This week we’re looking at the role of historical research in political science. What’s it good for, and how’s it best done?
Political science is centrally concerned with understanding how politics works. It’s a discipline of the present tense, and the bulk of our research focuses on gathering evidence in the here and now. But sometimes political scientists also dig into the past. From time to time, you’ll even find one of us trawling through the records in a dusty archive.
We are discussing one particular ongoing example of historical research in political science - at prisoner-of-war camps in the UK in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
We are joined by:
Zeynep Bulutgil,Professor in International Relations. Regular listeners may remember in episode we did with her back in 2022 on the origins of the secular state.
Sam Erkiletian, a final-year PhD student who’s just about to submit his dissertation on patterns of socialization in groups of combatants.
Mentioned in this episode:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
camps, research, pow, combatants, archives, historical, cases, reeducation, data, historians, material, sam, political science, british, questions, history, secondary sources, uncovering, information, archival data
SPEAKERS
Alan Renwick, Sam Erkiletian, Zeynep Bulutgil
Alan Renwick 00:05
Hello. This is UCL Uncovering Politics. And this week we're looking at the role of historical research in political science. What's it good for? And how is it best done?
Hello. My name is Alan Renwick. And welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics - the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
Political Science is centrally concerned with understanding how politics works. It's a discipline of the present tense, and the bulk of our research focuses on gathering evidence in the here and now.
But sometimes political scientists also dig into the past. From time to time you will even find one of us trawling through the records in a dusty archive.
So what's the value of historical research for political science? What does such research involve? And how do we ensure that we do it well?
Well, these are the questions that we'll be exploring today. And as we do so, we'll also be discussing one particular ongoing example of historical research in political science, looking at prisoner of war camps in the UK in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
To do that, I'm delighted to be joined by two of my colleagues here in the UCL Department of Political Science.
Zeynep Bulutgil is Professor in International Relations, and much of her research delves deep into history. Regular listeners may remember an episode we did with her back in 2022 on the origins of the secular state.
And Sam Erkiletian is a final year PhD student who's just about to submit his dissertation on patterns of socialisation in groups of combatants.
Zeynep and Sam: Welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics.
And Zeynep, let's begin with the big picture. And then maybe we can narrow things down as we go on. So what is historical research? And how would you characterise its value for political science?
Zeynep Bulutgil 02:02
So I would say that there's a pretty strong tradition of historical research in political science for two reasons. We're very much interested in causal theories. So we want to generate causal theories, and we want to be able to evaluate or test them. And I think historical research plays a crucial role in both of these avenues.
In terms of generating theories, when you read history, basically what you're doing is you're looking at how events unfold over time, which makes it easier to think of an argument that follows that sequence of events. And of course, then we're interested in whether or not that sequence is applicable elsewhere, which is maybe where we diverge from historians to some extent.
The other way, I think, in which history becomes very important, especially if you read history of contexts and countries that you're not familiar with, is the element of surprise, right. So sort of being hit with information and events that, in a way, contradict with the assumptions that you make - and we do make a lot of assumptions in political science - can be very sort of invigorating in terms of coming up with new ideas and coming up with new theories.
The second sort of element that's important that I've already mentioned is, of course, testing theories. And history comes into this picture, I think, sort of, in two ways.
One, we can use historical material, both archival and secondary sources, for generating original and systematic data. And this is something that political scientists have been doing for a long time.
Secondly, we can use the more descriptive information that we get from historical material in order to test the empirical implications of arguments. So often, a good theory will give you testable implications about the timing of things, the sequence of events, who are the main actors, how do they interact with each other, what are their attitudes and behaviours? And if you have these types of implications, looking at historical material with a plan in mind can be very enriching and useful in terms of testing theories.
Alan Renwick 04:20
That's really interesting. So in both of those cases, you're talking about sequencing of things that happen over time, and historical research being particularly helpful for helping us to understand that kind of sequencing - that kind of emergence of processes over time. And I guess politics is necessarily something that does happen over time, and sometimes over very extended times. And therefore, it's necessary for us to kind of dig back into the past in order to see how things develop over a period of time.
