The World of Political Science
The World of Political Science—The development of the discipline
Book series edited by Michael Stein and John Trent
Professors Michael B. Stein and John E. Trent are the co-editors of the book series “The World of Political Science”. The former is visiting professor of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Emeritus Professor, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The latter is a Fellow in the Center of Governance of the University of Ottawa, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and a former professor in its Department of Political Science.
John Trent
Michael Stein (eds.)
The World of Political Science
A Critical Overview of the Development of Political Studies around the Globe: 1990-2012
Barbara Budrich Publishers
Opladen • Berlin • Toronto 2012
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Contents
Introduction
Michael B. Stein
Political Science in Three Democracies, Disaffected (Japan), Third-Wave (Korea) and Possibly Fledgling (China)
Takashi Inoguchi
European Political Science(s): Historical Roots of Disciplinary Politics
Erkki Berndtson
Is There a Genuinely International Political Science Discipline? An Overview and Assessment of recent views on Disciplinary Historical Trends
Michael B. Stein
Issues and Trends in Political Science at the Beginning of the 21ST Century: Perspectives from the World of Political Science Book Series
John E. Trent
An Essay on the Present and Future of Political Studies 2012
John E. Trent
Index
Notes on the Contributors
Michael B. Stein
The original initiative in establishing this IPSA RC 33 Book Series was taken by John Trent and me at the Quebec IPSA World Congress in August 2000. As executive members of RC 33, we invited the Chairs of other IPSA Research Committees to convene a panel session at that Congress on the topic of the development and current state of their respective sub-disciplines within political science. We also asked them and their Research Committee members to revise these panel papers and include them in separate volumes of a book series to be organized under our co-editorship, one which would be designed to represent prevailing global professional opinion among political scientists on the historical development and current state of political science at the beginning of the millennium. At the initial organizational meeting of RC Chairs, convened at the end of that Congress, about 15 of the approximately 50 IPSA Research Committees attended and expressed a strong interest in participating in our project.
Our goal, as we explained at that meeting, was not merely to review the state of the art in various subfields of political science which these Research Committees represent, but also to commission essays for each subdiscipline volume that would probe the development of the subfield, or “why we are where we are in political science” at this particular moment in time. We also hoped that by providing these subdisciplinary overviews, we would be able to summarize and evaluate current concepts and methodologies that have been developed in recent years in our discipline, provide an overview of findings and trends in it, and include critical evaluations and suggestions for the discipline’s future.
During the first 3-year post-Congress period (2000-2003), about 15-20 Research Chairs and their collaborators proceeded to revise the original essays presented at the Quebec panel session, commission additional essays, and plan the sub-disciplinary chapters for their volume under their editorship or that of one of their deputies. During the same period Barbara Budrich, a highly intelligent, imaginative and skilled professional in the field of publishing and founder of her own new publishing firm, Barbara Budrich Publishers, agreed to issue a contract to us for publication of our proposed book series. The first volume of the series, Democratization: the State of the Art was published in 2004 under the editorship of Dirk Berg-Schlosser, the Chair of IPSA Research Committee 13 on “Democratization in Comparative Perspective”. In the following three years, there were five further volumes published on Political Psychology (2006), RC 29, edited by Linda Shepherd; Business and Government: Methods and Practice (2006), RC 38, co-edited by David Coen and Wyn Grant; Pluralism: Developments in the Theory and Practice of Democracy (2006) (RC 16), edited by Rainer Eisfeld; The Comparative Study of Local Government and Politics: Overview and Synthesis (2006), RC 5, co-edited by Harald Baldersheim and Helmut Wollmann; and Governing Developments across Cultures: Challenges and Dilemmas of an Emerging subdiscipline in Political Science (2007), RC 4, edited by R.B. Jain. After that there was a brief hiatus until further volumes were published. These included Political Sociology: The State of the Art (2010), IPSA RC 6 and ISA RC 18, co-edited by Subrata K. Mitra, Malte Pehl and Clemens Spiess; The Study of Ethnicity and Politics: Recent Analytical Developments (2012), RC 14, co-edited by Adrian Guelke and Jean Tournon; Gender and Politics: The State of the Discipline (2012), RCs 19, 7, 52, edited by Jane H. Bayes; Political Power: the Development of the Field (2012), RC 36, co-edited by Mark Haugaard and Kevin Ryan; Electronic Democracy, RC 10, (2012) edited by Norbert Kersting; and this volume, the concluding volume of the series on The World of Political Science: A Critical Overview of the Development of Political Studies Around the Globe – 1990-2012 (2012), RC 33, co-edited by John E. Trent and Michael B. Stein.
