A Partisan Political Science of Democracy

Two days ago, Leonardo Morlino, one of the most influential political scientists that Italy had after World War II, passed away. Leonardo was Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Luiss University, where he taught for a long time, also fulfilling very important academic leadership tasks, such as pro-rector of scientific research. Prior to Luiss, Leonardo had taught at the (then) Faculty of Political Science 'Cesare Alfieri', a faculty where he had trained as a scholar collaborating with Giovanni Sartori, the founding father (together with Norberto Bobbio) of Italian Political Science. Leonardo was one of the best known and internationally appreciated Italian scholars of Comparative Politics, in the United States (where he had worked with Robert A. Dahl at Yale) but also in Latin America, where his volumes are widely translated and adopted in the continent's political and social science faculties. Leonardo opened up new avenues for scientific research. One only has to think of his research on the quality of democracy, on transitions from authoritarian to democratic regimes, on the consequences of Europeanisation processes in the southern member states of integrated Europe. In each of those researches, Leonardo focused on the role of 'political anchors' (parties, groups, leaders) in ensuring democratic quality or the consolidation of a democratic transition. His analysis was never cold, as he looked at the role of actors, not just at the conditioning of processes and structures. With a strong methodological sensitivity, Leonardo introduced major innovations in the methods of comparative research, always striving to give it an empirical foundation. For him, science was not an opinion.

As he wrote in a memorable contribution on the state of Italian political science, for Leonardo it was necessary to resolutely preserve the distinction between political science and politology. Devotees of the former, he wrote, reason on the basis of concepts, categories, models, while devotees of the latter limit themselves to describing the everyday, adding little or nothing to what quality political journalism makes known to us. Leonardo did not like amateurs on the run, those who improvise a competence they do not have, just as his master Giovanni Sartori did not. At the same time, Leonardo was also suspicious of political scientists who went in and out of politics, as in a rotating door. For him, the overlap between 'Political Science' and 'Politics' ended up confusing their distinct social (as well as epistemological) realms, politicising the former and technicalising the latter. By losing the Weberian detachment from the object of study, as well as from the values pursued by the political actors involved, the political scientist was transformed into a 'militant intellectual' (in favour of the left or the right, it does not matter), into the partisan of a cause, into the rationaliser of a party's (or a leader's) choices. Scholars must speak to the public, we have said many times, but as scholars, translating their expertise into a comprehensible, yet educational language. What he had learnt from Sartori was that Political Science must be 'partisan' of democracy and liberal constitutionalism, before taking one side or the other of the political system. The political scientist must promote a systemic perspective on the problems that are the subject of political debate and confrontation, supporting reforms or opposing counter-reforms on the basis of a general, not a partial perspective. Only in this way can he or she be socially useful, to policymakers and the public. After all, the politicisation (i.e., partisanship) of the Italian social sciences (in disciplines such as history and sociology) was to be seen as the cause of their relative marginality in the respective international scientific communities. Leonardo's support was crucial in fostering internationalisation processes, in Rome as in Florence, against the resistance of the supporters of the traditional university (closed in on itself, refractory towards external evaluation, conservative as a corporation). Leonardo leaves behind many students and collaborators with whom he carried out research projects. With each of them he was generous in his advice, his help, his time devoted to them. He leaves Emilia and two daughters, heirs to the love of science passed on to them by their father.