political science and the internet

8/22/2019 Political Science and the Internet

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Political Science and the InternetAuthor(s): Max KaaseReviewed work(s):Source: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol.21, No. 3, CyberPolitics in International Relations. CyberPolitique et relations internationales(Jul., 2000), pp. 265-282

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InternationalPoliticalScienceReview 2000), Vol 21, No. 3, 265-282

Political Science and the InternetMAXKAASE

ABSTRACT.he Gutenberg invention of printing has been a majorprecondition for the development of present-day science and the sciencesystem. With this historical analogue as a starting point, the articleaddresses the present and future impact of the emergence of electroniccommunication networks as epitomized by the Internet and the WorldWide Web on the future organization and operation of the sciencesystem, including political science and the effects that can already befound in the science system. The analysis finds that the impact ofelectronic communication is already strongly felt in the "hard"sciences,but much less so in the humanities and social sciences, although itspotential there is also large. Electronic communication is a field wherethe social sciences should engage much more in research than ispresently done.Keywords:Electronicpublishing* Informationtechnology* Internet* Socialsciencesystem

The Gutenberg Galaxy at the CrossroadsTheagentof changewill be the Internet,bothliterally ndas a model or

metaphor.The Internet s interestingnot onlyasa massive ndpervasive lobalnetwork but also as an example of something that has evolved with no apparentdesigner n charge,keeping tsshapeverymuch like the formationof a flowofducks.Nobody s theboss,and all the piecesare so farscalingadmirably

(Negroponte,1995:181).Electronicpublications relikely o become an essentialcharacteristicf the workenvironment f scholars.Those whoadaptwillflourish;hose who resistarelikelyto be left behindin the dust(acob, 1996:208).

There is little disagreement in the literature that the multimedia emergencethriving on microchips, electronic networking, and on the digitalization of all0192-5121 2000/07) 21:3,265-282;013085? 2000International oliticalScienceAssociationSAGEublicationsLondon,ThousandOaks,CA nd NewDelhi)

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International oliticalScienceReview21(3)kinds of messages-be they audio, visual, audiovisual or print-because of its far-reaching, penetrating effects constitutes a true cultural revolution. Biuhl (1995:51) is mindful of the fact that the largest library before printing-located inAlexandria-contained the wisdom of the world on half a million ancient rolls ofscript; today, there are thousands of libraries, each of which holds more infor-mation. Fruihwald (1997; 1998), in stating the end of the Gutenberg galaxy,reflects both on the socio-cultural and the technological conditions which madethat galaxyblossom, as well as on the consequences for science of its emergence.He emphasizes that in medieval times, before Gutenberg, it was not theindividual author, but the "productivewriter"who was at the center of the writtenculture. The keepers of the flame were the cloisterers, the dominant language ofthe intelligentsia was Latin, and the couple of hundred books a medieval librarypossessed were reproduced by hand (Kaltwasser,1997: 13). From those days theGerman verb verballhornenriginates, referring to the "productivewriter"JohannBallhorn, who in the sixteenth century in copying an "ABC ook" let a roosterproduce an egg and claimed the intellectual property rights to this imaginativechange by noting "embellished and improved by Johann Ballhorn" (Fruhwald,1998: 316).Given this situation before printing, the Gutenberg invention certainlycan alsobe called a cultural revolution. It effectively challenged the dominance of theLatin language by permitting regional languages their representation and by thuspulling into the social communication process partsof the populace who for sheerlanguage reasons had been previously kept out, although illiteracy remained alimiting factor for quite some time. But there was also a major impact of printingon science, as Fruhwald,based on Elisabeth Eisenstein's (1979) work, points out.The multiplication of printed products led to their standardization and to theneed to clearly define their identity.A printed statement gained a special, enhan-ced authority over the spoken or handwritten word; at the same time, printinggave handwritten documents the dignity of the original. Printing became atechnology devoid of a special intellectual quality;printing "invented"the role ofthe author, and with it the emphasis on intellectual property and on copyrights;and printing, with its growth of scholarly output, invented for the science systemthe logic of peer review, which challenged the "natural"authority of printedscientific material.

Among the main factors making the Gutenberg invention so consequential inthe long run were, in the nineteenth century, the development of powerfulprinting presses for mass production and also the technical process by whichpaper became abundant and at the same time affordable, a prerequisite for massprinting.Affordable, of course, at that time did not imply that books were to be found inevery household. Rather,books belonged to the social and cultural elites, and it isnot by chance that the rising social groups struggling for recognition around theturn of the nineteenth century created a broad variety of cultural offerings fortheir growing memberships, including book clubs which made it at least possiblefor working class households to own such a commodity (as well as giving access tothe writingsof working classprotagonists like Marx,Engels, Kautsky,and others).Without specifying the complex set of factors and their interaction determiningthe growth of science since the eighteenth century as a societal subsystemwith itsown rules and procedures, literacy as a result of the rise in mass education, theeconomics of industrial society,and the logic of rationalityas a consequence of the

