In light of recent trends in the internationalisation of post-secondary education, the rising popularity of short-term study abroad programmes, and the persistent lack of diversity in study abroad, this article presents an option for a short-term, hybrid study abroad programme. The article highlights the Oregon University System Cuba programme and its use of a ‘double hybrid’ model utilising both in-person and on-line coursework and on-campus and study abroad courses aimed to internationalise educational opportunities statewide and to diversify populations participating in international programmes. Though early in its evolution, the ‘double hybrid’ model has much to offer educational institutions, faculty and students alike, either in its entirety or in part.

This article asks whether student peer advisors can contribute to curriculum ‘internationalisation’ through their role in promoting and supporting student mobility. We conducted a single case study of Erasmus student mobility at Loughborough University between 2010–2012, and our experiment offers a perspective on the possible futures of European Studies, where the decline of foreign language learning may find compensation in the internationalisation of the curriculum via the opportunity for study mobility abroad.

This article reviews and evaluates the process and experience of embedding internationalisation in a UK, HEI School of Social Sciences curriculum. It reflects upon the merits and limitations of using of a peer-reviewed checklist approach compared with alternative approaches, such as the provisioning of online toolkits, resource lists and internationalisation centres or units. Through an evaluation of the peer-reviewed checklist approach, this article sheds light on the gap between the desire by institutions to embed a richer understanding of internationalisation into the curriculum, and the uptake, awareness and implementation of this material by academic teams on the ground. The article asserts that in order to be effective, efforts to internationalise the curriculum need to be embedded in routine academic processes. It favours a ‘mixed’ approach, suggesting that a predominantly quantitative checklist approach can, in certain circumstances, prompt further (qualitative) reflection and engagement by those using the checklists, and, by so doing, act as a tool for change rather than simply providing a means of assessing or measuring internationalisation.

This article analyses the recruitment criteria, career patterns and social hierarchies of Dutch political science. Dutch political science is highly internationalised and outward-looking. About one-fifth to one-third of most departments is non-Dutch and English language courses are common. Two MA programmes are offered solely in English, and Dutch political science was among the first comprehensively to introduce the BA/MA system. Research is also internationally oriented. Promotion is increasingly based on merit although there are few women in the higher ranks. Working conditions are generally fine and young scholars enjoy a relatively high level of autonomy and reasonable rates of pay. The major hurdle is achieving a permanent position.

This article examines the current state of political science in Sweden, by looking at the contents of recent years' doctoral dissertations. To what extent do young Swedish political scientists seek to make their research available to an international audience? The findings indicate that Swedish political scientists are becoming increasingly more oriented towards the international research community. The use of the English language in doctoral dissertations has increased. Also, Swedish political scientists have taken increasingly more interest in international affairs, instead of writing exclusively about Swedish politics.

This study investigates the meso level impact of an academic development programme on internationalisation. We demonstrate the relevance of the framework of grassroots leadership in higher education in the Central European context and show how individual programme participants acting as grassroots leaders influence departmental attitudes and practices regarding internationalisation and student-centred learning. We identify two successful strategies—single-issue and multifaceted—for grassroots leadership. The study finds that established faculty member participants who are also active as grassroots leaders facilitate the spreading of the influence of an internationalisation programme beyond the individual level, highlighting the differences and similarities in the activism of faculty grassroots leaders in Central Europe vis-à-vis the USA.

This article examines selected system-level variables. Its premise is that a better understanding of how and why scholars may, or may not, choose an international orientation in their career requires taking into account factors beyond personal preferences or constraints. We suggest that characteristics of national systems shape prospects and strategies of internationalisation and look at two broadly defined variables: resource availability and career incentives. With respect to the first, we study the absolute level of national resources and their relative importance vies-a-vis those provided by the EU. With respect to the second, we consider the rules and norms governing the progress of academic careers, especially the extent to which international collaboration is significant and necessary for initially attaining a stable academic position and career advancement. We explore these questions through targeted comparison of four national cases, selected to ensure crosscutting variation across the selected variables. A comparison of two relatively low-resource cases (Bulgaria and the Czech Republic) with two relatively high-resource ones (France and Finland) is followed by a comparison with respect to career incentives. This allows to conclude that both factors should be considered as necessary conditions for internationalisation, and to suggest how this hypothesis might be further tested in subsequent research.

