POLITICAL SCIENCE IN GREECE by George CONTOGEORGIS SUMMARY The very recent emergence of political science as an independent field of knowledge is directly consistent with the primary stage of anthropocentric transition which the modern world is traversing. In this stage politics is employed as a purely ‘operational’ concept based on the strict dichotomy between society and politics or, put otherwise, on the exclusion of the social body from the political system. Politics is defined overall as the tautology of power. The particularity of the modern Greek paradigm lies in the fact that it enters the cosmosystem of the state-nation not through feudalism but directly from an integrated anthropocentric cosmosystem such as the Hellenic, in which politics is also shown to be a freedom and a good. Consequently, it is useful in the observation of the changes of the political phenomenon and, by extension, of its reversion, initially in the relevance of the sciences of the state and, further, in the process toward the construction of an autonomous scientific space. This particularity itself may explain, to a degree, the emergence observed nowadays of an alternative paradigm of politics which links the phenomenon itself with its nature and not with a specific structural expression like the state. This implies, in the final analysis, that the structure of politics in terms of power is incompatible with the integrated anthropocentric substance of the world and, in any case, does not exhaust the concept and the dimensions of the political phenomenon. INTRODUCTION The recent emergence of political science in the modern world confirms that the scientific approach to the political phenomenon depends directly on the place that the political praxis occupies in time and in the context of society. In European societies, the transformation of the political phenomenon from a private (feudal society) to a public affair was not in itself sufficient to promote the process of development of political science. Politics continued to be identified with the concept of the state power, which embodied the political system. The social body is restricted to a role of simple legitimization of the political personnel. To reach the point where the political phenomenon begins slowly to be treated as the subject of a distinct science that refers to it, it was necessary to break with the traditional framework of the public space through the substantial broadening of the sphere of politics in the direction of society. Society did not cease to be seen as a private space with no direct representative relevance in politics. The broadening of the political sphere of politics may be attributed on one hand to the profound change that the communication system underwent at the end of the 20th century, which resulted in the creation of the conditions for a more active participation of the social body in the political process, and on the other hand, to the relevant social emancipation of the individual. In this respect, the case of Greece is an exemplary laboratory, due to its uniqueness, since it refers to a society with a profound political development that corresponds to the era of (direct) democracy and the ecumenical constitution of the anthropocentric cosmosystem. This was precisely the political reality of Hellenic society during the pre-ethnocentric age, that is, until the 19th century. A. THE HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 1. From the ecumenical cosmosystem to the ethnocentric cosmosystem a) Perhaps it has not been sufficiently noticed that political thought and probably political science is a product not generally of human societies but of the anthropocentric society. Political ideas are indeed found in despotic societies too, particularly in the stage when they are being constituted in the form of state despotism. Not, however, political thought, philosophy or political science. At the same time, within the anthropocentric cosmosystem, political thought evolves concurrently with the changes of its societies. In the protogenetic stage of anthropocentric societies, political thinking, itself the subject of political science, focuses on the actions of the state, which exclusively embodies the political system and politics. In the integrated anthropocentric phase, society absorbs the political process and is transformed into the political system. The state deprived of the political system is transformed into a simple servant of the politically constituted society. b) Political thought and the science of politics were born in the Hellenic world precisely because it was here that anthropocentric societies appeared for the first time. By the Cretomycenean period the Hellenic societies had already established an anthropocentric cosmosystem that was based on the ‘chrematistic’ economy and the politeia of the city. To the degree to which the Hellenic societies have not known, since that time, the feudal (cosmo-)system, the political phenomenon constitutes their dominant characteristic throughout history until their entrance into the modern ethnocentric era. Hellenic political thought in this context presents an extraordinary differentiation that is consistent with the typological spectrum of development of the Hellenic cosmosystem. In the early age, politics as a concept is initially defined as a ‘force’ or as a ‘power’ in which the simple (political) right (e.g. during the pre-democratic period) flourishes, either as (social or collective) autonomy, in which the individual goes through the stage of political, or more correctly, of universal (individual, social and political) freedom. Politics as a field of exercising universal freedom made its appearance after the establishment of the political society and of the democratic system in the context of the city. The merit of Hellenic political thought consists additionally in that the political vehicle of the Hellenic cosmosystem, that is, the city, as well as the so-called direct democracy which it served, go far beyond the classical period and its