herminio martins soc scientists rulers

A landscape of the post-soviet amnesia in Russia | 281

How a few social scientists cameto hold top offices of state

Hermínio Martins*

A sociologist-President

The fact that a world-renowned academic sociologist, co-authorof one of the most influential social science texts of the last fivedecades, on the Theory of Dependency, in the Third World andthe First World, and not least in the USA, with an impressiveinternational academic curriculum, Fernando Henrique Cardoso,became President of Brazil, being twice elected in a free demo-cratic process, has struck many people as a singular, perhapsunique occurrence in political history of nations in the twentiethcentury. Possibly if it had happened in a smaller, less consequen-tial country, it would have attracted far less notice, and mighthave been summarily dismissed as the kind of oddity that canarise in the political processes of minor countries. Be that as itmay, it was consideration of this case that originated the presenttext, where we look at a number of careers that bear some degreeof structural similarity to this one and the kinds of socio-politicalcircunstances under which they have taken place.

* Emeritus Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford HonoraryResearch Fellow Institute of Social Sciences University of Lisbon; [email protected]

282 | Homenagem ao Professor Doutor Adelino Torres

Delimiting the scope of the inquiry

Attempting to see this occurrence in a comparative perspec-tive, I will look, in this brief account, at a number of cases wheresocial scientists (sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists,economists, and, for the purposes of this study, also economic his-torians), have come to hold the top political offices of Presidentsof Republics or Prime Ministers, in the twentieth century (the Presi-dency can carry little political power in republican parliamentarysystems, certainly in normal times, but even so it is formally thehighest office of State; in semi-presidential systems or rathersemi-presdential circumstances it may carry real power).

It could be argued that lawyers (or “jurists”, in the Continen-tal European parlance, which would include university Professorsof Law), perhaps the single most numerous category in suchposts in Europe and Latin America (and not unknown elsewhere),should be counted as a variety of social scientists, especially beforethe disciplinary identies of sociology, political science, interna-tional relations, etc., were consolidated and institutionalized inseparate departments in universities (sociology could appearunder a variety of rubrics, such as social economics, social studiesor social philosophy): certainly some, in terms of the subjects andapproaches of their doctoral dissertations, could be counted assuch (work which in a number of cases could easily have beendone as history, applied economics or political science), but in thisessay I will not include them as a genus. University Professors ofLaw, though, filled many ministerial appointments in practicallyall Continental European states between 1900 and 1914 (a timewhen the status, prestige, and relative remuneration within theState system of university professors in general were at theirhighest in such countries, the Geheimrat in Germany and theircounterparts in Austria being good examples1), and to a lesser

1 The Polish-American sociologist F. Znaniecki has some interestingremarks on the status of university professors in this period in his classic work

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extent between the two world wars, in democracies and dictator-ships, though none went on to become Prime Ministers or Presi-dents. Lawyers, i.e. graduates from Faculties of Law, as has beentypically the case in Continental Europe, whether or not theyexercised the profession for long periods of time, rather thantenured academic teachers of Law (including under this rubricphilosophers of law, an important scholarly area in Germany,Latin Europe, and Latin America) often pursued extremely suc-cessful political careers in Europe and the Americas throughoutthe twentieth century, holding the Presidency on numerous occa-sions in Europe and the Americas.2 They were probably the lar-gest single occupational category among holders of ministerialoffice in both Europe (including in this case the U.K.) and LatinAmerica throughout the twentieth century, amongst civilians, that

The social role of the man of knowledge (N.Y. 1940), referring in particular to inter-war Poland (in which country they had a status and salary comparable to that ofGovernment Ministers, as was the case also in a number of other countries,including inter-war Cuba, and at least for a time Salazar´s Portugal, as can beascertained from consulting the published data of the State budget for the 1930sand 40s). University professors, especially, though not exclusively, in the Facultyof Law (where applied or descriptive economci studies wer eoten pursued) were,in principle, regarded as ministrables, as a pool from which authoritarian regimesin particular could draw, in the absence of legal political parties and openpoltiical party competition, so much that the term catedráticocracia (rule byholders of University Chairs) or its equivalent in other languages, was coined inseveral countries. In France the Third Republic was known as the république desprofesseurs. Concerning authoritarian Portugal Unamuno spoke in 1936 ofthe”fascism of the Chair” (an expression coined by analogy with the late 19th c.German expression”socialists of the Chair”), though one can also speak of an”empire of professors” (António Costa Pinto :”O império do professor: Salazar e aelite ministerial do Estado Nobo (1933-45)” Análise Social vol. XXXV (157) 2000.

2 It is interesting to note that two of the most significant populist dictatorsof the secon half of the twentieth century, Colonel Perón and Colonel Nasser,both originally wanted to become lawyers, but family circunstances led them todesist, and join the military. Many military officers throughout the world, drawnfrom less prvileged social strata, will have had similar experiences.


is, as military officers often held several ministerial posts in eachCabinet, even in liberal polities (they could include militaryengineers of military physicians)3. Nor will I include physicians(medical doctors), who have been prominent in the political elitesof many countries, in Europe and Latin America, though oftentheir work in social medicine and public health might in justify tosome degree their inclusion among social scientists, such asAllende, for example (similar considerations would apply topracticioners of psychiatry, especially social psychiatry4).

The cases I am most interested in, for the purposes of thisessay, are those of social scientists who pursued an academiccareer of distinction for a significant number of years before ente-ring politics, or being appointed or elected Presidents of theRepublic or Prime Ministers (even though they may have harbou-red political ambitions in that period, they concentrated on scho-larly work for a reasonable number of years)5. I am not thereforeprimarily concerned with those holding an academic post for theminimum number of years simply in order to add to their port-folio of qualifications or credentials (in the sociological sense),their c.v. or cursus honorum without producing a significant scho-larly oeuvre or those who, at any rate, did not pursue an academiccareer for a significant length of time, for whatever reasons, andentered full-time politics instead, or whose commitment to party

3 Dahrendorf´s remark that the public schools in England are the counter-part to the Faculties of Law as avenues to polical office should be amendedslightly, in order to mention the role of Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge Uni-versities) and, within Oxford, the degree known as PPE. Several Prime Ministershave followed this route, sometimes even without going to public school. Theprobable next Prime Minister of the UK, as I write, David Cameron, is a PPEgraduate (as well being educated at the most prestigious public school, Eton).

4 The psychiatrist Frantz Fanon’s writings were very influential throughoutwhat was then known as the Third World among radicals and nationalists.

5 I have restricted the scope of this paper to full-fledged Sates, and will nottherefore consider holders of top political offices in such areas as Quebec,Catalonia, Scotland or Wales.


politics and to a political career was evident, even if, for financialor other reasons they still taught part-time or intermittently atone university or another. There are cases which may be difficultto interpret, and there will be legitimate disagreement on how toclassify them, but on the whole the analytical distinction seemsworthwile as a point of departure in the inquiry. Max Weber gavetwo famous lectures at the end of WWI on Wissenschaft als Beruf ePolitik als Beruf, which triggered considerable controversy andremain thought-provoking to this day6. The peculiar fascinationof at least some of the cases I will be considering is that theyexhibit a kinf of dual vocation, not the hybrid the “professorialprophets” that Weber castigated so vehemently (passionate as hewas about politics, and not without a degree of political influenceat certain politicasl conjuntures), but of two distinct careers overtime. To be sure, few cases are as striking as that of FernandoHenrique Cardoso in exhibiting in clear-cut fashion the twovocations in sequence, with excellence in both.

