The Institutionalisation of Political Science in Post-Yugoslav States: Continuities and New Beginnings

Abstract

The institutionalisation of political science in the four countries emerged after the break-up of Yugoslavia—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia—has not been a uniform process. Despite the discipline’s foundation at almost the same time and in the same state, there are considerable differences among them in terms of stability and autonomy. Some of the most salient, albeit certainly not all are numbers of institutions, professors, students and study programs, development of political science fields, state funding, and hiring procedure. Our investigation on the roots of differences between them covers two periods. The first one deals with the Communist Yugoslav period, when the first institutions of political science were founded, and the discipline went through three decades of development under autocratic regime. Second period deals with the following three decades of institutionalisation, from first multi-party elections in 1990 until 2020. We finish the chapter with concluding remarks which could also be perceived as a guideline for further research in the field.

1 Introduction

The politics of those states that emerged after the break-up of Yugoslavia has been widely covered in the media and in the literature. Wars, inter-ethnic violence, political transitions, and the establishment of undemocratic regimes in this region have been divulged to a worldwide audience. However, the scientific discipline dealing with politics in these states is much less well known. The aim of the present chapter is to rectify this situation somewhat by investigating the institutionalization of political science in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia since the inception of this particular discipline in the 1960s. Although some country case studies are available, regarding Slovenia and Croatia in particular, there is no comprehensive comparative analysis available. We do not claim that this chapter addresses everything; however, we do believe it is the first comparative study of the institutionalisation of the discipline in these states.

Our goal is to reveal the similarities and differences between the discipline in the four countries in question. We wish to establish why the institutionalisation of political science in these post-Yugoslav states produced different outcomes in terms of stability and autonomy. We have chosen these aspects of institutionalisation since they offer the opportunity to examine patterns not only in the post-1990 decades in relation to the four countries but also over the longer time period: that is, the status of political science in Yugoslavia prior to 1990, compared to that of the post-transition period. We expect to find traits of possible autonomy during the Yugoslav period, in terms of the profession’s internal decision-making, while the external constraints on the profession often changed as the regime itself changed. We believe that the analysis of the position of political science during the autocratic Yugoslav period might be indicative of the state of political science in several current regimes that cannot be regarded as democratic, such as that of Belarus.

In the following two sections we will try to establish how political science was institutionalised during two different historical periods—the Communist Yugoslav period first and the post-communist post-Yugoslav period thereafter. In view of the aforementioned first three decades, we assume that 1990 was not the discipline’s ‘Year Zero’; furthermore, the four republics already displayed differences during the autocratic period, which subsequently contributed to the discipline’s later development in different directions after the fall of Communism.

Our concluding remarks serve principally as a guideline for further research in the field. If we manage to answer the chapter’s research question, namely how political science persists and develops to different degrees under autocratic and democratic regimes, this could aid our understanding of the autonomy of political science under Communist and post-Communist political systems, as well as in some contemporary authoritarian states.

2 The Foundation and Development of Political Science During the Communist Yugoslav Period, 1948–1990

The development of political science in Yugoslavia during the Communist period lasted from 1948 to the first multi-party elections held in 1990. Our aim is to investigate three aspects of such development, namely the causes of this process; the kind of autonomy political science institutions acquired during this period; and the legacy that the new independent states inherited, which could explain their differences during the post-1990 period.

2.1 Conception of Political Science

Political science in the former Yugoslavia was neatly interwoven with the goals and interests of the political regime. After Yugoslavia’s split from the Soviet Union in 1948, not even the reconciliation of Tito and Khrushchev in 1955 could bring Yugoslavia back into the Soviet bloc. Prpić claims, that at that time Yugoslavia had two options: to become part of the West and thus risk bringing about the fall of the Communist regime or to proclaim its ‘original’ version of Communism in contrast to Stalinism (Prpić, 2002, p. 58). Only the latter option would have preserved the regime, and so a unique ideology of Socialist self-management that rejected the Soviet model was established. The Communist Party—SKJ¹—declared, in its 1958 Program, its intention to develop social science in order to contribute towards this aim (Fink-Hafner, 2002a, p. 358; Grdešić, 1996, p. 406; Pavlović, 2010, p. 251, 2018; Smiljković, 2018; Vujačić, 2013; Zajc, 2015, p. 478). This decision permitted the subsequent conception of political science, although its development turned to be a gradual, multidimensional process, with the political regime having a substantial impact on Yugoslavia’s academia.

Although several institutions were established immediately after the end of WWII, mainly to educate party officials on political issues, such as the School for Journalism and Diplomacy (1948–1952/1953), the Institute of Social Sciences (1948–1953), and the Party’s Higher School ‘Djuro Djaković’ (1945–1954) (Pavlović, 2018), these were not true predecessors of political science. In contrast to these schools, the regime’s intention with the 1958 Program was to provide higher quality education to politicians and others who were destined to work in government, the administration and other areas of political and social life (Smiljković, 2018; Benko, 2011, p. 20). It also aimed to foster a research of the Yugoslavian ‘self-management’ system and to offer insightful ideas for its further development. Table 4.1 shows the genesis of this institutional development in Sarajevo, Zagreb, Belgrade, and Ljubljana, respectively, the capital cities of the four Yugoslav Federal Republics—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia—analysed here.

