conference held in Canterbury, Kent, in September 2001 attracted only a few Polish political scientists.
[78] At the end of the 1990s, however, the Polish Political Science Association co-founded the Central European Political Science Association (CEPSA). Many Polish political science institutions and political scientists have joined the newly established pan-European professional organization - the European Political Science Network (epsNet)
[79] There is no simple explanation for this unsatisfactory international performance. The following phenomena may serve, however, as partial explanations: (a) the relative underdevelopment (by internal standards) of political sciences compared to sociology, psychology, and economics; (b) the relatively large internal academic market; (c) the domination of Polish political science by representatives of other social sciences.
[80] It is hard to assess exactly the magnitude of the "brain drain" from Polish political science, although the latter’s very underdevelopment means the harm cannot be that great. On the other hand, numerous political scientists of Polish origin are present at mainly US, but also Western European universities. A more detailed look at their professional background in Poland indicates, however, that the majority of them come from other social science disciplines, mainly sociology. Moreover, their individual fates indicate that most cannot be classified as classic indications of a "brain drain"; usually the Polish "real socialism" and its consequences were what drove these individuals out of the country, rather than the pure academic attractions of the West. In brief, for the majority of middle-aged and older scholars, the "push" out of Poland did more to drive this process than did the "pull" of the West.
[81] We know little about the current, 1990s processes of the "brain drain". First, because it is not clear who has left the country "for good"; second, because opportunities to travel and stay abroad became abundant, many, especially young, scholars benefit from these new opportunities, though we cannot estimate how many of them will decide to remain in the West.
[82] On the whole, the situation in Polish political sciences is complicated. On the one hand, there are strong, fruitful traditions that maintain an important field of study of good quality. On the other hand, there are also visible gaps and deficiencies. The latter applies most to some of the core areas of contemporary political sciences: political economy, public policy, neo-institutionalism, and methodological issues. Compared to other social sciences, political scientists can hardly be called a community: The lack of a strong, unified association that encourages academic quality and professional ethics and that boosts organizational opportunities, both at home and abroad, is a particularly sensitive problem. Publications and professional journals call for further improvement. The implementation of a transparent peer-reviewing mechanism is the essence of the problem, as we see it.
published 2002
| University: | Method and theory | Political philosophy | Comparative politics | Political socio-logy | Political econ-omy | National and area studies | Inter-national relations | Public policy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warsaw University |
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| Jagiellonian University, Krakow |
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| University of Curie-Sklodowska |
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| University of Mickiewicz |
X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| University of Silesia |
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| Szczecin University |
X | X | X | X | ||||
| Wroclaw University |
X | X | X | X | X | |||
| Catholic University of Lublin |
X | X | X | X |
| University: | Behavior-ism | Herm-eneu-tics | Ra-tional choice theory | Game theory | Neo-institution-alism | Historical ap-proaches | Functio-nalism | System theory | Organi-zational theory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warsaw University |
X | X | X | ||||||
| Jagiellonian University |
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| University of Curie-Sklodowska |
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| University of Mickiewicz |
X | X | X | ||||||
| University of Silesia |
X | X | X | X | X | ||||
| Szczecin University |
X | X | X | X | X | ||||
| Wroclaw University |
X | X | X | X | X | ||||
| Catholic Univ. of Lublin |
X | X | X | X | X |