Giovanni Sartori is considered one of the leading figures in Italian, European, and global political science. The year 2024 marks the centenary of his birth, providing an opportunity to revisit the early career of this scholar in Italy. Drawing on Sartori’s writings and previously unexplored archival material, this article revisits his personal trajectory. It illustrates how a distinguished academic career was built, beginning with his personal path as a student, and later, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, as a professor at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Florence, during a time when political science was, in effect, non-existent. The article outlines his intellectual influences, their political context, his struggle for the recognition of political science within the Italian academic system, and his continual commitment to internationalisation. These elements collectively provide a fascinating illustration of the emergence of modern political science in Europe.

Having experienced a late institutionalisation as an academic discipline in the 1990s, during this century the political science community in Spain has struggled to converge with other fully established counterparts in Western Europe. In this article, we analyse and evaluate how successful these efforts have been concerning internationalisation. The article sheds light on the factors that explain this development. Using data from PhD dissertations defended since 1990 and articles published on SSCI journals since 1985, we demonstrate that the institutional reforms affecting higher education in Spain during the early 2000s, and the austerity measures introduced in the first part of the 2010s to address the economic crisis, together with the evolution of the particular ecology of the discipline, introduced greater competition into the Spanish political science academic market. This, in turn, triggered internationalisation of political scientists in Spain, particularly among the younger cohorts.

There is a long tradition in comparative research on industrial relations of analysis concentrating on differences and similarities between countries, that is, focusing on aggregates measured at the national level. But what happens if there are no (more) differences in industrial relations systems between countries? If there are not differences the question arises if comparative research is becoming meaningless? Concentrating predominantly on statistical and methodological aspects, it is argued in this article that over recent decades industrial relations systems have changed in such a way that the national level has become less relevant as a unit of analysis. It is explained that this development in the nature of the field affects the measurement of its indicators which form the backbone of any comparison. On the basis of an empirical comparison of key industrial relations indicators in the European Union member states, it is concluded that comparative research has not reached a dead end, but rather that the field might have to reconsider the relevant unit for analysis. It is shown that the relevant unit for analysis has shifted increasingly from the national towards the sectoral level. One consequence of this shift is that from a methodological perspective comparisons between sectors, rather than between countries, are nowadays often more informative.

This article examines how the political science department of a small, regional university (Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania) has tried to develop activities that will help internationalise the student body and the campus. The article examines, in an attempt to prepare and internationalise students, the departments’ short-term study abroad opportunities. In particular, the article evaluates one course as a case study and proposes a new method aimed at trying to assess its efficacy. In doing so, this article will review the literature on the impact of study abroad, focusing on short-term study (or faculty-led) experiences and discuss the pedagogical motivations of such courses. Finally, the article will propose, and preliminarily test, a new method of assessing short-term study about courses. The conclusion of this article speculates on the final results and details the substantial barriers to replication and augmentation of these programmes.

Political science has not remained on the side of the internationalisation road. While continental European political science was criticised for not being internationalised enough in the beginning of this century, much progress has been done since then. This symposium discusses the state of play of the internationalisation trend(s) in European political science. Building on the data collected within the COST programme PROSEPS, the contributions show that we have made progress toward building a scholarly community across Europe. European political research has, on a number aspects, become a more collective endeavour deployed across Europe. Opportunities for cumulative knowledge-building and intellectual exchange are, partially at least, supported by internationalisation. These opportunities have significantly increased over the last two decades. We are, nevertheless, not there yet. The articles shed light on a number of challenges and pitfalls on the path towards a truly Europe-wide political science.

The internationalisation of political science is an uneven process. Existing studies have shown that it is characterised by centre-periphery relationships, with dominant Western countries setting the international standards of the discipline and scholars from the East and the Global South struggling to adapt to these standards. Fewer studies, however, have been devoted to the tensions that internationalisation creates within the Western world of political science. Through a study of the case of France, this article argues that some of the countries that enjoy a rather dominant position globally may still be internally divided by the changes brought about by internationalisation. The article portrays French political science as divided between institutions and scholars that are strongly connected to international venues, and others that are not. It concludes that the internationalisation of political science is best portrayed as a conflicted process and a point of contention, rather than a smooth process of gradual convergence.

