Christophe Jaffrelot, Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Research Director at the Centre de recherches internationales de Sciences Po (CERI), has just been elected the President of the French Political Science Association (AFSP). The opening of this chapter provides an opportunity to revisit the mission of this association, which was established by Sciences Po in 1949. It is also an occasion to discuss the projects of the new team that has been formed by Christophe Jaffrelot and Michel Mangenot, the Secretary General of the AFSP. Interview.

You devote your research to understand Indian and Pakistani societies and their political life. Isn't this at odds with the vocation of the French Association of Political Science, which seems to be national in scope ?

If the AFSP is French, that does not mean that it confines itself to France, far from it! Political science itself - like other social sciences, moreover - hardly recognises national borders - and if it does so, it is not to see them as an obstacle, but, as far as possible, to engage in a dialogue between traditions and methods that remain, it is true that they are different – as demonstrated by the weight of quantitative approaches in the United States and the greater importance of the "field" in France, for example.
As far as my personal case is concerned, I do not see the "exotic" nature of my objects of study as a problem. If my empirical terrains are in South Asia, I study them using social science theories. In fact, I have written texts on the theories of nationalism, democracy, populism... and I am about to do the same on authoritarianism, a sign of the times....
Working on South Asia, however, has led me to explore more the dimensions of political science that lie at the intersection of other disciplines, necessary to the intelligence of my objects, such as anthropology, sociology and geography - and not to mention history, my natural inclination. However, this in no way constitutes a betrayal of political science, which is a crossroads discipline par excellence. Do we not talk about political sociology, political anthropology, political economy and political philosophy. This is because power relations can be analysed from many angles.
I would also like to add that if we want to define political science as the science of power - which seems to me to be a good approach - it is necessarily "all fields" because there is power everywhere, and comparing the forms that power takes in different societies is most intellectually stimulating! The founders of the AFSP understood from the very outset the interest of "comparative politics". Although it was not until 2020 that a specialist from faraway lands became president of the Association, the Association showed an interest in comparatism from the very beginning and internationalised its activity from 1949 by participating in the Constitutive Conference of the International Political Science Association.  

In addition to your research activities, you have performed important research "administration" functions. What impact has this had on your own work?

These kind of functions hinder research work more than anything else in reality! Moreover, I have never been a candidate for any administrative function without "someone coming to look for me". However, on the one hand, scientists have to make their institutions work - because they are in a better position than anyone else to do so - and on the other hand, those who take on these kinds of tasks still find some advantage from the point of view of their research. Being a "full-time" researcher as a CNRS staff member, like me, can lead to hyper-specialisation. Taking on research administration functions means opening up to other approaches, other methods, other fields, and this is how one can progress in one's own research, through comparison - I will come back to this! In social science, too, there are "Eureka moments," which one prepares for by acquiring an intimate knowledge of one's object, but which often arise inadvertently - and reading work on different objects written by colleagues with other perspectives can play a catalytic role here. Examples: I understand better and Indian-style crony capitalism by learning about Russian oligarchs and Hindu national-populism by reading about Erdogan's Turkey... Yet one does not necessarily make these detours without being obliged to do so - and getting involved in tasks of collective interest creates this obligation. Having said that, there are other ways to achieve the same result! At CERI, the cohabitation of specialists from very different fields has recently allowed us, for example, to publish a book comparing the exercise of power by fifteen populist leaders - and this is only the latest and most recent manifestation of a long comparative tradition that leads us to relativise the specificity of cultural areas: when we make the effort to subject different societies to the same questioning, we become aware of the limits of this notion.

Since its creation, the Association has undergone important changes. Can we retrace the main stages?

