The emergence of politics as a taught discipline at universities in the United Kingdom
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148119873081 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Author | John Craig |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119873081
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2020, Vol. 22(2) 145 –163
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1369148119873081
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
The emergence of politics
as a taught discipline at
universities in the United
Kingdom
John Craig
Abstract
While existing disciplinary histories of political science focus on areas such as the development
of research agendas, establishment of chairs and the founding of subject associations, little work
has been undertaken on the history of teaching and learning. Based on extensive archival work
and use of contemporaneous documents and surveys, it combines data sources, which have not
previously been used in writing the history of political science. These are used to construct a
history of the taught discipline which traces the development of courses and curricula within UK
universities during the 20th century. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to the history
of political science, challenging existing accounts and chronologies of the development of politics
in UK universities, through a more comprehensive account of its diverse origins.
Keywords
disciplinary history, political science, teaching and learning
Introduction
This article explores the emergence of politics as a taught discipline within UK higher
education. While there has been a growing interest in the history of politics as an aca-
demic subject in recent decades, this has predominantly focused on the evolution of ideas
and on institutional developments such as the founding of departments, publication of key
texts and the appointment of professors. It has tended to be a history of ‘great men’ and
‘great books’. By contrast, there has been relatively little research on the educational
aspects of this development, and there has been little written on the emergence of politics
degrees. We know little of when they first appeared, what they constituted, who studied
them and what they learnt.
The aim of this article is to close some of these gaps. It begins with a review of the
existing literature on the history of the discipline in the United Kingdom, identifying key
themes that have emerged from this scholarship and the gaps relating to the history of the
Leeds School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK
Corresponding author:
John Craig, Leeds School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, City Campus, Leeds LS1 3HE, UK.
Email: j.craig@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
873081BPI0010.1177/1369148119873081The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsCraig
research-article2019
Original Article
146 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 22(2)
taught discipline. The article then provides a brief history of the development of political
science teaching in UK universities. This is divided into two sections, the first covering a
period from the 19th century through to 1950, and the second focusing on the period from
1950 to 1970. By this latter date, the discipline had become firmly established within UK
undergraduate provision. The next section of the article discusses some of the reasons for
these patterns of expansion and debates on the content of the politics degree. The article
then concludes with a summary.
Politics and disciplinary history
In recent decades, a significant number of studies have explored the history of political
science. Much of this work has focused on the development of the discipline in the United
States (e.g. Baer et al., 1991; Farr and Seidelman, 1993; Ricci, 1984; Sigelman and
Sanders, 2006), but there has also been work on international developments (such as
Coakley, 2004) and comparative studies (Adcock et al., 2007; Easton et al., 1991, 1995).
Less has been written on the development of the discipline in the United Kingdom, and
as Adcock and Bevir (2005: 1) observed, it is ‘striking that so little work has been done in
Britain on the history of political science in the last forty years’. Johnson (1989) and
Hayward (1991) both provide broad surveys, tracing its development from the political
economy of the early 19th century to its consolidation as a distinct academic discipline
during the 20th century. For Hayward (1991), this is a story of growing professionalisa-
tion, while Johnson (1989: 136) is more critical, arguing that the discipline has been ‘cor-
rupted by the passing show’ of contemporary events and ‘made esoteric by the pursuit of
an inappropriate scientific model’. Other accounts cover shorter periods. Collini et al.
(1983) and Stapleton (1994) focus on the emergence of the idea of political science within
British intellectual life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kavanagh (2003) explores
the development of the discipline in the inter-war period, while Kenny (2004: 569)
focuses on the 1950s and 1960s, the period during which, he argues, it transitioned from
being a ‘loosely constituted community into an institutionally accepted academic
discipline’.
Other studies explore aspects of this story. King (1977) and Wokler (2001), for exam-
ple, focus on professorial appointments. There are also studies of politics within single
universities. The development of politics at the University of Oxford is explored in
Chester (1986) and Hood et al. (2014). Both provide narratives which include issues of
staffing, estates, funding, research and curriculum, set within wider intellectual and insti-
tutional developments. The same is true of accounts of the development of political stud-
ies at the University of Edinburgh (Raab, 2012) and University of Warwick (Grant, 2015),
both of which were produced as part of anniversary celebrations. Likewise, the 25th anni-
versary of the founding of the Political Studies Association (PSA) was marked by a spe-
cial edition of Political Studies in 1975, with papers on the development of the discipline
in the United Kingdom. A history of the association, published to mark its 60th year
(Grant, 2010), also provides extensive coverage of key developments in the discipline.
There are also surveys exploring the intellectual developments of different subfields
(Gamble, 1990; Hayward and Norton, 1986; Hayward et al., 1999).
Together, the existing studies provide a rich account of many aspects of the historical
development of the discipline. It is told largely through the establishment of departments
and Chairs, the publication of books and journals, and the development of key ideas and
research programmes. A number of key events feature prominently in the literature and
To continue reading
Request your trial