What is the link between scholarship and democracy? What role do academics play in sustaining democratic values? Why should concerns about the 'hollowing-out' of democracy include a focus on the changing governance of higher education? Offering the first comparative analysis of how both democratic and autocratic politicians are seeking to control the research funding landscape, this book reveals a very worrying shift in the relationships between the state and universities: With higher education politically redefined as a mere tool of economic strategy, the space for academic autonomy, intellectual independence and critical thinking is being closed down. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned about democratic governance and the future of higher education.

What is the link between scholarship and democracy? What role do academics play in sustaining democratic values? Why should concerns about the 'hollowing-out' of democracy include a focus on the changing governance of higher education? Offering the first comparative analysis of how both democratic and autocratic politicians are seeking to control the research funding landscape, this book reveals a very worrying shift in the relationships between the state and universities: With higher education politically redefined as a mere tool of economic strategy, the space for academic autonomy, intellectual independence and critical thinking is being closed down. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned about democratic governance and the future of higher education.

This book is the first comprehensive study to respond to the ongoing debates on political sciences' fragmentation, doubtful relevance, and disconnect with the larger public. It explores the implications of the argument that political science ought to become more topic-driven, more relevant and more comprehensible for "lay" audiences. Consequences would include evolving a culture of public engagement, challenging tendencies toward liars' rule, and emphasizing the role of "large" themes in academic education and research, the latter being identified as those areas where severe democratic erosion is occurring - such as escalating income and wealth disparities pushing democracy towards plutocracy, ubiquitous change triggering insecurity and aggression, racist prejudice polarizing societies, and counter-terrorism strategies subverting civil liberties. Political science needs to address these pressing problems ahead of other issues by in-depth research and broadly accessible public narratives, including solution-orientated normative notions. This need provides the final justification for evolving a discipline where problems would take priority over methods and public relevance over sophisticated specialization.

Europaweit und daruber hinaus unterliegen Demokratien alarmierender Aushoehlung. Rapider wirtschaftlicher, kultureller, politischer Wandel weckt Unsicherheiten und Aggressionen; Politiker, Parteien, selbst Regierungen versuchen Burger durch systematische Lugen zu tauschen; neoliberale Deregulierungen schwachen die Bereitschaft zum zivilgesellschaftlichen Engagement; schroffe Einkommens- und Vermoegensunterschiede treiben die Demokratie in Richtung Plutokratie; fremdenfeindliche Vorurteile polarisieren Gesellschaften; Antiterrorismus-Strategien untergraben burgerliche Freiheiten; Vetospieler hemmen klimapolitischen Wandel. Zugleich wird seit Jahren gestritten uber die Fragmentierung der Politikwissenschaft, ihre zweifelhafte Relevanz und ihre Abkopplung von der breiten OEffentlichkeit. Dieses Buch ist die erste umfassende Studie, die beide Fragenkomplexe miteinander verknupft und prazise zu ergrunden sucht: Wie kann, wie sollte die Politikwissenschaft dem Niedergang der Demokratie in jedem der erwahnten Bereiche entgegenwirken? Rainer Eisfelds Antworten lauten: Entwicklung einer Wissenschaftskultur oeffentlichen Engagements; Auseinandersetzung mit Ursprungen, Mustern und partizipativer Bewaltigung durchgangigen Wandels als Hauptgegenstand der Disziplin; kategorisches Auftreten gegen Tendenzen zu einer Herrschaft notorischer Lugner; Konzentrierung der Forschungsprioritaten auf die Schlusselbereiche, in denen Demokratie sich zuruckbildet; fur Laien zugangliche Darstellung gewonnener Resultate; Erweiterung der Analyse zur Prasentation konkreter Gestaltungsvorschlage. Dazu, so Eisfelds Fazit, bedarf es einer Disziplin, die als normativ orientierte, empirisch gestutzte Demokratiewissenschaft brisanten Problemen den Vorrang einraumt vor ausgefeilten Methoden und burgernaher Relevanz vor immer weiterer Spezialisierung.

This book surveys the current state and recent development of political science in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern European, from Albania and Armenia through Latvia and Lithuania to Slovenia and the Ukraine. Covering patterns of the discipline's institutionalization, achievements, and deficits in research and teaching, it comprises twenty country reports, three comparative overviews, and a chapter on the European Confederation of Political Science Associations. The twenty detailed and comparable country reports include: Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The three comparative overviews include: Political Science and Regime Change in East-Central Europe from the 20th to the 21st Century; Analytical and Normative Elements in Political Science Approaches: Is there a Specific Central-East European Pattern?; and Political Science Associations in East-Central Europe: How Important, How Much International Cooperation? The book also includes tables on political science faculty and sub-fields taught at both state and private universities. Additionally, the book covers: institutionalization of the discipline, achievements, deficits, prevailing approaches, the funding of research in the discipline's sub-fields, curricula, admission regulation, the degree system in political science teaching, national representation and international cooperation, major journals and published books, political science associations, international links, the public impact of the discipline, the labor market, challenges, and opportunities.

Rainer Eisfeld's book highlights the merits of socio-historical research into topics infrequently covered by mainstream political science. Directing attention to the need for carefully scrutinizing the convenient "truths" of established - post-Nazi, post-Communist - political narratives, its chapters encourage reflection of the discipline's history and state of the art. A companion volume to the 2012 book entitled Radical Approaches to Political Science: Roads Less Traveled (also published by Barbara Budrich), this collection is likewise based on an approach to political science informed by a theory of participatory pluralism and grounded in history. The chapters focus on the discipline's fragmentation and its retreat from public debate; on the varying roles of political science and international relations as champions of more or less democracy; on normative and analytical concepts developed by Hannah Arendt, Klaus von Beyme, and Robert A. Dahl; on the deconstruction of the "Peenemunde Legend" about the unspoiled rule of science at the Third Reich's missile development center; on reasons for the Peenemunde engineers' actual complicity in the exploitation of concentration camp labor to mass-produce their V-2 missile. "Rainer Eisfeld's leadership in the fields of pluralism and analysis of the discipline in the International Political Science Association means that he has quite a background to share with us in this, his most recent, collection of essays." John Trent