There is a remarkable convergence among specialists around the idea that political science is a discipline whose expansion, as we know it today, is linked to the 20th century, being closely related to the evolution of democracy and capitalism.
The first expanded the themes of study and established a climate of freedom for discussion and analysis; while the second incorporated market principles into the electoral logic and boosted mass society, with the consequent expansion of demos that also affected specialized university studies.
The opening of schools and academic and research programs, as well as the expansion of demand from the student body, were a consequence of this. As Sartori pointed out, if the practice of politics was an art, its knowledge required mechanisms specific to science, which, according to Bobbio, revolved around three fundamental requirements: the principle of verification as a criterion of validity, explanation as a purpose, and not evaluation as an ethical presupposition.
Political science had an important reflection from academia, on the part of individuals who contributed with their study and research to its development. Thanks to his teaching, the giants on whose shoulders the main theories were established contributed to the consolidation of a discipline that was placed in the niche of the social sciences, accompanied fundamentally by history, economics and sociology.
When they asked a group of twenty colleagues – from very diverse national origins and with an average age of 65 – who, in their opinion, were the people born in the 20th century in which the discipline was anchored, the result obtained is quite significant: inside of a wide dispersion, among the answers there is a coincidence in highlighting the intellectual leadership of Robert Dahl, Maurice Duverger, Juan Linz and Giovanni Sartori.
Four authors for whom democracy had a central character as a working logic or set of rules that establish who is authorized to make decisions and with what procedures.
Conceiving politics as a set of rules to confront, shape and make power beneficial, democracy for them would have the character of a demiurge at the mercy of the institutions of the rule of law. The representative character of democracy, an unmistakable consequence of the new mass societies, was channeled through electoral processes, a collective action with political parties and instances of power in which the choice between presidentialism or parliamentarism was not indifferent.
Democracy would not be so much an ideal, but a mark of what is possible, in states with a social vocation increasingly prone to interventionism and subject to processes of deterioration and fall and restart.
last July, Fukuyama e López-Calva highlighted the extent to which governance systems are articulated based on three key factors, such as state capacity, social capital and political leadership. The application of these factors to the analysis of the current situation in Latin American countries does not fail to build an excellent guide for their understanding, which relates to the legacy of the canon shaped by the aforementioned masters.
Thus, the State, society and certain individuals endowed with vocation and ambition make up the triangle in which the exercise of a human activity becomes a reality, which, despite changes over time, has not lost its relevance.
When applied to Latin American countries, the three vertices maintain constant what the passage of time does not seem to leave behind. A large majority of States continue to maintain a worrying precariousness with three aspects that stand out: their enormous fiscal weakness, their inability to control rampant violence and their slow implementation of public policies, especially in the areas of education and health, but also housing .
At the same time, there remains a long-standing inability to establish processes of integration, or at least regional cooperation that allow for proactively facing the ups and downs of globalization.
As for societies, they project very high levels of segregation for reasons of deep economic inequality, but also of identity inequality. The rampant machismo and disregard for indigenous communities are factors that increase discrimination with the consequent increase in behavior patterns in which mistrust prevails. Added to this is the unbridled process of exacerbated individualism that makes it difficult for a moderately organized collective action to achieve goals that, moreover, are not clearly defined.
In terms of leadership, with presidentialism as an institutional incentive, politics is based on megalomaniac and narcissistic individuals who exhibit an authoritarian disposition, destroying other existing control mechanisms. Thus, the obsession for power and for remaining in it unrestrictedly, the total absence of empathy for others and the absolute belief that there are no alternatives to decisions taken through institutional mechanisms that are capriciously changed are constant elements.
Political science has perfectly identified these factors and the chain of consequences they entail. Furthermore, the empirical evidence accumulated is very solid and the works fill the shelves as they circulate through the network. However, it seems that the veil of ignorance covers everything, to the point that some wonder: what is the purpose of discipline?
Obviously, this is not an appeal to the cry of “political scientists to power”. On the contrary: experience indicates that the academy does not offer exceptional politicians per se. What is at issue, playing with the terms that Albert Hirschman made famous, is using one’s voice with loyalty to the common good to offer ways to break out of the stalemate we are in. But it is beyond the role of political science to ensure that this voice is not preaching in the desert.
.
