When IPSA was founded in 1949 under UNESCO’s aegis, political science carried an almost missionary confidence. The discipline would provide “disinterested study” of defective institutions, fostering “improved techniques of political organization.” Behind this language lay an assumption: that proper methods, applied by credentialed experts, would yield universal truths applicable everywhere.

RC37’s formation in 1983—granted full research committee status by 1991—marked a crucial shift. By then, the failures of top-down development programs and the insights of postcolonial scholarship had exposed the limits of universal theories. What emerged was something more humble and more democratic: the idea that understanding development requires listening to diverse experiences rather than imposing predetermined frameworks.

The volunteer nature of RC37 reinforces this intellectual commitment. Unlike consultants parachuting in with standardized solutions, or academics pursuing funded research agendas set by Northern institutions, RC37’s scholars participate because they believe in the conversation itself. They’re not accountable to grant deliverables or policy prescriptions. They’re accountable to each other and to the quality of ideas.

This creates space for the kind of patient, pluralistic theorizing that RC37 champions: “incrementally building a body of theoretical knowledge which is sensitive to the actuality and complexity of the development process in different societies.” You can’t rush that work. You can’t force it into predetermined conclusions. It requires exactly what volunteerism enables: sustained engagement driven by intellectual conviction rather than external incentives.

Building Bridges, Not Hierarchies

RC37’s current board—spanning Moscow, Turkey, Canada, India, South Africa, and Brazil—embodies IPSA’s founding mission to “link scholars from North and South as well as East and West.” But the volunteer structure makes this more than tokenistic representation. When scholars donate their expertise equally, regardless of institutional prestige or geographic location, it levels hierarchies that money and institutional power typically reinforce.

Consider what happens in funded research collaborations: Northern universities often hold grants, set agendas, and control publications, while Southern scholars provide “local knowledge” or “fieldwork”. RC37’s volunteer model disrupts this dynamic. Dr. Vaslavskiy chairs the committee not because Moscow State University purchased the role, but because his colleagues recognized his leadership. Board members contribute because their perspectives matter, not because someone’s grant budget allocated them a consultancy fee.

This doesn’t erase all inequalities—scholars still come from different resource contexts, face different institutional pressures, navigate different political environments. But it does create conditions where intellectual merit and collaborative commitment, rather than funding or institutional brand, determine influence.

The result is genuinely collaborative knowledge production. RC37’s emphasis on “cross-cultural perspective” and recognition of “different historical and cultural experiences” isn’t just methodological rhetoric. It’s enacted through the very structure of participation.

The Gift Economy of Ideas

Anthropologists talk about gift economies—systems where exchange creates relationships rather than settling debts. There’s something of that spirit in RC37’s volunteer model. When scholars donate their time to the committee, they’re not purchasing specific returns. They’re investing in an ongoing conversation, building intellectual relationships that generate insights no individual could produce alone.

This matters especially for a committee dedicated to “developmental pluralism”—the idea that societies may legitimately pursue fundamentally different trajectories. Recognizing pluralism requires genuine dialogue, not just multicultural box-checking. It demands sustained engagement with perspectives that might challenge your assumptions, openness to frameworks that don’t originate in your context, willingness to revise theories in light of others’ experiences.

That kind of intellectual generosity is hard to mandate through contracts or incentivize through funding. But it emerges naturally in volunteer communities where scholars participate because they value the exchange itself. RC37’s decades of operation suggest that volunteerism, far from being a resource constraint, may actually enable the intellectual openness the committee’s mission requires.

Sustainable Development for Ideas

The UN frames International Volunteer Day around the Sustainable Development Goals—targets for poverty reduction, education, health, environmental protection. But what makes development sustainable? RC37’s work suggests that sustainable development requires sustainable knowledge production: frameworks that emerge from affected communities, theories tested against diverse realities, institutions that persist through shared commitment rather than external funding.

RC37’s volunteer model embodies this sustainability. The committee has operated for over forty years, surviving shifts in academic fashion, changes in funding priorities, and the rise and fall of development paradigms. It persists because scholars continue to find value in the conversation, because the intellectual work matters beyond career advancement or CV lines.

This is especially significant given the precarity of contemporary academic labor. As universities corporatize and research becomes increasingly grant-dependent, spaces for sustained intellectual collaboration driven by curiosity rather than deliverables become rare. RC37 represents a form of resistance—not militant opposition, but quiet insistence that some knowledge work proceeds according to different logic.

