Arno Tausch – Visiting Professor of Political Studies and Governance, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Series: Distinguished Men and Women of Science, Medicine and the Arts; Political Science and History
BISAC: POL000000
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52305/GTEU8756
Book Reviews
“Arno Tausch is a scholar who developed during half a century a productive world-system perspective on global dynamics and dependencies, inequalities and exclusion as well as changing subjectivities in many different fields: Theoretically sound, methodologically innovative and empirically insightful. Tausch is a truly transnational intellectual with a clear cosmopolitan and social-liberal democratic compass, always with a healthy distance to the false comfort of Anglo-Saxon dominance in social sciences. In a way, his autobiography contains also a strong and motivating message to younger scholars: Develop a critical thinking, reflect on the highly uneven conditions of knowledge production and your position within the system – and find your own way! In Tausch´s own words: “one must always be one’s own teacher.” Today´s world is in deep trouble and needs such a thinking out of the box that contributes to understanding the “big picture.” Ulrich Brand, Professor of International Politics at the University of Vienna, Austria, and Co-Author (with Markus Wissen) of “The Imperial Mode of Living. Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism”, London 2021
“Arno Tausch shares with us his intellectual biography, looking back at half a century of doing political science research in an ever-changing world. He eloquently combines his personal life and the beginning of his career and visits abroad with larger questions of the world system. A quantitatively oriented scholar, he introduces us not only to his perspectives on value surveys but circles back to basic questions of how to make sense of the global order against the backdrop of Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.” – Farid Hafez, Class of 1955 Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Studies, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA
 “Arno Tausch is in his early 70s and thus looks back in this remarkable intellectual autobiography on a life with many distinct professional phases, as a university researcher in the fields of political science and political economy, as a diplomat witnessing the dramatic phases of systemic transition in Warsaw/Poland and as a civil servant in the field of social policies. This book testifies to his inquisitive mind confronting and investigating some of the great challenges the world is and has been facing (from the problems development-underdevelopment in the 1970s, to nationalism and populism over the 2000s, up to the more recent escalation of military conflict in Europe). He employs a variety of tools of analysis in an original way (from theoretical approaches of dependencia and world systems theories, to the heterodox approaches of Kaleckian and Keynesian economics, to the use of a spectrum of empirical tools applied in particular to World Values Survey data). Interesting are also his account of interactions with many intellectual figures who influenced his work, to name just a few: Friedrich v. Hayek, Karl Deutsch, Anton Pelinka, Andre Gunder Frank, Dieter Senghaas, Kurt Rothschild and many others. The book reflects a remarkable life of an intellectual always engaged in the pressing social and political issues of the time.” – Professor Dr. Michael Landesmann, Johannes Kepler University and Former Scientific Director, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) Wien, Austria
 “This is the exciting autobiography of an unorthodox scholar whose prolific writings and fine insights on an array of topics of grave importance have enriched our world. I recommend this book with enthusiasm!” – Andrei S. Markovits, Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
“This book is a must to all students of political science. I also, firmly believe that professor Arno Tausch’s analysis would serve many politicians and decision makers around the world in their daily assessment as to the direction they would like to navigate to in a reality of constant tectonic confrontation between East and West. Such a concise book with so much content and reflection!” – Colonel (ret. ) Dr. Jacques Neriah, Former Head of Assessment at Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, Senior Researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and Senior Security Commentator on i24news TV Channels.
“Arno Tausch’s intellectual biography tells us the story of a political scientist who neither drifted in the waves of changing mainstreams nor put too much effort in fighting them. Instead, he explored the “sidestreams” in different areas of social sciences, from (political) “world system” theory, the (economic) concept of “long cycles” and the role of “global values” to the deeper origins of “putinism” and its terrible consequences nowadays in the Ukraine. A stimulating read.” – Stephan Schulmeister, Economic Researcher and University Lecturer, Homepage: https://stephanschulmeister.wifo-pens.at/
Book Description
In this book, Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch, born in 1951, looks back on five decades of political science. Was the current global crisis preventable? Tausch, who has had a long career in academia and administration and is now Visiting Professor of Political Studies and Governance at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, tries to show in his scholarly memoirs that the unequal relations between centres and peripheries that he has analysed over five decades, as well as the long conflict-ridden cycles of the world economy and world politics, could have been avoided, and Putinism and nationalism and the end of peace and social justice in the West are also linked to the neoliberal model of society in the West, which he learned to reject as a student of Nobel laureate Friedrich August Hayek in Salzburg from 1969 to 1971. He is one of the few political scientists in the world who, since 1991, has persistently warned against the hardening of Russia’s course, including in leading Russian academic journals. In 1991 he wrote his book “Russia’s Treadmill”, the predictions of which have come true in an almost eerie way. But neo-liberal economic policy also corresponds 1:1 with the foreign policy vision of the “neocons”, whose policy of NATO expansion first fuelled those destructive forces in Russia like an accelerant, leading to today’s world crisis over Ukraine, which could end in a global nuclear catastrophe. The world must leave behind neo-liberalism, and return to political and economic concepts such as those of Michal Kalecki, Kazimierz Laski, Kurt Rothschild and Josef Steindl, whose basic structures he became acquainted with in the 1970s and which are still valid today: demand as the engine of growth, a stable or rising wage share, the growth of the public sector, fiscal coordination, international cooperation, coexistence and the rule of law within the framework of the 1975 Helsinki Accords.