Some cases are clearly “deviant” in terms of the criteria sti-pulated, but are mentioned for the sake of illustration or becauseof their historical interest (or, if we take the criteria indicated asforming a “constructed type” in a neo-Weberian fashion, of their“negative utility”).

If in temporal terms we have restricted ourselves to the twen-tieth century, as previously noted, and in geographical terms myexamples have been drawn mostly from Europe and the Americas.There is no claim that the cases I mention provide an exhaustivelist, though I hope they will include the most prominent ones.

The first case

The first case I can think of of a social scientist attaining atop political office in the twentieth century is that of Woodrow

6 See”Max Weber´s”Science as a vocation””which I co-edited with IrvingVelody and P.Lassman, London, 1989.


Wilson, a Professor of Politics and author of articles and books oncomparative government, elected Presdent of the American Poli-tical Science Association, who was twice elected President of theUnited States (1913 -1921)7. He became nationally known duringhis tenure as President of Princeton University that Wilson, andon his resignation he ran for election as Governor of the State ofNew Jersey and won, in 1910. Subsequently he became the Demo-cratic Party’s candidate for President in an unusually fraughtParty Convention, and won election in 1913, being relelected in1917. One might even say it was a fluke that he was nominated,in that he had not built up a following over the previous years bypursuing a normal political career or courting key Party figuresover a number of years. Since then, hardly any social scientists,not even economists, have come close to being nominated as Pre-sidential candidates for either of the two major parties, or evenbeen talked about seriously, in the USA, though two engineers(Hoover, Carter) became Presidents, though unlucky ones, neitherbeing re-elected...8

7 There are, to be sure, a number of figures who, without being academics,deserve to appear in comprehensive histories of political thought, in a fairly inclu-sive sense, who held the office of Prime Minister in the U.K. (the conservativeleader and Prime Minister Lord Salisbury being a case in point, a recent journalof conservative thought in Britain being called The Salisbury Review, though manywould wish to include the autodidact Winston Churchill). The same would holdin the case of authors of philosophical works, who were not academics, thoughthey enjoyed recognition as significant thinkers in their time, the most salientbeing Arthur Balfour, another Conservative Prime Minister, who again earns atleast footnotes in histories of philosophy of the period, though none of his oncewell-known works (he wrote at considerable length on questions ofepistemology) appears to be in print. Masaryk, whom we shall look at latercould easily be double-counted as a philospher as well as a sociologist, whobecame the first President of Czechoslovakia.

8 Wilson remains the only U.S. President to have previously earned a Ph.D. The economist Clark Kerr, President of the University of California, wastalked about as a possible Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party butthe student rebellion that shook Berkeley in 1968-9 put paid to this prospect.It would have been the third instance of someone who had become the President


A key pattern: social scientists and new States

The great majority of cases of social scientists (other thaneconomists) reaching the top offices subsequently throughout thetwentieth century have occurred in newly emergent polities,mostly either following the break-up of dynastic Empires withinEurope in the wake of WWI and later, after 1945, in the decoloni-zation of European overseas empires subsequent to WWII.

That is to say, in circumstances where there were not esta-blished national political elites to draw on, so recruitment tohighest offices of State was fairly open to figures other thanprofessional politicians. Such situations provided openings forprestigious figures of scholarship or the arts, especially theperforming arts, above all internationally known ones, sometimesapolitical, except in the sense of being publicly identified with thenational cause in pre-independence days, to be elected orappointed as Presidents or Prime Ministers (the choice of theworld-famous pianist and composer Ignacy Paderewski as

of a major university being nominated in the USA for a major political party,though of course General Eisenhower, President of Columbia University at thetime of his nomination for the Presidency, had not been an academic (exceptinsofar as he had taught at a military academy). However, the case of HubertHumphrey, who had been a instructor in political science at a university, afterearning a master´s degree, and enrolling in a PhD program, though he nevercompleted it, deserves mention: he did become Vice-President, but was defeatedin the Presidential elections when Lyndon Johnson decided not to run. Probablyno Democratic candidate could have won that election, at the time of the Viet-nam War. The U.S. Congress has had a number of former academics, andperhaps now that a number of academic scientists have become millionnaires asa result ot their becoming scientist-entrepreneurs, it may recruit some more,bearing in mind the prevalence of millionaires in the Senate and to a lesserextent in the House of Representatives (still, in a country with thirteen millionmillionaires there is a large pool to draw on, millionnaire academics or scientistsbeing very small subsets of this population). I have not considered Presidentialcandidates put forward by minor parties, either in the instance of the US or ofother countries.


Prime Minister of Poland in 1919, in his time a world celebrity9).Exceptional circumstances may arise, such as that of governmentsin exile, like that of the Spanish Republic or that of the PolishRepublic after 1939, and in the case of Poland again after 1946,where appointments to these positions may be made outside thenormal political criteria, and distinguished scholars may beappointed faute de mieux, as it were. But in this essay we aremostly concerned with relatively self-determining or emergentpolities10.

Within Europe, the emergence of Czechoslovakia in the wakeof the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, led to the acces-sion of T. Masaryk who had been prominent for some time as aleader of the Czechslovak independence movement, as Presidentof the Republic and indeed “Father of the Nation”. Masaryk,though a philosopher primarily, had published studies of a socio-logical character, such as a much cited work on suicide, and wasoften characterized as a sociologist. His international reputationas a scholar and publicist was certainly a factor in his accession:his participation in political movements to some extent reinforcedhis other assets, of intellectual prestige and international fame,valuable to a new country seeking recognition on the world stagein various ways11. A greater oddity was the election of another

9 This is perhaps truly unique. Especially valuable to the national cause asa friend of Woodrow Wilson. According to some sources, he was again PrimeMinister of the Polish government in exile in 1940-41.

10 Einstein was approached with the request that he should acceptbecoming the first President of the new State of Israel. He declined to leavePrinceton, much to the relief of practical Israeli politicians like Ben-Gurion. Israelmight be considered as an instance of the states emerging or being created fromthe break-up of European overseas empires, in this case that of Britain, thoughearlier its territory had been part of the Ottoman dynastic empire.

11 Karl Renner is a case that deserves mention as a social scientist withimportant scholarly publications ton is credit,who came to occupy the top officesof State without an academic career in a University or research institute.A lawyer by training, he earned his livelihood as a librarian to the Parliamentof the Dual Monarchy. His research and publications already before WWI


sociologist, at any rate a former Professor of Sociology at the oldand famous Charles University, Eduard Beneš, who, as followerof Masaryk’s social throught, and his close collaborator, succeededMasaryk as President of Czechoslovakia (1935-38) and assumedthe office again after exile in the U.K. during WWII, during 1945-48.Attempting to be neutral, he in fact assisted in the process whichled to the Communist take-over of the country, with the conse-quent destruction of the democratic political forces.

