Jean Blondel: his professional legacy

Jean Blondel’s life was always internationally oriented. His academic interest in political science emerged in 1950 during his studies at the Institute d’études polititiques de Paris (also known as Sciences-Po). As an undergraduate (1950–1953), he received a one-year fellowship in Brazil where he completed his degree thesis on the organization of local political parties in the state of Paraíba. His journey to Brazil made him aware that living in another country was most inspiring both academically and personally. He was therefore looking for academic places outside of France and took the chance to visit Great Britain where the structure of universities and the degree programs in political science were far better than in any other European country. From 1954–1957 he spent three years as a graduate student in Britain: First with a fellowship at St Anthony College in Oxford (1954–1956) that resulted in a graduate degree and further at the University of Manchester where he was offered a one-year research studentship by William Mackenzie (Professor of Government). Angered by the Gaullist takeover of France in 1958, he decided not to become a teacher in his home country (as originally intended), but to stay in Britain. In 1958, at the age


An international academic career
Jean Blondel's life was always internationally oriented. His academic interest in political science emerged in 1950 during his studies at the Institute d'études polititiques de Paris (also known as Sciences-Po). As an undergraduate (1950)(1951)(1952)(1953), he received a one-year fellowship in Brazil where he completed his degree thesis on the organization of local political parties in the state of Paraíba. His journey to Brazil made him aware that living in another country was most inspiring both academically and personally. He was therefore looking for academic places outside of France and took the chance to visit Great Britain where the structure of universities and the degree programs in political science were far better than in any other European country.
From 1954-1957 he spent three years as a graduate student in Britain: First with a fellowship at St Anthony College in Oxford (1954Oxford ( -1956) that resulted in a graduate degree and further at the University of Manchester where he was offered a one-year research studentship by William Mackenzie (Professor of Government). Angered by the Gaullist takeover of France in 1958, he decided not to become a teacher in his home country (as originally intended), but to stay in Britain. In 1958, at the age of 29, Jean received his first (fully paid) position as assistant lecturer to Samuel Finer at the University College of North Staffordshire (now Keele University).
Four years later, two new opportunities appeared almost simultaneously. One was an award by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to spend a year at Yale. The other was an offer to become Professor of Government at the newly established University of Essex. Jean Blondel accepted both positions: he first spent a year at Yale and then returned to Britain in 1964 where he founded the Department of Government at the University of Essex. After his retirement from Essex in 1984 he spent one year as a research scholar at the Russel Sage Foundation in New York before accepting a position as Professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence, a position he held until 1994. Since then, he was Emeritus Professor at the Robert Schuman Center of Advanced Studies (European University Institute) and visiting Professor in residence at the University of Siena. In addition, he taught as Visiting-and Guest Professor at numerous universities across the globe.
During his academic life, Jean Blondel received numerous tributes and accolades. He held honorary doctorates from the Universities of Salford and Essex in the United Kingdom, Louvain-La-Neuve in Belgium, Turku in Finland, Macerata and Siena in Italy. He also received the Life-Achievement Award by the British Political Studies Association (PSA) as well as by the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). Moreover, the University of Uppsala has honored Jean Blondel with the Johan Skytte Prize-popularly known as the Nobel Prize for political science-for his 'outstanding contribution to the professionalization of European political science, both as a pioneering comparativist and an institution builder'. In addition to these honors, Jean was an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Europaea.