Zeynep Bulutgil 04:52
Absolutely. I mean, I think when we think about historical research, sometimes what we have in mind is studying things like how do states emerge historically, how do democratic institutions - parliaments - emerge historically. I'm interested in how do secular institutions emerge.
But if you think about research and political science in general, it's never just about what's going on today, right. It's always about what has been going on at least for a couple of decades. And these are questions that can travel to different time periods.
So I think that's why it's important for us to make use of the very rich historical material that's out there. And that includes both deep history and more recent history.
Alan Renwick 05:34
So it's always helpful with this kind of slightly abstract topic to discuss a particular example. And we're going to be talking here mainly about Sam's work and his work on socialisation of combatants.
Zeynep, you're Sam's dissertation supervisor, so you've been thinking very deeply about this project as a whole. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you think about the project and how that fits in with what you've just described about the value of historical research?
Zeynep Bulutgil 06:00
Sure. I mean I think it's Sam has been doing the deep thinking on this, but I'll introduce this topic and then he can sort of go deeper into it.
So Sam is interested in the socialisation of former combatants. And to study this, he's been looking at prisoners of war, after - or during - the Second World War, in Britain and the US.
And this started with him finding some archival information on the US camps. And initially, it was difficult to access the full information there, so he had to become sort of a bit more practical and look into the British ones. And he was really able to find a wealth of information, which allowed him to both collect systematic information at the level of camps - so his unit of analysis for the large-N is sort of these prison camps - and then he was able to conduct both comparative analysis among the British camps, and then compare the British ones to the US ones, because it just turns out that the British had a different type of policy than the Americans when it came to these prisoner of war camps, which is very useful for Sam's project.
Maybe I'll stop here and let him talk about-
Alan Renwick 07:14
Yeah, Sam, let's hear from you on this.
So I guess the first question is, where does this project start? What's the kind of question that you started off with in your mind that you wanted to explore that you felt we really needed an answer to?
Sam Erkiletian 07:27
Yeah. Thank you, Alan, for having me. And just thank you for having me on the show - I really appreciate it. All the PhDs here at the department really loved the opportunity to actually be able to talk about our work in person rather than through conference abstracts or, you know, just through papers. So it's great to just have this conversation.
And what I'm really interested in is, you know, we think about military socialisation, and we think of this very uniform cohesive process where everybody goes through this very rigorous training. Sometimes it's ideological, sometimes it's just simply military training. But we sort of have this misconception that soldiers are all very uniform.
But when you actually dive into the cases and dive into the research, you see that no, despite many combatants being part of the same group, you have this extreme variation in what sort of preferences they adopt and sort of their behaviours on and off the battlefield.
And, you know, there's been more recent research, especially from the political scientists unpacking armed groups and diving deeper. But there's still a lot of gaps and questions about socialisation. So why do certain combatants develop certain norms while others don't?
And my background is in military history and in a military sociology. So I wanted to dive deeper into this more micro level. So my analysis is at the subgroup level: these are the junior commanders - sort of the squad leaders, the platoon leaders - and I just wanted to dive deeper just based on my readings of military history and military sociology, that really where I think a lot of these combatant preferences are formed are at this very immediate subgroup, sort of informal level, that a lot of political scientists haven't really tested yet or really dived into yet.
Alan Renwick 09:12
And in the introduction to the dissertation, you mention a couple of quite recent examples where different norms have developed in different groups of combatants. So you talked about the Australian Defence Forces working in Afghanistan and examples of war crimes being committed, or certainly alleged, by the Australian Defence Forces in Afghanistan, and then similarly with some US troops in Iraq, as well.
Do you want to just tell us a little bit about those examples? Because I guess it illustrates why this is so important, the research that you are doing.
Sam Erkiletian 09:50
Yeah, of course. I'm happy to discuss those very modern - or those very contemporary - cases. And you know, what we saw in these alleged war crimes against only very specific units in the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan.
And there was this incredible report carried out by the Australian government where they conducted hundreds of interviews and, you know, really gathered evidence to discuss why were certain units carrying out these war crimes. And what they found was it really went down to these subgroup leaders - these were the squad commanders, platoon commanders - and you know, these sort of divergent cultures where it was okay to harm civilians and okay to sort of break the rules was very specific in this report. It traces it back to just certain commanders in certain units.
