The contributions of Jean A. Laponce to political science

Published date01 November 2018
Date01 November 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118805358
Subject MatterReview Article
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118805358
International Political Science Review
2018, Vol. 39(5) 690 –701
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512118805358
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The contributions of Jean
A. Laponce to political science
William Safran
Department of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Abstract
Jean A. Laponce contributed significantly to the study of political science, particularly in the fields of French
and comparative politics, pluralism, the meaning of right and left, and the politics of ethnicity and language.
His most influential writings focused on the politics of multilingual societies. He examined the place of
language from three perspectives: the territorial imperative—a bounded formal space providing safety and
dominance for a single language; the problems of nonterritorially based linguistic minorities; and the rivalries
and conflicts between languages in contact. Finally, he dealt with the survival of minority languages and the
fate of languages globally. This review article evaluates Laponce’s contributions to political science.
Keywords
Bilingualism, ethnie, lingua franca, multiculturalism, territorialism
Introduction: Laponce and political science
Jean A. Laponce contributed significantly to the study of the politics of language. Founder of the
Research Committee on Politics and Language of the International Political Science Association
(IPSA) and author of numerous publications on language regimes, the politics of multilingual
societies, and the position of languages on a global level, he made the place of language an impor-
tant subfield of political science. As a product of the French educational system and a scholar of
French politics, Laponce’s interest in multilingualism and, more broadly, in ethnic politics would
seem perverse; but he was not a Jacobin. He examined bilingualism in terms of both democratic
representation and linguistic justice—and from the perspective of comparative politics. In focusing
on the spatial dimension of language, he pointed to the connection of political science to geogra-
phy. This connection had been emphasized by André Siegfried, a professor at the Institut d’Études
Politiques in Paris, whose writings greatly influenced Laponce.1
Laponce’s contributions were not limited to the politicolinguistic domain. His earliest publica-
tions focus on theoretical approaches to political science, the politics of France in general, and its
Corresponding author:
William Safran, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, UCB 333, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
Email: Safran@colorado.edu
805358IPS0010.1177/0192512118805358International Political Science ReviewSafran
research-article2018
Review Article

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