Contenu du sommaire : Sciences politiques allemandes

The comeback of the German political science. A paradoxical continuity of post-war rimes Hans J. Lietzmann Recent history seems to have proved incontestably that the German political sciences have been deeply influenced by their North American counterpart. It is far less known which has been the role of German emigrants for this influence, notably of those who had found their way to Northern America after World War I. The article analyses the work of Carl Friedrich who had received his forming years at he Heidelberg Institute under Max Weber's brother Alfred. The conservative and elitarian atmosphere at the Institute that, besides being a centre for social sciences, promoted a certain political spiritualism, has surely facilitated Friedrich to continue what other emigrants had begun in Harvard : a science of administration that would be aware of the double imperative of efficiency in public administration and the mastering of the divers - and sometimes unwelcome -effects of universal suffrage. His preference of a kind of enlightened dictature - an aspect that he thoroughly extinguished out of his postwar works - was not only at the intellectual base of his teachings in the Far West, he also tried to reintroduce it into the german faculties of the « new » political sciences, with approval of the American Political Sciences Association but ; paradoxically, without success.

German Political Science at the Crossroads: historical narratives and the framing of a discipline Pascale Laborier, Danny Trom This article is about the contemporary historic turn of the German political science. The peculiarity of the debates which took place from the mid-eighties, is their focus on the origins of the discipline in the chaotic German political history. The authors try to present in a systematic way the competition between alternative historical narratives of German political science. They show how those narratives rest on various epistemological and moral perspectives. The multiplicity of criteria, which serves to identify the existence or non existence of a political science in various German pasts, suggests that the quest for the origins of the discipline is rooted in actual shared visions and disputes on what political science is and should be.

Shaping French political science. The German model and the institutionalisation of the Ecole libre des sciences politiques in the late 19th century Rachel Vanneuville The purpose is to examine how both definition and teaching of political science in the Ecole libre des sciences politiques has been influenced by a reference to Germany. The context of the Sedan military defeat but above ail the admiration for the German high school system and the content of its pedagogy shaped the background for the creation of the French school. Our aim is to evaluate to what extent the German model have been used as a « scientific backing » to legitimise the, not yet established in this period, political science.

A disciplined political science. About some aspects of today's German political science Fabien Jobard The article tries to dry a picture of the social and political situation of political science in the Germany of today. Its efforts are centered on the configuration which gave rise to political science as an academical discipline twice : On the one hand the civic ambition, strongly supported by the Americans, to create a « science of democracy » after the second world war. On the other hand the civic ambition, this time under strong pressure of the established West-German professors, to establish their own social uses of the political science and their own teachings in the former GDR. The paper points as well to the very specific political and demographical dynamics which generated in the 60s and 70s a short but not insignificant « critical political science », which very quickly reconverted itself into the analysis of public policies. It insists on the generational detachment toward the Founding Fathers of 1945, which was intimately connected with a marxist critic of the « science of democracy » which had been supported by the former generation. But the political alternation leaded by W. Brandt, the euphorical planification of all kind of policies, and, « imported » from the United States, the rediscovery (for instance) of Max Weber, suddenly transformed this radical critical approach of the State to an analytical approach of its fonctionning, which became then this science of public action which dominates today the field of political science. This is the topic of the last part of the article.

A Counterfactual Collective Identity. Montolieu as « village du livre et des arts graphiques » Mohammad-Saïd Darviche When, at the beginning of the 1990s, a small commune in Aude (Montolieu) began to apply the concept, already tested in Northern Europe, of a « book town », it's people found themselves engaged in a reflexive process of identity reconstruction. Indeed, faced with the introduction of professional and amateur newcomers, but also due to the commitment of part of the local population and their representatives, a collective mobilization took form which engendered a new vision that was sufficiently credible to reformat the village's identity. This identity is « counterfactual » because its legitimacy and structuring effects stem not from the past, but from an anticipation of a future that local people hope will be a better.

A la recherche du temps perdu. How French Political Science Forgot Public Administration. About Notre Etat Françoise Dreyfus The author proposes a critical comment of Notre Etat. Le livre vérité de la fonction publique, a famous book published in 2000, directed by Roger Fauroux and Bernard Spitz. It gathers 28 high civil servants' papers who appeal to State reform. But this work remains in the political register and fails to develop a real analysis of the bureaucratic reality. In this way, the necessity to develop political science works about administration is becoming crucial.