An institution-builder
After having spent a year at Yale, Jean Blondel returned to Britain in 1964 and founded the Department of Government at the University of Essex. In the following years, he also established-together with his colleagues-the 'Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis' and the European Consortium of Political Science (ECPR). Jean Blondel's vision was to 'Americanize' European political science and to make Essex a leading department in Europe, similar to one of the 'top ten' universities in the US. He therefore hired in the first place young and highly qualified professors with an international profile and specific knowledge on quantitative research methods. Among them were (at the time) fairly unknown colleagues such as Anthony King and Ian Budge. They all shared Blondel's vision to make the department internationally visible. Six years after its foundation the department moved from a one-man initiative to an institution with a team spirit and first class ranking in the international political science community. Among others, the department initiated a new MA Program in Political Behavior for which students had to be trained in research methods such as survey design and advanced quantitative analysis. At the time, these courses were primarily offered by the Michigan based Inter-University Consortium for Political Research (ICPR) and their summer schools. These courses attracted an increasing number of young European researchers and Jean became eager to provide a similar 'training ground' for these students in Europe. Strongly backed by his colleagues in the department (particularly by Ian Budge) and financially supported by the UNESCO social science program, he founded the Essex Summer School on Research Methods modelled on the Michigan Summer School. Over the years, the number of students enrolled in the Essex summer program increased steadily. In 2023, the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis is in its 56th year and delivers a combination of both in-person and online courses to over 500 students from over 50 countries.
In the summer of 1969, the Ford Foundation created a new academic program which provided substantial financial support for the development of political science in Western Europe. The director of the foundation, Peter Janosi, toured around Europe and evaluated the teaching and research programs of several European departments, among other the Department of Government at Essex. Instead of asking for funding to build up the Essex department, Jean suggested to create a consortium of political science departments in Western Europe. Blondel's vision was to link the top-ten departments in Western Europe and thereby foster the quality of political science research. He also suggested that these departments should pay a fairly high annual 'entrance fee' for belonging to the 'club of excellence'. His idea was taken up by the director of the Ford Foundation with great enthusiasm. The result was that Jean received a quarter of a million pounds to set-up a 'European Consortium of Political Research'. With this money, he and his colleagues at Essex compiled 'A Directory of European Political Scientists' as well as a 'European Guidebook on Graduate Courses in Political Science'. They also launched the 'European Journal of Political Research' (with Arend Lijphart from Leiden University being the first editor), and started to organize annual workshops for researchers of member institutions who worked on similar research topics. The latter activity was originally initiated by Rudolf Wildenmann from the University of Mannheim. Accordingly, the first 'ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops' took place at the University of Mannheim in 1973.
Jean Blondel not only played a pivotal role as a founding father of the ECPR, but also became its General Director for the first ten years. Together with Stein Rokkan, who was the first ECPR chairman and Rudolf Wildenmann, who was in charge of the research workshop sessions, Jean declared the development of the ECPR as a major part of his life. It was him who travelled around Europe to find new member institutions and to initiate new research projects among them. He also visited the USA several times and held close contacts to colleagues at Michigan (which was the 'Mecca' of electoral behavior analysis at the time). In 1973, the ECPR started off with 25 member institutions and reached 120 political science departments ten years later. The consortium expanded constantly and now (2023) holds around 350 member institutions which makes the ECPR not only self-sustaining financially but also a major institution for sustaining European political science research.
Yet, Jean Blondel as an institution builder was not only 'on the job' in the 1960s and 1970s but also later in his academic life. Less known is his initiative to form an Asian Consortium for Political Research (ACPR) together with colleagues from South-East Asia and some former ECPR executive members. Unfortunately, the project failed due to financial support. Jean was also actively involved in setting-up new professional PhD training programs. He pushed hard for establishing an 'ECPR PhD Summer School on Political Parties and Party Systems' which was founded at Leuphana University (Germany) in 1991. He also belonged to the founding fathers of a new innovative PhD training in comparative politics at the University of Siena.

A pioneering comparativist
Over the past 60 years, Jean Blondel has published numerous books and articles. A complete list of his publications is yet not available. However, he has published at least 29 books and numerous articles. His scholarly contributions covered a broad set of questions mostly regarding the organization of government, but also focusing on leadership issues and political personalities. In all publications he followed a comparative approach covering structures and functions of parties, governments and political leaders in as many countries as possible.