First of all, a historical point: the AFSP was born in 1949 at Sciences Po, where its first president, André Siegfried, and its first secretary general, Jean Meynaud, served. From the outset, the Association was inclined towards interdisciplinarity - Fernand Braudel, Raymond Aron, Lucien Febvre, Jean-Marcel Jeanneney, Marcel Griaule, Alfred Sauvy and others participated in the founding meeting of the AFSP. Two years later, the AFSP was the melting pot, still at Sciences Po, of the French Journal of Political Science.I recall these founding elements in order to put into perspective what might appear, in retrospect, to be fundamental evolutions and to outline a periodisation that owes much to the work of Yves Deloye, Secretary General of the AFSP from 2003 to 2016, who has endeavored to write its history (see in this regard the wealth of information on the Association's website: https://www.afsp.info/association/archives/frise-historique/).
If we think in terms of stages, which is not so easy because continuity prevails in many ways as my "history point" suggests, the first stage, from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, is important to understand because it sheds light on the second : after the war, it was a question of inventing a discipline in the singular (political science) in a country where the political object had hitherto been the subject of plural analyses borrowing from law, philosophy, history and other human and social sciences. It was necessary to catch up with the United States and the United Kingdom, where the development of the discipline had begun between the wars.
The second stage began at the end of the 1960s when the AFSP (and notably Jean Touchard, who was then both at the FNSP and at the Association as Secretary General) realised that the first two decades of its history had not produced the desired effect: French political science remained marginal on the international scene (notably at the International Association of Political Science – AISP world congresses) and lacked a methodological foundation. The AFSP will contribute to this awareness and will promote its professionalisation. In this respect, its role in the creation of the political science aggregation in the early 1970s should be emphasised, since it definitely made the recruitment of political science teacher-researchers autonomous from the legal matrix, which was still de rigueur.
A third stage began with the arrival of Jean-Luc Parodi as Secretary General of the Association in 1980 - he remained there until 1999, and during these two decades he endeavored to improve recognition of the social utility of the discipline (to better interpret the world in which citizens live) and its professional basis. It is the time when there was a proliferation of study days, of the opening of a dialogue with other disciplines (law, anthropology, history...) and especially of the first congresses. The AFSP congresses became places of intellectual exchange and socialisation for young social-politists. I myself have benefitted from this, all the more so since the paper I presented at my first congress in 1988 was later published in the RFSP thanks to the benevolence of George Lavau and my thesis supervisor, Jean Leca. However, the role of the congresses in terms of socialisation was not limited to the scientific order: it also allowed for exchanges on how to teach political science, at a time when the discipline was developing in universities, particularly in the regions. Yes, an important turning point in the history of the AFSP was the creation and growth of this meeting, to which everyone is invited – even those who do not have a permanent job. The first edition took place at Sciences Po in 1981. The second, five years later, the Congress became quadrennial and then biennial in 2005 under the impetus of Nonna Mayer and Yves Deloye, respectively President and Secretary General.

The internationalisation of the AFSP was asserted in the 1990s, under the leadership of Jean Leca, who first presided over the Association in 1993-94, then the AISP in 1994-97 and again the AFSP, until 2005, the year Nonna Mayer succeeded him and further accentuated this process of internationalisation.

Another change occurred at the end of the 1990s, under the aegis of Pierre Muller, Secretary General, when the AFSP became more involved in the defense of political science professions, an approach that finally led in 2005 to the creation of the l’Observatoire des Métiers Académiques de la Science Politique (OMASP).   
A final inflection, thanks to the initiative of Andy Smith and Nicolas Sauger - and to the energy of the AFSP's administrative team, made up of Anne Avy and Isabelle Rocca - was marked in 2017 by the redesigning of the Association's website and by a notable presence on social networks: tools that still need to be ramped up.
The internationalisation of the AFSP was asserted in the 1990s, under the leadership of Jean Leca, who first presided over the Association in 1993-94, then the AISP in 1994-97 and again the AFSP, until 2005, the year Nonna Mayer succeeded him and further accentuated this process of internationalisation.
Another change occurred at the end of the 1990s, under the aegis of Pierre Muller, Secretary General, when the AFSP became more involved in the defense of political science professions, an approach that finally led in 2005 to the creation of the Observatoire des Métiers Académiques de la Science Politique (OMASP).
A final inflection, thanks to the initiative of Andy Smith and Nicolas Sauger - and to the energy of the AFSP's administrative team, made up of Anne Avy and Isabelle Rocca - was marked in 2017 by the overhaul of the Association's website and by a notable presence on social networks: tools that still need to be ramped up.