Probably the most striking cluster of cases of social scientistsassuming top political offices occurred in the aftermath of decolo-nization, with the independence of former colonies of Europeanpowers, above all in Africa, but also in the Caribbean, in the 1960sespecially, having been leaders or prominent figures of indepen-dence movements.

Jomo Kenyatta, born and bred in Kenya, entered universityat the age of 41, earned a Ph. D. in social anthropology at theLondon School of Economics under no less a figure thanMalinowski (he was one of his last students at LSE, before he leftfor the USA), the revised thesis being published as a book (FacingMount Kenya) in 1938, with a foreword by his supervisor. He didnot subsequently publish any scholarly work. He returned toKenya after an absence of 15 years and subsequently was arrestedand tried during the Mau Mau emergency and imprisoned foreight years under British rule. After his release he became PrimeMinister and shortly after, having engineered a change in theConstitution, President, executive President (being both head ofstate, head of government and commander-in-chief of the armed

addressed sociological topics. His best-known work on The institutions of privateproperty carried out what be called a Marxist but non-Leninist sociologicalanalyis of law, and indeed the English-language translation was published in theInternational Library of Sociology founded and edited until his death by KarlMannheim and has remained a standard reference. With the break-up of theAustro-Hungarian Empire, as a prominent figure of the social democratic party,and a master conciliator, he became PM in 1919, and after WWII the firstPresident of the Second Austrian Republic, one of the few eminent figures in thecountry not having been tainted with Nazi associations.


forces) of newly independent Kenya. As a Kikyu, he was a mem-ber of the majority “tribe” or ethnie, and he had been sufficientlyclose to the independence movement, that together with his intel-lectual standing, he came to be chosen for the post. Informallycrowned as “Father of the Nation”, he held it till his death in 1978(one of the first of the African Presidents for Life, in effect or indenomination, that proliferated in later decades). For the lasteight years of his life the country was a one-party state andKenyatta was the only candidate in the presidential elections.From our point of view he is a “deviant” case in that he did notpursue an academic career before entering full-time politics, buthis scholarly credentials were certainly important in the attain-ment of his political leadership.

K. A. Busia, a native of Ghana (the Gold Coast as it was calledthen) became Prime Minister in independent Ghana from 1969-72,after the end of the Nkrumah era. Having already taken anOxford first degree, PPE, he earned a D.Phil in Social Anthropo-logy from Oxford in 1947, at the time when Radcliffe-Brown wasdirector, published as a book in 1951 (The position of the chief in themodern political system of Ashanti12). Unlike Kenyatta, he went onto publish a number of other scholarly works of an anthropolo-gical kind: he was the first African to hold a Chair in the Uni-versity College of the Gold Coast (one of the few considered inthis Note to pursue a normal academic career, in this case both inGhana and in Oxford, where he was a Senior Associate Memberof St Antony’s College in his years of exile). In his case he hadbeen involved in party and parliamentary politics for a number ofyears, so that his intellectual eminence was less of a factor than inthe other African cases, his party leadership counting more perhaps.He was ousted by a military coup (and he had been brought to hisoffice by the military coup that overthrew Nkrumah), and appearsnot to have resumed scholarly activities during the rest of his life.

12 The subtitle was:”A study of the influence of contemporary socialchanges on Ashanti political institutions”.


In the post-colonial world, outside Africa, we have the caseof Eric Williams, a native of Trinidad, an undergraduate at Oxford,where he read History, being awarded a First, he later did gra-duate work in economic history in the same university. His chiefwork, Capitalism and Slavery (based on his Oxford D. Phil.,accepted in 1938), was published in 1944 in the USA (it was notpublished in the UK for another twenty years)13. It has beenrecurrently debated to the present day, and was certainly alandmark in the relevant historiography (unlike the theses ofKenyatta or Busia, it was not about his own country specifically,except as part of Caribbean history, but in a way on internationalpolitical economy, and those theses have not provoked the samekind of persistent historiographical controversy). Williams, withhis Oxford doctorate, wanted to pursue an academic career, but,unable to do so in the UK, where there was perhaps a racial fac-tor counting against him, he emigrated to the USA in 1939, wherehe taught at a leading Afro-American university, HowardUniversity, though he published little of comparable scope andoriginality after his remarkable book, which enjoyed aconsiderable reputation among African intellectuals associatedwith Pan-African or national African independence movements.He returned to his country, in its last years as a colonial depen-dency, in 1948, and he was very active as an independent lecturerand publicist, leading to the publication of a history of theCaribbean, a novel synthesis, of definite scholarly value14, as wellin party politics. In newly independent Trinidad, or, strictlyspeaking, Trinidad and Tobago, as a figure of internationalstanding, indefatigable in his educational and political activities

13 It was published by the University of North Carolina Press. The subtitle(which the work lacks) could have been something like”British capitalism andCaribbean slavery”. The D. Phil thesis was entitled”The economic aspects ofWest Indian slave trade and slavery”.

14 Professor Robin Cohen of Oxford University has emphasised this point(private communication).


since his return, he became Prime Minister, and his astutenessand ability to play the political game in an ethnically dividedsociety, and to handle massive discontents and the surge of“Black Power” which nearly swept him from power, kept him inthe office till his death (he held the post of Prime Ministerwithout interruption from 1956 to 1981), and even acquired theinformal title of “Father of the Nation”, like Kenyatta, who hadpreceded him also in his life-presidency.

Another case that would deserve to be listed here, had he notbeen assassinated, was that of the Mozambican Eduardo Mon-dlane (1920-1969). He obtained a scholarship to study in the USA,entered Oberlin College at the age of 31, graduated there inanthropology and sociology15, and subsequently earned a docto-rate in sociology at Northwestern University in 1960, havingspent a year at Havard as a visiting scholar in the meantime (histhesis, never published in toto or in part, was not on an Africantopic, but on role conflict16). He taught for a year at Syracuse Uni-versity and worked as a United Nations official, but returnedpermanently to Africa in 1962. His intellectual eminence andAmerican connections, amongst other factors, undoubtedlysecured a call to him to return to Africa to lead the movement forthe independence of Mozambique which was then preparing tostart the armed struggle (at that time it had not proclaimed itselfa Marxist-Leninist organization, committed to “scientificsocialism” and Mondlane, although a socialist, did not subscribeto a Marxist creed). It is still the ruling party today, more thanforty years later, FRELIMO, enjoying since 1975 a monopoly ornear-monopoly of political power. Mondlane was assassinated inTanzania, during the war for independence (initiated in 1964),through what agency is still not entirely clear. He would undoub-tedly have become the first President of the new Republic ofMozambique after independence had he lived, though one cannot

15 Among his teachers there were two well-known American sociologists,George Simpson and J. Milton Yinger.

16 I have not had access to this thesis, nor do I know anyone who has.


tell whether he would have become another President for Life orwould have chosen to only hold the office for a couple of terms orso, or whether he would have moved towards a less repressivepost-colonial regime than the one that was installed. Anyway, hewould have been another of the tiny roll of sociologists to havebecome Presidents, most of whom outside the normal parametersof democratic politics17.