slave system. They would constitute the fundamental constants of its societies during its ecumenical phase, until the 19th century. The intellectual approach to the political phenomenon was to accompany the political praxis within the Hellenic cosmosystem, even in the dark periods: at the beginning of Roman despotism (2nd century B.C. – 1st century A.D.), during the period of consolidation of Christianity in Byzantium (7th-8th centuries) and particularly at the beginning of the period of Ottoman despotism (15th-17th centuries). For finally, because the anthropocentric foundations of the Hellenic cosmosystem (especially the ‘chrematistic’ economy and the autonomous city) remained untouched, the despotic logic of central power or the reorientation of intellectual interest (during the period of the development of Christian doctrine) basically influenced the originality of political thought, but not the political praxis or the philosophical concern with politics. The great turning point for the relaunching of Hellenic humanism was the victory of iconolatry in Byzantium (8th-9th centuries) . Political philosophy, and more generally the approach to the political phenomenon, reappeared dynamically in the proscenium and became a privileged field of intellectual interest. This would give a boost to the content of the studies at the public University of Constantinople, as well as to the Schools or to the intellectual circles from which the functionaries of the State and of the society emerged. The great representatives of knowledge in this period are not theorists of law, judges and lawyers, theologists or philosophers, as in the first Byzantine period, nor mainly theologists as in the middle years. They are basically political thinkers and specialists in political life. Photius, Michael Psellos, Plethon Gemistos, Vissarion, Anne Comnini, and many others are the authentic representatives of this movement. The political dimension of law (e.g. C.Armenopoulos, 15th century) is also worth noting. The mass exodus of the representatives of Hellenic humanism in Europe during the 15th century contributed gradually to the transition of the continent to an intellectual creation inherent in the anthropocentric cosmosystem. However, the Ottoman domination deprived the vital space of the Hellenic cosmosystem of the production of original political thought for over a century. During this first period of Ottomanocracy, the most significant part of the Hellenic intellectual class maintained as its principal basis the “other” Byzantium, that is, the cities of Italy . Yet, the impressive number of translations of classical texts, including political texts, in the Hellenic areas, just after the conquest, shows in fact that the reality of the political praxis dominated everywhere in the Hellenic societies. This did not cease to stir intellectual curiosity and political inquiry. A new movement developed during the 17th century and reached its apogee during the 18th and 19th centuries within the context of the cities. An original intellectual production, comparable to that of the largest European countries, reappeared in the vital space of the Hellenic cosmosystem. An impressive number of political works were published just when, in the big schools of the cities of Hellenism, the teaching of political philosophy, of ideas and of the political phenomenon occupied a significant place. From the ideological, social and political point of view, the Hellenic intellectual class of the period was substantially involved within the ecumenical and cosmopolitean orbit of the Hellenic cosmosystem. The profound osmosis between the Greek intelligentsia and that of the “anthropocentrically reborn” Europe would not push the former to choose the pro-ecumenical project of the state-nation. The system of the autonomous city - in the sense of the politeia that defines, produces and articulates the political phenomenon - and of the cosmopolis constitutes the starting point and the basis of its logic. It is of vital importance to acknowledge that the Hellenic societies experienced the status of the city until the 19th century, i.e. the city-state and its politeias of the classical period as they adapted to the ecumenical phase of Hellenic cosmosystem. Indeed, just when the European world was thinking about the ‘be’ and the ‘how’ of the new (free) man, the Hellenic world was living in the context of the city in a regime of freedom which cumulatively covered the individual, social (in the labor field) and political sphere of the person. Politics, far from being perceived as a simple (pre-democratic) right, is in reality the component element of universal autonomy, the essence of which is the political freedom of the social body. The political space surpasses the public space, the common interest the general interest. The sovereign political power that it invests in its legitimization in the “social contract” comes in contrast with the autonomy of the social body, i.e., its political self-government. Therefore, the society of the city is not defined as a private society. It composes the main political parameter of the politeia, the demos. That is why in the cities where politics is structured in terms of direct representational power, the system is classified as pre-democratic. Within the framework of the democratic politeia, the agent of representational authority is limited to short-term functions (it is elected for six months to one year), it is directly and constantly controlled by the social body, it is freely revocable and its function is necessarily collective. The principle of the majority applies to the assembly (ecclesia) of the social body, that is, for the politically sovereign demos, but not for the representatives for the deliberation of whom the principle of unanimity is applied. The fundamental problem of Hellenic political thought and the ruling class of the Ottomanocracy was substitution on the level of the central system, of the “Asian” type of Ottoman power by the Hellenic cosmopoliteia in its ecumenical