Political Science in Portugal in the 21st Century: A Critical Appraisal

The birth of Political Science in Portugal was conditioned by the dictatorship and later by the predominance of other sciences such as Law and Sociology. The consolidation of the discipline and its trend towards autonomy and independence was carried out mostly in the nineties. This chapter analyses the evolution of Political Science in the 21 st century and, therefore, it focuses on the teaching framework, the role of the Portuguese Political Science Association, and the scientific output. Regarding the teaching component special emphasis is given to the number and diversity of programmes at BA, MA and PhD levels as well as to the evolution of the number of students in public and private universities. At the associa-tional level, we explore the development of participations at national conferences, expansion of membership and evolution of the Prize for Best PhD Thesis. In terms of scientific output we chose to look at the Portuguese journals of Political Science, the articles of the discipline published in Social Sciences Journals, as well as two renowned book publishers. On balance, our findings enable us to state that Political Science in Portugal has developed into a full mature discipline with an increasingly internationalised community, but that it is also facing important challenges regarding its future growth.