Table 4.1 The genesis of political science institutions in Yugoslavia

Firstly, Colleges of Political Sciences² were established in the capital cities of the three Yugoslav federal republics in the early 1960s and subsequently transformed into Faculties of Political Sciences. Only the Faculty of Political Sciences³ in Zagreb, set up in 1962 (Fakultet političkih nauka, hereafter FPZG),⁴ was established without previous existence of a College and from the very beginning was a university department of political science, first one in Yugoslavia, and probably in the entire Communist world, although the College of Political Sciences in Belgrade was the first academic institution of its kind in Yugoslavia.

Within a couple of years, in addition to the FPZG, a scientific journal Časopis Politička misao [Political Thought] began publication, together with a book series Biblioteka Politička misao [Political Thought], both products of the FPZG.

There were major differences between the Colleges and Faculties in terms of the enrolment process, study programs, and autonomy. First, the Colleges only enrolled party officials, at least in the case of the first three entry cohorts, as was the case of Ljubljana’s College (Benko, 2011, p. 20); in doing so, they retained ‘elite’ status, whereas Faculties were open to all high-school graduates (Čupić, 2018; Pavlović, 2010, p. 251; Prpić, 2002, p. 51). Secondly, the length of study programs differed, from three years at Colleges to four years at Faculties. Finally, the Faculties enjoyed some independence in setting their curriculum, with courses established by their staff rather than by Party organs (Prpić, 2002, p. 51). Their academic curricula included theories related to politics and political science as well as theories concerning practical social, partisan, and statecraft issues; however, their study fields still had to meet the ideological requirements of the Communist Party (Čupić, 2018).

2.2 The Building of the Discipline

The initial period was important for the subsequent development of the discipline, but it was not enough for its success. Both external factors (outside of academia) and internal factors (staff working at institutions) contributed to its further development and accounted for some of its difficulties. These factors were often interconnected, and in the following decades, it became clear that the ‘status and development of political science could indeed be used as an indicator of the democratization process in the country: the more freedom for research and teaching, the more liberal was the political situation—and vice versa’ (Grdešić, 1996, p. 407). A major internal problem in the 1960s was staff expertise. At that time, professors, lecturers, and researchers had not been trained as political scientists. Consequently, the study programs of new institutions offered courses that only partly concerned political science, and generally in conjunction with other social sciences and humanities, including philosophy, economy, law, sociology, and history. Nevertheless, as Table 4.2 shows, with a concrete curriculum, this study field incorporated a number of acknowledged areas of political science and offered a broad outlook.

Table 4.2 Courses comprising the temporary political science programme at the FPZG Zagreb in the academic year 1962–1963

One way to foster the development of the discipline was to accept the examples and new tendencies of countries with a certain tradition of political science, particularly western countries. Officials from the College in Ljubljana had already established contacts with Uppsala University in Sweden and a higher school for administration and political science in Paris during the 1960s, and were trying to use their experience for the benefit of the Ljubljana School (Benko, 2011, p. 21).⁵ These contacts were limited however.

Despite achievements, there was a limited degree of autonomy due to the fact that the presence of Marxist ideology in all research and teaching was something that impacted the whole academic community, leaving no room for alternative views on the part of individual political scientists. Nevertheless, it was in fact possible to find ways of criticising the country’s political and social situation without necessarily being expelled from the university. Such criticism was mainly aimed at certain social and political situations, without actually questioning the essential being of the Yugoslav regime, self-management, or Marxism as such. The battle fought by some (but not all) internal actors against external repression is well illustrated by an article published in 1964 in the journal Politička misao by a lecturer working at the FPZG. He argued that the foundation program and the temporary study plan at this Faculty should ‘[a]bandon-ideological concepts and open the way for a scientific approach to establishing and developing political studies as a separate academic field of human science’ (Smailagić, 1964, p. 116; the authors’ translation).

One way of overcoming external, largely ideological pressures was to conduct empirical research into the real problems affecting politics and society. In this regard, the situation varied across faculties. The FPN in Sarajevo, for example, conducted three empirical projects during the mid-1960s, including one entitled The democratization of the electoral process in 1965 (Filandra, 2011, p. 39), which was something unexpected in a Communist autocracy. From the very beginning, the FPZG’s task was also to conduct ‘periodical empirical research in the field of socio-political life’ (Smailagić, 1964, p. 114). Papers based on empirical research were published in journals like Politička misao (Political Thought) and Teorija in praksa (Theory and Practice).⁶ Some even boldly exposed the true character of ‘democracy’ in the Communist system⁷; however, due to the lack of funding and to inexperience in empirical research, most papers tended to be of a descriptive and philosophical nature. In Slovenia, political scientists conducted some empirical research that contrasted with official views, together with debates about issues of relevance at that time, such as citizens’ rights and freedoms (Zajc, 2015, p. 479). Nevertheless, Bibič argues that Slovenian political science’s ‘main deficits…were to be seen in its excessively normative stand as to political reality and in terms of prevailing ideological and normative premises, a rather too limited empirical research performance, and a relative absence of attention to certain important areas of study’ (Bibič, 1996, p. 428). The FPN in Belgrade developed along different lines from the other three faculties, and a clear decline in its status can be observed. Furthermore, the failure of market reforms in Yugoslavia, and especially in Serbia, in the early 1970s, also had a detrimental effect. The Yugoslav federal government ousted the ‘liberals’ from the Serbian government, and restricted the autonomy of the university.⁸ This turn of events impaired the development of empirical disciplines and effectively put an end to empirical research in political science in Serbia until the fall of Communism (Pavlović, 2010).

