In his famous volume on The Future of Political Science, Harold Lasswell argued that the sustained study of government, politics and law was undoubtedly a feature of the first urban civilizations that arose in the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus valleys (1964: 10). It is of course true that the study of political life has been pursued, in one form or another, almost for as long as there has been political life. To demonstrate that political science has a long historical tradition in the Nordic countries does not, however, require the claim that analytical approaches to politics were used in Nordic societies during times long past. This same goal can be achieved by less artificial means, namely by referring to the existence of political science as an independent university discipline. In Sweden, the first chair in the subject was established at the University of Uppsala as early as 1622, and in Finland, at that time a part of Sweden, the first chair was established at Abo Academy some two decades later, in 1640. As an academic discipline political science has a history of more than 350 years in the Nordic countries.

Most of the attempts made so far in Germany to present political science as a discipline in its own right have been seriously impaired by their ignorance of the general debate on the sociology of science and the defensiveness on which arguments are based. However, criteria which put-into perspective a good part of the usual self-accusations can be derived from a comparison with other disciplines, or with the development of this science in other countries. An adequate characterisation has to look for a middle ground between two extremes: namely, on the one hand, the assumption that the topics and theories of a discipline are of an exaggerated importance, as political science tends to believe, and on the other hand, a superficial treatment of the topics of a discipline, which is occasionally to be found in the sociology of science.

The pedigree of political studies in the Netherlands reveals an honorable lineage. Politica was taught formally since 1613 at Leiden University (itself established in 1575), and had been an integral part of rhetoric, philology and philosophy before then. There were explicit Professores Politices before 1622, when Uppsala founded the Johan Skytte Chair of Eloquence and Politics which is often (but apparently erroneously) believed to have been the first chair of political science in Western Europe. The contents of politica taught during the days of the Dutch Republic in Leiden and other universities has been carefully investigated (for a succinct survey in English, see Kossmann, 1963), and the influence of such teaching on universities and political discourse elsewhere in Europe has been amply documented (Oestreich, 1965).

Since the notion of science has acquired a narrower and stricter natural science connotation, those in Britain who have studied political phenomena tend to eschew or be diffidently embarrassed about adopting the label political science. As early as 1933 Ernest Barker set the tone: The English system of political science, so far as we can speak of such a thing, has combined an instinct for actual fact with some sense of the moral foundations on which the actions of States, like all human action, must necessarily be based (Barker, 1934: xix-xx). Insofar as historical fact was the main source of its description and philosophical theory of prescription, the study of politics remained traditional in its methods, unlike the more scientistic social sciences such as economics and sociology.

The guiding hypothesis of this article is that the way in which a scientific discipline organizes and controls its subfields is determined to a large extent by its social situation, and more specifically by its relation to other relevant social fields, above all to the intellectual field. The first two parts of this article delineate the social and historical processes which mave made French political science a profession but not yet a socially legitimate discipline.

Immediately after the second world war, Leoni laid down the essential characteristics of a political science that was to be refounded alongside democracy in Italy (Leoni, 1949-50,1980). Almost twenty years later, Sartori expressed the opinion that Italian political science is just in the process of being born (Sartori, 1967: 699). What can be said forty years later? In order make an assessment of the discipline at the beginning of the 1990s, I feel that the following questions need to be answered: how did the discipline take shape in the 50s and 60s; at the end of the 60s, when it was getting off the ground, how did it succeed in defining itself; what difficulties arose during take-off and how did these affect its subsequent development; how did it grow and become institutionalized; what were its contents during these forty years and how have they evolved; how far were they relevant to the political problems of the day; and finally, what overall assessment can be made?

Geographical peripherality, small size and slow pace of national socioeconomic development have combined to make of Irish political science a young and fragile flower. Since youth and frailty are, however, all too frequently associated with the position of political science in other societies, it is instructive to look at the Irish experience not merely for its own sake but also as an example of one path of development in a fledgling discipline. So highly visible are the political science communities in Scandinavia, the Benelux states and the larger countries of Europe that it is tempting to forget that in most societies globally political science is neither highly developed nor well-established as an autonomous academic discipline; in some, indeed, it does not exist at all.

The evolution and development of political science in Greece should be understood at two analytically separate but closely connected levels: the first conforms to the general trend observable in European and Western nations since the late 19th century and involves the gradual emancipation of systemic social and political inquiry from the tutelage of the legal sciences and its gradual transformation into discrete social science disciplines - political science being one of the last to claim its independence. The second level relates to the Greek historical experience and to the ways in which delayed social and political development combined with the dynamics of nation- and state-building in this country to determine the particular trajectories travelled by the social sciences and, especially, political science on their way to eventual emancipation.

The emergence and initial development of political science in Belgium has been determined by three disciplines (Dewachter, 1974). Public law represents its first historical root, and the first Belgian political scientists were predominantly constitutionalists who subsequently moved into political science. This background was reflected in the large and obligatory law component of political science courses. The general consequence of this is that Belgian political science has had difficulty in integrating behavioural and sociological approaches. More specifically the legal approach has dominated the study of international relations and European integration.

Political Science as an academic discipline was established extremely late in Austria, in spite of intellectual traditions (Johnston, 1972; Schorske, 1980) favouring it. The reasons were:

• - economics was fully developed at the beginning of the 20th century, modelled on the internationally praised Viennese School;

• - the theory and sociology of Law was another discipline highly regarded world-wide for its intellectual quality;

• - political ideas and traditions with an extremely strong impact on European development started in Austria at the turn of the century, especially Austromarxism (Rabinbach, 1985).

In comparative politics, the political system of Switzerland is usually treated as an anomaly, or is passed over in silence. One might also suspect that political science in Switzerland itself enjoys a somewhat anomalous status. The present study is an attempt to characterize the peculiarities of the discipline, in terms both of its historical development and of its present state, along three lines of enquiry:

1. 1) a brief historical sketch, revealing just how much Swiss political science is still in its infancy;

2. 2) a survey of professorships and teaching programmes, showing the fairly modest part played by political science in Swiss universities;

3. 3) a description of the state of research in the field, indicating that the intellectual contribution of political scientists is growing both in quantity and in quality, is attracting more and more attention, but is also the source of increasing controversy.

The sociopolitical situation prevailing in Portugal prior to the coup dtat of 25 April 1974 was anything but conducive to the emergence of an autonomous political science (Stock, 1985). Not only was its appearance hampered by restrictions imposed by the authoritarian regime and the absence of limitative democratic practice, but the nature of the political studies undertaken in Portuguese universities was also considerably affected (Braga Da Cruz-Lucena, 1985).

The emergence of political science as an academic discipline in Spain has been long and difficult. For reasons of historic timing and institutional context, the process has been slower than in other Western European countries.

Political science expanded very rapidly indeed in Western Europe in the 1960s, but most of this activity was contained within, and fragmented by, national boundaries. Links between different national groups and organisations were not created to any great extent, relatively little systematic research of a cross-national comparative kind was carried out, and in the main both teaching and research were predominantly national, not to say parochial. Some political scientists maintained a professional interest in other parts of the globe, but this did not encourage systematic comparative research. Rather, there tended to be a focus by people in one country with an interest in another single country - often in a colonial or ex-colonial country.

There is much to be said for the claim that an academic discipline achieves the status of science when its theories and findings easily transcend national barriers and boundaries. A scientific breakthrough in physics or genetics established almost anywhere in the world will rapidly find its way into the leading American journals and into the everyday research agendas of scientists. It follows that in such disciplines, one professional standard really does exist, and in the non-Communist world, at least, something resembling an international marketplace has developed, not only in ideas but also in personnel.