Summary: Compared with many other European countries, political science in Finland has a relatively long history, as the first chair was established at the University of Helsinki in 1921. Today, political science is a discipline in six universities with a teaching staff of some sixty scholars. In addition, there are some fifty political scientists working in different projects on a temporary basis. The Finnish political science community is small, but well established (the Finnish Political Science Association was founded already in 1935). After the Second World War, the discipline was influenced by American political science, but since the 1970s, political scientists have become more “European” and “global.” Today, the discipline is facing new challenges due to the Bologna Process and the EU's Lisbon strategy, which have introduced curriculum, governance and funding reforms in the Finnish higher education. As a result, universities were privatised in 2010. At the same time, new higher education ideology has emphasised large institutions with strong leadership and interdisciplinarity in teaching and research. In the new situation, there is a danger that political science as a theoretical science will lose its identity and become suffocated by more applied disciplines.

On the history of the Finnish political science

Compared with many other European countries, political science in Finland has a relatively long history as an academic discipline. The first chair in political science was established at the University of Helsinki in 1921. The teaching began in 1924, with Karl Robert Brother us (a historian by education) as the first professor in the discipline. One of the reasons for establishing political science as a subject in the University was a need to educate civil servants for a new republic after the independence in 1917 (on the debates concerning the founding of the new discipline; see Palonen, 1983).

An interest in political science existed elsewhere, too. A new Swedish-language University, Abo Akademi University, was founded in Turku (Abo in Swedish) in 1918. A chair of political science was established also there. Unfortunately a professor chosen for the post died before taking up his duties and Abo did not fill the professorship until 1942.

Introduction

Political science has been an academic discipline at the University of Iceland since 1970. At first, only undergraduate studies were on offer in a new department of social sciences: political science and sociology as BA majors and minors, and anthropology as a BA minor. The department only had three full-time academic positions in the first years – one of those in political science. Today, the Faculty of Political Science offers both undergraduate and graduate programmes (including PhD programmes), employs staff of 15 full-time academics, and the number of students is around 600.

In 1976, a new Faculty of Social Sciences was founded at the University of Iceland. Six disciplines functioned as departments in the new Faculty: political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, and library science.

Historical and institutional context

Political science first started to develop as a separate discipline in Britain in the 19th century. However, in this early period it was not clearly differentiated from the disciplines it grew out of, in particular philosophy and history. Indeed, this continued to be a problem for much of the 20th century. Historians argued that the proper way to approach politics was through the study of political history; sociologists argued that it should be subsumed in their discipline as political sociology; and economists thought that it could best be studied through applying the methodology of their discipline. For economists it was insufficiently quantitative to be taken seriously and for philosophers it was insufficiently rooted in their subject. Lawyers thought that insufficient attention was paid to constitutional and administrative law.

Being a ‘junction subject’ between many disciplines was thus both a strength and a weakness. It enabled political scientists to draw on the insights of many disciplines: for example, geography could be added to those mentioned above. However, it also meant that the study of politics often looked like a field rather than a discipline. It lacked a sufficiently well-defined territory of its own and its own distinctive theoretical perspectives, methodology and research techniques.

In the first fifty years of the 20th century, the subject was largely based in Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science (early developments at Cambridge had not been followed through systematically).

Development of political science until 21st century: A short introduction

The development of political science in North America and West Europe was accompanied by critical discussions and reflections on fundamental epistemological, theoretical and methodological issues of the discipline. As a result, a special subfield emerged which deals with the history of the discipline and comprises single-country studies and cross-national comparative studies. Up to the end of the 20th century both types of studies were emerging primarily in western democratic states where political science was most developed – whereby it is asserted by many that it really existed only in these countries (Easton et al., 1990, p. 4), though it was by no means equally developed in all western countries (Mény, 2010) and where there were subject and contextual prerequisites for its critical discussion.

In a paper presented at the XXIInd World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Madrid (2012), Erkki Berndtson surveyed the complex situation of political science in Europe in a comparative fashion. He drew up an interesting set of regional alignments where several common characteristics of political science converge. In the context of Europe, he talked about North European, Central European, South European, and East European approaches where Turkey is located within the South European approach to political science along with France, Spain, Greece, Italy, and a few other nations. Despite showing common South European regional trends, Turkish political science, Berndtson suggests, diverges from French legalistic roots due to American influence (Berndtson, 2012, p. 10). In the first part of this chapter, I would like to see to what extent this observation is valid. Hence, the first part will be an historical survey of Turkish political science from its earliest roots onwards. In the second part, I will focus on a more current vision of the discipline in Turkey and focus on the period from 2000 to 2013.