The discipline’s autonomy heavily depended on the political situation in each Yugoslav republic, since the degree of political openness and the level of political freedom in republic varied significantly. The political systems of the six Yugoslav republics⁹ and two autonomous provinces¹⁰ were generally organised on the same principles, but political practices were not identical, and in some cases were substantially different. This affected the degree of authoritarianism in each part of Yugoslavia, and consequently different levels of freedom of speech, research, and teaching existed at the various universities. In Slovenia, the situation was better than elsewhere due to this republic’s greater openness to the West (Zajc, 2015, p. 478); however, even Slovenia did not enjoy anything like the levels of freedom seen in the West. The 1970s were called ‘the leaden years’ for good reason.

Limited liberalization started after Tito’s death in the 1980s, and this was reflected in academia too, albeit with mixed results. Eye-catching achievements and increasing uncertainty prevailed in equal measure. Widespread public discussions were conducted in the 1980s regarding two books published by professors working at the FPZG in Zagreb, and engendered considerable interest. The volumes in question were Sistem i kriza [The System and Crisis] by Jovan Mirić and Načela federalizma višenacionalne države [The Principles of Multinational State Federalism] by Zvonko Lerotić. Book Interesi i ideje u SKJ [Interests and Ideas in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia] was published in 1989 by a group of lecturers at the FPZG on the basis of their empirical research. It was based on research of interests and ideas of the delegates at The First Conference of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1988 conducted by group of professors and assistants from the FPZG. The FDV in Ljubljana witnessed a decline in the number of students and professors of political science during the 1980s, due to a lack of interest in the discipline and owing to the fact that a number of professors left the FDV to work in other faculties (Fink-Hafner, 2002a, pp. 359–360). The FPN in Belgrade did not produce any significant books or other publications that could be said to have made any significant contribution to the discipline’s development (Pavlović, 2010). A similar situation prevailed at the FPN in Sarajevo. We can conclude that political science experienced a number of ups and downs during this period. Its development followed different lines at the four faculties in question. The greatest achievements were the establishment of the discipline, the fact that some empirical research could be conducted into Yugoslavia’s political institutions, and into religion and ethnicity, particularly in BiH, and the training of a new generation of political scientists who were to join the academic staff at the four faculties. Some of them even spent some time at Western universities, where they studied non-Marxist ideas and got to know the state of the discipline in the West.

3 The Institutionalisation of Political Science During the 1990–2020 Period: The Shift Towards Greater Divergence

The foundation of new independent states in 1991–1992, followed by wars and the formation of autocracies/hybrid regimes/defective democracies in the following decade, hindered the institutionalisation of political science and led to increased diversification of the discipline among the new states. Four republics declared independence in 1991 and 1992, while Serbia and Montenegro initially formed a joint republic which lasted until Montenegro declared independence in 2006. The Ten-Day War in Slovenia in June-July 1991 was very different from the lengthy wars fought in Croatia (1991–1995), BiH (1992–1995), and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, joint state of Serbia and Montenegro (1998–1999), with the latter also being involved in wars in Croatia and BiH, and Croatia being involved in the war in BiH. Slovenia had been the most economically advanced republic in communist Yugoslavia, and has remained so until the present day, becoming a member of the EU and NATO in 2004. The other three states struggled with transition and achieved different levels of political, economic, and social development (see Table 4.3).

Table 4.3 Economic and demographic developments since 1990

The development of political science after 1990 was a multidimensional process, ranging from the establishment of new subfields to the incorporation of new academic staff. Under the above-mentioned conditions, state funding was not at all sufficient.

Above, we observed several differences between the four seminal faculties during the communist period. We presume that in the post-Communist period, when external factors impacting the four states have increasingly diverged, these differences will have become even greater. In order to establish what differences have emerged among the four states and why, we will focus our analysis on the measures of stability and autonomy presented in Table 4.4.

