The routine finding of a positive relation between participation in voluntary associations and civic values and attitudes can be explained by two different causal mechanisms. On the one hand, some authors stress a process of self-selection: those who already have a more civic value pattern will be over-represented in voluntary associations, but their attitudes are not necessarily influenced by interaction within the associations (Stolle, 2001; Uslaner, 2002). Other authors emphasise socialisation effects: because of the interaction with like minded others, members of associations are imbued with more social and cooperative attitudes. In this view, associations function as ‘a learning school of democracy’ (Putnam, 1993; Hooghe, 2003).

While the socialisation approach seems to dominate the social capital literature (cfr. Putnam, 2000, 2002), the empirical research currently available does not fully support the assumption that associational involvement has strong socialisation effects. Although people who are members of associations are usually more trusting and tolerant, so far no one has convincingly demonstrated that social participation experiences have a strong independent effect on civic attitudes.

Based on a review of experiences in Lyons, Stuttgart and London, this article reflects upon the implications of metropolitanisation for democracy. It examines the institutional set-up of metropolitan authorities, the election procedures of representatives as well as dynamics of decision-making within them. In spite of contrasted institutional settings, political logics and territorial interest representation are present in policy-making at the metropolitan level to a strikingly similar extent. This results in power-sharing strategies among the major political forces and a move away from majoritarian towards more consensual patterns of decision-making.

The inverted classroom model (ICM) is an active learning approach that reserves class meetings for hands-on exercises while shifting content learning to the preparatory stage. The ICM offers possibilities for pursuing higher-order learning objectives even in large classes. However, there are contradicting reports about students’ reactions to this kind of teaching innovation. With the ICM making inroads in political science teaching, this paper discusses how students evaluate this method. We report results from an application of the ICM to an introductory international relations course. In our course, students’ reactions to the ICM varied greatly. Using a regression analysis of student evaluation scores, we find that students’ preference for collaborative learning best predicted their preference for the ICM over the traditional lecture format.

This article discusses, models and quantifies the relationship between the number of parties in government and the degree of policy change or instability. Single-party governments, such as those formed in the United Kingdom for several decades, tend to produce very high levels of policy changes and reversals, whereas multiparty coalition governments, such as the ones in Switzerland or Israel, tend to produce a high degree of stability and little policy change. This relationship is studied for 295 elections and the subsequent governments in twenty-four countries since the Second World War. According to the study, there is a strong negative correlation between the number of parties in government and the degree of policy change. The fewer parties in government the more changes, and vice versa.

The disciplinary focus on explanatory research designs leads researchers to concentrate on differences between political systems to maximise variation in independent and dependent variables. This causes a bias in comparative analysis towards cross-spatial differences and a neglect of similarities and change that occurs in most or all political systems invariably and simultaneously. The article identifies the main reason for this bias is the misled perception that a strong focus on explanation is necessary for a discipline to establish itself as scientific. The article debates the consequences of such a distortion towards differences in a world in which interdependence and diffusion create convergence. It thus proposes a stronger role for (1) descriptive analysis, (2) cross-temporal explanation, and (3) ‘Most Different Systems Designs’ as ways to address parallel change, re-establish the balance of focus between differences and similarities, and control for diffusion effects.

A bond of trust with someone gives us confidence that they mean what they say when they promise to cooperate. The ‘standard’ account of trust presumes that trust depends on information and experience. Offe (1999) states: ‘Trust in persons results from past experience with concrete persons. If Jane trusts Bill to keep his word and if Bill trusts Jane to keep her word, they can reach an agreement to cooperate that leaves both of them better off.

If Jane and Bill were strangers, they would have no basis for trusting each other. Moreover, a single encounter would not suffice to develop trust. Even after they get better acquainted, their mutual trust will be limited to what they know about each other. Jane and Bill might feel comfortable lending each other a modest amount of money, but Bill wouldn't trust Jane to paint his house and Jane would not trust Bill to repair her roof without knowledge of their respective skills in these kind of jobs (Hardin, 1992: 154; Coleman, 1990: 109; Misztal, 1996: 121ff.).