I have referred to Presidents, but sociologists have not beenPrime Ministers, though in recent years a significant number ofsociologists have held ministerial office in either presidential sys-tems or parliamentary or semi-presidential systems18.

17 Mondlane and Kenyatta have both had universities named after them.The intellectual distinction and prominence as public figures of Busia andWilliams would have warranted similar memorialization. Colonial liberationmovements were often headed by intellectuals in their early phases, withacademic experience in the metropoles (often after attending mission schools inthe colonies), where they in contact with members of other liberation movements(there were important clusters of such persons at various times in London andParis) and established links with influential persons and organizations thatwould prove helpful in various ways to the movements and the newlyindependent countries (“networking”, it would be called later). Some indeedcomprised significant numbers of intellectuals and Western-educated persons intheir cadres, but the prominent figures would often be writers (a surprisingnumber of poets amongst them) rather than technically qualified (somecombined a profession with literary gifts and achievment, such as the medicaldoctor and poet Agostinho Neto, head of the MPLA, which became the rulingparty in Angola). That Mondlane became a sociologist was in a way an anomalyin terms of the kind of academic fields chosen by these elites between the 1930sand 1950s: sociology only became fashionable later. But then Mondlane went forhis university education to the US, where sociology was well-established

18 There have been a number of cases of sociologists (as well as scholars ofother disciplines in the social sciences) appointed as Ministers in the last coupleof decades in a number of Western countries, some indeed being elected toParliament as well, but they are not considered in detail here. But many of thecases –not all– represent the coincidence of a young democracy with the recentrise of a new academic discipline with a certain cachet of modernity in the


The resurgent states of Communist Europe especially thosethat had been incorporated in the USSR in 1939, provided anotherensemble of polities which became independent, as a result of thebreakdown of the Soviet Union. In fact, very few social scientistsachieved the top offices of state in such countries since 1989/91.The only case known to me, not so much of a social scientist interms of the disciplines I listed, but close enough, of a psycholin-guist with a strong research interest in folklore and nationalidentity is the former President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga.A refugee in Canada, where she lived for 45 years, she became aProfessor at the University of Montreal, with numerous researchpublications to her credit during her tenure. Her focus on Latvianfolklore enable her at the same time to keep in touch with theLatvian diaspora. She returned to Latvia in 1998, and within ayear was elected President as an independent (few have returnedfrom such a decades-long exile to such an accolade in their homecountry), and re-elected for a second term in 2002. A convincedEuropeanist she played a significant role in the country´srapprochement with the European Union. She is also the onlywoman I am able to list in this paper (and highly critical of thescacrity of women in top jobs in the EU).

The opportunities of economists in democracies and dictator-ships for reaching the top offices of State in the twentiethcentury: two patterns

Of all categories of social scientists, economists would seemto have the best chances of reaching at least the office of Prime

university systems of the countries concerned. Cases of sociologists who haveheld Ministerial office in the last two decades known to me include FranciscoWeffort (Brazil), Michael Meacher (U.K.), José Maravall (Spain), António Barreto(Portugal), Augusto Santos Silva (Portugal) and Maria Lurdes Rodrigues (Portu-gal), not to mention the earlier instance of Ralf Dahrendorf in Germany if wecount being junior foreign minister in 1969 in the German Federal Republicbefore he left to join the European Commission. There may well have beenothers in other European or Latin American countries. Sociologists have alsobecome Secretaries of State in these countries, and doubtless others.


Minister. Again, we restrict our universe to those who haveenjoyed a distinguished academic careers or at least served ineconomic research institutes prior to ministerial appointments.There seem to be two kinds of cases amongst the economists whohave attained the office of Prime Minister: (1) those who arecatapulted (or perhaps one could say “parachuted”) into theoffice via the sponsorship of a “king-making” entity, whichaccording to the historical or national circumstances, may be themilitary (corporately our through factions within it), the dominantChurch, a major political dynasty, economic lobbies, top bankers,media moguls, etc.19, and (2) those who enter normal politics afterachieving eminence in their discipline, in democracies, andsucceed in being elected leaders of political parties, or at leastachieve prominence in them (of course these two patterns couldapply to social scientists attaining top offices of State in general,but economists have been the most favoured with the PrimeMinistership, certainly in Europe). To be sure, there will be mixedcases, such as those in which sponsorship of the kind noted wasvital initially to enter the political arena but the economists/socialscientists in question then proceeded to be elected Party leadersand subject themselves to competitive national popular elections,and win office through that route (the case of A. Papandreou,which we refer to below).

In the first type of case, it may arise most likely in a militarydictatorship. An example was Salazar who after teaching andresearch, with a number of scholarly publications, was essentiallybrought to power sponsored by the Church and with the supportof important segments of the military (it is true that many formeruniversity professors had held ministerial posts since 1910, partlybecause of the demise of the previous parliamentary political elite).Even though he belonged to a minor political party, standing for

19 I have listed institutions which have been alleged to have played thisrole in various historical accounts (some perhaps rather doubtful) for a numberof countries, especially in dictatorships or the aftermath of authoritarian rule.


the Church interest, it was not because of the importance of thisconfessional party of which he was not the leader, that he wasappointed Minister of Finance with exceptional powers. Throughthe exercise of these powers he gained influence and prestige andbecame Prime Minister and in effect the ruler of a civilian-mili-tary dictatorship from 1932 to his illness and incapacity (or“political death”) in 1968.

In military dictatorships in the post-1945 period in LatinAmerica, or better post-1960 period when a turn to more modern--oriented military dictatorships took place many economists wereappointed Ministers of Finance without any previous politicalexperience or affiliations, picked out directly from universities,amongst those willing to serve a dictatorship, to be sure, at leastunder certain conditions like being given carte blanche to imple-ment ambitious programmes of monetary, fiscal and other modesof economic reform, often via stiff doses of drastic “shock therapy”or “surgery”, and closing their eyes to repressive practices, thebanning of free trade unions, arbitrary imprisonment, systematictorture, etc. taking place at the same time. We may note at this pointthat the term “technocrat” came to enjoy widespread currency inconnnexion with this category in Latin America and elsewhere,though in a different sense from the word originally had, when itwas coined in the USA in connexion with the role of engineersand not economists, in public life and especially in rescuing theeconomy from crisis and stagnation through the promotion oftechnological innovation and implementation, especially in theenergy field: they might better be called “econocrats”20. But eventhe most successful of these Ministers of Finance, Delfim Netto inBrazil, an academic economist, under whose auspices the highestrates of economic growth the country has ever experienced before

20 The British political scientist Peter Self coined this term in connexionwith the pretensions of cost-benefit analysis in the determination of public policy,which have caused much harm to the public interest and to environmental pro-tection.


or since were attained for six consecutive years (the years of theBrazilian “economic miracle” as well as of the armed struggle andthe state terror, from 1968 to 1974), to whom therefore the militarydictatorship owed a special debt, never rose any higher, eventhough he did entertain hopes of becoming President (there was nooffice of Prime Minister in a presidential system)21. None of the“Chicago boys” elsewhere made it either, though in some casestheir policies did result in or coincide with fairly high rates of eco-nomic growth, if at the expense of not insignificant social andenvironmental costs (in others they were disastrous in every way,leading to financial collapse and exacting terrible social costs). Evenin a non-dictatorial situation, too, economists may be called directlyfrom the groves of academe to play a high role in politics. There wasat least the case of Andreas Papandreou, who had been living inthe USA for quite a number of years, having graduated from Har-vard, and become Professor of Economics (and Chairman of theDepartment) at Berkeley, though he also held Professorships ofEconomics at various other North American universities, being arather peripatetic academic. He was asked by his father, the headof the family’s political dynasty, and leader of a major politicalparty, to return to Greece, which he did in 1959, having lived in theUS since 1938 where he had become a US citizen, and becameassistant Prime Minister, in effect, though he was also elected toParliament for the first time. Arrested and exiled again, he becamePrime Minister in 1981, having founded and headed the SocialistParty, reelected in 1985 and again in 1993. The dynastic factor hereis a distinguishing feature of his trajectory22.