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KAASE:oliticalScienceand theInternetEnlightenment have all contributed to the development of the science system as itnow stands. One of its key features remains its disciplinary organization withspecial internal cognitive and social hierarchies (Nowotny, 1999: 67). However, thetransition from an industrial to a postindustrial, knowledge-based society (Kaase,1999), particularly in the OECD countries, is challenging this disciplinaryorientation, and again a variety of interacting factors has triggered this challenge:the enormous economic growth after the end of World War II, with the ensuingexplosion of investment in institutions of higher learning; the disciplinarydifferentiation of the science system after an initial phase of increasing resources,which now begins to overcome disciplinary boundaries; the acceleration of allsocial processes through new means of mass communication (telegraph, tele-phone, fax, electronic mass media, travel); the growing understanding of thecomplexity and interrelatedness of problems in modern societies, leading to ashift from linear to nonlinear scientific thinking; and the resulting change fromdiscipline-oriented to problem-oriented research agendas-what Gibbons et al.(1994) describe as the transition from mode 1 to mode 2 knowledge production.These processes have developed over some time; the question to be taken uphere is to what extent the new information and communication technologies suchas the Internet have left their individual marks on the science system and whetherpolitical science as a discipline is also affected by them. While in the long runthese changes will have a worldwide impact, they are presently most visible in theOECD ountries. Accordingly, I will concentrate on these countries.

The Economic Dimension of Information and CommunicationTechnologyLatzer (1997) has analyzed in detail the elements in and conditions for theemergence of the information or knowledge society. He describes two major stepsin the process: (1) the fusion of telecommunication and computing since the1970s into telematics, and (2) the fusion of telematics and the electronic media(radio and television) into mediamatics, which will result in a broad variety ofmultimedia services.This development has been triggered both by technological innovations (themicrochip and electronic networking, to name just two), and by a reduced role forthe state, especially in Europe, in framing the telecommunications sector. In theGerman case this is indicated by the establishment of private radio and televisionsince the mid-1980s (dualization), and by the opening up of the telecommun-ication market to competition in the context of the EU's initiative on "Europe'sWay to the Information Society"which, starting in January 1998, has cleared thewayfor economic competition in this area (Kaase, 1999: 529-531).The EU's emphasis on fostering the "Information Society" shows the economicand political importance assigned by the European Commission to ICT.Accordingto a publication of the German Ministryfor Education and Research (BMBF, 1999),the G7-market urnover for ICTproducts was worth about 2.3 billion DM in 1996. Interms of the world market, in 1997 the United States had a 35 percent share,Europe a 30 percent share andJapan a 14 percent share; this leaves the rest of theworld with 21 percent (Kaase 1999: 540), thereby emphasizing the role of theus-Europe-Japan "triad" for that market (see Latzer, 1997: 88-94 for furtherdetails).Almost everyone working in this field agrees that ICT s an important, probably

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International oliticalScienceReview21(3)TABLE1. MultimediaMarket1992-96 in G7 Countriesin billioneuros).

YearsMarketElements 1992 1996 Percentagein billion euros % in billion euros % pointschangeConstruction lements 90 12.2 140 12.0 +41MMendproducts suchasconsumerelectronics) 176 22.4 266 22.8 +51Networking mobilephones,datacommunication) 277 30.1 369 31.6 +56Content(suchassoftware,games, PayTv;CD-ROMs) 237 35.3 392 33.6 +42

Total 780 100 1167 100 +49Source:German Federal Ministryof Education and Research (BMBF,1999)http://www.iid.de/bah/BAH_zusammenfassung.htmlthe most important, growth market in the future for products and services inpostindustrial societies. It is difficult to find reliable longitudinal statistics on thatmarket because definitions differ of who and what belongs or does not belong init. According to the above BMBFpublication, a comparison of various elements inthe multimedia market shows an unmistakable growth potential, with an average10 to 11 percentage points annual increase (see Table 1).However, these dynamics must not be misread as an indication that ICT isalreadycontributing massivelyto the gross national product in the G7countries; itsshare is still below 10 percent. On the other hand, studies have shown that thegrowth of the telecommunications market is an important incentive for overalleconomic growth (Kaase,1999: 540-541).The impact of ICTon the labor market is similarlymultifaceted. Not the leastbecause in many European countries telecommunications was for years in thehands of the state as a monopoly, privatizationand growth of ICT have at best ledto a neutral balance in employment effects, and often in fact to an initialreduction in overall employment through market-induced rationalization. Only asnew services develop can a positive employment balance of ICT e expected.These findings show that the revolution, with the Internet as the epitome of ICTand multimedia, is just beginning, although at a tremendous pace. Given theanticipated pervasiveness of this development in the state, for business and inprivate homes, it should surprise no one that the process is accompanied, likeglobalization, with many hopes, but with at least as many fears (see for instanceDertouzos, 1997; Webster,1995).The speed of these changes makes it difficult to assess their consequences forthe social, cultural and political order (for a collection of ambivalent voices seeLeggewie and Maar,1998). Dertouzos, similarlyto Negroponte (1995), with slightreservations offers a very positive vision:

... theseimperativeso reuniteourhumanitywith ourtechnologyarenot easytasks,because they call for wholesalechange in human thinkingand in abehavior hathas takenhold of us for several enturies. t will takegreateffort

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KAASE:oliticalScienceand theInternetandperseveranceo undergothesechanges.Butit'sworth t. Unified,we shallthrustourselvesand our world forward n ways hatwill satisfyandpaytributeto the new wholesthat we willbe.

Then this newAge of Unificationwillrejoinwithinus faith, reason, nature,and humanity, paving the way for the Fourth Revolution, beyond humanartifactsand their consequences,aimed inwardat understandingourselves(Dertouzos,1997:316).The Internet

It would be interesting to look in detail at how the Internet came about; thiscannot and must not be done here. What is probably most telling is that the initialconcept, in particular its decentralized structure, was developed for the usDepartment of Defense and other related agencies. Its genesis was systematicallyintegrated by the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency(ARPA) and its Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). The resultingelectronic communication network was called ARPANETnd is generally regardedas the first forerunner to the Internet (for details see Dertouzos, 1997: 35-43;Cailliau, 1998; Leib and Werle, 1998).The Internet is characterized by its decentralization (this was a core featureespecially for militaryuse, to make it less vulnerable to external attack) and by thefact that it is used by commercial and scientific institutions as well as by privatecitizens. It is a network linking computers with each other; these host computersindividually permit access to the Internet for a large number of other computers,and estimates by the American "Network Wizards" were that in January of 1997about 16 million Internet hosts existed worldwide (see also OECD,998: 12-15).While the terms "Internet"and the "WorldWide Web"(wwwor 3w) have come tobe publicly used almost synonymously,they are not at all the same thing: "... thinkof the Internet as a postal system for shipping raw information among the world'scomputers. And think of the Web as a specific way of using this system to view andvisit information on distant sites by clicking your mouse" (Dertouzos, 1997: 18).Caillau (1998) has described the genesis of the World Wide Web, which hedesigned with Tim Berners-Lee for CERN Centre Europeenne pour la RechercheNucleaire, near Geneva) as a network-hypertext project for the field of high-energy physics. After CERNn 1991 offered the first "Line-mode"browser for theInternet free of charge, more and more institutional users became interested inthe technology, and in 1994 the World Wide Web Consortium was founded at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT);by the end of 1997 it had almost 250members (Dertouzos, 1997: 6). This consortium is responsible for all wwwregulations.One of the properties of the www is its hypertext capability,which easily directsusers from one website to another through links. What is increasingly importantfor the science system at large and also for the social sciences is the possibility tointegrate multimedia, text, and static graphic displays such as photographs andtables, as well as dynamic visual presentations and sound. (This capability of thewwwis, for instance, more and more used by television stations,which put completeofferings such as newscasts on the Net on a regular basis.) For the humanities itwill become very attractive to join textual, audio, and visual information, therebyopening up completely new avenues for scholarly analysis and reproducibility offindings by other researchers, as in content analysis of visual information.

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International oliticalScienceReview21(3)Given the attractiveness of such Internet services, its novelty, the growing easeof usage through browsers and search machines, and the ever-decreasinghardwarecost, it is little wonder that at least in the OECDcountries the Internet has

become a widespread commodity, estimates pointing to a magnitude of about 160million users in 1999. In the science system, for quite the same reasons Internetaccess has become, again at least in the OECDcountries, almost universal (OECD1998: 12-15); in fact, the coverage is so widespread that presently new, improvedtechnologies are designed to make Internet use more efficient in time, potential,and cost. These include Internet 2; Very High Speed Network Backbone Service(VBNS);Next Generation Internet (NGI);Trans-European Network (TEN34); andnational networks like the German "Breitband-Wissenschaftsnetz"nd Super-Janetin the United Kingdom (OECD,998: 15-17). However,one of the problems here isthat, very similar to the knowledge gap hypothesis in mass communicationresearch (Bonfadelli, 1994), there are obvious disparities in access by scholars indifferent parts of the world to this resource (UNESCO,999). In this context,another problem also surfaces which is very consequential for internationalscholarlydiscourse, namely that the predominance of English on the Internet notonly requires language capabilities but also forces a certain way of language-related thinking onto a broad varietyof national scholarlycultures.

The Internet, Multimedia, and the Science SystemGeneral ConsiderationsIn the section on the Gutenberg galaxy, it was argued that the invention ofprinting not only led to deep cultural and social changes, but was alsoinstrumental in the emergence of the social subsystemof science as it is known atthe end of the twentieth century,and that the emergence of new information andcommunication technologies (ICT)s,jointly with other factors, contributing to anacceleration of social processes;whereas a letter from Europe to the United States,even when sent air mail, used to take up to two weeks for delivery, an e-mailexchange between, say,British and American scholars can now go back and forthmany times during a single day.Acceleration is mentioned here also for a more systematic reason. Given thespeed of the ICTdevelopments, the question is whether they have already beensubjected to systematic social research, especially with respect to their eventualeffects on the structure of the science systemat large and of individual disciplines.This question would require a much more detailed search than is possible for thisarticle; checks in libraries and with scholars competent in this field seem toindicate, however, that results of systematic research on this topic are not yetavailable (Wiest, 1998: 299).The Growthof Science and of ScientificInformationGrowth and differentiation are the main factors characterizing the developmentof education and science in the contemporary OECDountries. For instance, inWest Germany the percentage of youth formally qualified for a universityeducation rose from 5.6 percent in 1960 to 27.8 percent in 1988, and universitystaffgrewbetween 1970 and 1980 by 46 percent. It is argued that with the numericgrowth of the science system its output of research findings and publications to