Model European Union (MEU) is a simulation of European politics that aims to familiarise young Europeans with the decision-making process of the European Union (EU). Participants simulate the cooperation between the Commission, the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of the EU in the ordinary legislative procedure. About 190 people annually participate at MEU Strasbourg, which takes place on the premises of the EP. This article uses quasi-experimental panel data from surveys with participants of MEU 2012 to test the impact of the simulation conference. While most empirical research on the effects of political simulations addresses the educational effectiveness of classroom simulations, this article tries to answer a research question with a new focus on political attitudes: Do EU simulations influence European identity and political support of the EU?

While some 40 per cent of the students undertaking political science degrees in the UK are women, about three-quarters of those teaching them are men. This article examines why female undergraduates are less likely to go into graduate work in politics, utilising focus groups conducted with groups of male and female students and interviews with the female students in four large UK universities. The research identifies eight key factors that impacted upon our respondents' decisions to undertake further study. The first four affected both men and women, although there were subtle, yet important, differences in how the women spoke about these issues, and can be somewhat loosely categorised as: money; making a difference; lack of information; and self-confidence. The other four factors influenced the women's, but not the men's, views about graduate work and the profession: stereotyping; role models; family commitments, and time constraints. On the basis of our research, we suggest how national political science associations and individual departments might increase the number of women undertaking graduate work.

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) provide an invaluable contribution to higher education, yet their role is often overlooked and understudied. We report on a UK-based study to describe the experience and views of GTAs with particular focus on training and professional development. Our findings draw from a survey of 32 GTAs along with informal group discussions with a small number of undergraduates and academic staff. A key theme from our project is the value of subject-specific training. We explore this issue and raise the possibility that in addition to university departments, learned societies and academic associations within the discipline may have a role to play in providing pedagogical training for GTAs and early career academics.

The Great Recession that hit the world in 2008 functioned as a critical juncture, nurturing socioeconomic but also political transformations. Some of the political developments during the crisis have challenged civil, political and social rights, triggering a Great Regression. In the geographical areas that have been hardest hit by the financial crisis, particularly in the European periphery, waves of protest have, however, challenged the austerity policies adopted by national governments under heavy pressure from lending institutions including the European Central Bank, the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund. This has put democracy under stress, but also triggered at some capacity for innovation. While some have considered the multiple crises as proof that governments need more technical expertise, others have blamed an “econocracy” that has taken over political decisions while pretending they are not political. Siding with this second vision, I will suggest in these notes that what we need is more, rather than less participation in democracy. I develop my argument by summarising some recent reflections in the social sciences on the challenges that the financial crisis poses to democracy, and the ways to address those challenges.

This paper explores what makes relevance difficult to deliver. Researchers can be victims of the play of politics in policy settings and organizational blockages limit the numbers of academics that seek to achieve relevance. In addition the scholarly arguments for relevance are underdeveloped leaving scope for sustained doubts about the project. Crucially political science lacks a design arm and as a result it is deficient in the intellectual foundations needed to proffer solutions to political problems.

Rankings of departments are key Information tools for central administrations of universities, public and private funders of research, and students and faculty. For example, to find out how European universities perform compared to institutions in the United States, the European Economics Association commissioned research into the global ranking of economics departments (esp. Coupé, 2003). Applying a similar method in political science to the dominant method used in the natural sciences and economics - looking at the number and impact of articles published in the main journals in the discipline in a given period - produces quite robust results for our discipline (Hix, 2004). One of the advantages of this method is that it enables comparisons to be made across Europe, between Europe and the United States, and within European countries. The next section explains and justifies the method.