His most influential and widely recognized monographs include Voters, Parties, Leaders (1963), An Introduction to Comparative Government (1969), Comparative legislatures (1973), Comparative Government (1990), The Presidential Republic (2015 and his book series on world governments and leaders (with SAGE Publications): World Leaders (1980), The Organization of Governments (1982); Government Ministers in the Contemporary World (1985); Political Leadership (1987). In these and his other publications, Blondel has indefatigably called attention to the value of classification and comparison in the study of politics. He was utterly convinced of the importance of the systematic collection of empirical data in the area of comparative government and kept telling everybody that the state of social science knowledge was centuries away from that of the hard sciences-and for that reason we should keep on working! It is probably no coincidence that his first and one of his last books focused on Latin America. In 1955 he undertook a study of parties and voting behavior in a local town (Paraiba) in Brazil. 63 years later, he published a book on the character of the governments in Latin American presidential republics (Presidents and Democracy in Latin America 2018). From personal talks with him, I know that he never lost his interest in exploring governmental politics in Latin America. Jean Blondel was an academic self-made man who has written his books without any support of graduate and postgraduate researchers. For finalizing his formidable monographs in comparative politics, he never needed any research grants. He purely relied on good libraries, his encyclopedic knowledge, his excellent memory, and his own sharp mind.
In his later academic life at the European University Institute, Jean looked out for younger colleagues who were willing and prepared to follow his idea of collecting empirical data on governments in Western-, Southern-, and-since the early 1990's-Central Eastern Europe. From 1985 to 2005 he directed seven large comparative projects on European governments and ministers in which more than 50 schol-ars from basically all European countries participated. In rigidly organizing these projects, he strengthened and broadened the ties between these political scientists and the cooperation between quantitative-empirical and historical-descriptive scholars within the profession.
Creative in his own thoughts, he was always hospitable to the thoughts of younger political scientists who felt enlarged and never diminished in his company. In fact, those people who took part in his projects learned something more about the real meaning of 'working together'. Under his leadership, several comparative co-edited books were published with the participation of many scholars. Among them Cabinets in Western Europe (1988) As his long list of publications shows, Jean's research interest was always comparative in nature. Why is this so? What has been the origin of his long-lasting affiliation to comparative politics? For one, as a student at Science-Po in Paris, his thinking benefitted strongly from Maurice Duverger's seminal comparative book on political parties in Europe which he read (in French language) much earlier than any other political scientist in the English-speaking world. Later on, his interest in the comparative approach was tremendously influenced by two schools of thought: The British and the American which reflected-in the 1960's-the distinction between 'politics' (in Britain) and 'political science' (in the US).
Jean Blondel received his British (historically oriented) academic socialization at St Anthony's College in Oxford as well as in the Department of Government in Manchester. Most important, however, for his genuine interest in studying governments in comparative perspective was the intellectual impact of Samuel Finer with whom he worked at Keele University. Jean has adopted at least four elements of Finer' thinking. First, in his lectures on governments at Keele, Finer made a distinction between historical and comparatist approaches in that historians would explore and account for particularities whereas comparativists look-out for regularities. Jean followed Finer's descriptive comparative approach. Second, for Finer government was the real core of politics. Jean adopted this idea and developed it further. His fine book on 'Comparative Government' (1969) was a 'must-read' for thousands of British and American undergraduate and graduate students. Finer's definition of governments being the core of all politics not only explains Jean's life-long research interest on comparative governments, but also his initiative to build a 'Department of Government' at Essex University rather than a 'Department of Politics' which was the common denomination in most other British universities. Third, Finer distrusted general theory and prefered what he called a 'problem-centered approach'. Similarly, Jean was never that much interested in theory building. He rather favored cross-national, systematic and comprehensive data collection for developing comparative typologies and/or classifications. Finally, according to Finer's autobiography, the key to understand why Finer did what he did is that he always did what he was interested in. This is also true for Jean who was intrinsically motivated to follow only those research topics that were of his own interest. He never started a project because of an 'in-vogue' topic or because of funding availabilities. Having been asked why he would study cabinet ministers, he simply answered: "I am just curious! They are important political figures who determine the life of millions of citizens so we need to know who they are. If we stop being curious, it would mean the end of science." A second major phase of his academic socialization followed at Yale where he worked for one year as a research fellow. In 1963/64, Yale was by far the most exciting political science department in the US (Michigan was 'only' the center of behavioristic research). At Yale, Jean became familiar with the book The Politics of Developing Areas written by Almond and Coleman (1960). The book looked-among others-at governmental structures and authoritative functions in areas such as Southeast Asia, South, Asia, Sub-Sahara Africa, Near East and Latin America. Jean was deeply impressed to see that comparative research could proceed in comparing most different political systems, such as democracies and autocracies. The book by Almond and Coleman as well as the global studies approach by Karl Deutsch, who was also Professor at Yale at the time, has highly influenced his thinking about comparative politics. Consequently, his research interest moved away from the comparative analysis of governments in Europe to a broader approach including countries on all continents.
