Is there a ‘German school’ of comparative politics? An institutional perspective

Abstract

Looking at scientific research in terms of 'schools' marks an established way of evaluating larger research areas. In this paper, we deliberately use a soft concept of 'school', designed to capture possible peculiarities of the discipline of Comparative Politics in Germany, and its impact at the international level of political research. The focus of our inquiry is on three major sub-areas of comparative political studies-comparative executive politics, comparative legislative research, and comparative federalism research-which can be meaningfully subsumed under the label of institution-centred comparative political research. Moreover, we focus basically on the developments of the past decade. We find that the size of the German, or German-language, community of comparative politics has long worked to keep the pressure for German or Germany-based scholars to publish their research in English low, though the language of publication alone cannot be considered a valid indicator of either scientific excellence or parochialism. Data collected for the past decade, measuring the share of contributions by German or Germany-based scholars in the internationally leading specialist journals of the sub-areas examined, suggest that the discipline has 'opened up' and 'reached out' more recently. That said, for the time being, the German comparative politics community in the three sub-areas studied continues to be considerably stronger at the receiving end, in terms of paying reasonable attention to the theoretical and empirical developments at the international level, than at actively shaping the international debate. As in other areas, exceptions prove the rule.