Table 4.4 Analytical model of the institutionalisation of political science in the four states 1990–2020

3.1 Stability

3.1.1 Institutions and Students

Probably the easiest way to understand the patterns of divergence is in terms of the number of higher education institutions and their respective dynamism. The liberalization of higher education in the 2000s brought an end of the state monopoly in this sector. A raft of new political science institutions sprung up in all of the post-Yugoslav states, including Kosovo, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, although to a lesser degree in Croatia and Slovenia. There is still only one faculty of political science in the latter two states, both dating back to the Communist period, together with one private institution of higher education in Croatia which offers degrees in international relations and diplomacy. In contrast, Serbia has 4, and BiH has 12, faculties or departments teaching political science or selected sub-disciplines thereof (see Table 4.5). Some of them offer study programs covering only one or two sub-fields of political science, mostly international relations which in these four states is widely regarded as a sub-field of political science.

Table 4.5 Institutions of political science and its subfields in the four post-Yugoslav states in 2020

The proliferation of new institutions can place the institutionalisation of a discipline at risk. While a larger number of institutions and students presumably sustains the discipline in terms of its visibility and performance, such proliferation can also be a handicap if it does not meet proper legal and professional standards. So, a more careful analysis is required of the background to such proliferation and of how it relates to academic and teaching standards.

The first aspect directly relates to the roots of the rise in the number of new institutions and of students in the new millennium. Such an increase could be the result of governmental policy, rising living standards, labour market demand, or even profit factors. While all these aspects are important, ultimately what matters most is money. Tuition fees are of a mixed nature: they are totally or mostly public in the case of state-owned institutions, while there is no public funding for students’ tuition fees in private institutions. Thus, the latter are keen to enrol the highest possible number of students and the least number of tenured professors. The FPN in Belgrade has the largest share of fee-paying students at both BA and MA level. The FPN in Sarajevo follows come in second place at MA level¹¹ (see Tables 4.6 and 4.7). There is an enormous difference between the four states with regard to the MA level: public funding of MA students in Croatia and Slovenia differs considerably from that seen in Belgrade and Sarajevo. At the same time, it should be mentioned that only Belgrade offers public funding to PhD students, albeit only a handful, whereas in the other three countries, PhD students have to pay for their studies.

Table 4.6 Quotas for students enrolled in the first year of the respective program in 2018/2019 at four seminal faculties for all study programs

Table 4.7 Finance patterns at the BA and MA levels in the four countries

The second issue concerns teaching standards, which might also affect stability. The sharp rise of new institutions in BiH and Serbia has raised questions about the quality of education. It is similar to the situation in the 1960s when it was easy to enrol students into new colleges and faculties, but it was difficult to enrol skilled staff to teach the programmes. This is a major problem, with some private institutions coming over as ‘diploma printers’ where students can easily obtain a degree if they just pay the tuition fees and put in minimum effort. While these diplomas are not widely cherished in the labour market, they meet legal requirements for those seeking jobs in state entities or agencies. Some of these institutions do not last though, which qualifies the stability argument as a property of institutionalisation.

Concerns regarding the educational standards do not mean that there is no legal regulation of higher education in these states. For instance, a law (Zakon o visokom obrazovanju) regulates higher education in Serbia as well as the foundation of its institutions. A National Accreditation Body works on accreditations, controls the quality of higher education institutions, and evaluates study programmes (Art. 14). However, this body was suspended from the European Association of Accreditation Bodies because of the lack of reaction to cases of plagiarism in Serbia, which also involved certain high-ranking politicians, and in 2020, it still has not been re-admitted to this association. Uncertain legal regulations also persist in BiH. For example, one can find working and updated websites of universities seemingly operating as active institutions, that do not appear on the List of Accredited Higher Education Institutions of the country’s Agency for the Development of Higher Education and Quality Assurance.¹² Mention could also be made of the Governments’ policies regarding the country’s universities, which in some cases were of an authoritarian character, albeit based on existing law. One of the worst things that happened from the point of view of political science and academia in Serbia was the adoption of the Higher Education Law in 1998 (also called the Šešelj’s law¹³), which aimed to abolish university autonomy and place academics under government control (Skrozza, 2004). It was not until the fall of Milošević in October 2000 and the start of a second phase of transition in Serbia, that Šešelj’s Law was abolished.

The rising number of institutions—particularly those established on uncertain foundations—might well raise concerns about the quality of the curriculum as well. An analysis of the study programmes of a number of traditional and newly established institutions¹⁴ reveals two basic problems. The first concerns the composition of the programmes. If the curriculum is diluted by the inclusion of courses from other disciplines, and the number of political science courses is limited, then the programme necessarily becomes ‘soft’, and its students will get a lower quality of education than their counterparts in study programmes based on well-defined political science curricula. The second problem is that even if the curriculum consists of courses that are nominally the same as, or similar to, the ones offered by esteemed, high-ranking departments of political science, an analysis of their actual content and of what students are in fact provided with would appear to paint a completely different picture: namely one of low-quality teaching, the non-concurrence of classes with the subjects presented in the syllabuses, and lecturers who are not qualified to teach their assigned courses or indeed are asked to teach too many courses.