In the midst of the great recession, the Spanish Socialists Worker’s Party (PSOE) lost the Government and experienced a process of instability while trying to reconnect with its electorate. The party’s strategic response was embracing highly inclusive deliberations on both key institutional and policy issues that eventually sparked tensions and division. These internal debates led to the introduction and implementation of other democratic innovations, such as direct votes and consultations that substantially transformed key features of the PSOE’s organizational model. The article discusses the main features and problems of such deliberations and democratic innovations, and their wider consequences.

A comparative survey of the main journal of the Political Studies Association (Political Studies) and of its French counterpart, the journal of the Association Française de Science Politique (Revue Française de Science Politique), between 1951 and 2002, reveals that the two political science communities have not followed the same road to institutionalisation. Three types of differences are analysed: the struggle of the discipline for legitimacy, and its evolution to differentiation and internationalisation.

The subject of this study was an attempt to discover whether and to what extent core-periphery theory can be used to describe international economic relations in the process of creating a global knowledge-based economy. To this aim the most important core-periphery theory theses were selected and tested empirically. The following results were obtained: (1) Over time the profitability of leading products falls and their production is transferred to the periphery – thesis supported. (2) This brings benefits not only to the investors but also to the societies of core nations; it counteracts a fall in living standards among groups affected by unemployment or real wage decreases and indirectly promotes political stability in core nations – thesis supported. (3) Capitalism in the core is of a financial nature – based on speculation – thesis supported. (4) Financial speculation in the core leads to political destabilisation of the periphery – thesis supported. (5) The greater participation of periphery nations in the international economic system, the greater losses they suffer – thesis unsupported. (6) the greater benefits to the core nations – thesis unsupported.

Concerns about the use of online political microtargeting (OPM) by campaigners have arisen since the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit the international political arena. In addition to providing conceptual clarity on OPM and explore the use of such techniques in Europe, this paper seeks to empirically disentangle the differing behaviours of campaigners when they message citizens through microtargeted rather than non-targeted campaigning. More precisely, I hypothesise that campaigners use negative campaigning and are more diverse in terms of topics when they use OPM. To investigate whether these expectations hold true, I use text-as-data techniques to analyse an original dataset of 4,091 political Facebook Ads during the last national elections in Austria, Italy, Germany and Sweden. Results show that while microtargeted ads might indeed be more thematically diverse, there does not seem to be a significant difference to non-microtargeted ads in terms of negativity. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of these findings for microtargeted campaigns and how future research could be conducted.

Jean Blondel made many lasting contributions toward comparative politics, not least in his classification of party systems in Western democracies. Yet during the 5 decades since Blondel’s original contribution, party competition has been transformed by multiple developments, including changes in the grassroots electorate, as intermediary organizations connecting citizens and the state, and at the apex in legislatures and government. Does Blondel’s typology of party systems remain relevant today—or does it require substantial revision? And, does party system fragmentation predict ideological polarization? Part I sets out the theoretical framework. Part II compares trends from 1960 to 2020 in party system fragmentation in a wide range of democracies, measured by the effective number of parties in the electorate and in parliament. Not surprisingly, the effective number of electoral parties (ENEP) has generally grown in each country across Western democracies. This does not imply, however, that party systems are necessarily more polarized ideologically. Part III examines polarization in party systems across Western democracies, measured by standard deviations around the mean of several ideological values and issue positions in each country. The findings suggest that party system fractionalization and polarization should be treated as two distinct and unrelated dimensions of party competition. The conclusion reflects on the broader implications of the findings for understanding party polarization and threats of backsliding in democratic states.

Clear rules that encourage meritocracy, and that include the evaluation of scholarly productivity, are slowly and unevenly taking hold in academic life in Latin America. While some countries have official rankings of political science departments, others rely only on informal assessments. In a third set of countries, we cannot even consider the competition because the market is dominated by a state monopoly. This article provides a first, systematic study of scientific productivity and concomitant impact in more than twenty departments of Political Science and International Relations in the region. I show that scholars’ productivity is intimately related to where they pursued graduate studies, what subfield of research they work on, and the explicit adoption of rules that encourage meritocracy and academic careerism.