So it was not a widespread - it was not widespread patterns of violence or of war crimes. It was very specific to these particular units.
Alan Renwick 10:53
And therefore understanding why different units develop in such different directions, and why people within different units are socialised into different norms, is such an important question.
Sam Erkiletian 11:05
Yes, exactly.
Alan Renwick 11:06
Yeah. So you start off in the dissertation with that focus on these quite contemporary cases. But then, as Zeynep explained, the research that you do is on POW camps in the UK in the aftermath of the Second World War.
So I guess first it's useful for us just to understand those cases a little bit better. I mean, many of our listeners will be British, or will be living in the UK, but won't actually be aware that there even were these POW camps in the UK in the 1940s. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about who was there, what was going on, what was the kind of time period we're talking about?
Sam Erkiletian 11:42
Yeah, of course. So first, you know, as a PhD student looking for sources of data and really interesting cases to use to test my theories, I was finding it very difficult to gain access to the data I needed, which would have required working very closely with state militaries or even working, you know, collecting data or gathering data in an active combat zone or within a state of military. So for me, I was trying to think of alternative ways I could find interesting data to test on my theories of socialisation.
And, you know, this is one of the main benefits of archival data - it's not so dangerous going to the archive. I mean, I guess you could get a paper cut or a large stack of books could fall on you. But you know, for the most part, the archival data is there.
And I was really drawn to these really unique universe of POW camps. But not just POW camps: POW camps where there's re-education programs as well. And it seems like a very unique and odd sort of universe of cases. But it's actually pretty widespread throughout history.
So specifically, the Soviet Union had this massive re-education program for Japanese POWs and for German POWs. After the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese had a re-education program for former South Vietnamese soldiers. So there actually is this small universe of cases that I started to dive into and was just shocked to really find this overlooked case of German POWs being re-educated by both the US and the UK during, but mainly after, the Second World War.
And this is really this fascinating case where both governments devoted substantial resources to not only housing and feeding these POWs, but really trying to change their minds before sending them back to Germany.
And, you know, to give some context, this was the heightening Cold War. So both the US and the British really wanted to send back as many pro democratic Germans as they could to West Germany to sort of shore up their, I guess, democratic lines against the iron curtain there.
Alan Renwick 13:51
And why are these good cases for testing your theory?
So your theory is suggesting that the leadership of small groups of combatants makes an important difference to the norms that those groups kind of develop - the norms that become socialised within those groups.
And I guess, you know, coming in from the outside, I might think: Okay, so you've got a POW camp, so here, well, the norms are going to be set by the leadership of the POW camp - so it's going to be the Brits rather than by combatants who are involved here.
But actually, one of the things that I found very striking and that I learnt in the early stages of reading your dissertation was that quite a lot of the leadership within the camps is coming from POWs themselves. So there's a kind of leadership structure within the camps, and therefore you're able to track differences created depending on the disposition of the leading POWs within the camps. Is that right?
Sam Erkiletian 14:51
Yeah, exactly. So what's really unique about the POW camps in the US and in the UK is that you know the American and British authorities really allowed the Germans themselves to administer the camps.
Part of this was simply manpower shortages: they just did not have the personnel to adequately manage these camps. And on the other hand, they were actually trying to follow the Geneva Convention as closely as possible. And different articles in the Geneva Convention essentially allow prisoners of war to recreate their military hierarchies within these camps. So that actually led to the Germans themselves running the camps.
In the British case, there were British commodores and British interpreters. But they were really minor in comparison to the German camp leaders, deputy camp leaders, the leaders running the hospitals, the canteen, the medical officers, even the priests in the camps as well.
So you have this really unique opportunity. And then this is one of the big things they had to sort of figure out how do we move - was how similar and how comparable are life within these POW camps to life within an armed group, you know, in order for me to test my theory.
And I was, you know, stunned to find that they're very, very similar. And sort of, you even see from the memoirs of these German combatants, they used to say that their life, it almost felt like they were in the German army again when they were in these camps, because the hierarchies were able to recreate themselves.