environment . A typical example is the project of Rigas Feraios (1757-1798) on “Hellenic Democracy.” c) This orientation of Greek political thought would undergo a serious trial following the great revolution of 1821, which, from another point of view, represents the most significant upheaval that Hellenism and its cosmosystem have ever known. The birth of a neo-Hellenic state which asphyxiated within its borders, in the margin of the Hellenic cosmosystem and the Hellenic societies, would be accompanied by a series of measures that would lead to the undeniable, even institutional, control of the state and, at the same time, of the overall society by the great powers. The transition from the profoundly democratic and “republican” political system, introduced from the beginning of the revolution, to the Bavarian absolute monarchy (1832-1843), imposed by the Holy Alliance, would mark the definite classification of the state in the perspective of ethnocentrism. Hellenic society was called upon to experience a political system that was suited to societies that had just come out of feudalism and not to its post-statocentric or ecumenical nature. Compared to the European societies, the Hellenic society is the only one that illustrates a different way of transition to the state-nation . In the case of Western Europe, it is the state that forges the nation and ultimately the progress to an early anthropocentric society. In its exit from the feudal age, the political project inevitably focuses on individual freedom and on a body of rights that it actualizes or protects. Therefore, politics has a simply operational content. Social and political freedom are absent altogether from the thinking of the social body. In the case of the Hellenic society, the nation, on the contrary, creates the state. That is, it undertakes, first of all, to be redefined from “nation cosmosystem” to “nation state”; secondly, in its new version, to legitimize the catalysis of the fundamental attainment of the Hellenic cosmosystem – the ecumenical character of the economy, the partner relationship of capital with labor, etc. – and mainly the political freedom of society, in order to adapt to the proto-anthropocentric political system that the new state professes. This precedent of the Hellenic society explains a series of deviations in its political system, which ultimately confers on it, despite opposing views, the role of a kind of precursor in relation to the European rule: the introduction of universal suffrage (in the sense of a right and not of political freedom) from the very start of the Revolution (Constitutional Assembly of Epidaurus, Dec. 1821-Jan. 1822), just when in Great Britain, in 1832, this right covered only 7% of the electorate . The establishment, from the outset, of a stratified party system within the context of a parliamentary regime, with a loose republican central power, in contrast with the class or ideological parties and the social movements that dominated the modern world until recently . And many more. Life in the immediately pre-ethnocentric past of the “direct” democratic politeia explains the profound politicization of Greek society, a politicization that specializes as political individualism and certainly not as mass behavior or an adherence to the political power. The political behavior of the Greek citizen may be evaluated bearing in mind the total time he dedicates daily to politics and not based on his adherence to the forces of mediation. The citizen approaches the politician as a mandate and not as an individual. His intense politicization prevented the political forces from assuming roles of liberators and “protectors” or the wealth of ideologies (such as statocentric socialism or liberalism) that belong to the proto-anthropocentric period. The exceptional politicization (that is, political emancipation) of the social body explains simultaneously the entire absence from modern Greek society of phenomena that restrict the political field, such as personality cults or totalitarianism. The modern Greek state demonstrates the parliamentary and party system with the longest history under conditions of universal suffrage, and, most of all, with the broadest field of politics . 2. The period of the state-nation a) The transition of the Hellenic societies from the system of the ecumenical cities to the territorial state, which defines itself by the element of the ethnos, radically altered the socio-political environment and the direction of political thought in Greece. The concept of the political phenomenon adapted to the specifications of the new system, which aspired to delimit it as a tautology of the state. Henceforth politics is perceived not as a function of its particular nature (as a phenomenon), but according to its structural expression (as a power and as a force), within the framework of the state-nation. This very quality of the citizen is defined by his national origin or by his belonging to the state. This suggests that the political determinant is the nation and the state, and not the people and the political system. The policies of the state (e.g. foreign policy) reflect national aspirations or policies; the inter-state system is defined as an international system; the general interest is equivalent to the national interest, etc. The political system, in its turn, subjected and even identified with the state - the servant of the “national interest” and of the “public domain” - is recorded as being under the responsibility of public law. The sciences of politics are the sciences of the state. Works of political science that negotiate the earlier political system (of the age of the ecumenical cities) or the new Hellenic state are entitled as if they belonged to public law. The history of Hellenism and of its cosmosystem is ultimately reconstituted through an ethnocentric prism. The criterion for the Hellenic continuity is no longer its anthropocentric and cultural background, but racial origin. The history of the Hellenic cosmosystem is reduced to the history of