Here I recount my experience as a three-term Senator of the Italian Republic between 1983 and 1996. It is a personal memoir written with a modest dose of self-praise and nostalgia. I have tried to explain how the Italian parliament works, to analyse the relationships between parliamentarians and parties, with special emphasis on the Italian Communist Party, whose voters sent me to the Senate, and to indicate what I have contributed and what I have learned. For better or worse, throughout that long period, I remained a professor of political science. Hence, I have also made reference to those of my writings that have been directly influenced by my experience of ‘real’ politics, as well as to my efforts to influence ‘real’ politics. Much has changed in Italian politics and my experience, which could not be repeated today, suggests that not much has changed positively.

Since 2001, the political science associations of The Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium) have sought ever closer cooperation, culminating in the organisation of annual Dutch–Belgian political science conferences. One of the goals of this unprecedented cooperation is to strengthen the visibility of Dutch-language political science, and to keep Dutch alive as a credible language for political science research. At first sight, this form of regional cooperation runs counter to processes of internationalisation and Europeanisation. It can be argued, however, that exactly these regional identities and associations (cf. also the Nordic countries) can counterbalance a one-sided orientation to Anglo-Saxon norms within international political science.

The article presents an overview of the presence of political science in Italian universities. After a brief historical introduction, detailed figures are given regarding the number and distribution of political scientists in Italy's universities, and the courses currently offered in the field of political science are described and discussed. In the second part of the paper, the authors give their views on the current state of Italian political science, which they consider to be not dissimilar to that of other countries, and they subsequently invite the reader to reflect on the need for an increase in its social status.

This article assesses the evolution of the study of international relations (IR) in France during the twentieth century, before proceeding with an examination of the present state of the field. It is concerned with both substantive issues and institutional developments. It concludes that France has much to offer and is taking its proper place in the international development of the field. An appendix offers a taste of the French IR literature.

The lack of power exercised by the European Union (EU) in the international security arena explains its relative invisibility in the US. When Americans do recognise the EU, their interpretations of American history shape their responses to it. Whether puzzled by the loss of sovereignty or by the continuing strength of national identity, the American understanding of European integration cannot be divorced from Americans’ own understanding of the American process of nation-building and the exercise of federal power.

The US and the EU have undergone a process of institutional convergence. While Madison argued that the US was subject to a systemic imperative to promote an anti-hegemonic order, the same has revealed itself to be true of the EU too – this because of the asymmetry of powers between its member states. However, because of the anti-hierarchical structure which supports it, an anti-hegemonic order is weak in terms of decision-making capacity. Thus, the price of the preservation of internal complexity is external ineffectiveness. The article considers the most appropriate trade-off between the two. The Madisonian approach to the compound of American states can help the EU in facing the dilemma of the integration process.

The paper examines the claim that Europe is committed to a Kantian liberal model of international order, while the United States is committed to a Hobbesian realist model of international order. The paper argues that the realist approach to international order is more plausible than the liberal approach. Furthermore, the realist approach to international order remains fully consistent with the project of European political integration.

The ‘American model’ is one of the central points of reference in the debate on the European Union's (EU's) constitutional future. However, replicating the ‘us-versus-them’ mode of thinking that made constitutional patriotism possible in the United States would paradoxically destroy what is truly unique in the EU's constitutional model. Instead of ‘patriotism’ nurtured by opposition to the ‘other’, the EU needs a ‘constitutional discipline’ founded on rational calculations and a readiness to assess critically one's own national loyalty.

Western lecturers visiting social science departments in the former Soviet Union find themselves immersed in a social micro-system that often functions differently from comparable departments in the West. Having been isolated from international developments and abused as instruments of indoctrination for decades, post-Soviet social sciences are plagued by a number of pathologies in administration, teaching, and studying. While posing considerable challenges for visiting professors, these defects make the continued presence of Western visiting lecturer programmes in the former USSR all the more necessary.

The supervision of doctoral theses remains one of the few areas of academic activity in which there is little regulation. While opposing an extension of bureaucratic rigidity to the process, this article, based upon findings from various conferences and discussions, indicates that ‘ad hocery’ is not always beneficial to the supervisor or doctoral student. The absence of guidance to the student means that the climax of the PhD process – the oral examination – is often shrouded in unnecessary mystery.