How Many We Are

The number of academic researchers in political science across the world is much higher than twenty years ago. In total we may be already as many as economists, and more than sociologists. The numbers of students and graduates in political science and public policy are certainly still lower than those in economics and business, but the tendency of scholars to expand points out to a reduction of the gap.

Specifically, the combined official membership of the American Political Science Association (APSA), the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the International Political Science Association (IPSA) is close to 25,000 individuals. This number is very similar to the combined membership of the American, European and International Economic Associations, and significantly higher than that for the corresponding associations in Sociology, which is about 17,000. The number of economists and of sociologists in academic associations rose at high speed in the 1950s and 1960s, but that of economists has been virtually stable since the early 1970s and the one of sociologists has possibly decreased, while the increase in the number of political scientists during the last few decades has been more spectacular.

Political science is still a very American discipline, but a little less than some years ago. The numbers are the following. The APSA membership is over 15,000 individuals. Of those, about 13,000 are in the United States, while about 600 are in Canada, 1,000 in Europe and 500 in the rest of the world. The ECPR estimates that the individuals working in its institution-members are about 7,000. But one can suspect that not all the employees in the 314 institutions in the consortium would likely become ECPR individual members if this were the only way to affiliate (like in APSA), so a more comparable estimate might be around 5,000. Of this, about 4,000 are in Europe, while about 500 in the United States, 200 in Canada and 300 in the rest of the world. The IPSA declares 1,500 individual members and 100 institution members, possibly about 3,000 individuals in total, a substantial fraction of which are in Asia and Latin America. About twenty years ago, an Oxford fellow presented the educated guess that “in the United States there is, by far, the largest proportion of all instructors in political science in the world, perhaps beyond 80 per cent” (Johnson, 1989). According to the above numbers, nowadays that proportion may be closer to 70 per cent.

The same numbers suggest that there can be about 1,700 transatlantic political science scholars: that is, about 1,000 Europeans being members of APSA and about 500 Americans and 200 Canadians travelling, at least occasionally, the other way around to ECPR meetings. In proportion, thus, Europeans pay more attention to American political science than the reciprocal, but the number of North Americans looking to Europe has increased considerably.

As a reference to compare, academic economists are much more heavily concentrated in their American association, which has almost 22,000 members, but only about 14,000 of these are in the United States. In total, still a narrow majority of all academic economists in the world are in American universities. Comparable numbers for sociologists do not seem available, but it’s positive that most academics in sociology in the world are outside the United States.

References

By searching appropriately, data can be found in the following well-known sites and their links (click): APSA ECPR IPSA
and the other associations mentioned.

Nevil Johnson, The Limits of Political Science (Oxford University Press, 1989).
I use this book only for data, although it was a kind of pronouncement against a science of politics; as the book review in the APSR said, this book “is so eminently wrong-headed yet has some interesting things to say about some disciplinary fads and foibles”.

COMMENT

Joaquim Silvestre said...

In a logical reaction from an economist, Joaquim Silvestre has compared prices, in order to know the proportions of professionals in each discipline who are members of the respective association, since the fee can be a factor of the decision. He has found that the APSA is quite more expensive than the AEA!
The figures below.

American Political Science Association
Regular Members with income $100,000+ $208
$80 - 99,999 $173
$60 - 79,999 $160
$50 - 59,999 $148
$40 - 49,999 $126
Under $40,000 $84

American Economic Association
Annual Income Membership Fees for 2007
Above $62,000 $90
$47,000 to $62,000 $77
$47,000 or less $64

J.S.
California, Davis

(For the editor of this blog, this might mean that there should be an even higher proportion of professionals in political science than economists than what the association memberships reveal, which sounds intriguing).