Greece. This choice corresponds to the demands of this period and particularly to the need of the neo-Hellenic state nation to justify not only the anthropocentric reversion that it imposed upon the Hellenic society but also its inability to lead it to national integration. However, this choice proves to be deforming from every aspect of the Hellenic past and more importantly deprives modern social science of an unprecedented wealth of knowledge (i.e., of social and political systems of the anthropocentric type, etc.) Social science has continued to ignore this fact until today and, therefore, does not include it among its issues. b) Despite this, the modern Greek state came close to the creation, in 1829, of a Higher School of Political Sciences, intended to train diplomats, administrators, judges and legislators, by the first President of the Hellenic Republic, Ioannis Kapodistrias, former Foreign Minister of Russia. The idea, which actually belonged to Alexander Stourtzas, then member of the Russian Council of State, was abandoned after the assassination of Kapodistrias and the establishment of the absolute monarchy. The project would be taken up again by Prime Minister Charilaos Tricoupis (1832-1896), but would not succeed because, in the meantime, his government would lose its majority in the Parliament. Thus, with the exception mainly of history, folklore and linguistics, whose presence was uninterrupted, social science, and by extension political science, was represented from then on by the law, with the prevalence of the fields of constitutional law and administrative law. Public law made an invaluable contribution to the monarchy and to the party system, firstly, in the construction and legitimization of the institutional and ideological arsenal of the new State, and secondly, in the effort to completely abolish the foundations and the resistances of the previous cosmosystem (i.e., of the autonomous city, its democratic regime, etc). Moreover, the consequences of the profound lack of correspondence of the political system of the state (which reserved for society the status of a private partner) with the high political development of the citizen (who meant to behave as mandator) is basically liable for a series of features of the Hellenic political environment: the meeting of the citizen with the politician under conditions of political individuality, the “multicollective” and not class structure of the party system, the constant inability of the public domain to delimit and absorb the political dynamic that produces the social body, the legitimization of the political class in a context of perpetual contestation, etc . This tendency continues and is even accentuated , particularly during the period between the two wars, or even later, until today. c) The period which opens in the second half of the 19th century is characterized by the manifest failure of the national type of state to create in the Ottoman territories a vital space for Hellenism, according to its economic, sociological, cultural and political dimension. This failure would weigh heavily on the political life of the country, particularly after the 1860s, with the emergence in the Balkans of the Slavic nationalisms. These nationalisms not only disputed the Greek monopoly on the heritage of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, but also the Greek society’s claim on participation in its distribution. The inability of the Greek political class to impose the application of the treaty of Sevres (1922) in Asia Minor and in eastern Thrace constitutes in this respect a major turning point. The defeat of Greece, which led to the mass exodus of nearly the entire Greek population from its centuries-old homes, brought about a final solution to the question of national integration, as well as to the presence of the last bases of the system of the city (1922). The liberal reform that started in 1909 by the government majority of E. Venizelos led, among other things, to the drafting of a law and its submission to the Parliament in 1911 regarding the introduction of a Higher School of Political Sciences, which, however, did not pass. In the meantime, foreign ventures and the violent interference of the throne on the political life of the country would cause serious injury to the process of domestic reconstruction, the consequences of which would leave their mark up to the present time. d) These developments on the political scene reinforce the tendency that had already manifest itself during the 19th century, and which marks the appearance of numerous works of political theory and research on Greek political life. Their distinctive feature was that their authors developed an intense sociopolitical action . This movement intensified at the beginning of the 20th century, and would take on significant political dimensions, whose objective would be the contestation of the sociopolitical and intellectual life of the country. In 1916 the Social and Political Sciences Society was founded, which for many years published the scientific journal “Archives of Economic and Social Sciences” and organized lectures and other events. In this Society, a host of intellectuals presented their works on, among others, political science, such as that of E. Lembesis in 1929 (“Review of Public Opinion”) and in 1931 (“The problem of Capitalist Accumulation in the Agricultural Economy”), among others. In 1925, the director of the “Archives,” D. Kalitsounakis, published his work, “Political Science.” This general movement resulted in the creation, finally in 1927, of the project of a Higher School of Political Sciences, intended to promote the study and teaching of the political phenomenon, the political institutions and the state . From the beginning, this School, which after 1930 joined the project of another supporter of this idea, Alexander Pantos, and adopting his name , was divided in two departments: a) political science and history, and b) economics and sociology. It is noted that “the studies of the School differ substantially from the instruction given by university institutions. Although it contains subjects equivalent to those of the Higher Institutions, its mission is different… in accordance with the modern concepts of the educational system recommended by the political and social sciences. The curricula of the Panteios School thus broke with the tradition of the science of Law while at the same time approached the political phenomenon from a rather multidisciplinary point of view, whose previous position fell to what is nowadays called political sociology. In 1925, with the law founding the University of Thessaloniki, two departments were formed within the School of Law and Economic Sciences: a) law and b) economics and political sciences. A little later, in 1930, the Law School of the University of Athens established a program of specialization in the fourth year, which led to a diploma in political and economic sciences. Towards the middle of the 1930s, the first sociology chair was created at the same University, but dealt more with the history of sociopolitical ideas. In 1937, the royal dictatorship (1936-1940), conscious of the catalytic role of the Panteios School of Political Sciences in the ideological ‘promotion’ of society and the training of managers, converted it into a public university institution, while preserving its two initial departments. This initiative is of particular interest in the case of Greece, because it reveals the reaction of the powers-that-be with respect to an innovative academic experiment, in a country where, for reasons that we have cited, the tide of fascism that shook Europe did not find practically any response in society, in political life or even among intellectuals. It is precisely this deep political rooting of Greek society and the inherent democratic emancipation that are behind the intense questioning of doctrine of sovereignty of power. This persistence, which links citizenship with the quality of the mandatory, also led the Communist Party - marginal before - and its allies, to attempt during the Occupation a return to the system of the autonomous and self-governing city in the free territories (1941-1944). In 1943, a reform of Panteios Higher School of Political Sciences changed the subjects of its departments, one of which was concentrated in political science and the other in journalism. The Civil War (1944-1949) and then the Cold War drew Greece into the democratic deficit of the world order, which restrictively defines the content of political alternance, while at the same time restricting the area of political science. Law and the economy are unconditionally imposed on university institutions. The Panteios Higher School of Political Science and certain circles of teachers in the Faculties of Law, the economy and of the political sciences continued to promote the studies about the state, the political system, the public policies, the history of the institutions and of international relations . At that time history was becoming essentially an accessory of the philological program in the respective Faculties. In 1951-1952, it was persistently repeated that, as a university institution, the Panteios School was intended to offer a different education from that offered by the other university institutions: initiating young people into the political institutions and political theory, the economic sciences, the various branches of the political and social sciences, in order to promote a critical approach to the political and social phenomena. At the same time, several subjects of the political sciences and of international relations continued to be included in the curricula from 1948 to 1954. In 1952, an Institute of Social Sciences operated within the Panteios School. Nevertheless, with the announcement of the founding of an Institute of Journalism, whose curriculum was envisaged to last three years, it is emphasized that the teaching of the science of journalism be rigorously limited to the theoretical and national context, and any interference in the political issues of the country be strictly forbidden. Political science, strictly speaking, is not included in the syllabus . Thus, handbooks entitled politeiology, public law (constitutional and administrative), public finance, international law, absorb the analysis of the political phenomenon and often try to cover the subject of political science. Despite this, several professors of constitutional and administrative law developed a somewhat regular contact with the International Political Science Association (I.P.S.A.) from its foundation. In 1955 the Hellenic Political Science Association was created, formed, however, primarily of lawyers, particularly by members of the Council of State. Its scope remained marginal or even insignificant for political science. This unfavorable climate for political science, which was shaped progressively by the international political circumstances shortly before the Second World War and continued after it during the Cold War, appears to have changed during the 1960s. In the curricula at the Panteios Higher School of Political Sciences in the academic year 1960-1961, political science already occupied a significant place, while at the same time we see the appearance of comparative studies on contemporary political systems (British, French, American, Russian, etc.), as well as courses in sociology, economic sciences, international studies, including international relations. The tendency to return to political science stricto sensu to the university system had already made a significant step. In 1963, the Panteios Higher School of Political Sciences was again reorganized, the spearhead of which was the reorientation of its two departments: one took on political science and the other public administration. The following year, political science stricto sensu acquired a chair, while international relations was upgraded, reestablishing instructional autonomy. A little later, in 1967, the program of specialization in the Faculty of Law of the University