^aGovernment Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC1N2AN, UK. Corresponding author: A.Goerres@lse.ac.uk

¹ The title is borrowed from Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel and the movie of the same name. We are very grateful to Anke Gerhardt and Thomas Plümper for making detailed results of their surveys available to us. We would also like to thank Andreas Busch, Gudrun Eisele, Peter Greisler, Thomas Gschwend, Ralf Kleinfeld, Sandra Pogodda, Torsten Selck, Kai Spiekermann, Stefanie Stegemann-Boehl, Joachim Wehner and Arndt Wonka for helpful comments.

Abstract

We describe the current career system for young political scientists in Germany academia. The situation is still dominated by the apprenticeship model in which young PhD graduates undertake a second supervised piece of research. Recently introduced junior professorships are still too few and far between to have a major impact and represent only a half-hearted effort. The current system is still unattractive, unproductive, and uncompetitive. A lecturer tenure-track system would shift insecurity to the beginning of a career and would have built-in incentives and resources for young political scientists to engage in high-quality research.