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KAASE:olitical Scienceand theInternetcarrythem to the community of scholars has necessarily followed suit (in fact in anexponential curve: see de Solla Price, 1974: 13-42). Coakley and Doyle (1996), forexample, come up with a list of more than 300 political science journals publishedin Europe in 1995. Unfortunately, there is no longitudinal analysis available ofhow these numbers developed over the last 40 years, but there is every reason toassume that the increase after 1945 is not equally distributed over the whole spanof time but was concentrated in the last 20 years.Clearly, it is impossible for any individual political scientist in Europe tobecome familiar with the content of all of those European political sciencejournals, not to speak of important related fields like sociology, economics, masscommunication, and social psychology, nor those pertinent political sciencejournalspublished outside of Europe, such as the AmericanPoliticalScienceReviewor theAmericanJournal ofPoliticalScience.However, there are at least three other structurallimitations to be considered when it comes to coping with information growth.First, it is common knowledge by now that university libraries can no longerafford to buy all the journals on the market for the various disciplines; thus,choices have to be made, and access in many instances becomes, if not impossible,at least time-consuming and cumbersome (as through the inter-universitylibraryloan system). Secondly, while it may be impossible to familiarize oneself with allthe articles published in the journals of the relevant discipline-the problem ofthe vastlyincreasing number of monographs and edited volumes is not addressedfor the time being-it is at least conceivable to look at the tables of contents (thishas been effected the hard way by some institutions of higher learning whichroutinely supply researchers with this photocopied information; however, theInternet here is opening up new, faster options). Then there is, thirdly, thelanguage problem, especially in Europe, with its cultural, social, and politicaldiversity. Many European political scientists who publish only in their ownlanguage have found that, however relevant their research may be for thediscipline, native English speakers and writers in their field often ignore theirfindings when published in languages other than English. This problem isreinforced by the fact that the language capabilities and inclination of many nativeEnglish-speakers regarding other languages are, to put it politely, usually quitelimited. This is the reason why in Europe professional journals over the years haveincreasingly decided to publish either all or some articles in English, or are at leasthave discussed such a transition.Some of those problems, depending on the specific context, are eitherenhanced or partly resolved through the digitalization of information andthrough modern electronic networking, which lead to the increasing availabilityofinformation at the researcher's workplace.Is ThereAnything SpecialAbout the Social Sciences?When it comes to the impact of ICT on the science system, one particular exampleis routinely put forward: the E-Print-Archive Forum of The American PhysicalSociety, which (with its associated Los Alamos National Laboratory Preprintserver) was pioneered by Paul Ginspang at Los Alamos in the field of high-energyphysics almost a decade ago (Wiest, 1998: 286-287). The total number ofadmissions to the archive in April 1999 had gone beyond 100 000, and Figure 1shows that since the start of the archive in 1991 the number of monthlysubmissions has increased continuously and regularly.

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272 InternationalPoliticalScienceReview21(3)3000

J nJ JJ

2000 J nj a1500 JJ a

1000 a

500 -A J aa u9 2

0 Last 03months7Feb 00 otal=123,286)FIGURE. MonthlySubmissionRateStatistics,E-Print-Archive(Number of new submissions received during each month since August 1991).Source:http://xxx.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/show_monthly_submissions

Thus, a major impact on high-energy physics of the new mode of scholarlycommunication is obvious. However, the fact that at this website preprints aremade available at the time of submission reflects very much the specialty ofworking with a limited number of expensive instruments and therefore cannot begeneralized across other fields (OECD, 1998: 54; the OECD describes in detail theimpact of ICTon a variety of fields especially in the natural sciences).But what about the social sciences? Hobohm (1999), in his analysis of socialscience information and documentation for UNESCO'S World Social Science Report1999, gives various reasons why ICT as of now has not become as consequential forthe social sciences as for other disciplines.Probably the most important point made in his chapter is that the socialsciences are not cumulative and at the same time selective, as are other fields: theylack the generally accepted scholarly criteria by which research findings, such as inthe natural sciences, can be eliminated if according to the present state of thediscipline they are no longer valid (see also Kaltwasser, 1997: 14). Thus, in thesocial sciences not only is there an information overload, but there is also anelement of arbitrariness immanent in scholarly debates: in principle, anythinggoes. Nor are there institutionalized penalties for ignoring previous evidence andresearch, and so the accumulation of knowledge is slow and cumbersome, if ittakes place at all. A problem here is that social phenomena are so diverse that it isdifficult to aim for and to achieve the kind of theory-based generalized knowledgeknown from the natural sciences (Mayntz, 1995).How have social scientists tried to cope with the increasing problem ofinformation overload? Based on his research, Hobohm (1999) argues that manysocial scientists (this is apparently even more true for the humanities-Geisteswissenschaften) start their research with the information available in their



