French Political Science: Institutional Structures in Teaching and Research
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French Political Science: Institutional Structures in Teaching and Research Libia Billordo and Adina Dumitru* Department of Political Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4880, USA. E-mails: [email protected], [email protected]
Previous research in this journal has analyzed publication trends in the top political science journals in France. An inventory of published articles in the Revue Franc¸aise de Science Politique and Politix since 1970 has provided information on methodological preferences and sub-field coverage, thus allowing for meaningful comparisons with trends in American political science. This essay identifies the scholarly output of the teaching and research institutions of French political science and examines the methodological requirements of the graduate programs of political science departments in France. French Politics (2006) 4, 124–134. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200095 Keywords: France; political science; research; publications; methodology
Introduction In the United States, the political science academy has been engaged in a selfreflective exercise of mapping and evaluating its institutional and epistemological components for a considerable time. In France, this process has only begun recently.1 The dissemination of research through publications in professional journals constitutes an important characteristic of American political science. Universities build their reputation on the quantity and quality of publications produced. Rankings of academic departments have been developed by using indices based on their publication records (Hix, 2004). A recent symposium published in PS: Political Science and Politics has been dedicated to the evaluation of methodological trends in journals and in graduate education (Issue 3, 2003). This essay will provide a preliminary analysis of political science institutions in France. It will concentrate on two aspects: the nature of the scholarly output of the teaching and research institutions of French political science, as reflected in the top journals in the field, and the parallel between the methodological requirements of graduate programs and the publications these academic *Authors listed in alphabetical order.
Libia Billordo and Adina Dumitru Institutional Structures in Teaching and Research
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departments produce. A detailed analysis will be provided for the top graduate programs in the country.
Method French political science became institutionalized at a satisfactory level in the late 1980s (Jean Lecca, interview with Cristophe Roux, 2004). This is due, in part, to the fact that the discipline was not fully recognized as such before 1972, when a national competitive examination for university professors, l’agre´gation de science politique, was created (Daguerre, 2004). Also, political science in France has strong roots in constitutional law and political sociology, which made competition with them a perpetual reality and made the process of creating a disciplinary identity somewhat harder. Today, political scienc
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