3.1.2 Structural Reforms

The above-mentioned problems concerning the proliferation of new institutions rightly leads to the assumption that structural (internal) reforms are a more important factor in the institutionalisation of the discipline than is the increasing number of institutions. Probably the most important reforms relate to curricula. Curricula reforms were introduced in two distinct periods: the post-Communist ‘pre-Bologna period’ 1990–2005/2006, and the ‘Bologna period’ after 2005/2006. The former period was characterised by an almost completely autonomous, intra-institutional shift from Marxist and ‘self-management’ ideology to a more diversified, non-ideological model and the prevalence of internal actors (inside academia) over external ones (those outside academia, like state agencies or ministries). The latter period, on the other hand, was characterised by a change in the study programme system, along the lines of the European agreement.

Reforms in the four major faculties during this period were characterised by the political, social, and economic situation in which they operated. The FDV in Ljubljana was in a better position than the other three faculties. The introduction of democracy in Slovenia in 1990 opened the way for significantly greater academic freedom, and was accompanied by a substantial change in curricula in 1991 and 1992 (Zajc, 2015, p. 480). This was performed autonomously by the FDV (Zajc, 2010, p. 282), where the common social science core of the first two years of undergraduate study was replaced by specific political science courses (Fink-Hafner, 2002b, p. 279). The Faculty also changed its name from the Faculty of Sociology, Political Science, and Journalism to the Faculty of Social Sciences (Fakulteta za družbene vede, FDV). Although the foundation of political science institutions in the 1960s was stimulated by the regime’s needs, Fink-Hafner argues that new the advent of curricula and research at the beginning of the 1990s was encouraged by the need to build a new Slovenian state following the dissolution of Yugoslavia (Fink-Hafner, 2002a, p. 362).

The three other major faculties were marked by the wars their respective countries were involved in during the 1990s, and this made structural reforms more precarious at that time. For example, although the city of Zagreb was mainly spared from the destruction of war, the academic year 1991–1992, which saw the worst of the fighting in the war in Croatia, was basically lost in the case of the FPZG. A number of students and teaching staff were called to arms, no regular classes were held, and the submission and defence of final theses (degrees or PhD) was conducted against the backdrop of air-raid sirens. The first major reform was introduced in 1992, when one of the three study programmes was abolished, this being a remnant of Yugoslav communist doctrine focusing on social mobilization in the case of war (entitled: Total People’s Defence and Social Self Protection). The second partial reform that was introduced abolished the courses based on Marxist ideology and established new political science courses. Although this process was not an easy one, it eventually proved rewarding, and the pre-Bologna reforms before 2005 saw continual change, leading to the establishment of new courses and subfields that had not exist previously, such as the public policy course introduced in around 2000.

The FPN in Sarajevo found itself in the worst situation of the four. The beginning of the war in Spring 1992 represented a major turning point for political science, but in a negative way. Nevertheless, the war did not prevent the FPN in Sarajevo operating, and it continued its activity under war conditions for more than three years, until the beginning of the new academic year in Autumn 1995 and the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement. Moreover, in the academic year 1994/1995, in grave war-time conditions, the FPN launched a new MA program entitled ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Contemporary World’ which both domestic and (some) foreign students enrolled in (Filandra, 2011, pp. 36–37). However, it was not it until 2005 that it could implement the most ambitious reforms in the Faculty’s history (Filandra, 2011, p. 54). The FPN retained all of its study programmes, with the exception of ‘Total People’s Defence’ dating from the Communist period (this was similar to the one mentioned with regard to the Zagreb Faculty), and remained the only public school of political science in the country until the establishment of the FPN in Banja Luka in 2008.

After 1990, the FPN Belgrade abolished ideological courses such as ‘The Basics of Total People’s Defence’ (Osnove opštenarodne odbrane), and the curriculum was improved by the introduction of new courses such as: Local Self-Governance, the Science of Organization and Management, Models of Political Decision Making, Political Culture, Political Anthropology, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies, European Relations and Regional Economic Integration, and Gender Studies (Čupić, 2018). Although the curriculum was modernized, overall academic development was significantly disrupted by the wars and the international isolation of Serbia, then part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The second period of curricular reforms, which started in 2005/2006,¹⁵ was marked by the top-down Bologna reform. During this process, external factors proved more important than that in the first period, and the reforms were more far-reaching. Decisions on reform at European level were implemented at national levels, with each institution’s limited autonomy shaping its respective programmes.

We can conclude that after the fall of Communism and the break-up of Yugoslavia, there were differences in the establishment and stability of the four states’ higher education institutions and student numbers; these were affected by government decisions and financing patterns and also by the different political trajectories of the countries concerned. The differences between Slovenia and Croatia on the one hand, and Serbia and BiH on the other hand, were particularly significant. In terms of internal development, especially in terms of curricular changes, similar developments can be observed but with different time dynamics: first there was a shift away from courses and programmes bounded by ideology, and secondly a shift towards Bologna standards and expectations.

3.2 Autonomy

During Yugoslav Communism, political science enjoyed somewhat limited autonomy overall. While in some periods, new courses and subfields were introduced, albeit under strong state and party control, hiring was not characterised by this limited autonomy. The two themes we shall focus on in this section concern hiring and promotion and establishment of new subfields after 1990. We shall try to find the similarities and differences among the four states in question.

