Dividing the Domain of Political Science: On the Fetishism of Subfields

A Different Europe is Possible: The Professionalization of EU Studies and the Dilemmas of Integration in the 21st Century

“…And with key research material on the EU being published in discipline (political science) and field (public administration, comparative politics, International Relations) journals, it becomes harder for EU scholars to follow all of (even Anglophone) EU scholarship – as was certainly possible in the 1960s. The sociology of the discipline matters here, especially in contexts where self‐identification as a ‘Europeanist’ or as an ‘EU scholar’ is at variance with the standard sub‐field configuration of political science (Andrews, ; Kaufman‐Osborn, ). In other words, fragmentation brings with it an incentive to mainstream.…”

‘Greatly exaggerated’: the death of EU studies–new regionalism dialogue? A reply to Jørgensen and Valbjørn

“…What is interesting is that Jørgensen and Valbjørn presume that dialogue across and between these four fields are likely to be hamstrung by the disciplinary tendencies they identify later in the paper. To be sure, different subfields within political science can seem like non-communicating silos, and US political science in particular has a tendency towards subfield 'fetishism' (Kaufman-Osborn, 2006). However, discipline-subfield and subfield-subfield divisions are surely not the major (nor the most significant) source of cleavage in the broad universe of political science.…”

“…1. Obviously there is considerable cross-national variance, with the USA providing perhaps the most clear-cut example of international relations being formally constituted as a subfield of political science (Kaufman-Osborn, 2006). Even then, there are hopes that a newer international relations subfield, less subordinate to the disciplinary oversight of political science, could form in the context of developing interdisciplinary 'global studies' programmes in the USA (Rosow, 2003).…”

The LawPresidential Studies, Behavioralism, and Public Law

“…Lawrence Mead once labeled the defect as “scholasticism.” By this he meant “a tendency for research to become overspecialized and ingrown” (Mead , 453). One scholar called the phenomenon “the fetishism of subfields” (Kaufman‐Osborn ). Mead's central point was that political science's desire to mimic the natural sciences “has come at the expense of relevance to political problems and issues as non‐academics perceive them” (2010, 453).…”