Rainer Eisfeld’s book highlights the merits of socio-historical research into topics infrequently covered by mainstream political science. Directing attention to the need for carefully scrutinizing the convenient ‘truths’ of established – post-Nazi, post-Communist – political narratives, its chapters encourage reflection of the discipline’s history and state of the art. A companion volume to the 2012 book entitled Radical Approaches to Political Science: Roads Less Traveled (also published by Barbara Budrich), this collection is likewise based on an approach to political science informed by a theory of participatory pluralism and grounded in history. The chapters focus on the discipline’s fragmentation and its retreat from public debate; on the varying roles of political science and international relations as champions of more or less democracy; on normative and analytical concepts developed by Hannah Arendt, Klaus von Beyme, and Robert A. Dahl; on the deconstruction of the ‘Peenemünde Legend’ about the unspoiled rule of science at the Third Reich’s missile development center; on reasons for the Peenemünde engineers’ actual complicity in the exploitation of concentration camp labor to mass-produce their V-2 missile. ‘Rainer Eisfeld’s leadership in the fields of pluralism and analysis of the discipline in the International Political Science Association means that he has quite a background to share with us in this, his most recent, collection of essays.’ John Trent
About the author
Rainer Eisfeld, Professor emeritus of Political Science at Osnabrück University, Germany. Rainer Eisfeld has long served as a member of the Buchenwald/ Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial’s Board of Trustees and, in recent years, also of the International Political Science Association’s Executive Committee. He taught at UCLA as a Visiting Professor.
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