Pieniä säröjä, suuria huolia:

valtio-opin evaluaatiosta ja yhteisöstä Suomessa 1980-luvulla

Kirjoittajat

• Ilpo Koskinen
• Juri Mykkänen
• Matti S. Sarmela

Abstrakti

Several rather gloomy reviews stating the crisis in Finnish political science have been written by notable members of the research community during the 1980s. One line of reasoning behind this judgment emphasizes structural reasons such as the fragmentation, smallness and demographic features of the community. The perception of a crisis has also been explained by such psychological phenomena as a loss of intellectual stimulation. These factors are evaluated against data on the community. The data on the core community does not support fragmentation hypotheses. The small size of the Finnish research community seems to contribute indirectly to a feeling of crisis by forcing several diverse trends in political science into a researcher’s field of perception. This may result in difficulties in giving shape to this discipline. It seems that psychological factors related to smallness offer a better explanation of the perception of a crisis than either structural or psychological factors by themselves. Further research on this hypothesis is needed.