“Wissenschaftsfreiheit” debated: German parliamentary discourses on an essentially contested concept

Whether it is a question of health, climate policy or international relations with China or Russia, the relationship between truth-producers and guarantors of good democratic practice has never seemed as fragile as in the last decade. In fact, the freedom of expression of scientists has long been debated in both the political and academic spheres, in Germany as well as in many European liberal democracies (Wilholt 2012; Altbach 2001). Enshrined in the German Basic Law, “Wissenschaftsfreiheit” can now be considered one of the most valuable and uncompromising goods (Article 5(3) GG). However, its meanings have recently been subject to numerous adjustments depending on the actors, places or disciplines involved, and have thus become a divisive political issue (Fecher et al. 2021). At the heart of these definitional struggles, research and knowledge production activities in the social sciences in particular seem to be at stake (Scott 2019). In such a context, to what extent do these recent conceptual shifts around “Wissenschaftsfreiheit” shed light on a radicalisation of social science knowledge use? The German case seems particularly interesting for dealing with “Wissenschaftsfreiheit” as an essentially contested concept (Gallie 1956). Firstly, for structural reasons, as "the political competences for education and research are located in the cultural sovereignty of the Länder" (Ausschuss-Drs. 18(18)304e). But also for situational reasons, since Germany was the setting for the founding of the Netzwerk Wissenschaftsfreiheit in 2020, an association of conservative academics who "oppose all efforts to restrict the freedom of research and teaching for ideological motives" (official website) and who have since found an echo among MPs. Considering representative bodies as an ideal-typical site for institutionalised agonistic political confrontations (Mouffe 1994), the proposed paper will draw on a rhetorical analysis of the transcripts of Bundestag debates (Wiesner et al. 2017) and on a content analysis of its press releases between 2012 and 2022. This desk-based investigation work will be complemented by some semi-structured interviews with German parliamentarians. Based on this multiple approach design, I will try to understand which socio-discursive imaginaries (Charaudeau 2005) German parliamentarians refer to when addressing the issue of “Wissenschaftsfreiheit” for social scientists, according to the definition they give to it. I will show how the issue is subject to left-right polarisation as it is addressed - albeit in different ways - by MPs from all political parties. I plan to prove, however, that these constant definitional variations are not only a function of purely argumentative needs for winning rhetoric. In fact, parliamentarians' use of the term also seems to shift in a particular ideological direction, namely a radical-conservative one. In this way, I hope to understand the mechanisms by which an issue that was initially raised mainly by left-wing MPs has gradually been reclaimed over time by members of Germany's extreme right-wing party. In doing so, I will try to identify the new centre of the debate when it comes to deliberating the roles and functions assigned to the social sciences.