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Political science I 83
3. The Europeanpatfern
A third pattern, equally complex, is that of the universities of the continent of
Europe. There are certain similarities in tradition from the Straits of Gibraltar
to the Urals, and this tradition has had strong influence in Latin America, in
the Middle East, and in the universities of the former French and Belgian Empires.
European universities had diverse origins, but in the late eighteenth century
and the Napoleonic period there was a general tendency to ‘nationalise’ and
unify universities as agents of the policy of State and nation; dignified and in
some respects independent, but concerned primarily to serve the State by winning
the prestige of intellectual distinction and by training citizens for the
highest levels of intellectual activity.
The Faculties of Law played a special part, in that general administrators in
the State service, central and local, were trained primarily in law, and the same
basic training was given also to judges and court officials, to private practitioners
in law, and to many who later served as managers in state industry and
private business. ‘Law’ (Droit or Recht) was more widely construed than is usu-
al in the British or American university systems, and it included much history,
economics and philosophy, as well as a serious consideration of the struc-
ture and interrelation of State organs, and their relation to citizens. Neverthe-
less, the training was juristic in spirit, and did not leave much room for the
adoption of empirical methods in the social sciences.
Hence a variety of developments, which affected all the social sciences and
which depended on the circumstances of academic politics. Sweden possessed a
professorial chair of Statskunskap from the seventeenth century : for centuries,
the teaching given was in effect juristic, but the old tradition offered a base for
new developments, and some Swedes (notably Herbert Tingsten on voting
statistics, Gunnar Heckscher on organized interests) played a notable part in
the conceptual development of political science before World War 11.20 In
France much was done outside the universities, but the famous Ecole Libre was
a school of ‘the political sciences’ not of ‘political science’; work done there, by
historians, jurists and geographers, was of extreme importance to political
science, but political science did not win effective recognition as a single dis-
cipline until the end of World War 11.~‘
In the Central European countries the position is equally various and com-
plex. One might however venture the generalization that in so far as juristic
training did not expand to deal with political subjects, the gap was filled by
teaching of economics and sociology on a very wide basis, so that the work of
Central European (here I include Italy) economists and sociologists has now
become part of the established course for ‘Anglo-Saxon’ political scientists.
The three greatest names perhaps are Max Weber, Pareto and Schumpeter, but
there are many others.
Germany before Hitler played a very great part in this development, yet
(though there was an old tradition of Kameralwissenschaft) Staatswissenschaft
was not in these days regarded as a unified academic discipline, with its own
professorial chairs. In the years after 1945, a first attempt was made to fill this