of Athens became an independent department of political science and economics. In the two last years of study, this department is oriented in two programs of specialization that lead to two separate diplomas. One of them deals with public law and political science. The creation of a chair of political science stricto sensu in the Faculty of Law, in the mid-1960s, and a relatively autonomous presence of international relations in the curriculum was the result of this development. In the meantime, two events in the field of research marked the end of the 1950s: the creation of the Royal (later National) Research Foundation and of the National Center for Social Sciences (EKKE) (1958). The Byzantine and the Neohellenic Research Centers, created in 1960, as well as the Center for Hellenic and Roman Antiquity (1977), put forward broad historical aspects which interest political science, such as the history of the institutions, political life and the movement of ideas. The EKKE was to be devoted to the study of contemporary social phenomena, including political phenomena. At all events, the approach to the political phenomenon as well as to political thought in Greece, continued after the second world war, in the traditional way, that is, it was particularly privileged by a strongly politicized intelligentsia and by literary circles. A rich bibliography relating to the political phenomenon (studies of the institutions, of political life and the political parties, of ideas, of foreign and international relations, of public policies, etc) was added to that of the previous period, of which the generation of the 1920s constitutes a point of reference in the ideological and intellectual evolution of Hellenic society. With the dawning of the 1960s, a number of political societies made their appearance in the intellectual and political life of the country, beside the political forces that supported modernizing projects. The publication, in 1961, of the work of Grigoris Dafnis, The Greek Political Parties, and especially, in 1965, of the voluminous work by Jean Meynaud (with the collaboration of G. Notaras and P. Merlopoulos), The Political Forces in Greece, constitute a major phase in the development of political science. e) The interlude of the dictatorship (1967-1974) paved the way for the hastening of political developments, marked by an intense radicalization, both of political life and of the intellectual class. The consequences of this radicalization became particularly perceptible in the social sciences, mainly in the period after 1974. The most outstanding sign of this situation was the reestablishment, in 1975, of the Hellenic Political Science Association . This association was from the very start a dynamic professional and scientific forum (its members were, as of the first year of its existence, nearly 200), which asserted itself as a significant point of reference in the intellectual and political life of the country. During the period 1975-1981, it organized conferences and meetings; it intervened (with reports, publications, etc.) in various aspects of political life (e.g. in questions of modernization of the party system or of university reform), thus contributing greatly to the establishment of political science. In 1978 the Association published “Social and political forces in Greece,” which was an important development in terms of the scientific debate about the political system of the country, while the next year the first issue of the Political Science Review was being prepared, with a special feature on the elections. At the same time, the H.P.S.A. became a member of I.P.S.A. and established active relationships with other international institutions. During this period, the status of membership in the H.P.S.A. was much sought-after by most of the political world, which participated or regularly followed its activities. The university reform of 1982 offered political science new opportunities on an institutional level. The existing curricula in political science at the Panteios Higher School of Political Sciences and at the National University of Athens were reorganized in the context of the new academic units: new departments and sections. Moreover, a section of public law and political science was created in the law department at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Finally, the EKKE opened its doors to political scientists and to political studies stricto sensu. The great turning point in political science, and generally in the social sciences, is linked to the reform of 1989. This reform was conceived and implemented by the chancellorship of the Panteios School based on the previous action of H.P.S.A. and virtually imposed upon the political power. It included the conversion of the five university Schools existing in Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki, into Universities. Four of these specialized in the main branches of the social sciences . In these new universities, in place of each of the Schools, many new departments (approximately eight at each new university) and sections with their own curricula as of the first year, were created, in step with the scientific currents of the times, as well as institutes and university research centers. The Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences includes a total of eight departments divided in directions and sections (a total of 29), with the subjects of political science (and its various branches) or related disciplines: Departments of Political Science and International Studies, Urban and Regional Development, Social Policy and Anthropology, Communication and Mass Media, Law, Sociology, and Psychology. The impact of this reform went far beyond political science and the Panteion University. With regard to political science and its branches, new departments and sections were created at the Universities of Athens, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Thrace, Crete, the Aegean, and Thessaly. Moreover, departments of social sciences included political science courses. The integration of the country in the E.U. (January 1, 1981), gave new impetus to European and International Studies, in the context of which political science occupies a not at all negligible place. This report would be incomplete if it failed to mention the contribution to the social sciences of the phenomenon of the private institutions that operate as annexes of foreign universities in Greece. This phenomenon appeared after the 1980s and responds to the keen demand for university education in Greece, combined with the student selection system and the constitutional prohibition of the establishment of private universities (ecclesiastic or secular). Today it is a reality, felt particularly in the field of the social sciences. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3. Towards a new paradigm of political science The dynamic return of political science in a country like Greece, which quite painfully lives the reality of the restricted institutional space of politics in the environment of the state-nation, makes the raising of questions as to the concept as well as to the method of approach to the political phenomenon almost self-evident. The success of another ‘paradigm,’ beside the dominant ‘paradigm’ of modernity, which projects itself as a unique laboratory of political science that is not subject to comparison with the past, is a natural consequence. This modern ‘paradigm,’ which is served by contemporary political science, perceives the political phenomenon as a function of its organizational or structural expression within the framework of the state-nation in the proto-anthropocentric phase. Political science has power as an object because only power and the relations of force that are expressed around it are considered to be able to produce policy. As such, any other structural approach to the political phenomenon that does not identify the political system with the state is inconceivable. Moreover, it considers that statocentrism is the only form of structuring the world cosmosystem. This approach itself does not distinguish between political science, whose object is the political system, its structure and functions, and the sciences of politics, which refer to the action of the political system (political economy, international relations, etc.). The new “paradigm” reproaches modern political science for possessing a limited gnosiological and methodological depth, shallow comparative perspective and a committed logic so that it sets the modern age as a universal model. The ethnocentric approach to the political phenomenon entirely distorts the historical horizon, while at the same time it considers the process of the emergence of the nation and of the proto-anthropocentric society in Western Europe as a measure of judgment and causality of universal value. On the contrary, this new ‘paradigm’ chooses to conceptualize the phenomena (e.g., politics, democracy, representation, freedom, etc.) and then submits the historical and modern cases to scientific control. This point of view sees the current stage of the anthropocentric cosmosystem not any longer as a model of reference and integration, but as a simple historical incident of the anthropocentric cosmosystem, which we are called upon to approach in terms of comparative analogy. Compared with the whole anthropocentric cosmosystem our era resembles typologically the first statocentric period of the city. The Hellenic or anthropocentric cosmosystem on a small scale also demonstrates, however, apart from its integration within the context of the state, its post-statocentric or ecumenical phase, which is recognized politically at the level of the cosmopolis. The significance of this finding is multi-faceted because it enriches the conceptual approach to the typology of political systems and the organization of the world. It also informs us that the political systems of the city, such as, for example, democracy, were not recorded, as believed, in a restricted period of statocentric antiquity (5th - 4th centuries) but were, in fact, a constant in all of the phases of the Hellenic cosmosystem, in the context of the city until the turn of the 20th century. The challenge which the comparative analogical method addresses to modern political science to disassociate itself from the “synchronic” argument and to invest in the typological space of the whole anthropocentric cosmosystem, essentially reintroduces the question of redefinition of the concept of politics and, by extension, all the concepts or phenomena ascribed to its object. Thus, democracy for modern theory is the political system which modern societies are experiencing. However, the subjection of the modern political system to the control of the democratic principle classifies it not as a democratic political system, but as a pre-democratic, and in fact a pre-representational, system. In this case, the question is not focused on the feasibility of the Athenian democracy nowadays, but of the democratic principle. As far as politics is concerned, this approach rejects the established approach to politics, which links the concept with its nature and not with its structural type in the era of the anthropocentric proto-genesis. It accepts that the political phenomenon as such is intrinsic in society and not power, force, or coercion. The projection of the hypothesis that the political phenomenon does not manifest a unique structural “face” in the whole cosmosystemic process dramatically broadens the gnoseological basis and the space of reference of political science. In terms of perspective, the question concerns the conditions under which the social body can transcend its constitution in terms of power or, put another way, in terms of private society, which reflects the actual phase of modernity. To what degree, therefore, can we anticipate the alternative possibility of the transition to a system of direct representation and, furthermore, “political society,” which defines the anthropocentric integration? We are obviously referring to