In this twelfth and final series volume, we hope to present the accumulated findings and results that we have culled from the eleven previous published volumes. In fact, chapter 4 of this volume, entitled “Issues and Trends in Political Science at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Perspectives from the World of Political Science Book Series”, written by John Trent, consists of a careful overview and detailed synopsis of the major concepts and arguments contained in the earlier books of the series (section 1); a summary of “Advances in Political Science” (section 2); an analysis of “Orientations and Trends in Political Science over the past Two Decades” (3), a presentation of current “Problems of Political Science”, including critiques of its major orientations and explanations of its development (4); “Proposals for Improvements in Political Science” (5) and a “Summation” and “Conclusion”. Two other chapters, number 3 by Michael Stein entitled “Is There a Genuinely International Political Science Discipline? An Overview and Assessment of Recent Views on Disciplinary Historical Trends” and chapter 5 by John Trent entitled “An Essay on the Present and Future of Political Studies 2012” convey most clearly the co-editors’ shared critical overall perspective on the past evolution and current state of international political science. We view the contemporary discipline as insufficiently relevant to the political concerns of the average citizen; too “scientistic” in its emphasis on generating quantifiable and empirically testable propositions; and too dominated by what has aptly been described as the “American cum Transatlantic European perspective” or disciplinary approach and methodology, one that draws heavily on the natural sciences. We call for a more balanced approach to an understanding of the historical development and current state of the discipline that relies and draws on the competing paradigms, approaches and methodologies of both mainstream positivist-empiricist and critical political science, “modern” and “post-modern” feminist, post-structuralist and post-colonialist ideas, normative and empirical analytical value perspectives, and regional-geographic and global political science communities.
In our view, the two essays by Takashi Inoguchi (chapter 1) on political science in East Asia and Erkki Bendtson (chapter 2) on political science in Europe reflect this more balanced geographic, cultural and conceptual perspective. They also provide useful quantitative and qualitative information and data that give a regional perspective on the theoretical and methodological orientations of the series and volume co-editors.
In short, in this volume we invite our readers to consider our call for improvements in our increasingly global political science discipline, one that in our view better reflects pluralism in paradigms, approaches and methodology, and a more open and creative future path of inquiry. We view this as the most desirable direction for our discipline to take at the beginning of this new millennium.
* * * *
Takashi Inoguchi
It was Stanley Hoffmann (1987) who once rhetorically asked a question, Is International Relations an American Social Science? Yes, it has been at least for the last half a century – is a standard answer to the question. The same question must be asked of political science. Has political science been dominated by Americans? Yes, it has been for the last half a century – is a standard answer to the question. In terms of amount and variety – and some say in terms of quality as well, it is undeniable that American political science has led political science for the last half a century in the rest of the world. Just as Midland, Texas has brought up George W. Bush and Tommy Franks and thus shaped United States war policy in Iraq, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for one, has exemplified and thus arguably shaped quintessentially American political science. It is this trinity of robust academic professionalism, solid positivism and heavy methodological armory that has been a trademark of American political science (Gunnell 2004; Farr and Seidelman 1993; Easton et al. 1995, Oren 2002).
In political science journals in other countries, one can easily discern the creeping influence of American paradigms and authors just by looking at the uniformly comprehensive and catholic citation practice and the plain and clear style of presentation, even if it is often unabashedly American biased. However, one can discern a robust non-American citation practice in many other countries. What is called the three stage citation style in one’s academic career still exists in most countries (Inoguchi 1985). In the early stage, you normally aspire to become a great academic and express it in the form of citing great scholars shamelessly frequently as if you were becoming on a par with Karl Marx and Max Weber, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Dahl and Karl Deutsch. In the middle stage when one perceives she or he has established her/his foothold among great scholars, at least in one’s areas of expertise, one starts citing one’s own works as if he or she had become a primus inter pares in the area concerned. In the twilight stage, everything looks so self-evident that she or he stops citing others as well as one’s own works. One’s article even starts with a phrase like, “As everyone knows,” which renders the whole undertaking of writing an article sound worthless. In other words, the cycle of others-citation, self-citation, and no citation in this order seems to be a universal truth governing every academic’s citation practice. A casual and self-critical glance at my own writings for the last four decades after my Ph.D. enables me to say that I have been unintentionally and thus dangerously following the three stage cycle, now seemingly heading toward the third stage (http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~inoguchi). But Americans are different. Americans are an exception. They have overcome this life-cyclical pattern, says Peter Katzenstein (2006). Indeed, the multiple anonymous reviewing system plus the use of the social science citation index linked to higher salaries, positions and prestige in one way or another seems to discipline many American political scientists sufficiently to surpass the seductive three-stage citation cycle of many academics of the world.