(Early) beginnings

The development of the political science in Slovenia may be conceived and investigated only in relation to the wider development of political science in the world taking into account the particular circumstances of the previous integration of Slovenes in the bigger states and disintegration of the Socialist Yugoslav federation at the end of the 1980s. Analysing the development of political science in Slovenia therefore requires a “political sociology” of political science, involving the exploration of a considerable number of political, historical, economic and other factors (internal, external and international) which have influenced the discipline's evolution and at the same time were limiting or increasing its potentials.

Political science has not existed in Slovenia at least formally before the Second World War. We could find some elements of the basic ideas in the works of the first Slovene protestant writers in the 16th century describing the new type of a democratic organization of the believers within the Protestant Church.

The appearance and development of political science in the Republic of Moldova, as in other ex-Soviet republics’ is a complex, contradictory process of accumulation and affirmation of a relatively new scientific field for academic and university community. This process requires self-identification of subjects of study, its principles and categories, methods of research, analysis and evaluation of political phenomenon. Taken as a whole, these components make up the investigative object of political science's essence, of fundamental paradigms, its theoretical and methodological potential. In the Republic of Moldova these elements were developed during two and a half decades, but until now, this has been a complicated process of accumulation and exploitation of research trends. These results ensue from the complexity of new political practices of new challenges, which have emerged with the collapse of the Soviet empire and, later, difficulties of building new entities on the ruins of the empire.

This book is the result of a co-operative effort of an international team of researchers who came together in search of answers to the question concerning the situation and condition of political science in selected European countries. We have been concerned with this question for quite some time now and the result of our observations are two books devoted to political science in Poland, entitled Political Scientist, Who Are You? Past and Present of Political Science in Poland [in Polish: Kim jesteś politologu. Historia i stan dyscypliny w Polsce, B. Krauz-Mozer, P. Borowiec, P. Ścigaj, Kraków 2011 (vol. I), 2012 (vol. II) Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego]. The book we hereby present to the reader might be seen as a follow-up on those reflections. Together with the authors from a number of countries we have tried to paint a relatively coherent picture of political science in Europe. We are delighted to take this opportunity to thank our authors for their commitment. We are infinitely grateful for their co-operation, valuable observations and the results of their work.

The book contains papers prepared by researchers from various European academic centres, presenting their opinions regarding the condition of political science as well as observations regarding the dominant areas of interest to political scientists in their respective countries. The papers are not always uniform in structure and neither are they entirely coherent with each other in terms of presenting information and interpreting data. This in itself may be seen as a sign of the diversity of political science and its complex nature, which reflects the various ways in which the history of the discipline has unfolded in different countries. Bearing this in mind, we hope that this collection of papers will serve as a reliable compass for all those interested in this subject and will inspire an honest debate on the new challenges faced by political science. The reader alone can decide whether our aim has been achieved. If so, this would mean that we have succeeded in building a bridge that benefits us all.

In Russia the tradition of teaching political science at institutions of higher education began in the XVIII century. The Department of Policy was established in the structure of Moscow University in 1755 at the suggestion of M.V. Lomonosov. The Faculty of Moral and Political Sciences as part of the University of Moscow produced specialists in the field of politics and political economy from 1804 to 1835. In St. Petersburg State University special political science subjects were not given in the XVIII century, but there were courses on “Natural Rights and Practical or Moral Philosophy.” Start of Political Science in this educational centre was laid by the rector of St. Petersburg State University M.A. Balug‘iansky (1819‒1821). There were the faculties and departments in other Russian universities, in Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, in St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, where political science was given; master's theses in political science were defended. The infamous “case of the professors of the St. Petersburg State University” (1821), when the master teachers’ staff faced persecution for “freethinking” and attempt to present that the power is not from God, but the result of an agreement between people, was initiated by reactionary forces to destroy the very foundation of the teaching of political science without ideological background on an objective scientific basis.