The committee’s focus on “refining theoretical tools” and “acquiring empirical understanding” rather than prescribing policy solutions reflects this independence. RC37 scholars aren’t beholden to funders expecting actionable recommendations or consultancy clients demanding clear prescriptions. They’re free to acknowledge uncertainty, to build theory incrementally, to prioritize understanding over application.

Networks of Commitment

IPSA’s structure—biennial world congresses, research committees spanning continents, emphasis on geographic diversity—creates infrastructure for exchange. But infrastructure alone doesn’t generate intellectual community. That requires the sustained commitment that volunteerism represents.

When board members coordinate across time zones, when scholars present work-in-progress knowing they’ll receive genuine engagement rather than pro forma comments, when senior researchers mentor emerging scholars without quid pro quo—these acts of intellectual generosity create networks that transcend formal organizational structures.

RC37’s requirement that research committees include scholars from at least seven countries and two continents ensures breadth. But depth comes from relationships built through repeated interaction, from trust developed through collaborative work, from shared commitment to intellectual projects larger than individual careers. That’s what volunteer participation enables.

The committee’s tools—conferences, working papers, collaborative projects—matter less than the relationships they facilitate. RC37 isn’t just producing theoretical insights about development; it’s modeling a form of international scholarly collaboration that respects diversity while building genuine community.

The Freedom of Unpaid Work

There’s a paradox here worth examining: in contemporary academia, unpaid labor often signals exploitation. Yet RC37’s volunteer structure may actually enable greater intellectual freedom than funded research typically allows.

Funded projects come with expectations: deliverables, timelines, policy relevance, stakeholder engagement. These aren’t inherently problematic, but they shape what can be studied and how. Questions that don’t fit funding priorities go unexplored. Findings that don’t support policy agendas get downplayed. Theoretical work that doesn’t promise immediate application struggles to find support.

RC37’s volunteer model liberates the committee from these constraints. Scholars can pursue questions because they matter intellectually, not because they align with funder priorities. They can challenge conventional wisdom without worrying about jeopardizing grant renewals. They can take time to think deeply rather than racing toward deliverables.

This freedom is what makes “rethinking” possible. RC37 isn’t tweaking existing frameworks or refining established theories. It’s questioning fundamental assumptions about development—what it means, who defines it, whether universal models are even possible. That kind of intellectual ambition requires independence from the incentive structures that typically govern academic research.

International Volunteer Day and Scholarly Citizenship

On International Volunteer Day, we celebrate volunteers advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. But we should also recognize volunteers advancing the intellectual work that makes those goals meaningful—scholars questioning whose goals, whose development, whose vision of sustainability.

RC37’s volunteers contribute something less visible than building infrastructure or delivering services, but equally essential: the patient, collaborative work of understanding political development in its complexity. They donate expertise not to implement predetermined solutions but to deepen questions, not to prescribe pathways but to illuminate possibilities.

This is scholarly citizenship at its best—using one’s expertise not for personal advancement but for collective understanding, contributing to conversations that transcend national boundaries and disciplinary silos, building intellectual infrastructure that will support future generations of researchers.

The committee’s emphasis on “developmental pluralism” embodies the democratic spirit that should animate volunteerism: recognition that diverse communities may legitimately pursue different paths, that expertise should enable rather than dictate, that understanding requires listening as much as analyzing.

Looking Forward

As RC37 enters its fifth decade, the volunteer model faces challenges. Contemporary academia increasingly demands quantifiable outputs, immediate impact, measurable returns. Early-career scholars face pressure to prioritize publications over service, to focus on work that advances individual careers rather than collective projects.

Yet RC37’s persistence suggests enduring appetite for intellectual collaboration that transcends these pressures. Scholars continue volunteering because the work matters, because international dialogue enriches their thinking, because some questions can only be explored collectively.

On this International Volunteer Day, RC37 reminds us that volunteerism isn’t just about implementing solutions—it’s about creating spaces where difficult questions can be explored, where diverse perspectives can be genuinely engaged, where intellectual work proceeds according to its own logic rather than external demands.

The thousands of hours RC37 volunteers have donated over four decades represent more than unpaid labor. They represent commitment to a vision of scholarship as conversation rather than competition, of development theory as collaborative inquiry rather than expert prescription, of international academic community as genuine exchange rather than hierarchical knowledge transfer.

That’s worth celebrating—and worth sustaining.​​