What does the above observation have to do with the question: is a genuinely global and universal political science possible? From the above episode I am implying that the style of writing that prevails in the American political science community conveys somewhat surreptitiously the presupposition of American political science, being global and universal.
But I will not, in this article, try to argue about whether the question should be answered either positively or negatively. Instead I will try to examine three political science communities in East Asia in terms of their key features and structural conditions that sustain those features. In this sense, this study is a modest attempt to indirectly suggest that no genuinely global and universal political science is possible.
The purpose of this article is to describe how political science has been developing in the East Asian countries of Japan, Korea and China for the last quarter of the 20th century and to show that their development has been proceeding in ways that are definitely associated with American political science (often with some lags). But their development has also been inexorably grounded in the nature and dynamics of their society and politics. It is especially grounded in the nature and dynamics of their democracies: a disaffected democracy in Japan, a third-wave democracy in Korea and a possibly fledgling democracy in China. Therefore, the dominance of American political science is not a key feature of these three political science communities. Before going into these three disciplinary communities, I will first compare the three democracies that characterize the three regimes in East Asia (Inoguchi 2002). Then I will describe each of the three political science communities one by one, focusing on the kinds of subjects popular during the last quarter of the last century in relation to the nature and dynamics of each regime. Lastly, the conclusion will be drawn that points to the need to closely examine the rise and fall of topics in relation to regime self-transformation.
A disaffected democracy (Pharr/Putnam 1999) is a democracy which has become mature and established, but in which distrust and indifference to politics have become a key feature. Robert Putnam has famously published Bowling Alone (2000) in which the associational propinquity of Americans has been long lost. Instead of enjoying bowling together with friends and with the family, bowling alone has become a normal phenomenon symbolically showing how the vibrant democratic spirit has been reduced. Most visibly, popular trust in political institutions has been at its nadir, with political parties accommodating members and supporters without much interest (Dalton/Wattenberg 2001, 2003; Wattenberg, 2002). A disaffected democracy is also called an established or mature democracy in which critical citizens play a key role of voicing dissent and demanding correction of wrongs (Norris 1997, 2002; Norris & Inglehart 2003). Whether a democracy had better be called a ‘critical’ democracy depends on one key feature; whether citizens demonstrate a robust commitment to democratic norms and values. Citizens’ distrust in politicians and political institutions may not automatically constitute a strong evidence of its being a disaffected democracy. Rather, as long as the basic core commitment to democratic norms and values is robust, it is positive, argues Pippa Norris. Is Japan a critical democracy? Yes, it is. I can offer two forms of evidence. Confidence in political parties, the parliament, the civil service, political leaders and the elected government are uniformly low (Pharr 1997; Inoguchi 2003). However, electorates overwhelmingly prefer democracy to authoritarianism, thus demonstrating robust commitment to democratic norms, values and institutions (Inoguchi 2002).
I have said that two adjectives, ‘disaffected’ or ‘critical’, make a difference in characterizing the nature of democracy among what are called established or mature democracies. Doh Chull Shin (2006) argues and empirically demonstrates that the distinction between critical views of democratic institutions and strong commitment to democratic values and norms was able to differentiate the durable from the fragile democracies. His deft use of survey data enables him to argue that the increasing prevalence of the procedural definition of democracy and its institutional outcomes causes the number of fragile democracies to grow after the initial phase of democratization.
