Marginality or Self-Marginalisation?
International Relations: Science, Politics, and Scientific Policy in the Czech Republic
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Many politicians in the Czech Republic see their country as lacking in size and influence. Numerous political scientists also take this view. Structuralist theories of international relations reinforce this stance. The dominance of the Great Powers is mirrored even in the academic world. After 1989, continuous comparison with Western countries or Western research was supposed to serve the end of “catching up” with them. For several years, however, fatalism has been spreading. Yet a look at the history of the field of International Relations in the Czech Republic shows that in politics and in academia, complaints about marginality have above all one consequence: self-marginalisation.
(Osteuropa 3/2016, pp. 33–41)