State formation, parties and democracy. Studies in comparative European politics

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preface - by Peter Mair

The papers republished in this volume reflect the work of a comparative political scientist of a particular style, generation, and academic culture. The earliest paper included here dates back to 1966, and is a comparative treatment of political developments in Europe, focusing in particular on parties and their organizational and governing strategies. It has long been seen as one of the classic building blocks in the development of the discipline, and has often been reprinted. One of the most recent papers was drafted in the late 1980s, and was first published in English in 1995. It too looks at European political development, but in this case from the perspective of the growth of bureaucracies. Both papers are intellectually ambitious, far-reaching, and address very big questions, and this in particular sets them off from much of comparative political science today. It is not so much that contemporary comparative political science fails to produce papers and books that address big questions in meaningful ways - that still does happen - it's simply that this work is usually swamped by the volumes of more narrowly cast and specialised analyses that now flood the literature.

These two papers were neither the first not the last that were published by Hans Daalder. There are earlier papers not included here that analyse different aspects of the politics of his own country, the Netherlands, as well as papers on Britain. For his generation, and for some time afterwards, the practice was usually to begin with analyzing the politics of a single country, often one's own, and only later, if at all, to venture further afield into genuine comparative analysis. There are also later papers, and a number of Dutch language books, some of which constitute part of the multi-volume biography of Willem Drees, the former Dutch prime minister. This can also be characteristic of this generation of comparativists, who sometimes return to a focus on themes relating to their own country in the later stages of their scholarly career or after their retirement.

In the middle of this span of papers is one which tries to get beyond a simple left-right dichotomisation of party identities and to identify the parameters within which it makes sense to speak of there being an autonomous ‘centre’ in European party systems. This is one of the few papers in this collection to have originally appeared in a journal, in this case the American Political Science Review in 1984, where it was bracketed between one paper on the ‘nationalization of the American electorate’ and another on ‘the constituency service basis of the personal vote for U.S. Representatives and British Members of Parliament.’ It was also Daalder's first and so far only publication in this leading review, and in his introduction to these essays he refers somewhat ironically to being ‘congratulated on this “feat” from various quarters, not least by ambitious younger colleagues.’

Few of these younger colleagues would have done work similar to that appearing in this volume. Indeed, many of the younger comparativists of today are not comparativists in the sense that Daalder would understand the term, but are

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rather what he would have termed ‘cross-nationalists.’ That is, they are scholars who don't begin with countries, but with data; who don't look in depth, but more widely; who don't generalise, but specify; and who place greater emphasis on method than on understanding. In particular, and in sharp contrast to Daalder and to the other leading comparativists of his generation, they rarely address big questions. As Richard Snyder has noted, commenting on the work of the early US-based comparativists that he and Gerardo Munck interviewed for their fascinating volume Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), and as is also visible in these essays, there was a passion for research that was rooted in ‘the conviction that the questions they study are normatively important and, hence, their work has implications for the “real world” of politics, policy and public opinion.’

Contemporary comparativists are also more professional than older generations. That is, they will have usually taken a basic degree in political science, and they are likely to have received extensive graduate training in one of the many graduate schools that have long flourished in the US and that are now spreading across Europe. They will probably have received further training as postdocs, including training in how to write journal articles - they must focus on one main point, have a clear introduction, outline the theory behind your approach, apply it to data, and then conclude - and how to submit them. Most young comparativists would aim to carry out analyses which are ‘replicable’ by others, in contrast to Daalder's work, which is not replicable, except with an awful lot of learning. Finally, most would likely aim at the APSR or a comparable journal right from the off, and would probably try to steer clear of book chapters. Daalder, on the other hand, as he states in his Introduction, probably speaks for many others of his generation in stating that ‘I was not used to, and still reject, the modern belief that publications in refereed journals (themselves ranked in importance), “count” more in research assessments and are regarded as more important than chapters in books, not to speak of books themselves.’