Distinguished from a disaffected or established democracy is a third-wave democracy (Huntington 1993; Rose/Shin, 2001). Third-wave democracy is so called because it was born in the third wave of democratization in the twentieth century (the first was after World War I, the second after World War II and the third in the last quarter of the last century). Its key features are its focus on the procedural definition of democracy, on the electoral aspects of democracy, on the manipulative nature of democratic regimes, and on the fragile nature of democratic commitment. But democracy is normally defined in terms of substance, not just in terms of procedure. Hence we speak of government “by the people, of the people, and for the people”. And this politics and power are defined as getting things done, or as A’s ability to get B to do what B would not otherwise do. But in third-wave democracy its definition focuses on how leaders are selected in terms of free and fair elections among a number of political parties, sometimes under the monitoring of the United Nations. East Timor was a good example. It was Joseph Schumpeter (1947) who highlighted the procedural definition of democracy. He presented the somewhat cynical view of democracy, “new rascals in, old rascals out”, as the essence of democracy. As long as democracy moves the power of people (democracy), not the things of people (republic), the circulation of power among competing elites is inevitable. The dramatic shift from the substantive to the procedural conception of democracy has accelerated the increase in the number of democracies in the latter half of the 20th century, especially in its last quarter. With the accession of Montenegro to the United Nations, democracies have numbered 125, whereas the UN member countries have amounted to 192. Also salient are the manipulative aspects of regime design and construction, such as those found in southern Europe, East/Central Europe, Latin America and East and Southeast Asia (Huntington 1993). Sartori’s notion of “crafting democracy” aptly describes this spirit. It is like democratic engineering following Karl Popper’s phrase, “social engineering”. Democracy is designed and fabricated. By whom? It is a good question. Normally it is by agreement of ‘interested powers’ and the United Nations. A regime in a peripheral country has often been fabricated by big powers’ interventions. It is not a new thing. Different now from before is the idea of a democratic regime. As long as norms and values are shared by both promoters and recipients of democracy, a democratic regime is designed and manufactured accordingly. Democratic diffusion is a phrase often used to obfuscate the blunt nature of fabricated democratic regimes. A no less important key feature is its fragility and volatility. Some regimes manifest more of this than others. In Korea, for instance, citizens’ commitment to democratic norms and values is manifestly lower than in other established democracies, for instance, Japan (Shin 2001; Inoguchi 2002).
Is Korea a third-wave democracy? Democratization took place in Korea, with the military dictatorship following the tide of democratization already underway in Southern Europe, Latin America, and East and Southeast Asia. Korean democracy has been exhibiting a volatility of public opinion, as exemplified by the dramatic anti-Americanism during the December 2002 Presidential election (Kim 2005). Furthermore, a fairly sizable number of voters prefers authoritarianism to democracy (Shin 2001).
China’s possibly fledgling democracy is, in other words, a semi-democracy or a democracy-in-the-making. Although the basic nature of the regime is doubtlessly authoritarian, one can find some features that may transform themselves into a democratic form. They include the increasingly inclusionary nature of the nomenklatura, village level democratic elections, and increasing attention to transparency and accountability. In China, for instance, Jiang Zemin’s “three representations” doctrine sought to enhance the membership of the communist party by admiring those who are capitalists and those advanced in science and technology as well as those committed to the party. Increasingly, village elections allow multiple candidates directly chosen by popular votes, although most candidates are from the communist party. Hu Jintao, the President, proclaims the “three wei”s, meaning power used for people, sentiments shared with people, and interests promoted for people. In other words, it is not quite government by, but somewhat of, and increasingly for, people.
The inept and non-transparent handling of the SARS infection in China in the spring of 2003 has reinforced the low level of transparency of the political system. Although President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao replaced the health minister of the Central Government, they were not able to do anything either about the Guangdong Provincial Government or the People’s Liberation Army, both of which were suspected at being more directly responsible.
Given the above admittedly cursory review of a disaffected democracy, a third-wave democracy and a possibly fledgling democracy, I shall describe the development of political science in Japan, Korea and China in the same order, with the different democratic characteristics kept in mind. As Japan has been a forerunner of the three in terms of democratic and disciplinary development (Easton et al. 1995), I will first examine the development of political science in Japan in good detail. Then I will turn to Korea and China.
