Looking for eclecticism? structural and contextual factors underlying political science's relevance gap: Evidence from the Italian case

The article deals with the perception of political science's limited social relevance, by proposing a theoretical framework of analysis through which the Italian case is addressed. Thus, we assume that the prevailing nature of the discipline (variously defined as soft/pure/divergent/rural) results in specific patterns of behaviour which strongly constrain political science's capacity to increase the importance of its social role. This framework is adopted to analyse, using original empirical data, the Italian case where notwithstanding the institutionalisation of the subject within university curricula, and the relatively promising level of internationalisation of research, the 'political' and 'social' roles of political science continue to be of a substantially limited entity. Furthermore, three professional pathways emerge as prevailing (pure public scholar, pure academic, pure public intellectual) and largely independent of each other, thus emphasising the problems of the visibility and relevance of the subject. Consequently, in order to fill the social relevance gap, we discuss the need for a fourth, more eclectic professional pathway.