The Dispute Over the Identity of Political Science

Abstract

The chapter presents the main axes of the dispute over the identity of political science in Poland in the last half-century, with special emphasis put on the period after 1989. Debates concentrating on three identities criteria are discussed, i.e., the research object of political science, the methods and techniques used in political science inquiry and history and organization of the discipline in Poland. The possibility of indicating the boundaries of the discipline based on a distinct object of research or a unique political science method is considered to be incorrect. Therefore, the answer to the identity criteria question lies rather in organizational and historical differences, as well as in special political scientific perspective. In other words, discipline identity is more about theories, language, the way of posing research problems, than methods and object. The outcomes of these disputes for the pluralism of the approaches in political science and interdisciplinarity are also discussed.