Japanese political science started as staatslehre, adopted from Germany, a branch of study which is meant to provide the skeleton of major subjects deemed necessary for adequate knowledge and skills for young aspirant political leaders serving a modernizing Japanese state in the late 19th century (Inoguchi 1997). They included history, philosophy and economics. After dismantling feudal class distinctions in the 1870s, the modernizing government built schools to train future leaders. The primary purpose of building seven imperial universities was to generate key professional personnel in agriculture, engineering, medicine, science, law, economics, and foreign languages in order to quickly build a strong army and a rich country on the basis of enlightenment and entrepreneurship in Japanese society. The governing elite corps of the previous Tokugawa era (1603-1868) was exclusively recruited from the warrior class which comprised some 3-7 per cent of the population. After the medieval warring period which ended with the ascension of Ieyasu Tokugawa to power, the warrior class was first concentrated into urban castle towns of 300 odd semi-autonomous domains, and then disarmed to metamorphose themselves into bureaucrats. The suddenly disemployed former warrior class families were given a number of possibilities. A substantial number of their children assumed either academic or bureaucratic careers. Even in the 1920s one half of the Imperial University of Tokyo’s students were identified as originating from warrior class families. The warrior class’s distinctive features were (1) high levels of literacy including Chinese classics, (2) high level of self-discipline. These traits were regarded as essential for the new governing elite corps. It is remarkable that major universities set up schools and departments according to key applied professions such as medicine, agriculture, engineering, law and economics at the undergraduate level. It is even more remarkable that Japan continues untill today with a structure that was first created then in the new universities (Inoguchi 2005a).
Political science was submerged by staatslehre, the primary purpose of which was to train and nurture future cadres of the modernizing state. Staatslehre encompassed topics that served the state. The school of law at the undergraduate level comprised law, history, philosophy, economics and all other relevant courses such as public administration, diplomatic history, international law, colonial studies and military science. It was only in the 1920s that course of political science was installed in the curriculum of the Imperial University of Tokyo. During the period of fledgling democracy called Taisho democracy, a remarkably well developed academic discipline of political science was born. Glancing, for instance, at a political theory book of Prof. Kiheiji Onozuka, a founder of political science in Japan, one marvels at how quickly political science in Japan was able to advance in tandem with its American and European counterparts, which were then also at an incipient stage (Onozuka 1903).
Political science in Japan had another more traditional stream called historicism. This tradition became predominant in that researching historical documents and describing events and personalities in contextualized settings became a major mainstream endeavor of many academic disciplines, including political science. It is due, in part, to traditions of not arguing about the world using grandiose vocabulary (kotoagesezu) and not offering to generalize propositions and laws from observed human interactions. Even today, the trichotomous structure of political science curriculum in Japan consists of political history, political philosophy and political science – in all of which historical descriptive, textual criticism and interpretive approaches remain very strong. This traditional mainstream prospered as part of a quiet resistance to the government-led regulation of certain viewpoints within the limits imposed on the freedom of expression by the Internal Security Preservation Law, enacted in 1925.
Another stream is that of Marxism. This stream was pervasive during the half century period from 1920s through 1960s. During this period it was not an exaggeration to say that Japan was marxist. Marxism flourished under the Internal Security Preservation Law (1925-1945), during the occupation by the Allied Powers (1945-1952) and thereafter until roughly 1969. Marxism was attractive to many academics for a number of reasons. One of the most important was the fact that Marxism was an opposition science whereby one can combine thought and action while retaining a “scientific” style and role as an academic. Although they stayed aloof from power, many of those Marxist academics participated in politics even during the winter period of 1925-1945 and the American period of 1945-1952 (Barshay 2004).
A fourth stream of political science is that of American influence since the 1920s, but mostly since the 1950s. By 2000 this fourth stream had become very strong indeed. But it is important to note that it is a relatively new stream, and that it is much weaker in Japan than in neighboring countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and possibly in China as well. One can call South Korean and Taiwanese political science neo-colonial (Chung-In Moon) and Japanese political sciences as bumi putra (meaning that endogenous elements are deemed most important and somewhat impermeable to exogenous attempts at penetration) (Moon and Kim 2002: 45-68). It has something to do with the large domestic market for academic publication and with the tenacious resistance to efforts at enhancing English proficiency.
Who constitutes the political science community in Japan? It has been comprised mostly of academics. The role and space of practitioners have been on a slow increase as retired professional practitioners take up positions in academia in such areas as public policy, international relations, accounting, journalism and business. They number some 6 per cent according to my informed guess.
