"The Political Science of Giovanni Sartori" (Gianfranco Pasquino)

* Un ensayo sobre el trabajo y contribución de Giovanni Sartori, uno de los politólogos contemporáneos más importantes .

Abstract

This article reviews Giovanni Sartori’s contribution to contemporary political science. Sartori, who has just turned eighty, re-founded Italian political science and taught a generation of political scientists. He has made important contributions on democracy, party systems, and on political and constitutional engineering, and has written many significant methodological articles.

CONCLUSION

In this brief essay, I have at most been able to suggest what I think are the most outstanding and enduring of Giovanni Sartori’s contributions to contemporary political science. Four major books in particular – Democrazia e definizioni (Sartori, 1957), Parties and Party Systems (Sartori, 1976), The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Sartori, 1987a), and Comparative Constitutional Engineering (Sartori, 1994) – as well as several articles published in prestigious journals, such as the American Political Science Review, and several chapters in important collective enterprises, mark his special, and from many points of view, exceptional scholarly career. Each of his books has been translated into several languages and they remain essential reading, for scholars and students alike, in a discipline that often seems lacking in ‘institutional and professional memory’.

All this said and duly emphasised, I think that Sartori has made two additional immensely important contributions to political science. First, he has led the way in the search for true autonomy in political research, accompanied by a solid methodological awareness with specific reference to comparative politics and the comparative method. Secondly, he has convincingly shown that good political science does not simply mean ‘pure’ political science, focused mainly on formulating neat and polished models, sophisticated paradigms, and the quantification of its findings. In several areas political science has, and has always had, a powerful tendency to become political engineering. This tendency should not be resisted.

Rather, it should be channelled, disciplined, and put to work. By so doing, we will witness (and contribute to) a better political science not only for its practitioners, but also for political systems and citizens. As suggested by his powerful editorials (now available as a set of collected essays in Sartori, 2004) in the leading Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, and in the most important Italian weekly, l’Espresso, and by his frequent appearances on TV as a skilful and even abrasive discussant of public issues, Sartori’s strongly held belief in the significance and relevance of political and constitutional engineering gives additional meaning to his work in political science.

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"The Political Science of Giovanni Sartori" (Gianfranco Pasquino)