¿Para qué servimos los politólogos?

Almost everyone knows what to say when asked what an architect is good for or what a doctor's job is. The answer is usually less clear if you are asked about a politician: someone who "does politics" or "is involved in politics" will probably be the answer, leaving aside other less pleasant qualifications. Still less evident is the role of political scientists: a group that is little recognized but has been gaining more public prominence in recent years. In this essay, Josep Maria Vallès takes a broad tour of the profession: how political scientists come to be considered as such, what positions they occupy in the world of work and what functions they perform. But is your work socially useful? Not much if they only add to the political-media fuss, fueling the inflation of occasional comments. But they are when they carry out rigorous studies and involve themselves with their specialized knowledge in the critical analysis of the most pressing collective problems - growth of inequality, gender discrimination, public corruption, environmental predation or erosion of rights and social policies- trying to achieve better living conditions for society. The same utility to which those who began to reflect and debate on politics in classical Greece of the 5th century BC aspired. C.