In 2020, the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) will celebrate its 50th anniversary and will publish an anniversary volume on the origins and development of European Political Science. The anniversary volume is an endeavor from a large range of leading figures in the discipline who have joined forces to provide a critical assessment of the achievements and challenges lying ahead for European Political Science.In the workshop, authors will do a short presentation of the main argument of their draft chapter followed by an interactive discussion with the audience. We are thrilled to run the workshop at the EUI and have the opportunity to engage with the EUI community and beyond about the development of our discipline.
Everybody is welcome to attend!
The workshop will tackle successes and challenges for the future of our discipline. As disciplines go, 50 years is a short period of time. Yet, this half-century has been a defining period for the development of political science in Europe: disciplinary norms have emerged and become institutionalized in training and research units and in professional organizations – such as the ECPR; the scholarly community and production have dramatically grown across the continent; the sophistication of the analytical and methodological tools of the discipline has significantly increased and the knowledge production and exchange disseminated under the label “political science” is bigger than it has ever been. Yet European political science remains fragile and challenged at several levels. On the professional level, political science remains heavily centered on Western European paradigms and to a large extent dominated by its more traditional constituencies (white, senior, and male scholars). On the intellectual level, tensions between advocates of different paradigms, methods, and subdisciplines has challenged disciplinary unity as well as its ability to speak authoritatively to the public at large. Ultimately, on the political level, the discipline has been subjected to increasing pressures that, in extreme cases, go as far as putting its very existence under threat.
- Organisers:
- Prof. Isabelle Engeli (University of Exeter)
- Dr Diego Garzia (EUI – RSCAS and University of Luzern)
- Prof. Thibaud Boncourt (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)