Contenu du sommaire : Pour une socio-histoire de la science politique

A science without scientists ?
This paper describes the development of political science as an academic discipline in post-war France. In just a few years, Sciences Po, a professional school rather than a research institution, established by Executive Order in 1945 in order to “promote research”, has offered academic programmes and degrees, founded an academic journal and a professional association, and created several research centres in political science. The post-war French academic context accounts for Sciences Po's disciplinary investment, backed by the US philanthropic foundations which provided money, scientific recognition, and epistemic models. Focusing on empirical methods and on the study of politics, the academic discipline has been caught between contradictory demands : scientific autonomy vs. social and political demands for expert knowledge in a post-war context of staterebuilding and economic and social modernization

“The French Connection”This article develops some hypotheses about the emergence of the discipline of International Relations in France. Rather than considering it the result of national idiosyncrasies or a product imported from the United States, it seeks to situate the development of the discipline within the framework of transatlantic circulations. It places the emphasis on the intellectual and ideological similarities between the French and the American trajectories of the discipline, due in particular to the displacement of German political thought and its impact in both contexts.

The Atlantic Structuration of European Studies
Tracing the main enterprise of the Ford Foundation aiming at instituting European Studies, from the 1950s to the 1970s, this article shows how transnational strategies linked with the institutionalization of the European field of power come up against the resistances of national fields. “European Studies” indeed appear to be the residual lot of much more ambitious strategies to create a truly “European University”. In this special issue about the sociohistory of political science, this article thus illustrates the fact that a “discipline” cannot be apprehended in isolation from other social spaces seemingly extraneous.

Paradigmatic PartiesThis article examines two “classics” of political science : La
Palombara & Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development, 1966 ; Lipset & Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Vote Alignments, 1967. Combining a content analysis and a sociological study of the interactions between their authors, it shows that their various theoretical models and contradictions can be explained by a shared commitment to the paradigms of the “normal science” of their time : systemic functionalism and behavioralism. This community of thought is nourished by a common membership of the same networks, which in turn reinforces these paradigms by applying them to the study of a canonical object : political parties.

Off-Center or Off-the-Wall ?
Studying the department of political science at the University of Vincennes from 1969 until 1980, this article presents the history of the discipline by taking into account : institutions that are considered secondary ; disciplinary departments as relevant units of analysis ; the heterogeneity of local practices inside the discipline itself. Built on archival and biographical research, the analysis insists on State policies, the sociology of student audiences and the social capital of scholars developed outside of the academic world as important parameters in order to explain the developments of a discipline.

Do Doctors in Political Science Believe in Their Academic Degrees ?
This research note gives some evidence from a survey about people who achieved a PhD in political science during the 2000s. We asked them about their doctoral years and the conditions under which they achieve their PhD. The article focuses on a paradox : how can we understand that, even though the vast majority of PhDs get a stable job and are satisfied with the relationship they had with their supervisor, half of them would advise newcomers not to commit on a PhD course.