Alan Renwick 16:21
We're going to be talking here mainly about the methodology that you're using and the use of historical research. But before we get there, we should let people know what the results are. What do you actually find through the research? And then we'll have to kind of double back and go into the methodology a bit more.
Sam Erkiletian 16:38
So the goal of re-education was to really change the attitudes of these German POWs, specifically to democratize them before sending them back to Germany. And these re-education initiatives were actually fairly hands off in the sense of it was more just discussing democratic norms, watching pro democratic films, reading - you know, each camp had its own library where they disseminated pro democratic books.
And what I find is that, based on the subgroup leadership of each camp, we really see variation in the outcomes of their attitudes. So at the end of their stay in the UK, the British were tracking the attitudes, and particularly at the end had initiated several surveys to track how much had their attitudes actually changed.
So what we see here is this really extreme variation in their final attitudes before going back to Germany. And this is all, you know, as I argue, based on the subgroup leadership type of each camp. So if the leaders of the camps were actually pro democratic and supported re-education. Or you had camps where they were not very supportive of re-education and did not necessarily change their views and still maintained their wartime identities.
Alan Renwick 17:55
Great, that's really helpful. Thank you.
Let's then go back into the methodology and explore that further. And Zeynep, actually, it would be interesting to hear from you here.
So I was quite struck when Sam was talking there about why he was investigating these historical cases. Then a significant part of the explanation is just a kind of practical explanation - that it's not possible to explore contemporary cases because you just can't get the information out of the military in the present, whereas the evidence does exist for cases in the past.
Whereas when you were talking earlier, you were maybe talking about a kind of more fundamental reason for sometimes needing to go to history - that we need to see the long sequence over time, and we just can't do anything other than look at history in order to get there.
Is that fair that we have these kind of two different sorts of reasons for digging into history?
Zeynep Bulutgil 18:52
Yes, I think I think that's correct because, in a way, Sam is looking at a snapshot of what was going on in these camps at the time. It's equivalent to doing research in the present, right.
But there are certain issues with accessing information there. I think also issues about whether people would not be forthcoming - you know, because they are scared of culpability and things like that - that make it easier to go and look at historical material. We don't feel as strongly about historical material. It's less ideological - often, not always. So maybe that's another advantage that we have when we do historical research.
Alan Renwick 19:39
Yes, that's interesting.
And I guess that potentially raises some ethical questions relating to this kind of research. So is it appropriate to be digging around in things that people might regard as rather sensitive because we can do because maybe those records were being made at a time when ethical standards were lower? So maybe we're able to get access to materials that today we just wouldn't be able to get access to because ethical standards of research have arisen? Or maybe it's just that, you know, if we are looking back in time, then things are less sensitive, and it is fairer - more appropriate - for us to be looking to that material.
Zeynep Bulutgil 20:21
I think it is possible that sometimes there's material that was collected in a way that that would be ethically unacceptable today. I don't think that's the case for Sam's project in particular.
But I think when you think about these ethical issues, research that doesn't involve human subjects is always slightly less dangerous, right, ethically speaking, because you're not dealing with humans that are alive today and not worried about their wellbeing.
That doesn't mean that archival historical research doesn't raise issues about ethics. Like, for example, you might be looking at archives where, you know, some of these people are still alive. Even these POWs, some of them might be alive, except that of course Sam won't using their names. And often he won't even know the names because I think they get just letters as signifiers. Or it might be that they have relatives, you know, who don't want to hear certain stories or want to hear certain types of stories.
So, of course, there are ethical issues involved. But I do think that the ethical issues when it comes to historical work and archival work are not as dangerous as when you're dealing with human subjects in field work doing field experiments. In fact, I think that's one of the advantages of dealing with historical material.
Alan Renwick 21:46
Sam, do you want to come in on that? Because I think you do have some material in your dissertation where you reflect on some of the ethical questions relating to your research.
Sam Erkiletian 21:58
Yeah, it's a great question, Alan. And to echo Zeynep, you know, there are certain ethical issues to think about as, you know, some of these people in my case very well could still be alive. And it's even a question of the privacy of their descendants as well. So even though we kind of think about using this, you know, material from 80 years ago, there still are some sort of standards we should keep in mind.