3.2.1 Hiring and Promotion

Following the beginning of the democratisation process in 1990, faculties were granted the power to hire teaching staff who could contribute to the development of new subfields and courses without ideological prerequisites. Although this year marked a critical juncture in terms of the breaking of ideological chains, reform continued to be hindered by external and internal factors.

One of the major external constraints on reform was state funding for the hiring and promotion of academic staff. The severe economic crisis affecting three states (but not Slovenia) was the result of a combination of war and transition in the 1990s. Very limited state budgets for science and higher education made it difficult to hire new staff. All staff salaries, provided by the Ministries of Science and Universities, have depended on the will of the State to finance the work of academics. After the end of the wars, and following an increase in government revenues and budgets, the situation began to improve; however, hiring and promotion still depended on the availability of State funding, and on the willingness of new scientists to come to teach in these institutions. After a decline in the number of students and professors in the 1980s, the arrival of new academic staff after 1990 took a number of years (Fink-Hafner, 2002b, p. 289). Slovenia, with the highest per-capita GDP of all the post-communist states, and lower spending on national defence, meant that in the 1990s state funding of higher education, from the very beginning of the post-Yugoslav period, was much better in that country than in the other three states analysed here. The FPZG in Zagreb only improved its position after 2000. New state budgets in 2000 and 2001 provided funding for more than 2000 new teaching and research posts at Croatian universities, including around 20 at the FPZG. This enabled the said Faculty to replenish its staff numbers, and many of the existing staff had been made professors by 2020. The FPN in Belgrade and the FPN in Sarajevo did not experience this critical juncture. Virtually no new staff were hired during the 1990s, years characterised by international sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and by the war in BiH and the grave economic situation resulting from this war. The FPN in Sarajevo still only employed 10 professors and lecturers, together with 4 assistant lecturers and researchers, in its Department of Political Science, in May 2020 (see Table 4.8).

Table 4.8 Departments and chairs at the four major faculties, and the number (in parentheses) of professors and assistants who were full members of those faculties in May 2020

Internal factors that have influenced staff renewal and the development of subfields originate in academia, first of all in regard to the availability of new staff. Until the proliferation of doctoral education in the 2000s, PhD degrees were mostly awarded to scholars who were already employed at universities. Consequently, new professors were not available ‘on the market’. So, the institutions had to employ teaching and research assistants who would only become professors at some later point in time. The last decade, however, has seen a shift towards the employment of new lecturers from among PhD graduates. This process has been accompanied by the occasional additional input: for example, at the FPN Belgrade, teaching staff were partially upgraded through the hiring of former students who had received their MAs and PhDs abroad.

A further factor to be considered in the context of hiring and staff renewal concerns the danger of pouring ‘new wine into old bottles’. Newly hired staff have encountered internalized norms and procedures that had been previously established over the years by existing professors. Normally, they interiorise with such norms and procedures (Goodin & Klingemann, 1996, p. 11), although this implies the danger of path dependency, which could seriously hinder the development of the discipline. This problem was especially salient after 1990, when not only did staff with new ideas have to be hired, but the existing academic staff were also required to adapt to a new, democratic environment which supported free thinking and free speech, and to be ready to help change the curricula and research topics.¹⁶ In other words, it was not only necessary to introduce fresh blood: the existing old blood had to be prepared to participate in the process of change as well. The time factor proved to aid this process in part, as over the course of the subsequent three decades, many professors and lecturers retired and were replaced by younger, sometimes internationally educated, colleagues.

Promotion in all four states is governed by a series of laws and regulations. This process has become increasingly closely regulated, and stricter requirements are now in place. Promotion is required to be performed in the case of each professor/lecturer every five years at public universities, but in some cases, this procedure is blurred. The University of Sarajevo does not have fully regulated standards of promotion in terms of an academic’s publications, and it is much easier to achieve promotion there than in the other three major faculties in question. This is criticised as constituting a closed intra-institutional process that negatively impacts the staff selection and quality.

3.2.2 New Subfields

The introduction of new subfields can follow as a result of external requirements (like the Bologna process), but may also be connected to staff development. Research in new fields, by new staff, and the introduction of new sub-fields to the curriculum, are often correlated. The major faculties continued to be central to this process, since they had developed their staff capacity over a period of decades. Furthermore, as mentioned above, promotion criteria also oblige professors and lecturers to publish and do research. This is the case at state universities, whereas academics hired by private universities do not have such an obligation. Consequently, the latter are less motivated to conduct research and publish works and do not contribute to the development of new or existing subfields to the extent that their counterparts at state institutions do. As a result, the new private institutions founded after 2000 have been mostly oriented towards education rather than research. They may offer courses from different subfields, but research work has not been important to them since it does not bring in any profits. There have been some exceptions, like the FPN in Banja Luka founded in 2008, that also conduct research, but this could be accounted for by the fact that this institution is part of the public, state-funded University of Banja Luka.

