Between Science and Ideology. The Strategic Uses of Political Science in Austrian Parliamentary Debates

In Austria, the history of modern political science defined as social science (in contrast to philosophy or legal studies), began with the founding of the Institute of Advanced Studies in 1967. During the 1970s political science was established as a university degree and today, there are three universities which offer a curriculum in political science, Vienna, Innsbruck, and Salzburg. A preliminary scan of the parliamentary records, searching for politikwiss* and politolog* (political science/scientist) reflects this development. The first hits are from the late 1960s and especially in the 1970s the majority of references to political science discuss the implementation of the university degree. Up until now, politikwiss* appears 141 times and politolog* 164 times in the parliamentary records of plenary debates in the Austrian National Council and the Federal Council. Beside debates about university studies, there are two further kinds of reference to political science, one, referring to persons who are political scientists, and another referring to political science research. Both kinds of reference are applied in strategic ways by parliamentarians in order to legitimize or de-legitimize a political standpoint. Addressing political scientists or political science research in plenary debate is frequently accompanied by ideological allocations to so-called political camps. Since the 1980s a growing number of MPs have studied political science and use their own competence to reinforce their argument. As members of the legislative body they are disadvantaged compared to lawyers. However, legal studies and their image of jurisprudential neutrality are useless in ideological dispute. This paper investigates the strategic uses of political science in plenary debates. The aim is to highlight the changing image of political science in parliamentary discourse ranging from pure ideology to objective science, hypothesizing that this development is not a linear process, but varies depending on power relations in parliament.