The rhetoric of political science in parliament : A study of Westminster debates after the Second World War

Abstract

A parliamentary perspective on the politics of the academic political science connects my former interest in the history of the discipline with parliamentary studies. This article continues the discussion in a previous article of mine on the German Bundestag. The conceptual point lies in a mutual suspicion between parliamentarians and academics regarding politics. In this present study I analyse Westminster debates on the concept of ‘political science’. Possible similarities between British and (West-)German debates appear in how this applies to academic authorities, in the increasing number of parliamentarians having studied political science at university, as well as in the distance towards academic political scientists. However, in the Bundestag political science is understood in academic and disciplinary terms and references to it serve for the members’ politicking. In Westminster a concept of political science frequently refers to a intellectual tradition persisting also in the late twentieth century and it emphasizes analysing political changes as challenged to political science.