While working at Yale, Jean also became aware of Robert Dahl's book Who Governs (1961) which followed a behavioral approach focusing on the actions of individuals engaged in political life and in political institutions. Moreover, Jean became familiar with statistical methods. The book by Robert Dahl convinced him that the behavioral approach and the statistical methods were a huge improvement in political science. Yet, he also recognized its limits. Jean was, for instance, always sceptical about the ultimate contribution that sophisticated statistical methods can make to our understanding of politics. He particularly disliked game theory and rational choice models because-according to him-they do not reflect real political life. This is not to say that he was a-theoretical, but his theoretical ideas have always been constrained by his historical and empirical knowledge.
In addition, Jean Blondel's scholarly work was substantially influenced by Robert Lane and David Barber who both were Professors at Yale in 1960s. From Lane's book Political Life: why and how people get involved in politics (1959) Jean received valuable insights about the relation between popular government and psychological factors in political life. Moreover, intensive conversations with David Barber about his forthcoming book The Lawmakers: Recruitment and Adoptation to Legislative Life (1965) which analyzed the political experiences of leaders, their personalities and their performance have stimulated the essence of Jean's books on the profession of world leaders. Overall, the enormous knowledge that Jean has received during his year at Yale highly influenced his later thinking and writing.
In sum, the scholarly contribution of Jean Blondel that is, his comprehensive and systematic research on comparative governments and world leaders acquired major relevance in the contest of the 'historical institutionalism' approach. His academic impact is enormous, but at the same time difficult to measure (if one does not only want to consider the various citation indices!). Yet, over the past sixty years, his publications have-without any doubt-fueled the work of several generations of students and colleagues around the world with totally different cultural backgrounds and academic training.

An extraordinary personality
Jean Blondel was known to be modest, kind and down to earth. His values and attitudes stood in direct contrast to elitist views often found in academic life. A hallmark characteristic of his personality was his French charm which was always warm and friendly, cheerful and joyful. He was a formidable friend and a tireless mentor of all generations, particularly to young researcher for whom he always asked for more coherent MA and PhD programs. According to Jean, a graduate program should not just contribute to the preparation of the thesis or the dissertation, but towards research for lifetime.
He was also one of the few people who can look back to 60 years of being an active Professor in Political Science. Many colleagues stop working after leaving the university. Jean's dedication to political science was life-long. Retirement from work was an inconceivable concept for him. He never retired from political science and published his last book three years ago at the age of 90.
Jean Blondel was never 'talkative' about the merits of his life as a political scientist, mainly because he did not take himself too seriously. The story is that, after having receiving Awards and other honors he always said "I do not think that I have deserved this".
With his creative ideas, his unrelenting activity, he promoted the quality of European political science research and teaching. After Jean Blondel's passing, we remember a highly creative scholar, one who opened new fields of research, who promoted enduring academic institutions, who was the mentor of so many younger scholars, but first of all a man of honesty and manifest integrity as well as a generous friend. Political science has lost a gifted institution-builder, a highly esteemed scholar and an extraordinary human being.
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