Funding is necessary not only for salaries, but also for research, and thus for substantial curriculum development. Research and development expenditure in the four states is highest in Slovenia and lowest in BiH (see Fig. 4.1). Research activity in Serbia suffers from the structural problem of research funding in general. Between 2004 and 2017, annual funding fluctuated between around 0.3% and 0.9% of GDP. In Croatia, annual research and development expenditure was below 1% of GDP during the whole 2003–2017 period, except in 2004 when it stood at 1.03% (Croatia—Research…). In 2018, the Croatian Science Foundation provided only around 8 million euros in funding for all scientific research in Croatia. The University of Zagreb also has some funds, but these amount to around 4–5 thousand euros per project per year. European funds are also available in theory, although it is very difficult to obtain them, and all approved projects have only concerned questions of Croatian politics and society, or in certain rare cases, an analysis of Croatia from a comparative perspective. As Fig. 4.1 shows, there has been a decline in the position of the most advantaged country in this regard, that is Slovenia; nevertheless, funding there is still substantially higher than in the other three states. State funding of research in political science in Slovenia stood at 316,254€ in 2010, 415,928€ in 2011, 316,065€ in 2012, and 367,908 € in 2014 (Zajc, 2015, p. 483). Finally, research in BiH today is a precarious activity. Despite not being in the worst situation in the region (when compared, e.g. with Kosovo), BiH’s government does not offer political scientists any real opportunity to carry out expensive research projects, with only 0.2% of GDP earmarked for research and development (Bosnia and Herzegovina—Research…).

Fig. 4.1

Research and development expenditure (% of GDP) in the four states. (Source: Bosnia and Herzegovina—Research and development expenditure, Croatia—Research and development expenditure, Serbia—Research and development expenditure, Slovenia—Research and development expenditure)

In an environment where funding for scientific research is scarce or literally non-existent (in some fields), it is very difficult to achieve any progress. This is particularly the case with comparative politics, as national science funds or ministries of science are generally not inclined to finance something that is not directly connected to their respective countries. Such preconditions are ripe for maintaining the ‘rural’¹⁷ status of certain political science subfields, or even for their future disappearance altogether. On the other hand, this might enhance the visibility of the field in national politics and make research in political science more applicable. For example, the media in both Slovenia and Croatia occasionally present the results of research projects published in scientific journals concerning Slovenian and Croatian politics.

The paucity of state funding, which was, up until the 2000s, probably the only form of funding of research in political science in the four states, has been mitigated to a certain extent in recent years by EU funding. These funds are more competitively structured than national funds and are mostly available to political scientists in the two member-states Croatia and Slovenia, and only occasionally to political scientists in BiH and Serbia. Furthermore, foreign and international funds have been made available for the mobility of students and staff, such as Fulbright and Erasmus funds.

Clearly, research funding and new staff are closely related to the emergence of new sub-fields. Nevertheless, occasionally ‘older’ staff have been the forerunners in establishing new subfields, as at the FPZG Zagreb where courses in comparative politics have been established.¹⁸ Assistants who were awarded their MA and PhD degrees at the Central European University in Budapest or at Western universities, brought new ideas back to their home Faculty. Their input in terms of methodology has proven particularly valuable. The Faculty has also established research centres, although their activity is still low key, and they are not a structural basis for research, but rather they represent the individual activity of professors and assistants. The main Croatian journal specialized in political science is the Faculty’s Politička misao, which was supplemented in 2004 with the journal Anali Hrvatskog politološkog društva [Annals of the Croatian Political Science Association], which represented the main forums for research initiatives.

As in the case of the FPZG, international cooperation with, or visits to, foreign universities by the academic staff of the FDV in Ljubljana, started in the communist period; this aided the transformation of the discipline to a more western model, through the importation of ideas from those western institutions, and their adoption in research at the FDV (Bibič, 1996, pp. 428–429). In Ljubljana, research activities are clearly centred around five departments (Political Theory, Political Science Research, International Relations, Administrative-Political Processes and Institutions, and Defence Research Centre), while the Faculty’s journal Theory and Practice is still the most important Slovenian journal for political science.

In Serbia, especially in the 1990s, political science research was ‘largely reduced to political sociology, comparative politics (in both of which political scientist hardly took part) and political theory. Research in political economy… and international relations was practically non-existent during that period’ (Pavlović, 2010, p. 255). Academics were not ready to quickly adapt to the new circumstances, and sociology took the lead from political science in regard to research into the process of democratic transition. It has even been argued that this was not only a period of stagnation, but one of significant decline (Džuverović, National Report on the State of Political Science (PS), p. 2). Research was often more relevant ‘outside’ the parent institution (see, e.g. V. Goati’s observations as noted by Pavlović, 2010, p. 254).¹⁹ This situation has improved since 2000, and as with the abovementioned country cases, the Faculty established several centres thereafter, and also began publishing a journal Godišnjak Fakulteta političkih nauka Univerziteta u Beogradu [The Yearbook of the Faculty of Political Science at Belgrade University], which now publishes two issues per year, with papers in Serbian, English, and Russian.