In normal democratic politics, in Europe, as in the Americas,quite a number of academic economists have been appointed

21 It is true that his second run as Minister of Finance did not meet withmuch success.

22 His son has become Prime Minister (the current incumbent), like hisfather and grandfather.


Ministers of Finance (or the equivalent).23 One of the two greatesteconomists of the twentieth century in the view of many econo-mists (the other one being, of course, Keynes), the Austrian JosephSchumpeter, a Professor of Economics who became Finance Mi-nister of the new Austrian Republic, but an unlucky one. AnotherAustrian, Rudolf Hilferding, a (not very orthodox) member of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany, became Minister of Financetwice in 1923 and 1928-9, in singularly unpropitious economicand political circumstances (Hilferding had become an economistinformally as it were, through the classes provided by social-demo-cratic economists, and a number of his publications were of consi-derable importance such as his book on Finance Capital, surprisinglytopical once again24).

Other examples could be adduced in recent times, as in thepost-communist countries of Eastern Europe, even if none have sofar enjoyed a very successful record, that is they have not presi-ded as yet over any “economic miracle”. To be sure, a number ofacademic economists have enjoyed great influence on economicpolicy in their countries without holding a ministerial post, oreven located in key financial institutions like Central Banks.Keynes, who after all taught economics for many years, may beseen as perhaps the paramount instance, though his influence onthe ways in which economic policy was framed, in a wide sense,

23 I use the expression generically. The post may come under other rubricsin different countries: Chancellor of the Exchequer in the U.K., Secretary of theTreasury in the U.S, Minister of the Treasury, Minister of Planning, and so on, ina number of other countries. Often the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry ofthe Economy are separated, at least for a period, and economists may hold bothposts. Cognate posts such as Minister of Industry could be counted also.

24 He authored a remarkable paper on totalitarian orders (under whih hesubsumed both Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia) in the late 1930s, publishedby a Menshevik journal in the USA. It was reprinted in C. Wright Mills’ collec-tion The Marxists and yet it is too little known, and rarely cited in accounts offormulations of the category of totalitarianism in the 1930s. He was a victim ofthe Gestapo.


was worldwide, and other cases could be referred such that ofRaul Prebisch and his leadership of ECLA in Santiago de Chile,key ideas of which had world-wide impact25. No need to dwellhere on the role of the “Chicago boys” ( a generic term, for by nomeans all of the economists referred to had received their docto-rates from the University of Chicago, often earning their docto-rates in universities in their own countries where the Chicagomind-set held sway) and the shaping of the “Washington Con-sensus”, subjects which have been addressed already at lengtheverywhere.

Very few economists have gone on to become PMs or PRs,possibly because their tenure of the ministry was not in generalvery successful, not necessarily because of the wrongness of thepolicies, more perhaps the intractability of the conjoncture whenthey were appointed or elected (the post can be as much abreaker as a maker of political reputations, in fact more likely theformer)26. Four cases come to mind, listed in chronological order,

25 Celso Furtado deserves a mention, and not just for his role in CEPAL. Anacademic economist, he was only briefly Minister of Planning before the militarycoup of 1964, which led to his exile. He exerted considerable influence oneconomists and indeed the intelligentsia in general through his writings on theeconomic history, development economics and international economics. He wasone of the earliest Brazilian economists to develop an ecological consciousnessand a sustainability approach, partly perhaps owing to his Brazilian NorthEastern background and practical experience heading the State developmentagency for the region. He was also one of the first in Brazil at least to use thephrase”globalization of the economy” (“mundialização da economia”) in theearly 1970s.

26 Harold Wilson was an academic economist, but for rather a short time,and was involved in Government work and party-political activities from veryearly on, so I would not include his Prime Ministership in this list. Hugh Gaits-kell, similarly: he might have become Prime Minister, as leader of the LabourParty but for his premature death. Since then there have been no instances ofacademic economists coming so close to the office, or indeed becoming Chan-cellors, in the UK. Maybe PPE (the acronym of the Oxford degree in Philosophy,Politics and Economics) has become the universal qualification (both Wilson and


according to the date when they first became Prime Ministers (orthe equivalent).

First, Ludwig Erhard (1897-2007), an economist who directedan institute of economic research, until dismissed during the Naziperiod. He introduced the very successful currency reform of1948, was appointed by the Chancellor as Minister of Finance, apost he held between 1949 and 1963, became a very successful orvery lucky Minister of Finance with the resurgence of the WestGerman economy, the very first “economic miracle” (Wirtschafts-wunder), justifying his faith in the “social market economy” ofOrdo-liberalism and the Freiburg School (other countries havesubsequently been looking for their “Erhard”). Some even claimthat his success was as important as the Marshall Plan for theresurgence of Western Europe. Partly on the basis of his success,of his affiliation to a political party (the CDU) and partly thoughthe convolutions of parliamentary politics, was subsequentlyelected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, a post heheld from 1963 to 1966.

The second case was that of Raymond Barre (1924-2007), anacademic economist teaching at the Institut d’Études Politiques inParis who became Prime Minister under the Fifth Republic, apresidential appointment. He was the only PM of the Fifth Repu-blic not to be leader or a prominent figure of any political party.This is a case where a President, as was his prerogative, chose anindependent figure who has not played a part in politics, on the

Gaitskell did PPE) and there is no need to go on to do academic research ineconomics, even if a consultancy is now often a respectable aftermath...Of coursein a parliamentary system there are constraints in such appointments which donot exist in presidential systems i.e., they have to be elected in a parlimantaryconsituency). Still, nomination to the House of Lords has provided numerousMinisters from outside the elected chamber, though never, I believe, for the keyoffices: in any case, but no academic economist has been chosen for the purpose,even if from time to time they have been influential on the thinking of theMinistry of Finance, a.k.a. the Treasury.


grounds of intellectual distinction and professional competence,though in fact he had held a number of government advisorypositions and had been Minister of Industry for a few months. Infact the President appointed him as both Prime Minister andMinister of Finance and Economy (the only person to have heldboth posts at the same time in the history of the Fifth Republic),which he was conjointly from the date of his appointment in 1976till 1978. He was Prime Minister during the greater part of theGiscard d’ Estaing Presidency, but headed three different govern-ments during this period (1976-1977, 1977-78, 1978-1981). The Pre-sident was not re-elected to a second term, and Barre never secu-red national political office subsequently.27

The third case is that Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who earned a Ph Din economics at the University of York28, pursued an academic careerafter his return to Portugal, publishing a number of technicalpapers, joined the center-right party, one of the two major parties

27 Giscard had been Finance Minister (twice) before running for President.He had not been a professor of economics, teaching and researching in this disci-pline: on graduating from one of the grandes écoles (the École Nationale d´Admi-nistration, or ENA) he went straight into the Civil Service and stayed in publicadministration or politics, in government or in parliament from then on. This wasnot an uncommon path for énarques: going from the ENA to the inspectorate offinance has characterized a number of successful political leaders in the Fourthand especially the Fifth Republics.

