Political Science in Central-East Europe: Diversity and Convergence

摘要

Political science, as the editors of this volume remind us, has sometimes been portrayed as an inherently 'moral' discipline, imbued with democratic ideals, contributing to the emergence and stabilization of democracy. However, as history records, political science has also been practised by autocratic regimes, suitably adapted to their authoritarian purposes and in the process distinctions between scholars and ideologues have become somewhat blurred.Such then is the context for this volume, the first attempt to review the development and state of political science in nineteen post-communist countries of Central East Europe, some of them within the EU and some not. It is a remarkable achievement in which the editors have assembled a team of twenty-eight authors, all of them senior academic experts in the countries under review, ranging from Russia, Poland and Hungary to Lithuania, Albania and Moldova.