The dutch political science association 1950–2000

Abstract

Founding Years of Discipline and Association Dutch political science claims early roots. In 1613 Daniel Heinsius became Professor of Politices at Leiden University. The various sciences bearing a relation to the state were then regarded as one body of ‘scientia politica’. During the 19th century, however, the juridical-legalistic point of view began to predominate in the theory of the state, and between roughly 1840 and the end of World War II Dutch universities practically neglected the existence of political science proper. Immediately after the war, the University of Amsterdam established a new Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. Its two founding fathers were both historians but as early as the 1930s one of them, Jan Romein, had become well acquainted with American political science. The holders of the first three chairs in political science in the Netherlands, established between 1948 and 1953, had themselves studied law. It was only in 1963, with the appointment of Hans Daudt in Amsterdam, that the first professor of political science was appointed who had himself studied political science. The appointment of other political scientists, Hans Daalder in Leiden and Andries Hoogerwerf in Nijmegen, soon followed. This new generation of professors signalled the beginning of the development of political science as a separate discipline, with its own subject matter and research methods. At that time, most Dutch political scientists followed the example of their American and English colleagues by embracing behaviouralism and focusing on electoral studies. The Dutch Political Science Association itself was founded in 1950 as the ‘Nederlandse Kring voor Wetenschap der Politiek’ (literally the ‘Dutch Circle for the Science of Politics’). Only a part of its members was made up of political science teachers. Others were constitutional lawyers, economists, historians and sociologists, as well as journalists and politicians. The members met a few times a year to read and discuss papers on subjects related to political science. Papers on public administration and international relations were discussed in two other bodies, the ‘Instituut voor Bestuurswetenschappen’ (‘Institute for Administrative Sciences’), established in 1939, and the ‘Genootschap voor Internationale Zaken’ (‘Society for International Affairs’), which had begun in 1947 to publish the monthly journal Internationale Spectator. This situation was and is rather typical for Dutch political science. Where in many other countries international relations and public administration are part of political science, in the same way that comparative politics and electoral studies are, in the Netherlands they stand more or less apart. In the founding years of the discipline, this had much to do on the one hand with the left-wing origins of the Amsterdam Faculty of Political and Social Sciences (which was called the ‘red Faculty’), and on the other hand with the fact that at that time the great majority of diplomats and public administrators (who had often worked in the Dutch East Indies) had studied law in Leiden. The latter could not easily identify with the new discipline and its ambitions and kept aloof.