28 Supervised by Sir Alan Peacock, a specialist on Public Finance and astaunch liberal in economic vision (to use Schumpeter’s term) or ideology (verycritical though of some versions of economic liberalism, and sympathetic to Ordo-liberalism at least to the extent of editing a book on this movement of thought).Cavaco Silva was a rather pragmatic Finance Minister, not a liberal ideologueseizing the chance to reshape the economy on neo-liberal lines, which wouldhave been practically impossible anyway in a democracy except perhaps inparticularly serious crisis-situations when the need for profound changes ineconomic policy has become apparent. He was of course greatly helped by theaccession of Portugal to the European Economic Community from January 1 1986,which rescued the economy from its dire straits. It is still a matter of academicdiscussion how far his policies complemented the bonanza.


since the transition to democracy, became Minister of Finance (butother economists have served as Ministers of Finance since 1974in a variety of governments, though not all Ministers of Financehave been economists). Eventually, having become leader of theparty, Prime Minister. He enjoys the dubious distinction of havingbeen the second longest serving PM in Portugal after Salazar(another economist). After some years’ absence from active poli-tics he stood for election to the Presidency, backed by a widespectrum of opinion, and not only by his party. A more creditableachievement is that he is perhaps the only academic economist tohave become both Prime Minister and President of the Republic,certainly in a democratic polity (in a semi-presidential system thePresident can be an important political player).

The fourth case is that of Romano Prodi, who was an acade-mic economist at the University of Bologna, having taught andresearched there and also in the US, from 1963 till the early 1970swhen he started a governmental career. He did not hold theMinistry of Finance, properly speaking, but was Minister ofIndustry (at any rate, an economic ministry). He became PrimeMinister of Italy subsequently from 1996 to 1998, and held theoffice again from 2006 to 2008. In the meantime he was Presidentof the European Commission (1999-2004), a new kind of appoint-ment in the recent history of international organizations for poli-tician-academics29.

The fift instance comes from contemporary Greece too. Cos-tas Simitis who was a Professor of Economics, and continuoulsypolitically active became Minister of Finance, after beng elected tothe Parliament (he had held the post of Minsiter of Agriculture

29 Two economists, Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo, became Presidentsof Mexico in recent years. However, after their doctorates in economics in topAmerican universities, they stayed in academia less than five years before ente-ring full-time government service, and the first was not elected but de factoappointed since they were not free elections at the time. There are no doubtother Latin American examples.


wihout a parliamentary seat). He held other ministires subsequentlybecame leader of PASOK, and became Prime Minister of Greece1996-2004, having won the legislative elections of 1996 and 2000by a narrow majority. He did not contest the parliamentary electionof 2004, having been a minister for over eight consecutive years, arecord in modern Greece.

For the sake of consistency, as we have already included aneconomic historian who became Prime Minister, we should men-tion another economic historian, Amintore Fanfani. A professor ofeconomic history in Milan he published various works, of whichone was translated quite early and is still referred to in currentliterature: Catholicism, capitalism and Protestantism (1935). He wasinvolved in politics from the mid-thrties at least, joining theFascist Party, but later disowning his past and became leader ofthe Christian Democratic Party and Prime Minister on severaloccasions.

We have not considered non-economist academics becomingMinister of Finance (as has happened) and then achieving one orthe other of the highest offices (of which only one case comes tomind). We end by returning to the beginning of this paper.A sociologist by training and vocation, he followed a parliamen-tary career after his return from exile, having taught at universi-ties in three different countries30. FHC owes his election to the

30 Something like the modal cursus honorum of Brazilian national politics forplausible presidential candidates would demand at least some of the followingelective posts: membership of either House of Parliament, especially (but notexclusively) election to the Senate, prefect (executive Mayor) of one the leadingcities of the country, governor of a state, especially one of the major states. Non-elective posts like being a Cabinet Minister, or State Secretary in a major statelike São Paulo, are not as decisive, in general. FHC was a distinguishedparliamentarian, but his one great mishap was failing to be elected governor ofhis own state of São Paulo (though he was not defeated by a wide margin).Fortunately, it did not prove fatal, and being Minister (of Finance) in this casemore than compensated for that mishap. In any case, he had being talked aboutamong the Brazilian elites as a potential President, a papabile, as it were, for someyears before his first candidacy.


Presidency above all (though by no means exclusively) to the factthat he was appointed by the then President to the FinanceMinistry rather than to the Foreign Ministry, for which his qualifi-cations, interests and cosmopolitan background would have madehim an obvious and superb choice. He had the good sense to lis-ten to his team of economists and the good luck to have a team ofeconomists who put forward a realistic programme which turnedout to be adequate to the circumstances31. In addition, of course,and this factor was crucial, he had the courage and political savvyto launch a programme based on their recommendations, whichturned out to be most successful economic programme, the PlanoReal which marked a turning point in Brazilian history since thetransition to democracy starting in 1985, taming inflation whichhad endured for decades despite numerous plans and program-mes, sometimes quite drastic, in pratically every governmenttrying to address it. Though the leader of only the fourth largestparty in Parliament, he won a substantial popular majority on hisfirst campaign for the Presidency, being substantially backed alsoby an important segment of the intelligentsia (those not irredu-cibly committed to the Workers’ Party and their leader, Lula, anemotional tie the strength of which cannot be underestimated),the key media and a majority of the middle classes. Certainly, hewas the most intellectually eminent of Brazilian Presidents (andnot only)32, and played a crucial role in the consolidation ofdemocracy in his country. Of course, he could not follow the

31 Every serious presidential candidate in Brazil since 1985 has relied on ateam of economists even before the electoral campaign starts, often drawn from aparticular university department or center.

32 Possibly the next President will be José Serra, former State Secretary inthe State of São Paulo, Minister in the FHC Administrations and subsequentlyelected Mayor and Governor of the State of São Paulo. Serra took a Masters ineconomics in Chile, and subsequently a Ph.D. in economics at Cornell Universityand taught economics at a university in Chile and in Brazil (University of Cam-pinas).


prescriptions that might have been derived from the dependecytheory he had formulated in the 1960s, but that was due to world-changes and reprioritization of democracy as a goal and a primevalue after the ordeal of dictatorship33.