And this just sort of points to a wider discussion on using archival methods in general in conflict research, as it's being used more and more frequently, especially as state archives are opening up and more data is being declassified.
And, you know, we have a lot of rules and standards in other aspects of the discipline, you know, particularly with survey data and doing survey experiments. But it's been less of a discussion so far around, you know, sort of what are the best practices and standards for the archive.
So, it's still uncharted territory in a sense. And there's been some fantastic work out there sort of recommending what we should do and sort of how to grapple with it.
But, you know, to carry on Zeynep's point, I think at this stage it's also more about methodological standards of how to sort of tease out the biases in this data.
You know, particularly in my case, the reports and the data I'm using were all constructed by British re educators. And that obviously comes loaded with lots of potential biases and lots of issues that I had to sort of control for and sort through by just diving deeper and deeper into the case.
So I would actually say one of the most important questions to ask when you're using archival data is, you know, who created this document and why was it created? And importantly, why is it still preserved?
You know, from my own research at the US archives, I have found out that around 97% - if not up to 99% - of government documents are destroyed. That three or one percent are only kept if they're deemed of historical value. So you know, who is making that decision of is this, you know - should this be - preserved?
So there's lots of questions you have to ask yourself when you're holding a document or accessing archival data. Why am I looking at this? Why does this still exist? So these are sort of the questions in the back of my mind that I explore in my dissertation and try to control for.
Alan Renwick 24:27
Yeah, I was really struck by that statistic when I read it, and only 3% of records being retained. And yeah, I guess, I mean, can we get a sense of, in this particular case, why some materials have survived and other materials have not survived? Is it possible to look into that?
Sam Erkiletian 24:45
Well, the great news for my case is that the British were very proud of this re-education program. So they weren't really trying to hide - it didn't seem like they were trying to hide too much from me.
So you know, as I was sort of uncovering these different record groups - and this is at the National Archive near the Kew right outside of London - as I was uncovering it, they really preserved a wealth of material. I mean, you know, you'll be going through these documents, and you'll see coffee stains and cigarette burns and things like that. So I actually think some were destroyed, and they didn't all survive.
But between going to the records at the National Archive and also secondary collection at the Imperial War Museum collections, I was able to triangulate and figure it out, okay, there's actually about 60 to 70% of the camps that the reports have been maintained on. And sort of from there, I was able to just build this dataset where I ended up with 64 POWs camps and tracking the different socialisation outcomes over time.
Alan Renwick 25:48
Zeynep, I'm wondering if this is a kind of general difference maybe between historical research and other forms of research that, in a sense, with a lot of political science research, looking at the present time, I guess the researcher is really in charge of what data are being collected, who can design the research process in order to get the data they want. Whereas with historical research, quite often you're dependent to a greater degree perhaps on decisions made by others, shaping what kind of information is available to you in the first place.
You're looking very sceptically at me.
Zeynep Bulutgil 26:27
Yes, I think-
Alan Renwick 26:28
We should warn the podcast listeners. Maybe you think that's not right.
Zeynep Bulutgil 26:33
Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with the starting assumption. I think we're always constrained, right?
If you want to conduct let's say, you know, a survey experiment or field experiment today, you need layers and layers of permissions for ethics purposes. You have to apply for funding - that's another hurdle. And at each step, you have decision makers that constrain. And then when you go to the field, there will be other things about whether people actually do respond to your surveys, right, and dealing with the local obstacles. So I think we are always constrained, right?
So what we worry about is whether these constraints actually impact or bias what we find. And I think that's a concern with any type of research. And we should keep an eye out for it for historical research as well. So if you're reading secondary sources, historians, you have to ask yourself sort of what were the camps? What were the debates on this issue? Or where did this historian fall? And then, you know, take the next step and look at historians maybe who disagreed with this one, right.
So the nicest is when you find the agreements, so when you can triangulate and find those points of information when historians agree - that can be very powerful. Or when you're looking at archives, right. You have archives from different governments or maybe governmental and non-governmental resources, and you're getting different things, then, you know, you need to acknowledge that - you need to think about how they relate to your findings. But if they agree, even though that's different sources, that's again very useful. But that goes for all kinds of research.