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KAASE:oliticalScienceand theInternetimmediate surroundings, even if this is only their own personal collection of books,articles, and papers. Those are convenient to use, familiar, and often assembledaccording to the research specialties a scholar has established over the years.For the reasons given above, there is little incentive in the humanities and inthe social sciences to give up these traditional waysof collecting information, evenif more and more resources to ease access and to broaden the knowledge basebecome available. In part, this is still a resource problem (Hrachovec, 1996: 377;UNESCO, 1999); in the literature one also frequently finds the argument that theirmore competent and easy-going approach to the new resources of the youngerscholars will enhance their position vis-a-vis he older scholars and will in the longrun, at least to a certain degree, reduce status differences in the science system(seeJacob, 1996: 208; Schmitz, 1997: 87; OECD, 1998: 24; Wiest, 1998: 292).One development that may well accelerate the use of ICTservices in the human-ities and social sciences is the multimedia properties of the World Wide Web(Hrachovec, 1996: 382-383). Its capability to integrate textual, audio, and visualinformation is likely to change the presentation of research on cultural, social,and political phenomena in a basic fashion. Qualitative analysis of written textsderived from oral history reports, as is traditionally done, or integrating audio-visual reports into a published document, will not only give flavor and substance toan argument but will also at the same time help to evaluate critically the inter-pretations and conclusions derived from such material. This example is a verysimple one in the wide array of integrated, complex presentations of researchfindings.In sum, then, there seems to be no question even regarding the social sciences,that ICT and the resulting services provided by public institutions like libraries,academic data archives, and commercial firms will at least revolutionize access toinformation and to data, and will even change the structure and makeup of somefields of research. Whether these trends at some time in the future will also havean impact on the social sciences, either positive or negative, must at this timeremain an open question. The most serious argument against better researchquality based on more information and easily accessible data is, as mentioned inthe beginning of this section, the lack of criteria for eliminating outdatedtheoretical approaches and faulty data and empirical findings; there is everyreason to believe that information overload under such circumstances willimmobilize researchers if they do not become even more selective-which inmany instances may mean more idiosyncratic-in their choice of material. Oneway out of this dilemma for the scholarly associations is to create a reward systemfor scientists who at regular intervals do stock-takingstudies of research in specialsubfields of social science disciplines; such studies could enormously profit fromthe availability of recent, reliable, and reasonably complete information(Wissenschaftsrat,1992: 32-33, 47).What's Going On Right Now?The 1998 OECD report scrutinizes a variety of topics, among them the com-munication between scientists and the eventual emergence of new, IcT-inducedkinds of research collaboration, as well as the educational system, with particularemphasis on the universities. These points will be only briefly discussed herebecause they are not central to our main topic, ICT'Simpact on the social sciences,and on political science in particular. The change in the market for printed

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International oliticalScienceReview21(3)products, especially the digitalization of scholarly journals for online publishingand the emergence of electronic journals, is our main focus, to be examined ingreater depth below.Communicationand Collaborationbetween Scholars. There is no question thatcommunication among scholars has been eased and intensified by the e-mailfacilityof the Internet. According to OECD (1998: 12), by 1994 in the United States75 percent of the sociologists and 67 percent of the political scientists inuniversities communicated through e-mail. This percentage in the United Stateshas certainly increased since then, and while no precise figures exist for the OECDcountries, it can be safely assumed that there, too, e-mail is now widely used forscholarly communication, for sending and receiving data to speed upcollaboration in empirical research projects, for writingco-authored papers withinas well as across countries and continents, and for simply exchanging notes whichwere previouslysent out as letters.An interesting question is, to what extent has electronic mail measurablyspeeded up research and improved scholarly cooperation across universities andother research sites? To generalize from personal experience and from theobservation of colleagues, the effects of electronic communication are substantialand mostly positive. This is buffered by data indicating that between 1981 and1991 in the United States, in the natural sciences and in engineering,international collaborativepublications increased on the averagefrom 8.8 percentto 11 percent (OECD,1998: 20; unfortunately, the document fails to establish thecausal link between network access and use and enhanced international co-authorships. Furthermore, the argument rests on the assumption that inter-national co-authorship per se is a good thing).Especially in the natural sciences, ICT networks have obviously enhancedsystematic cooperation between research sites and laboratories in research. Thishas resulted in "a new form of scientific work... the 'extended research group.'This is typically a large, unified, cohesive, co-operative research group that isgeographically dispersed, yet co-ordinated as if it were at one location and underthe guidance of a single director. It provides access to colleagues and toequipment, software and data bases that are traditionally part of laboratoryorganisation, without regard to geography" (OECD,1998: 19, 44-46). The virtualarrangements are called collaboratories, or centers without walls, and havebecome effective, indispensable research structures, for instance in atmosphericand space science, biology, chemistry, medicine, and physics. How thesecollaboratories actuallyoperate and what their assets are, as well as their potentialpitfalls, has not yet been demonstrated by empirical research, other than whathappens when private companies link laboratories across countries (Brockhoff,1998). Brockhoff demonstrates that both the linkage and its study are rathercomplex matterswhich do not lend themselves easilyto explication.To what extent ICT has stimulated national and particularly internationalcooperation in social science research is difficult to say,since this kind of researchmeets many obstacles on other than technical grounds; it will require more timeand systematic observation to reliably assess this matter. However, there is noquestion that ICThas considerably eased cooperation in general, especially withregard tojoint publications by scholars in different locations.Teaching in Universities and Beyond. By the mid-1990s ICT had started to influence

