Politics of Political Science in Poland: The Ongoing Reform of Higher Education

Abstract

The 21st century can be called a "century of reforms" in the Polish system of higher education and science. Each successive ruling party was looking for an opportunity to revise the way the Polish Academia was organized. Those reforms were aimed at changing the system of evaluation of higher education institutions (and the associated system of granting public subsidies thereto). But also they were targeting the list of scientific disciplines recognized and subsidized by the government. That was possible thanks to the fact that each piece of legislation on funding the Polish system of higher education was imparting power on the Minister of Higher Education to issue an executive act. Such discretionary decisions allow for influencing the way institutional science is organized in Poland. It is also a reason why in Poland "scientific lobbying" has arisen and various research coteries have been trying to promote their subfields to the rank of "discipline" by influencing the Ministry. This paper is an attempt at summing up the 21st-century debate over the shape and legal foundations of the institutional dimension of the realm of political science. It is also an attempt to provide evidence that in Poland it is not theory that is influencing the decisions of recognizing new disciplines that are arising from the field of political science, but rather the political (and lobbying) practice as well as discretionary decisions of the Ministry are shaping the development of theory.