The comparative politics of Political Science: Chile and Uruguay in authoritarian times

Abstract

The article compares the history of political science (PS) in Chile and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on research that includes 58 interviews with Chilean and Uruguayan scholars and a systematic analysis of the main academic journals of these countries, it shows that important aspects of the Chilean case have not been fully taken into account by the literature. While in Uruguay PS was indeed undermined by the authoritarian government, in Chile key components of the current institutional infrastructure of the discipline were created during, and sometimes by, the dictatorship. The contrast between these two PS trajectories problematizes the linear narrative ‘democracy?PS’ and provides a more nuanced understanding of the discipline’s development(s) as well as of its political nature(s). In the background of this piece there is a theoretical meditation on the relationship between knowledge and power.