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KAASE:oliticalScienceand theInternetthe shape of teaching at universities. According to a 1995 survey conducted at allGerman universities by the Conference of German University Rectors, at that timein about half of all disciplines some ICT was in use for teaching, and many of theuniversities planned to increase their ICT teaching resources (Hochschulrek-torenkonferenz, 1996; 1997). These reports also note a great deal of varianceamong universities and disciplines in ICT application for teaching and student use,with political science holding the sixth lowest position among 35 disciplines(much lower than psychology, economics, and sociology).Certainly, these data reflect but one point in time, and one would need adetailed comparative analysisof the role ICT is now playing in universitytraining tocome to a valid assessment of the situation. Also, universities in the mid-1990sseemed to be in the phase of innovation diffusion, where much depended onindividuals and groups who engaged in ICT implementation and use(Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, 1996: 8; OECD 1998: 58; this factor should at leastin part explain the observed variances among universities and disciplines). Butdata from the United States indicate that there ICT use in teaching is in the processof becoming firmly established on the educational agenda, as shown byTable 2.On a different dimension of education, ICTwill probably become even moreimportant for distance teaching and virtual universities than for on-locationteaching. As OECD (1998: 62-64) observes, in the long run the "virtual classroom"bears the promise not only of higher cost-effectiveness, but also of higher result-effectiveness because of the interactive and self-instruction multimedia potentialof ICT. For instance, more and more distance-teaching takes place in medicine,where for example young scholars around the world can participate audio-visuallyin complicated operations performed by first-rate teachers in first-rate medicalcenters. There is no reason why an equivalent approach to distance-teachingshould not be possible for the social sciences.Furthermore, while OECD notes quite a few differences in the use of distance-teaching in Europe, the existing open universities are increasingly applying ICT fortheir teaching (for the German Fernuniversitat Hagen see Schlageter andMittrach, 1999). Finally, ICT distance-teaching is bound to open up new avenuesfor helping effectively to achieve the goal of life-long learning, a goal that hasbeen consensually put on their political agendas by the OECD countries.In sum, ICT has already had a major effect on university teaching; variants ofdistance-teaching will spread further and will in the long run change the face ofuniversities.With respect to political science, especially regarding empirical research,sooner or later ICT's effects on teaching, too, will be felt. Whether the basicstructure of the discipline will also be affected is not quite as clear. The same,however, cannot be said for the next topic to be discussed: publishing.Electronic ublishing.Online publishing opens up direct access to a broad varietyofpertinent information for scientists through electronic networks and powerfulpersonal computers; offline publishing, in which information is stored on CD-ROMS, while easing access to and usability of information, is clearly secondary toonline publishing in its impact on the science system.In an article in the German newsmagazine Die Zeit,Zimmer (1997) stated thatfor German university libraries about 20 000 scholarly journals were relevant. TheBavarian Regensburg University in a pilot project has assembled electronicinformation from 43 libraries on about 6 200 journals, among them 110 in

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International oliticalScienceReview21(3)TABLE. ResultsfromtheUSSurveyofIT Use n HigherEducationinpercent).

1994 1995 1996 1997PlanningStrategic plan for role of ITFinancial plan for IT purchase and replacement1Technology useProportion fcoursesusingIT resourcesE-mail

Computer classroomsComputer simulations/exercisesPresentation handoutsCommercial coursewareMultimedia resourcesCD-ROMbased materialwww pagesInternet resources

43.4 48.422.0 22.0 28.1 28.9

8.016.09.015.111.04.04.0

In institutions:www and InternetOn sitePlan for use in instructionPlan for use in distance educationPlan for use for off-campus promotion (marketing)Recognizing ITin tenure &promotion committeesMandatoryIT requirement for all students2Considering Internet2 access essential by 1999Universities2- and 4-year colleges

Single most important ITissue confronting institutionover the next 2-3 yearsAssistingfacultyto integrate IT into instrumentationProviding adequate user supportEnhancing/expanding user networksFinancing the replacement of hardware&softwareUsing ITeffectivelyin distance educationProvidinguniversal access to the Internet

Mandatory technology/computer fee for studentsCampus systemsconnected to the network