Alan Renwick 28:15
Yeah, no, I'm sure you're right about that.
We're coming towards the end of our time, and we've been going through lots of heavy stuff. So let's get to the fun bit before we conclude.
And so we've been talking about using archives, and certainly I've always found just sitting in an archive, exploring a box of materials that perhaps no one has opened for years and years and years is just the most enormously exciting thing to be doing making all of these discoveries.
Sam, do you want to tell us a little bit about your experience in the archives: what the material was like; yeah, what was the process involved for you in looking through these archives?
Sam Erkiletian 28:53
Sure, yeah. It's a lot of luck, Alan, and a lot of stumbling around to be honest.
And really, my biggest advice would be to just consult the experts that are there at the archive. They're a tremendous wealth of knowledge.
And something I've learned from going through a number of state archives now is that none of them are uniform, but none of them are organised in a way that immediately makes sense. You really have to spend a lot of time understanding how these record groups are laid out. And so really, it took me two to three exploratory trips just to get a grasp on where may I even be able to find this data.
And yeah, just after that, just sort of pulling at threads. And you know, where I found all of my data was somewhere I did not expect to find it at all. I was looking around for everything that was labelled 're-education for POWs'. And all of these reports that I had found on these POW camps was actually under the ACP - the private papers and collections of someone who had run just one of the special camps involved. And then there was probably one of the happier moments of the PhD process where I realised: Wow, I can actually do something with all these reports in this data.
But no, it's a lot of luck. And you need a lot of help from the archivists that are there.
Alan Renwick 30:15
And I guess one other point is that you also get a lot of help from other historians who've already done a lot of the work. And Zeynep, you were talking about the use of secondary sources as well, so the fact that we as political scientists can draw on the great wealth of work that historians have already done.
Zeynep Bulutgil 30:33
Yes, I mean to some extent we do that, right. There is a very sort of rich literature if you look at people's studies. As I said, state formation, political institutions, political party formation. You know, these are all important subfields in political science where people do use secondary sources.
Perhaps there has been some decline in the last couple of years. We as any field have fads that come and go. But I do think that we will come back to it because there's so much information that's just readily accessible at a low cost, right, with just walking over to the library.
You do have to know how to use it - be sensitive to the fact that historians themselves can have biases. But that goes for all kinds of data. And I think it is kind of a waste if we don't use the wealth of information that's sitting just at the tip of our fingers.
Alan Renwick 31:25
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. This has been a really great discussion. I've learnt a lot about the particular example about the POW camps after the Second World War in the UK, but also so interesting to explore these different ways in which we can do historical research and use historical research in political science.
Sam, I think you're submitting your dissertation quite soon. So we can't quite see it yet. But hopefully you'll be doing it and then there will be some publications coming out in the future. Is that right?
Sam Erkiletian 31:58
Yes. Very excited to defend later in January. So in the not-too-distant future. And then, hopefully, we'll find it on ProQuest sometime this spring. And then yes, very much trying to summarise all of my findings into a journal article.
Zeynep Bulutgil 32:18
And also a book.
Sam Erkiletian 32:19
Yes.
Alan Renwick 32:21
Yes. There speaks the dissertation supervisor.
Well, I've genuinely found it really, really an interesting read - a fascinating read. And I learnt so much. So best of luck with the defence coming up very soon. And then I think we'll all be looking forward to seeing it coming out - it seeing the light of day, very, very soon. So many, many thanks, Sam.
And Zeynep, we have lots of your research are already out there using history - so your most recent book, The Origins of Secular Institutions, which we talked about on the podcast before. And we'll make sure that we've got information about that and all your ongoing research in the show notes for this episode. Really great to hear from you again Zeynep as well.
Next week, we'll be turning to a theme that's very contemporary indeed, namely Russian discourses concerning the West during the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Remember, to make sure you don't miss out on that or other future episodes of UCL Uncovering Politics, all you need to do is subscribe. You can do so on Apple, Google Podcasts or whatever podcast provider you use. And while you're there, we'd love it if you could take a moment of time to rate or review us too.
I'm Alan Renwick. This episode was produced by Alice Hart and Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann.
This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening.