Political science (“politology”) as an academic discipline and applied specialty at the Belarusian State University

Abstract

The article explores the formation and development of political science as an academic discipline and applied specialty at Belarusian State University. The development of the specialty “Political Science” (“Politology”) at BSU, and specificities of training specialists as “politician — lawyer”, are key themes. We show that this qualification ensured the professionalization of the teaching of political science in Belarus and aimed at solving domestic and foreign policy issues of the Belarusian state and the political system as a whole. The training of specialists in political and legal activities facilitated the formation of skills of analytical support for government bodies to solvepressing issues. The development of the Political Science Department of the Faculty of Law at BSU focused on problems of public policy and administration. The main directions of the political research included comprehension of a number traditional and modern issues, which the Belarusian political science faces, including: the problem of the correlation between the universal and the unique in the development of political science; dialectical comprehension of the political and administrative components in public administration, of domestic and foreign policy processes, “erosion of state sovereignty”, “softening of border regimes”, versus strengthening the sovereign state, protecting its security, and ideological substantiation of the values of national-state development; internal political processes consideration through the prism of globalization and the digital transformation; identification of mechanisms for the formation of political problems, their setting on the “policy agenda”, of mechanisms for the transformation of the social issues into political, the struggle for the production and control of information; research of the normative value systems formation; rethinking democracy, and mechanisms for legitimizing power; identification of “points of inclusion” of ethical and regional issues in politics. The current trend in the Political Science development in Belarus is the transition from disciplinary isolation to interdisciplinary synthesis.