20.124.014.025.718.58.49.06.210.9

25.024.014.428.418.511.08.99.215.3

55.2 79.424.4 30.112.5 17.538.1 56.812.233.1 40.0

27.324.117.617.44.15.828.3 36.9

62.5 70.8

32.822.614.533.016.913.411.424.024.8

34.224.858.312.240.3>50


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KAASE:olitical Scienceand theInternetpublishers' websites (which, of course, offer only their own journals) or throughorganizations like ECO (Electronic Collections Online, with 2 211 titles availablefor online research as of August 1999; of those 28 were in political science) is auseful addition to such searches (Luther, 1997). If one considers that in 1995 andin 1996 only a little more than 10 percent of the political science journalspublished in Europe were available with complete or some information online(Coakley and Doyle 1996; 1997), it is clear, though, that we have not yet reachedthe point where complete information on all journal publications is reliably andquickly available through the Net-at least not in political science, althoughmaking this information more and more accessible electronically is certainly anongoing process.Up to this point online publishing for journals has been considered under theassumption that both an electronic and a printed version of a journal areproduced by the publisher. In this sense access to journals is primarilya matter ofresources, completeness of information, ease and speed. As was mentioned before,however, ICT s growing in importance given the fact thatjournals have become sonumerous and expensive that libraries can no longer afford to have completeholdings (OECD, 1998: 51). The cost factor in particular has triggered a vividdiscussion in the United States, and, among other implications, in 1998 led to theestablishment of "The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition"(SPARC;ee Johnson, 1999) which in particular participates in the us discussion tomove scholarly publication away from the publishing industry and back into theuniversity system and to individual scholars (Jacob, 1996: 206-207; thisconsideration is generalized in Arnold's [1995] criticism of present universitypress practices to books and monographs). This is not the place to go deeper intothese debates; the point is that such initiatives would not have been possiblewithout the spread of ICT.One important aspect of online processing which will in the future becomeeven more important, is the emergence of the e-journal: an electronic journalwithout printed versions, such as the aforementioned E-Print Forum of TheAmerican Physical Society. In the natural sciences, in medicine, and inengineering research findings are often so consequential for other research andfor practical applications in society that long delays from submitting a paper to ajournal, getting it accepted, and finally getting it printed are simply intolerable.While scholars in the humanities and the social sciences frequently suffer from thesame squeeze, it appears that they are much more lenient in this matter thanscientists from the "hard"sciences.The question, however, is, whether turning to ejournals will solve the time-lagproblem. In an expert study for the OECD, Kling and McKim (1997) analyzedvarious scenarios to assess how much was gained in time when the productionprocess for scientific journals was speeded up through electronic networking. Theresults of this analysis deserve full representation (see Table 3).What first catches the eye is the large variance the authors found in the timerequired for packaging and production of a journal issue before printing. TheOECDreport does not comment on those differences, which obviously hold a highpotential for acceleration through online publishing by,for instance, giving up theconcept of having to produce complete packages to fill a journal issue. There isalso some potential for shortening the peer review process electronically, but thisis much smaller than one might have expected. In sum, ICT does not matter a lotfor online publishing as long as the standard features of scientific journals-peer

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International oliticalScienceReview21(3)TABLE. TheSpeed fScientificCommunication nderDifferent cenarios'in days).

Conven- Courier E-mail Electronic Pure Pre-print Pre-printtional scenario attachment journal, electronic system, system,scenario scenario with issue journal, article articlepackaging with sent at sent atindividual time of time of

articles acceptance submissionTransmission 10 4 2 2 2 2 2of manuscript2Peer review3 63-93 51-81 47-77 47-77 47-77 47-77 0Journal issue 30-120 30-120 30-120 30-120 0 0 0packaging4Journal 20-80 20-80 20-80 20-80 4 0 0productionDelivery of 5 5 5 1 1 1 1journal5Total 128-308 107-287 104-284 100-280 54-84 50-80 31.The tableshowsan illustrativecenarioof theimpactof electronicpublishing n the timebetweenthe sending of an article by the author to ajournal and its deliveryin published form to the author.The scenarios assume that the paper is accepted by the chosen journal.2. This combines the time from author to the editor, and that from the editor to the productionmanager.3. This measures the time between the editor's receipt of the manuscriptand its acceptance.4. This is the time taken by thejournal editor to produce a sufficient package of articles and send themto production.5. This measures the time it takes for a subscriber-or the author-to receive the finaljournal issue.Source:OECD1998: 53).

review and issue packaging-are maintained. By far most attractive is a situationlike that in high-energy physics, where a preprint system is effected, withpublication at the time of submission. This, of course, raises the principal questionof the scholarly control over output from the science system which has been anessential condition for the emergence of modern science; here the system of peerreview comes to the fore. For most of those who argue in principle in favor ofpositive effects of the ICT revolution on the science system, the fears frequentlyvoiced in view of these changes are overstating the case: "The emphatic insistenceon qualities of the traditional, customary operation of science emphasizes the roleof martyrdom just as the media philosophers assume the role of prophets.... Butnetworking also offers the chance to bypass crusted institutions. Nothing justifiesthe presumption that unconventional interventions and unqualified contributionssignal the end of serious research" (Hrachovec, 1996: 380, 385 [translation M.K];see alsoJacob, 1996; Wiest 1998: 292-293).While this optimism may be well-founded, a look at the growth of e-journals,peer-reviewed or not, provides at least some justification for those who haveexpressed concerns in this matter. In its 1997 edition (the most recent oneavailable at the time of this writing) of the Directoryof ElectronicJournals, Newslettersand Academic Discussion Lists put together by the Association of Research Libraries

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KAASE:oliticalScienceand theInternetTABLE. ElectronicJournals1999).

Fields Peer-reviewed Student-reviewed Non-reviewed Allabs. % abs. % abs. %Scientific/Technical/ 334 81.3 (75.6)a 7 43.8 (1.6) 101 73.7 (22.8) 442MedicalHumanities 77 18.7 (63.1) 9 56.2 (7.3) 36 26.3 (29.6) 122