It seems that by now, as a result of several changes made, the situation is probably more similar than before in the most important faculties analysed here, with the sole exception of the FPN in Sarajevo. All four faculties have study programmes in political science, comprising courses in all sub-fields of the discipline. The number of courses within each subfield, and number of teaching staff working in their political science subunits, are indicative of the state of discipline, and the latter figures are shown in Table 4.8. Most other institutions, including the state-owned FPN in Banja Luka, do not possess a similarly developed structure. While FPN in Banja Luka is structured differently, its four study programmes, one research institute, and relatively large staff of 33 professors and 10 assistants guarantee stable, well-developed educational patterns.

We can conclude that the four states display one major similarity and at least two major differences in regard to hiring, staff promotion, and the foundation of new sub-fields. The one similarity is that the laws in these states do not establish the same obligations for public and private universities with regard to the hiring and periodical promotion of staff. These laws do not concern political science specifically, but all disciplines or groups of disciplines. The differences are more substantial, however. The first of these concerns the hiring of new staff. The major institutions in Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia have larger numbers of professors compared to all other institutions concerned with political science or its sub-fields in these states. This enables these three major faculties to achieve such a concentration of political scientists that they can develop existing sub-fields and establish new ones, making them flagship political science institutions in their respective nations, unlike the FPN in Sarajevo in BiH. The institutional Balkanization witnessed in BiH has negatively affected the development of the discipline, by scattering political scientists across several new institutions. The small number of professors at the FPN in Sarajevo has resulted in experts having to deal with various different sub-fields. Furthermore, low legal requirements for promotion in BiH has not encouraged professors to publish. Consequently, the rule ‘publish or perish’ does not operate in BiH. Finally, we may conclude that different legal requirements affecting the autonomy of the discipline, represent a greater impetus to the institutionalisation of political science in Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia than is the case in BiH.

4 Conclusion

Rather than reiterating the numbers and summarising the details and the nuances, both as similarities and differences among the four country cases, we would like to formulate two general observations that might have broader significance as well. One concerns the connection between political science and democracy; the other regards the norms and values that political science is expected to adhere to.

Political science today is seen by many as the ‘science of democracy’, with its perceived purpose being that of promoting and contributing to democracy. What, then, is the role of political science in non-democratic countries? Can it still be the ‘science of democracy’, and is it a real political science at all? In the case of our four states, the field was established in Communist Yugoslavia in the early 1960s because of the autocratic regime’s need for self-legitimation. Nevertheless, it gave professors and researchers at the newly founded faculties a certain degree of freedom in curriculum creation, teaching, and research, and this ‘crack’ in the regime’s control was enough for the institutionalisation of the discipline to begin. Although far from the academic freedom enjoyed in the West, it enabled political scientists to slowly develop new academic fields and fields of research. There were several setbacks during this period, but many active participants at the institutions in question played a vital role in the discipline’s institutionalisation. This sent out an important message to those political science communities where the state of democracy was, and continues to be, a serious problem.

Political science during the post-Communist period has freed itself from the ideological burden of Marxism and socialist self-management; however, different new values in teaching and research replaced old values. As a rule, the new political regimes have not seen political science as a source of analysis of politics that can be used in everyday political life, but instead have mainly left the discipline and the faculties up to their own devices. Nevertheless, the staff working in these political science institutions often have personal experience of the difficult times and tragedies that the rest of Europe has been spared. Some new personal values and attitudes saw the light of day during the 1990s, a period of brutal conflict and the dissolution of the federal state, together with the emergence of new worldviews. Political scientists were not isolated from such events, and thus, it is not surprising to see the occasional return of normative judgements, pronounced biases or ‘having answers before raising questions’,²⁰ or the rejection of any critical interpretation of new facts and scientific inferences altogether. Being emotionally burdened with belonging to a state, ideology, ethnic group, and/or own family tradition can make the unbiased search for new truths difficult. Under these circumstances, there are two particular things that should be promoted: on the one hand international cooperation, and on the other the importing of new knowledge, which implies quality training with a strong international and comparative focus, which would help existing biases be superseded.

The first multi-party elections in 1990 were the basis and pre-condition for the discipline to transform itself on the basis of Western models. Nonetheless, wars, economic crises, and new forms of authoritarianism during the following decade offered only limited opportunities for such transformation. Only the period after 2000 offered greater freedom of speech, except in Slovenia whose democratic transition was more successful in the 1990s; more opportunities for an increased student population; and the opportunity to establish new institutions of higher education. Accessibility to international funds, the exchange of students with foreign universities, and more opportunities for young scientists to study at the best universities in the West, have all contributed towards improving the quality of education and research. Political science has also become more readily accepted within academia, and no more suggestions of its faculties being abolished have been forthcoming.

The problems that contemporary political science has in the countries examined here, and the roots of the differences among these countries, are in many ways related to the environment in which the discipline exists. An analysis of stability and autonomy has led us to conclude that financial resources, legal regulation and policies matter significantly. The combination of the legal regulation of higher education and the availability of funding, accounts for the major differences seen among the four states. At the same time, political scientists and their institutions are also responsible for using the opportunities they have for the development of political science.