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Comment on Moran's ‘Interdisciplinarity and Political Science’

Document Cited in Related
AuthorKenneth McKenzie
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9256.2007.00288.x
Published date01 June 2007
Date01 June 2007
Comment on Moran's ‘Interdisciplinarity and Political Science’ P O L I T I C S : 2 0 0 7 V O L 2 7 ( 2 ) , 1 1 9 – 1 2 2
Controversy
Comment on Moran’s
‘Interdisciplinarity and Political Science’
Kenneth McKenzie
University College Dublin
In his recent article on the reasoning behind interdisciplinary political science, Michael Moran
examines both external factors (such as funding), as well as internal motives (the desire to keep a
discipline alive). He does not acknowledge, however, that political science is in fact likely to be a
poor candidate for interdisciplinary work. In this article, I outline three reasons – training, career
advancement and the self-regulation of the profession – why political science has not adopted an
interdisciplinary direction.
Michael Moran (2006) does an admirable job of addressing the neglected paradox
of why there is much talk about interdisciplinarity but not much evidence that it
has taken root within political science. Moran comments that many of the motives
for interdisciplinarity are external to the profession itself: for example, the funding
regime of the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the ‘rhetoric’
of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) both encourage interdisciplinarity
(Moran, 2006, pp. 73, 76).
Internal forces are somewhat underemphasised by Moran, however. He observes
that disciplines in crisis will turn to interdisciplinarity as a survival strategy, but does
not look in detail at why disciplines may resist such a turn. He acknowledges that
there has been a historical record of interdisciplinarity in the variegated training of
the early father figures of British political science, but, aside from his observation on
the influence of American thinking on the flagship department in Essex, he is less
vocal on why the diverse traditions of British political science have not resulted in
healthy interdisciplinarity. In response, I attempt to sketch out some reasons for the
lack of success in fostering such a research strategy. I detail three main factors which
inhibit genuine interdisciplinarity: training, career advancement and the self-
regulation of the profession. Training and self-regulation are considered by Moran
(2006, p. 76), but I revisit his points and approach them from different angles, while
I propose the factor of career advancement as integral to understanding the lack of
interdisciplinarity.
Training
Doctoral-level training in political science is...

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