Indeed, it is from this last difference that many of the other inter-generational differences stem - or at least it is there that these other differences are typified. For example, for the contemporary generation of comparativists, it has become essential to publish in journals. Indeed, it has become essential to publish in particular journals, the ranking of which hardly differs from one country to another, or from one academic setting to another, including the APSR, World Politics, American Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, and Comparative Political Studies. This inevitably results in common styles of analysis and presentation. Most of these journals now operate a strict word limit for submissions of around 8,000 words; most - the exception is probably World Politics - tend to favour quantitative cross-national analyses; and most are likely to come to a decision on the acceptance or rejection of a submission primarily on the grounds of method. The result is to encourage the production of more or less standardised and normalised modes of analysis, a process that leads to a pronounced degree of convergence in the themes, approaches and outputs of contemporary scholarship. There is therefore little credit-worthy space left available for

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the more idiosyncratic, lengthy, exploratory and sometimes speculative writing that often marks Daalder's work in this volume and that of others of his generation in other books and essays, writing that was usually judged not on the basis of methodological considerations, but instead on the basis of the intrinsic interest and importance of the argument. Although Daalder has indeed published in a number of these top-ranking journals in the past, few of the papers in this present volume would match the criteria demanded by these journals today. The profession is worse off as a result. This is also what Juan Linz's concludes in the Munck and Snyder volume: ‘By becoming more impersonal and more bureaucratic, the field produces Standard, predictable products, but this standardization allows little room for mavericks and innovators.’ More's the pity.

Despite his misgivings about the rush to refereed journals, Daalder himself has always been a strong advocate of professionalisation, and when serving as the first Chair of the new Political and Social Sciences Department at the European University Institute in Florence, he did much to initiate an American-style PhD training programme. Later, he was the driving force behind the inter-university graduate school in political science that was established in the Netherlands in the late 1980s, and that was later absorbed into the larger and more successful research school, the Netherlands Institute of Government. He was also one of the founding fathers of the ECPR in the 1970s, emphasising always in this context the need for more professional training and greater internationalisation. Moreover, throughout his career, he collaborated exceptionally well with other colleagues, and was very active in promoting and sustaining research groups and collective projects. In this sense, his style was the opposite of that which used to favour the lonely scholar in the attic who would disappear for months or years and then return with a finished manuscript, and for this reason also, he would recognise and be recognised by the culture of the modern comparativist. But this is probably as far as mutual recognition would go.

Towards the end of his review of the interviews with the founding generation of comparative politics, Richard Snyder bemoans the professional amnesia that now characterises the field of comparative politics. ‘Graduate students,’ he notes, ‘are often discouraged from reading older works, which are routinely seen as “passé” or even “pre-scientific”.’ Although this tendency is probably not as pronounced in Europe as in the US, and although it is countered by the laudable efforts of the ECPR to republish and re-publicize classic texts, this is a problem that is becoming increasingly apparent. This is also a by-product of professionalism, of course, since an emphasis on training as such inevitably leads to an emphasis on training in methods above all else. Graduate students are busier than ever these days. They are obliged to follow training programmes, they are expected to publish, and they are under greater and greater pressure to complete their dissertations within three to four years. This leaves little time for reading (or writing) outside the box, and hence leaves little room for paying attention to the classics. This is regrettable in every sense, not least because, as Snyder also points out, these students are then robbed of ‘inspiring models of intellectual excellence.’

Hans Daalder offers one such model, and also for this reason, these essays re-

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pay reading and study. But reading and studying such classics also serves a more practical purpose. It reminds us of the important questions that continue to face comparative politics, and it helps us to avoid re-inventing the wheel, generation after generation. Precisely because the papers republished in this volume reflect, as noted, the work of a comparative political scientist of a particular style, generation, and academic culture, they, and the papers of the earlier generations more generally, continue to offer immense added value.

Peter Mair

EUI, Fiesole.