As far as institutions are concerned, there certainly is a European political science: the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) has now been embodying it for more than thirty years. This paper uses a comparison between three political science journals – the European Journal of Political Research, the French Revue Française de Science Politique and the British Political Studies – from 1973 to 2002 to show how much the ECPR political science differs from national political science traditions.

This study investigates the suitability of student-driven internationalisation of the curriculum in a diverse educational setting. Despite its vast educational potential, internationalisation of the curriculum is an often-missing component of general internationalisation even in programmes and courses with a diverse student body. To remedy this shortcoming in a course of international politics, I introduced a teaching and learning innovation, which encouraged students to use examples based on personal experiences and regional background—rather than merely from the assigned literature—during their arguments in preparation for and during biweekly seminars. In addition, the assessment criteria were shifted to support the sharing of information and knowledge among peers in this course, called “Theories of Cooperation and Conflict in International Relations”. The study uses a quasi-experimental setup and offers a comprehensive mixed-methods analysis of the innovation and finds that student learning and their classroom experience was positively impacted. While students did use notably more “own experience” examples and improved in their written preparatory work for the seminars, they turned to these very cautiously in the actual classroom debates. The findings are explained by the interplay between internationalisation and decolonisation of the classroom and the increased stakes in assessment criteria.

Latecomer political science communities have faced multiple challenges in the past decades, including the very establishment of their professional identities. Based on the case study of Hungary, this article argues that publication performance is a substantial component of the identity of the political science profession. Hungary is a notable example among Central and East European (CEE) political science academia in the sense that both the initial take-off of the profession and then its increasing challenges are typical to the CEE region. In an inclusive approach, which encompasses all authors published in the field between 1990 and 2018, as well as their publication record, the analysis demonstrates that political science has undergone major expansion, quality growth and internationalisation but these performance qualities are unevenly spread. These reflect important aspects of the profession’s identity. This agency and performance-based approach to identity formation might well be used to build up identity features elsewhere and also in a comparative manner.

Internationalisation among European political scientists is not uniform and while research emphasises variations between Western and Eastern Europe, we known less about the contrasting patterns of internationalisation among countries in Central and Eastern Europe. This contribution aims to identify if there are different patterns of internationalisation among groups of countries in the East and what factors influence diverging or converging trajectories. We look at how historical institutionalisation of the discipline, European Union membership, and levels of national funding impact internationalisation in four groups of countries, for three different profiles of international scholars. Relying on data from the 2018 ProSEPS survey among European political scientists, we find that historical legacies have a significant negative impact on levels of internationalisation for all profiles of international scholars. On the other hand, higher access to national funding and EU resources has a positive impact on internationalisation, but not as significant. We conclude that legacies matter and that Europeanisation and access to resources leads to a slow convergence in internationalisation of political scientists form Eastern and Western Europe.

Based on data on 67,000 articles published in 100 high-impact journals in the twenty years between 2000 and 2019, I analyse the scientific contribution of European political science scholarly communities in the global context. The scholars contributing to the global scientific production are largely concentrated in a few countries, with the US and UK alone accounting for more than half of the articles published in high-impact journals. However, the tendency is towards increasing diversity in the geographic basis of the international scientific production; and European countries are central to this change. Contributing to international collaborative publications has been a key engine of the increased scientific production of scholars based in Europe. This was a generalised global tendency, and a spectacular one for certain national scholarly communities. The network analysis of international collaborations points to the consolidation of three clusters within a growing and increasingly dense network. The US, followed by the UK, are central to a global cluster of collaborations. European countries are primarily clustered in two groups: a larger and growing cluster; and a smaller but even more integrated, highly productive and connected cluster of scholars based in seven northern European countries. All bibliometric indicators consistently point to a generalised growth in the output and internationalisation of the scientific contribution provided by the European political science community.