democracy, that is, to the political system whose distinguishing feature is the whole (individual, social, and political) freedom is recognized by the diffusion of politics to the society or, more correctly, by the vesting of the social body with the status of political system instead of the state. The fundamental hypothesis of the cosmosystemic paradigm announces a radical reconsideration of the whole of the conceptual and methodological arsenal of modernity, and at the same time, the determinative broadening of the space of political science. In this context, modern political science is charged with the duty of distancing itself from this view of modernity so that it can rethink the political phenomenon, not simply on the basis of an intra-systemic critical review of the political praxis, but in terms of the universal character of its manifestations. CONCLUSIONS With the definite attachment of Greek society to the conditions of the modern cosmosystem, Greek political science was bound inevitably to adapt to the epistemological concessions of the new ethnocentric order. The features of this adaptation, as significant as they were, do not refute the fact that the investigation of the political phenomenon in Greece was recorded, as everywhere else, as the responsibility of related scientific branches (law, history, etc.). A science of politics had no reason to exist in the proto-anthropocentric stage of the state-nation. Having been absorbed by the public space or at least by state political power, the political phenomenon - and subsequently the political system - could not hope for a delimitation of its space so that it would cover the area of a distinct discipline. Moreover, to the degree that the social body possessed neither the necessary political maturity nor the status of political partner, the political praxis could introduce only indirectly a hypothesis of society and, as such, it was rather impossible to claim its own scientific space . Therefore, the delay of political science and the relatively limited progress it has made nowadays, is evaluated in comparison to the precedent of the Hellenic or the small-scale anthropocentric cosmosystem, and not with the realities of our era, with which they are clearly in harmony and which it accurately renders. On the other hand, the progressive emancipation of political science, which started only a few years ago, did not make it feasible to promote a creative dialogue about its major options as far as the concept of the political phenomenon and its object are concerned, or the most expedient method which would allow it to go beyond the environment that gave birth to it. That is why the redefinition of the concept and the method becomes a major priority for political science at the beginning of the 21st century. It is clear that the science of politics is the only one of the social sciences that persists in defining its object based on the way it is structured in our era (as a tautology of power or state) and not by virtue of its nature as the same order of phenomenon of which the structural manifestations are connected to the type and the developmental expansion of the analogous (despotic or anthropocentric) cosmosystem. This remark has more than just rhetorical value. As a working hypothesis it allows, on one hand, the investigation of the political phenomenon within the whole historical context, and, on the other hand, the search for the deeper significance of recent developments that the transition to the technological age signals. Therefore, the task of political science no longer focuses on an apologetic function in favor of some form of power or other, or to whatever policies lie behind its short-term options. Political science is called upon, mainly, to rise above the “short history” and to bring its step in harmony with the “rule” that issues from the long history recommended by the cosmosystemic approach. This confirms the view that political science, much more than any other branch of the social sciences, will not acquire an upward indicator of reliability if it does not first acquire a universal conceptual object. In the final analysis, the discussion about the object of political science refers to a fundamental problem of identity. Generally, political science in Greece presents one of the highest levels of development in Europe. It is historically in the vanguard of institutionalization of political science. The first efforts date back to 1828 and to the second half of the 19th century – long before the creation of the Ecole des sciences politiques de Paris and the London School of Economics – whereas the Panteios School of Political Sciences numbers among the first schools of its kind (it was created in 1927). The first political sciences society in Greece appeared in 1916, and also publishes a review of social and political sciences. Later, when in 1949 UNESCO urged the European countries to establish national political science societies, Greece was among the first. The Hellenic Political Science Association was already established in 1955. Finally, the Departments of Political Science in Greece are among the first in Europe to be emancipated from the sciences of the state and to become institutionally autonomous. From their creation, the curricula of the political science departments included only political science stricto sensu and its related branches from the first to the last semester. The disproportionately large – in relation to the population of the country – production of works of political science, combined with the translations of foreign works into the Greek language, confirm the picture of a society with a high level of individual politicization and subsequently explain the significant demand for political science. The difficulties concerning the problem of the professional status of graduates does not refute this finding. (to read the full article please go to the authors blog)
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 08:02:26 +0000
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