What are the types of career path, of professional academics? In political science, professors with a Ph.D. are in the minority, say some 10 per cent. The younger the age, the more professors are xxxxxx to have a Ph.D. but they are still remarkably small in number. The majority take a teaching position whilst working on a Ph.D. dissertation, and oftentimes do not complete their Ph.D. degree even at a later date. Professors with an American Ph.D. are in a very smaller minority – my guess is some 3-4 per cent. Since the number of political scientists is something like 5,000, only some 150 would have U.S. doctorates. In comparison, Korean political scientists with an American Ph.D. number 1,500 out of some 2,500. The large domestic market for book publication and the still strong Japanese model of self-reliance: borrowing first from abroad, then endogenizing things foreign, then starting domestic production and then eventually liberalizing the professional academic market (a stage that has not fully arrived in Japan) seem to explain this figure very well (Inoguchi and Harada 2002).
What are the outlets for political scientists’ publications? After all, academics are most highly reputed by what they publish. Most of them publish in the form of a book or a journal article in Japanese. Those regularly publishing in English number only 20-50. They are mostly young and with an American Ph.D. The picture is not so dismal, however. The spring 2005 issue of the American Political Science Review carried two articles by Japanese authors. The June issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution carried an article including two Japanese names, which is a most widely read in terms of the frequency of hits registered in the publisher’s website (Hill and Matsubayashi 2005: 215-224; Imai 2005: 283-300; Goldsmith et al. 2005: 408-429). Journal publication is vigorous. Some dozen academic associations in these broad areas of political science exist. The largest, the Japan Association of International Relations, publishes two journals, one in Japanese and the other in English (their contents are different). The Kokusai seiji publishes five issues a year and International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (Oxford University Press) publishes three issues a year. Thomson-Reuters has granted the journal an imput factor since 2010. The second largest, the Japan Political Science Association, publishes one journal in Japanese, Nenpo Seijigaku (The Annals of Political Science). The Japanese Electoral Studies Association publishes two journals in Japanese. The Japanese Public Policy Association publishes a journal in Japanese. Aside from association-sponsored journals, the Japanese Journal of Political Science is edited by the author of this chapter and is published four times a year by Cambridge University Press. Thomas Reuter has granted an imprime feature since 2010. The Leviathan is edited in Japanese by the Leviathan group.
In the post-1945 period, one can discern three distinctive turning points in terms of key framing questions: 1945, 1975 and 2005 (Inoguchi 2005a). By ‘framing’ questions I mean those questions that drive political scientists to think and argue about something. After all, key framing questions reflect what they regard as their problematiques. 1945 was a new beginning. The key framing question for the period between 1945 and 1975 was: what went wrong with us? I am refering here to the defeat and disaster of the Second World War. During this first period, political history covering the period leading of 1945 dominated their writings, and political philosophers wondered what they could learn from Western political principles and institutions. The period starting roughly in 1975 and ending in 2005 had one key framing question: what are the distinctive features of Japanese politics? Is it really unique? Is it really an odd outlier in comparative politics? This second period is an era of Japanese politics. It coincides with the rise and decline of Japanese self-confidence in a sense. The period starting in 2005 seems to be another distinctive period, in that some common features are sought in relation to Japanese politics. In the first period Japan was portrayed as an “odd and bad guy” amongst major powers. In the second period Japan was a rara avis among industrial democracies, despite high income levels. In the third period, Japan is increasingly portrayed as an ordinary country with features common to others. Which features do Japanese politics have in common and with which other country groups seems to characterize many questions posed by political scientists in the third period. If the first period asked a framing question as if political scientists were framing a Constitution by themselves, and if the second period asked a framing question as if political scientists were dissecting their own body, the third period asked a framing question as if political scientists were finding friends from near and afar in search of a better understanding of themselves. Symbolic of these self-transformations are the three representative journals carrying the zeitgeist, the essential spirit, of each period. The first period was best represented by the Nempo seijigaku with its critical and liberal spirit. The second period was best represented by the Leviathan journal with its strong commitment to empiricism when dissecting our own malaise. The third period seems to be best represented by the Japanese Journal of Political Science, with its intensely comparative outlook, carrying articles on East Asia as well as international relations in the region of the Asia-Pacific. However, this third period has barely started.
It is always difficult to list key political scientists in Japan because all are colleagues and friends. The best known political scientist in Japan is Masao Maruyama (Maruyama 1956). He represents the spirit of the first period. He hated the ancien regime. He wanted a new regime to be far more liberal and democratic. He saw the same malaise that attemped the ancien regime being reproduced in the first period. He quit the University of Tokyo in despair when the University was intruded on and destroyed by violent radical students in 1968. The first period was represented by many others whose names are best identified by glancing at the authors’ list of the Nempo seijigaku in the 1950s and 1960s.