Summary and conclusion

One of the great windows of opportunity for social scientists(other than economists), or at any rate politically ambitious intel-lectuals, to come to the fore in politics, to reach the top offices ofStare, were provided by independence or liberation movements,but these have narrowed as the great empires, dynastic or coloni-al, have broken up, from 1918 to 1991 (in some cases, no doubt, asense of national duty counted as much, if not more than politicalambition or appetite for honours). Of course there are still “natio-nal liberation” movements in every continent, and if some ofthese were to be successful in securing independence, it may bethat in a few cases them may still elevate social scientists, econo-mists or not, to the Presidency or the Prime Ministership. Socialscientists may become Ministers and Secretaries of State moreoften than ever before, throughout the Western world, but theirchances of reaching the top are very unlike to increase thereby (asto the degree of influence they may be willing and able to exerton Presidents and Prime Ministers, as advisers, or indirectlythrough their teachings, or think tanks, that is another matter).

As we noted one of the three patterns we discerned was theelection of economists as Prime Ministers after serving as Minis-

33 This question has provoked a lot of commentary, often ill-informed. FHChas responded to it in carious writings, including his English-language book, TheAccidental President. See also the interview and discussions in Democracia, Crise,Reforma: estudos sobre a era Ferando Henrique Cardoso [Democracy, crisis, reform:studies on the Fernando Herique Cardoso era], edited by Maria Ângela D´Íncaoand the present writer, São Paulo, 2010. In this book the anthropologist Robertoda Matta gives a very interesting account of the wider socio-cultural import ofthe ”Plano Real”.


ters of Finance, in democratic regimes. However, political elitespractically everywhere, certainly in Western Europe, have becomemore and more professionalized, with the top offices becomingvirtually the preserve of politicians who start their political livesfrom their teens, absorbed in party-political affairs of one sort oranother almost continuously afterwards, holding local or nationalpolitical office or in an advisory capacity, or at any rate serve inpublic administration or quasi-governmental bodies of one sort oranother, national or international financial institutions or compa-nies, charities, transnational organizations, etc. (sometimes thisbecomes a full-time occupation after ceasing to play a part innational politics).

Even when breaks occur in democracies with party systemsand established political elites, as in the French Fifth Republic orthe Second Republic in Italy, opening up political space, affordingroom for new entrants from outside politics, academics have notmostly been called upon, with a few exceptions (R. Barre, R. Prodi,respectively). There have been 14 Prime Ministers in the FifthRepublic of France, but only one of them was previously an aca-demic, the economist Raymond Barre (as previously noted), evenit they had all been to one or another of the grandes écoles (afterwhich they entered government service or party politics at local,regional or national levels).

Even in the case of economists, those who could have pur-sued an academic career with distinction, may prefer or be sedu-ced by, the prospects of a career in financial institutions, nationalor international, or advisory bodies and commissions of one sortor another, or occasionally bas CEOs of companies (especiallyState--owned ones), practically full-time and life-long, a structureof opportunity which has steadily widened in recent decades(mathematicians and physicists also flocked to Wall Street in theyears preceding the Great Recession). The paradigmatic examplehere is M. Singh, who after a D. Phil. in economics at Oxford34,

34 The ”D.Phil” is what is called elsewhere the Ph.D. He was a graduatestudent at Nuffield College, having been a brilliant undergraduate in Cambridge.


went straight into non-academic organizations, and mostly workedin international organizations, Ministries, and Sate Banks, althoughhe also taught concurrently at the University of Delhi for a shortperiod in the 1970s. He became Finance Minister (1991-1996),during which ministerial tenure he enjoyed great success, turningaround the Indian economy, though oddly, no-one called him theIndian Erhard. Five years after he left office, the Congress Partychose him as their candidate for Prime Minister and subsequentlyhe was elected Prime Minister of the Indian Union twice, in 2001and 2007 (he is still the current incumbent) at a time when Indiais a rising economic power on the world stage35. That is likely tobe the major pathway to the top political offices in future foreconomists (though it may not happen, of course).

Of course there is always the possibility of social scientists, orindeed scholars or intellectuals in general, being picked for Minis-terial appointments by executive Presidents despite or because oftheir lack of party affiliations or political experience (and/orarranging for them to be elected to Parliament for safe seats).Where the Presidency in parliamentary systems is in normal ti-mes largely honorary, with little or no political power (thoughthere has been a strong tendency towards the American-stylepresidentialization of the powers of Presidents and PrimeMinisters in Europe since 1962), one might expect intellectualdistinction in one of the major fields of the natural or socialsciences, the humanities or in literature, to be an asset, but it hasrarely happened, V. Havel in post-Communist Czechoslovakiabeing perhaps the outstanding case where it did happen36.

35 If José Serra, one of the two major candidates in the forthcoming Bra-zilian Presidential elections is elected President, then we might have the twoBRIC powers which are democracies led by fomer academic economists (thereare other similarities between the two countries with respect to the distributionof wealth and income, and in the trends thereof, perhaps more than between anyof the pairs involved in this quadruplet).

36 The philosopher Jan Patocka (1907-1977), beaten up and severelytortured under the Communist regime, might well have become the first


Besides economics, other social sciences also have becomeever more closely associated with policy-formation organizationsof one sort or another, national or international, quangos, and

president of post-Communist Czechoslovakia. There is at least one case of aphilosopher becoming President in the twentieth century, S. Radakrishnan, thesecond President of the Indian Union (the President being elected by Parlia-ment), who, among various professorial appointments, had held a Chair atOxford University (the Spalding Chair in Religion and Ethics): as a leadingauthority on Hindu religion and philosophical thought and its interpretation interms more familiar to Western traditions, he had commanded great prestige.A philosopher of distinction, and university professor, Julian Marias served as anadviser to the King of Spain and the Prime Minister during the difficult earlyyears of the transition to democracy: few philosophers of twentieth century haveplayed such a noble role. At least one philosopher, the Brazilian Robert Man-gabeira Unger, a brilliant, wide-ranging, and prolific thinker, author of notableworks in social, political and moral philosophy, a professor at Harvard LawSchool for many years, has publicly expressed a desire to become President ofhis country, though his chances are virtually nil (even if he does come from ofgreat political families of Republican Brazil). He held briefly a post of Minister oflong-term planning in the Lula Administration, a kind of Minister for the Future.During the twentieth century philosophers have been appointed (rather thanelected) to Senates (the political philosopher Norberto Bobbio was appointed life-senator in Italy), or to Ministries (in various European countries), elected as exe-cutive Mayors of cities (Massimo Cacciari has been a notable Mayor of Venice),or, as I have already mentioned, as Prime Ministers (Balfour). Lakatos exertedconsiderable influence in the reform of the educational system in CommunistHungary after 1945 before being thrown into prison in one of the ipowerstruggles within the Party, from which he emerged, after leaving for the Westafter the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, as a notable philosopher of mathematicsand of science. The apppetite for major national political influence in adictatorship (what might be called”the Syracuse temptation”) has not beenlacking in outstanding philosophers, alas, Heidegger providing perhaps asalutary warning, or Carl Schmitt in political, consitutional and legal theory :still, in the German tradition, at least since Fichte, philosophers have thought ofthemselves as capable of forming national opinion. Some have led or beenassociated with terrorist movements (Sendero Luminoso) or signed executionorders in their ministerial capacity (Lukàcs). The role of neo-Confucian philoso-phers in contemporary China provides a particularly fascinating case-study inthe relations between philosophy and politics.


the like, or at least involved in think tanks (which are nowmushrooming outside the UK and the USA, where they havebeen remarkably influential for the last three decades or so, inEurope and some Latin American countries), research institutes,UN commissions, UNESCO, Foundations, agencies, charities, etc.,a world which in part could be described as para-academia (in somecases this becomes a kind of extra-territorial career, especiallysuited, it seems, to those from small countries). This is perhapshow at least ministerial office within states may be reached infuture, and the political influence that many covet (though in thepast high civil servants could play a part in social reform, in theimprovement and extension of the welfare state). With the constantpressures over the last three decades on universities to become anintegral part of the market economy, knowledge factories,intellectual property generators, purveyors of services to cognitivecapitalism in a regime of techno-economic acceleration,biotechnological power-houses, in sum, the hollowing out of theclassical universiy ideals and academic or scientific ethos, the so-cial sciences will become increasingly de-academicized, as far asthe old sense of “academia” is concerned: we have entered theera of “post-academic science” in the nominal academia andoutside37. Perhaps they will follow the template of economics inthese respects, with social scientists increasingly outside academia.Nevertheless, within academia, “the storm breaking upon theuniversity”38, competition for jobs, promotion, funding, publica-tion, ratings and rankings, etc., is possibly more intense than ever,the consequences of which would deserve careful study: after all,the cognitive implications of various modes of competition havebeen a classical topic in the sociology of knowledge. Economists

37 The term was coined by the physicist John Ziman in his studies of con-temporary science. On related issues see my article with José Luís Garcia ”Oethos da ciênciae as suas transformações contemporâneas, com especial atenção àbiotecnologia” Scientiae Studia vol. 7, 1,2009.

38 The title of a very informative British blog about what is happening tothe universities in Britain.


and other social scientists if and insofar as they follow theoccupational pattern of economists will no longer serve as theresearch arm of the welfare-warfare state of the post-warconsensus but of the new market-security-warfare state (if notreal security, at any rate “surveillance”, justified by an unending“war on terror” and the fear of the enemy within, and untilrecently at any rate rising levels of incarceration, within an over-all culture of fear, in a polity which now defines virtual thought-crimes). De-academicized, morphed into policy scientists orknowledge-entrepreneurs, perhaps it won’t matter very much anylonger what political posts they do secure39. How can one speakof the “authority of reason” or the capacity “to speak truth topower”, once a mark of intellectuals, under such circumstances?

Appendix

One case which I have not included is that of Teófilo Braga,President of the new Republic of Portugal for a few months in1910-1140. Partly because he was not so much a social scientist asa polymath of the humanities with extensions to the territory ofthe social sciences: a Professor of Literature, as a disciple ofAuguste Comte, he researched folklore and socio-culturaltraditions in Portugal, so that he can in fact be counted as a pre-cursor of academic anthropology and even to some extent ofsociology. Partly because he never sought a political career, havingaccepted the short-term post purely out of civic duty. But he iscertainly an interesting figure if “deviant” to some extent from theconstructed type outlined.

39 I am very grateful indeed to several colleagues who took the time tomake numerous substantive suggestions, comments and criticisms, from which Ihave benefited: Dr David Doyle, Dr Rui Feijó, Dr David Goldey, Dr Charles Tur-ner, Prof. Robin Cohen, Prof. Bridget Fowler, Prof. Ken Menzies and Prof.Roland Robertson.

40 I am grateful to Dr Rui Feijó for suggesting this case to me.


A case regarding which I lack sufficient information is that ofRafael Caldera, twice President of Venezuela (1969-1974, 1994-1999). He taught sociology at a Venezuelan university for anumber of years, but I have not had access to any his publications(several books on sociological topics). Also he was involved ingovernment affairs from a very young age, it being claimed thatat the age of 20 he helped to frame an early labour law41. It is notclear how far he was able to pursue an academic career and apolitical career at the same time without detriment to hisacademic scholarship: he was certainly a publicist and an essayistbut whether he pursued systematic research projects of atheoretical or empirical kind is not clear. He is definitely veryunusual in having being president of the national sociologicalassociation and President of his country (at different times)42.

Communist rule in Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1989did not favour social scientists or indeed intellectuals of anyvariety for even the honorific posts of President of the Republic(even though some perhaps entertained the ambition of becomingéminences grises of the leaders who counted or perhaps exertinginfluence through Party Summer Schools). Still, there was oneunusual appointment, Andreas Hegedüs, as Prime Minister inHungary, the youngest Prime Minister in the history of the coun-try, for a brief period, April 1955 to October 1956: replaced by Nagyin the course of the fast-moving process that led to the Hungarianrevolution, he signed the formal request for Soviet intervention.He had not been a fully-fledged sociologist before his appoint-ment as he had spent practically all his life from early adoles-cence in the Communist Party but subsequently he dedicated

41 Rafael Duarte Villa”Rafael Caldera (1916-2009) e a democracia: memóriapolítica de um estadista latino-americano” Política Externa vol 18, no. 4, 2010.

42 Other cases which I cannot determine for lack of information includethat of Lionel Jospin Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic, who taught economicsat a French university, but it is not clear to me whether this was more than asecondary activty rather an academic vocation, since even then he was heavilyinvolved in electoral politics.


himself to sociological research and publication, as free aspossible from political control, censorship or ideological conta-mination, maintaining international scholarly contacts as far aspossible, publishing his books abroad, and was never temptedback into politics, even in more liberal times, though he didprotest against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia and wasone of the best-known dissidents while Communist rule lasted(perhaps this counts as some sort of expiation for his action in1956). This is a unique case in his post-political dedication tosociological inquiry, a second, longer and more productivescholarly career than the one he had prior to becoming PrimeMinister. Most social scientists who have held the top politicaloffices of State (as distinct from ministerial posts) do not return toscholarly inquiry on a full-time basis after they had held suchoffices, partly no doubt owing to age, and the sense of not beingable to recover time lost, though some maintain a lively, acute,high-quality commentary on world affairs.

We started this paper with the assumption that the typicalcase of the dual career academic-political, at least in the case ofthose who became PMs or PRs would start with a career in aca-demia. As the case of Hegedûs shows, the reverse sequence canoccur, in exceptional circumstances. An interesting case of anintellectual in politics, a normalien who, after earning a doctoratein law pursued a career in politics for many years, holding sevenministerial posts, and only afterwards publishing most of hisscholarly works in political science and social analysis, is that ofAlain Peyrefitte (1925-1999). Again, a fairly exceptional caseamongst those who have been full-time politicians for manyyears, even though they may publish memoirs of great interestand acuity in their post-political years. Holding ministerial officefrom 1962 to 1968, and then again from 1973 to 1978, as well as adeputy or senator, regional councillor and mayor, he managed topublish scholarly works in 1973 and his best-known work Le malfrançais in 1976, and a number of other works after leaving minis-terial office for good in 1978, especially La societé de confiance.