Liparit Kiuzadjan
European Coordination Centre for Research a n d Documen-tation in the Socia! Sciences, Vienna
Introduction
There is nothing unusual today about international cooperation in the social sciences; there are many organisations and institutes who specialise in inter-national comparative research, and somé have alsó adopted a particular East-West focus. At the time of the foundation of the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation in the Social Sciences, however, the situation was entirely different. It was 1963 and the ideological division of Europe was at its zenith. At that time the first and most dangerous phase of post-war division had just ended. Nobody knew how stable the new equilibrium would be. The
foun-dations of the territorial division were ideological differences over the construction of society. There were two main issues: how to regulate the economy and how to deal with the will of the people; or put differently, the crucial questions of the role of markets or central planning, and the question of democracy or autocracy, both core questions for the social sciences.
The Vienna Centre was established as a non-governmental organisation.
However, the possibility of becoming inter-govemmental was clearly allowed for in its originál statutes; it was underwritten by public money, however dispensed, 150
and member countries regarded the Centre as a symbol of cooperation. Even if it was linked to UNESCO in Paris, it was sited in the heart of Europe. The task it was given was to coordinate social science projects in Europe.
Ostensibly, this task was the same as those of other régiónál UNESCO social science centres established during the same period. In the sixties, the social sciences were still far from being fully accepted in quite a few European countries, and their infrastructure was often weak. Under these cirfcumstances, intemational cooperation was seen as one way to strengthen national social science structures, advance methodology (and especially comparative research methods) and create intemational networks. As a part of this, documentation was seen as a way of supporting cooperation and the exchange of information.
For UNESCO all these functions were necessary and urgent; they became the outward, visible tasks of the Vienna Centre. However, given the conditions - a completely divided Europe with competing political systems - there were addi-tional roles which the Centre had to take on.
For almost 30 years the Vienna Centre has contributed to a certain extent in shaping the ability of European social scientists to understand other nations and cultures. It has done so with greater influence than university-based centres and area studies programmes because joint projects of the Vienna Centre have been explicitly designed for multi-national and multi-disciplinary teams of high-quality specialists with good reputations in their disciplines. Obviously the results were sometimes dependent on political and ideological limits shaped by the Cold War, but the experience gained, even if a negatíve one, is valuable and could serve as a point of reference for future activities. The Vienna Centre was charged with maintaining East-West contacts in the social sciences, with building a bridge across a very deep intellectual gap. Of course, it could not react adequately to many of the pressing questions in Europe. Pressing questions are usually those considered most contentious, and, as cooperation was in contention itself, less controversial questions were deemed more acceptable for comparative research between Eastern and Western countries.
This does not mean that the tasks selected as the subjects of the Centre's activities should be characterised as peripheral. On the contrary, the themes studied within the framework of intemational cooperation organised by the Centre have been lodged within central concems of the social science communities. They have been largely topicai ones but their elaboration, in terms of theoretical back-ground, methodological equipment, and generalisability as well as explanatory power, has not been sufficiently developed on the transnational level but rather according to the standards of the individual nations. Of course, there have been serious obstacles to harmonising the different culturally and ideologically bounded national standards in order to achieve a new intemational quality. Even in the
cases of activities in which very strong national teams have participated it has rarely been possible to come to sufficiently well-founded explanations and gener-alisations.
So, for a certain period, the Centre had a monopoly on East-West social science relations. It was an institution with an ambitious task: to do independent com-parative research on the very thing that divided the two political systems. This constrained the type and quality of the research, and it is a lesson which has to be learnt by everyone in cross-national comparative research: How to avoid the Lowest Common Denominator Syndrome?
Hopefully, this more overtly political function of the Centre has now come to an end. In the same way, the Centre's unique position in the domain of East-West comparative research has been overtaken by events beyond anybody's control.
Regarding the past and future of the Vienna Centre, let us refer to Mrs. Francine Fournier, Assistant Director General for Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO, who, in her address to the recent meeting of the Vienna Centre's Board of Direc-tors, found that, on account of the considerable achievements made by the Vienna Centre during the nearly three decades of its existence in the fields of comparative research, data collection and establishing networks of institutions and individual scholars, it seemed to be particularly pertinent to encourage and enforce this work, it being understood that the Vienna Centre must adjust itself to the new situation in Europe. Indeed, there is an opportunity to restructure the Centre, and to make use of its cumulative knowledge and experience of East-West relations.
The creation of what has become known as the Vienna Centre was a true and useful experiment which must nowadays be transformed in a proper way into a modern international non-governmental institution, not only facilitating and coordinating scientific cooperation within Europe but also contributing to the complicated processes of shaping the newly unified Old Continent.
One experience out of several can illustrate this potential for development. The first twenty years of the Centre's existence were dominated by its East-West role.
In the eighties, however, the Centre began to deal with the North-South axis, establishing a research programme on the Mediterranean countries and those bordering the Black Sea. This has been supplemented by subsequent work in this region, broadening the geographical and thematic scope of the Centre's work and extending the participation of the southern Mediterranean countries.
The incorporation of this North-South aspect may be regarded as an important step away from traditional paradigms, towards a truly European outlook. Last year's changes throughout Europe require a comparable reassessment of conven-tional political and scientific concepts; we essentially need a new framework which grasps the fact that international relations have changed. This way of thinking prompts two important questions: What did the Centre achieve during these past years? What makes the Centre still worthwhile, even in today's Europe?
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