The spirit of the second period was represented by the Leviathan-based political scientists comprising Hideo Otake, Michio Muramatsu, Ikuo Kabashima and the author of this chapter. Leviathan is a journal edited by the four founding editors, who were succeeded by the current editorial team in 1998. Its spirit is empiricism and its substantive focus is Japanese politics. No less epoch-making was the multi volume publication of Gendai Seijigaku Sosho (Contemporary Political Science Series) edited by the author of this paper and published by the University of Tokyo Press (1989-present). Along with these journals has come a host of younger political scientists who present and discuss their work in such forums as the Japanese Electoral Studies Association and the American Political Science Association, and publish their work in such journals as the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science and the Japanese Journal of Political Science. They include: Junko Kato, Steven Reed, Motoshi Suzuki, Yutaka Tsujinaka, Yusaku Horiuchi, Ikuo Kume, Ofer Feldman, Masaru Kohno. Not only does their work appear in English journals, they publish books in English as well.
The spirit of the third period is increasingly comparative. It is not necessarily Japan-focused. It does not necessarily compare Japan with other industrial democracies. As authors are interested in comparative categories such as electoral systems and outcomes, path-dependent policy outcomes, comparative interest groups and comparative life styles. Representative of this third spirit are such works as Kato’s comparative public policy, Tsujinaka’s comparative interest groups, Kobayashi’s comparative civic cultures and the AsiaBarometer survey on values and life styles (Kato 2003; Knoke et al. 1996; Inoguchi et al. 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009; Shin & Inoguchi, 2010; Inoguchi & Fujii, forthcoming in 2012). One of the salient features of the spirit of the third period is the commitment to create and deepen comparative empirical data bases and to engage fellow political scientists abroad as well.
Japanese political science has been changing quickly and with its innate diversity kept intact. The large size of its community ensures its largely segmented existence. Yet as a whole its transformation is very remarkable. In the first period no serious political scientists did empirical work on Japanese politics except for such respected political scientists as Junichi Kyogoku and Ichiro Miyake. In much of the second period those specializing in Japanese politics proliferated. The transition from the first to the second period was fast. The transition from the second to the third period is steady. It is becoming a normal practice to see Japanese political scientists conducting comparative field work and, executing social surveys abroad, and participating in foreign and international academic conventions abroad as well as at home.
Political science in Japan has been changing very steadily for the last half a century. This has been taking place despite some seemingly very severe institutional and mental constraints that have been inflicted for more than a century. They may be called ambivalence and insulation. By ambivalence I mean the mixed feelings about the state. By insulation I mean the orientation toward things coming from abroad and toward interacting with foreigners.
The Japanese ambivalence about the state has not been well recognized. The state has never been so powerful until a modernizing impulse was implanted in the Japanese mind in the mid-19th century. Japan was isolated most of the time in its 1,000 year history. Japan was able to selectively absorb higher civilizational ideas from China or from the West as Japanese were reasonably astute and adroit in learning from abroad. Geographical isolation and the relatively high level of land productivity of the Japanese archipelagoes helped shape the Japanese attitude of not allowing a centralized state to emerge until recently. The experiences of the wars in the 1930s and 1940s did not encourage this way of thinking. It revealed first that the state mishandled international relations on all major occasions, such as 1931, 1937, 1941 and 1945. Second it meant that the state was irresponsible in its management of government wartime bonds, which they purchased willynilly. The defeat of Japan made these wartime Japanese government bonds worthless after August 15, 1945. Let me provide two examples of the Japanese ambivalence about the state. First, the resistance to consumption tax hikes has been dogged and tenacious. Before it was finally introduced in 1989, three prime ministers were forced to resign from office because of opposition to it. Second, the resistance to sending troops abroad, even when restricted to United Nations peace keeping operations, has been equally tenacious. The legislation authorizing this was passed at long last but the law will terminate after a certain time passes. It is not a permanent law, which is normally the case with most laws in Japan. While the strong staatslehre tradition does exist, popular reactions have tended not to encourage the government to install political science departments.