Political science 2b -Sociology 4c - Id

Total 411 (72.9) 16 (2.8) 137 (24.3) 564(a)Rowpercentages(b) EducationPolicyAnalysisArchives, ournalofPoliticalEcology(c) ElectronicJournal f Sociology,RevistadeSociologia Politica,SociologicalResearchOnline,Socioroute(d) SocialScienceJapanSource:http://www.edoc.com/jrl-bin/wilma/hpr(ARL),more than 1 400 electronic journals are listed, of which 69 percent are peer-reviewed. Unfortunately, the Directory does not distinguish between e-journalsand journals available in both electronic and printed format. Another source for1999 lists 564 pure e-journals, of which a little less than a quarter are not peer-reviewed, with little difference between the hard sciences and the humanities.Thus, there may indeed exist an emerging element of the anticipated "junk"problem, but it is not signalling an erosion in e-journals of the peer review system,which is uniformly regarded as indispensable for acceptance by the scholarlycommunity (see WeiBbach and Poy, 1995: 226-228; Jacob, 1996; Wiest 1998:292-294). In addition, a 1996 analysis of the impact of selected e-journalsindicated that it was negligible at the time although there was promise for thethree e-journals scrutinized (Harter, 1996). Futhermore, if the data retrieved fromthe Net are valid, certainly no problem for political science lurks around thecorner (see Table 4). Finally,as the high-energy physics case indicates, there mighteven be good reasons to set up a non-peer-reviewed e-journal.

It is not easy to summarize the findings from this analysis of online publishing.All available evidence points to the fact, however, that ICThas already changed theface of science publishing and will do so even more in the future. There is littlereason to expect that these dynamics will not include publishing in politicalscience, even if their impact has not yet been felt very much by political scientistsaround the world who are, as in other disciplines in the social sciences andhumanities, notoriously slow to adapt to the new ICTworld.In Lieu of a Conclusion

In the summer of 1999 a respected German national newspaper (FAZ,1999)reported the following case. A Japanese customer had bought a Toshiba videorecorder but again and again found the instrument not functioning properly.When he talked to the customer service of Toshiba on the phone, he was-in adeparture from the famed Japanese politeness-even verbally attacked. Since thecustomer had taped the telephone conversation with the Toshiba employee, he

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280 International oliticalScienceReview21(3)decided to design a Web page describing and documenting his case. Within onemonth, the Web page was addressed by interested users more than six milliontimes. Toshiba then went to court, but was bombarded with complaints about itspoor handling of the case by so many people on the company's website that theywithdrew the court case and publicly apologized to the customer.This may sound like a slightlystrange, irrelevantstory.However,it very tellinglysignals the potential impact of the Internet on all areas of life. Regarding ICT ndthe science system, the situation certainly is more variegated, but the mainmessage is that through ICT he science process has alreadybeen changed in manywaysand will in the future change even more dramatically,as more advanced ICTbecomes available and scholars learn to fully exploit its potential.As this development is in flux, so is its evaluation by participatingobservers. Inthat respect, three points will be made here. First,ICTs not only interesting in itsown right, but because of its potential impact on the science system also is alegitimate topic for the sociology of science and knowledge-research.The fact thatthe spread of ICT s taking place gradually and almost as a "normal" part ofchanging life circumstances may cloud the view of the long-term impact of thisprocess and may in part explain why so far not much research seems to have beenconducted on the matter.A pertinent analogy is the spread of television which wastaken up as a research field only after the diffusion process had alreadycome to anend, at least in the OECDountries. Second, one question repeatedly raised iswhether electronic communication by computer and, as multimedia applicationsspread, through television screens, will lead to the end of printed products, whichif true would be an obvious loss of cultural heritage. Here Riepl's "law"ofcomplementarity mayoffer consolation. At the beginning of the twentieth century,he had argued that throughout history no established mode of communicationhas ever completely disappeared, but-while adapting to circumstances-hasalwaysbeen complemented by the more recent modes (see also Schmitz, 1997:85). Thus, it is difficult to imagine that printed products of the science process willever be fully replaced by electronic equivalents. Third, the ICT evolution raises awealth of new social questions, among them the problem of rising inequalitiesbetween those who can manage the new technologies and those who cannot; theimpact on the political process, for instance through intranet partycommunication which strengthens the influence of the party centers on theirperiphery; on the organization of workplaces-the list is infinite.Returning to the science system and especially to political science, ICTmay inthe long run indeed deterritorialize the science system, but only because it helpsto deterritorialize the nation-state as the core entity which still, despiteglobalization, frames most of people's lives and also most of the scholarlywork ofpolitical scientists. That the nation-state is presently challenged on manydimensions no one can seriously question, although it may have carried theargument a little too far when Jean-Marie Gu6henno (1994) relates theconsequences of ICTto the end of democracy. Furthermore, it should be recalledthat especially in Europe nation-states constitute the quasi-laboratory ofinstitutional, social, and cultural diversity on which multi-level comparativepolitical science thrives. Thus, while the Internet may have broken down manyexisting boundaries of communication in science, at least for a while it seems thatICTwill not deterritorializepolitical science.



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KAASE:oliticalScienceand theInternetReferences

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Biographical NoteMAXKAASE as been Professor of Political Science at the University of Mannheimsince 1980. From 1974 to 1979 he was executive director of ZUMA,he centre forpolling, methods, and analysis in Mannheim. Since October 1993 he has beenresearch professor for the Comparative Study of Democracies Project at the SocialScience Research Center in Berlin. He is a vice-president of the European ScienceFoundation and a member of the Executive Committee of the InternationalPolitical Science Association. ADDRESS: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Reich-pietschufer 50, D-10785 Berlin, Germany. [e-mail: [email protected]]

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