Today, what are the main challenges that the Association will strive to address?

As I said, the AFSP's vocation is to be the professional association of French social-politists. It must be entirely that, beyond the 341 members it has today in its ranks. It is in this spirit, moreover, that as director of the CERI I decided to reimburse their membership fees to the researchers in the lab who joined the AFSP. It is not a question of " crunching numbers ", of inflating the number of members for the sake of it, because it is not an end in itself, but because an AFSP fully representative of its professional environment will allow it to walk on its own two legs: On the one hand, the association is an academic society where all scientific sensibilities should be able to discuss the major themes of the discipline and its methods; on the other hand, the AFSP is a privileged place to defend the professions of political science, at a time when the precariousness of lecturer-researchers and researchers is increasing, when job creation is completely out of step with the growing attractiveness of the discipline to students and when contract research has not succeeded in proving its worth. We want to take stock of all of this so that we can be more than just a lobby: a creative force.
It is to try to rise to these challenges that Michel Mangenot, professor at the University of Paris 8 where he directs the Institute of European Studies, and myself have set up an office where the members are in charge of missions are as many as the priorities.  We have already mentioned the defense of political science professions, where Frédéric Sawicki will be on the front line; Assia Boutaleb and Hélène Combes form a tandem focused on research activities, both those of the AFSP working groups - a breeding ground for vital forces - and those that expose academics to all sorts of dangers, starting with those in the field, as we bear witness today by the cruel imprisonment of Fariba Adelkhah, whom we have not forgotten! Carole Bachelot is in charge of strengthening AFSP's network of partners, notably by getting closer to academic societies in other disciplines, both to reinforce intellectual exchanges and to better defend scientists; Claire Dupuy is working on the internationalisation - already well underway - of AFSP, a task that again requires partnerships, but also more occasional exchanges and increased socialisation of young and no so young, internationally. In this regard, having participated in the IAPHS Congress held at Sciences Po in 1985 and in dozens of international conferences (notably in the United States where I taught every autumn for ten years), I must say that I have always been shocked by the persistent lack of knowledge, in these forums, of excellent French works, due to a lack of translation or the inability of authors to afford to attend major conferences. When I was director of CERI, I made participation in these conferences a priority - it is still close to my heart. Last but not least, Marieke Louis, who has valorisation as her mission, will help AFSP to exist in the City by using new audio/visual tools, since it is so important to make our political science and those who pursue it even better known.

In 1969, at a key moment in the history of France, Jean Touchard regretted that the AFSP was "too discreet /reserved " because, he said, "it is up to the AFSP to reflect on the state of political science in France and to make a certain number of precise proposals and establish priorities". This observation and his call to action remain topical, in a context that is finally comparable, and we will make sure that we draw the consequences from it, in a collegial manner that also involves the AFSP Board of Directors, where all the good will is already being put to task!

Christophe Jaffrelot, CNRS research director at the Centre de recherches internationales de Sciences Po (CERI), devotes his research to nationalism (and more particularly to national-populism) and to processes of de-democratisation, particularly in the context of Indian and Pakistani political societies. His research interests include the evolution of the Indian political system, the sociology of the Indian political class, the links between religion and politics, and the external relations of India and Pakistan.
He was awarded the bronze medal of the CNRS and today his work is an authoritative reference in his research fields. His activities related to the promotion and organisation of research have been and remain numerous: Director of book collections, Editor-in-chief or director of scientific journals in France and abroad, Director of CERI (2000-2008), President of the "Politics, Power, Organisation" section of CNRS (2012-2016), President of the Scientific Council of the network of French Research Institutes in Asia (2006-2016). He is also a member of many scientific councils in Indian, German and Pakistani universities. In addition to these functions, he is actively teaching at Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Montreal and King's College (London). He is also involved in action research as a permanent consultant at the Quai d'Orsay Center for Analysis, Foresight and Strategy since 2008, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert at the Montaigne Institute.