By insulation I mean something that is both geographical and mental. Japan’s isolation and relatively high productivity inculcated in the Japanese a mentality of allowing only selective ideas, institutions and technologies coming from higher civilizations such as China or the West to penetrate Japan. It is sometimes called ‘permeable insulation’ (Schaede & Grimes 2004). This feature can be understood when you compare the political science communities of Japan’s neighbors. Take Korea. As we have seen, Korea has some 1,200-1,500 American Ph.D.s whereas Japan has about 150-200 despite the discrepancy in relative size of the two political science communities of 2,500 vs. 5,000 respectively. You can call Korean political science neo-colonial (Moon & Kim 2002) and Japanese political science bumi putra in the sense of a lower readiness to absorb foreign ideas and practices. The existence of the very large domestic market for book publication and the rather slowly rising proficiency of English among Japanese social scientists seem to reinforce the already strong tradition of ‘permeable insulation’.
Given these features, it may not be surprising to see that political science in Japan has not been more vigorous in exercising conceptual and methodological leadership or taking international organizational initiatives. My point here, however, is that given the relatively fast transitions from the first via the second to the third periods, various schemes of international interaction and engagement such as the Asian Consortium for Political Research could become much more frequent and dense in the years to come. For example I as associate editor of a leading journal recently joined the editorial board of the International Encyclopedia of Political Science, which was organized by the International Political Science Association, and contributed to the publication of eight volumes in 2011 by Sage Publications (Inoguchi 2011).
Political science in Korea was shaped in tandem with its complex historical development (Park 2006). The first political science book was published in 1896 during the last years of Chosun dynasty by a reformist scholar, Yu Kilchun (1856-1914). But its development was retarded by Japan’s colonization of Korea (1911-1945). Instead, the Japanese scheme of academic teaching and writing overwhelmed what could have been a more endogenous development of Korean political science. What they established instead was the dominance of staatslehre. Since the Directorate General of Korea (its colonial government) imposed a Japanese-style administrative system without the element of parliamentary politics Japanese bureaucracy dominated its colonial politics. Without having full fledged civil freedoms and political democracy, even a fledgling Korean political science was not possible.
Rather noteworthy was the influence of Marxist ideas, which was diffused through Korean students in Japan. Also one might speculate that the Japanese colonialist legacy is still felt in the way in which some features of central bureaucracy are preserved in Korea. After all, bureaucracy was developed most vigorously during its military dictatorship period (1960-1987). In much the same way as the Japanese bureaucracy had enhanced its power in the 1930s and 1940s with its economic development momentum kept high and war mobilization accelerated, the Korean bureaucracy empowered itself during the military dictatorship (Woo-Cumings 1999).
The protagonist in all this, Chung Hee Park, was after all trained in the Japanese Imperial Army College and was a Japanese military officer during the wartime period, he learned much from Japan which reemerged from the ashes and joined the club of rich countries by the mid-1960s. The long period of authoritarian politics, first by Syngman Rhee and then Chun Hee Park and his successors, left a very strong imprint on Korean politics and Korean political science. Two noteworthy phenomena occurred. First, the maldevelopment of political science was inevitable, by which I mean that it was not easy for political scientists to openly write about Korean domestic politics. In order to preserve their integrity, many political scientists specialized either in political philosophy or international relations. Political philosophy was used as a sort of mask to disguise their critical tone without even touching on contemporary Korean politics. International relations was popular among many political scientists because one did not have to criticize the government very much in teaching it. Second, foreign Ph.D.s in political science were more common in Korea. Syngman Rhee, first President of the Republic of Korea, was a Princeton Ph.D. (1910). Advanced degrees in political science were not accorded until 1973 in Korea. At present American Ph.D.s are dominant. This is in stark contrast to Japanese political science.
The size of the Korean political science community is about 2,500. It has expanded threefold since the democratization of its regime. Its foreign Ph.D.s amount to 1,500. Among foreign countries where Ph.D.s are bestowed, the United States is number one, recording more than 500. It is very interesting to see that of all the universities in the United States, Missouri, Northwestern, Michigan, Hawaii, Ohio State, Southern California, Chicago, Indiana, and Texas produced most of the Ph.D.s for Koreans, in that order. Also very interesting is the fact that some non-American universities also produced many Ph.D.s for Koreans including the Free University of Berlin, Peking University, the University of Paris, the National Chengchi University (Taiwan) and the University of Tokyo had each produced between 16 and 25 Ph.D.s for Koreans, as of 2006. One can see that in order not to fall into a “neo-colonial” trap, the impulse to diversify the foreign countries in which to pursue advanced degrees seems to be strong despite the dominance of universities from the United States.