Political science concerns topics that can be highly relevant for politicians. Political science research and education offer insights that can help incumbents win elections or govern better. At the same time, the discipline provides knowledge that can be used to challenge politicians in office, for example, on how to organise mass protests or effective opposition parties. Therefore, politicians in power may have mixed feelings about the existence of political science departments. Some will encourage their establishment, while others – perhaps especially autocrats – may try to contain their presence or control their location. We study the existence and placement of political science units at universities across the world and assess the extent to which these features vary with regime type. Using large-N data on university subdivisions, we examine cross-national variation in existence and within-country variation in the location of political science departments. We find surprisingly few substantial differences along the democracy–autocracy continuum: Political science units, on average, are no more frequent in democracies. Across regime types, political science units are about equally likely to be located at public (versus private) institutions, and similarly likely to be placed at universities closer to the capital.

An ever-increasing availability of digital texts has opened new research opportunities for political scientists. Yet, researchers who want to utilise these data face several challenges. This paper presents the results of a community-wide survey tapping into various research challenges, training needs, and preferences of scholars using text analysis methodologies. The survey involved respondents from various academic fields and career levels. Our findings indicate that text-as-data methods are gaining momentum in various political science subfields and are used on a wide range of political texts. However, relevant training is not easily accessible to all. Only half of the respondents have ever participated in a training event, though there is a high demand for training opportunities in different formats and at different levels. In ‘Conclusions’, we discuss how the inaccessibility of training risks narrowing the field of researchers.

This article introduces the new module Gender in Contemporary Europe: Rethinking Equality and the Backlash developed for Round 11 of the European Social Survey (ESS). The module represents the first large-scale, cross-national effort to comprehensively map contemporary gender attitudes using both established and innovative measures. It captures five interrelated contemporary concepts that have rarely been included in prior cross-national surveys available for public use: gender identity, sexism (hostile, benevolent, and modern), perceived and experienced gender discrimination, the salience of gender equality as a social value, and support for gender equality policies. Pretesting and cognitive interviews conducted across a group of participating countries highlighted both the value and the complexity of measuring gender-related constructs, particularly in relation to translation challenges, perceived item bias, and social desirability effects. As we introduce the new data set, we highlight four critical challenges for gender research: bias, gendered translation, response bias, and cross-national measures of sexism. We also provide details on how the module development tackled each of these.

This paper compares how the EU and the U.S. address hybrid threats, particularly the manipulation of information as a tool to undermine democracies. Hybrid threats include tactics like cyberattacks, disinformation, and electoral interference, often by foreign or non-state actors. The EU has adopted a regulatory approach, notably through the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), which impose duties on large platforms to mitigate systemic risks and enforce transparency. It combines hard and soft law tools, emphasizing human rights and co-regulation. In contrast, the U.S. prioritizes free speech, limiting government action against disinformation due to First Amendment protections. Although federal agencies play a key role in countering foreign interference, recent shifts signal a move away from fact-checking and cyber operations. The EU and U.S. face similar adversaries but diverge significantly in their strategies. This divergence may weaken democratic resilience unless efforts are coordinated and platform accountability is strengthened across both regions.

A lingering feature of academic publications in political science is persistent gender gaps. In the aggregate, men are dominant in the discipline, and on the individual level, men publish and submit more articles and books than women do. In this article, we explore one way that journals may potentially reduce the gender gap in publishing. Focusing on the composition of editorial boards, we hypothesize that a higher share of female editorial board members, particularly if such representation is coupled with a high share of female editors, can increase women’s presence as journal authors. We test this argument using data from 120 political science journals. Through quantitative analyses, we find a relatively strong association between a high presence of female board members and female authors, especially in situations with a high percentage of female editors.

This is the introduction to a debate on Knowledge and Democratic Accountability in Policy Making. The debate is based on an EPS Roundtable event hosted at EUI.

Arising from the 2024 European Political Science (EPS) annual debate, this article examines the role of expertise in transnational governance (TNG) with a focus on political science. It explores how transnational governance reconfigures the spaces and contexts for expert engagements in global policy making and transnational administration. In these evolving spaces of jurisdiction, the democratic potential, accountability, and legitimacy of expert knowledge are not only shrouded from the Global Majority but cannot be assumed to be inevitable. The article outlines some meanings attached to TNG and suggests democratic considerations cannot be conceived or operationalised in the same ways as at nation-state levels of governance. First, TNG is a series of overlapping but fragmented transnational spheres of public sector activity as well as hybrid public-private jurisdictions where democratic principles are yet to be normalised and embedded. Second, the accountability and legitimacy of sources of expertise in the policy sectors of TNG can be counter-swayed by latent features of ‘epistocracy’, or expert rule, in transnational policy communities.

This article examines the conditions under which policy learning occurs, distinguishing between instrumental learning (evidence-based, problem-solving oriented) and political learning (strategic, shaped by institutional position and incentives). Drawing on three cases presented by Claudio Radaelli – examining bureaucrats, politicians, and experts – the paper shows that much of what occurs in policy practice is best understood as political learning: actors acquire and deploy knowledge strategically, filtered through professional hierarchies, electoral pressures, and reputational concerns. While the literature has long recognised these dynamics, the paper argues that existing accounts of political learning understate its relational and contextual character. Political learning emerges through positioned interactions within institutional and epistemic communities, rather than from individual strategic calculation alone, and from alignment with shifting background political conditions that determine what knowledge becomes actionable. Recognising this relational dimension has implications for institutional design aimed at fostering democratic accountability and integrating expertise more effectively into policy making.

This article examines the evolving role of expertise in democratic policy making amid growing political contestation and institutional strain. Drawing on insights from the annual roundtable convened by European Political Science, it explores how the legitimacy of expert knowledge is being challenged through crises of trust and rising populism. The article analyses how evidence is shaped and contested through challenges of literacy, capacity, and politics. It argues that democratising expertise requires greater inclusion alongside structural safeguards for academic independence. By reframing the use of evidence as fundamentally political rather than purely technical, the article calls for a more reflexive and accountable knowledge-policy interface.

Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Trajectories of Democratic Innovations’.

This article examines the divergent trajectories of democratic innovations in Australia and contextualises the institutional constraints on efforts to revise and improve traditional mechanisms of political participation and decision-making. Adopting a broad definition of democratic innovations as interfaces between citizens and government designed to enhance citizen participation, it distinguishes between two main types: electoral (vote-centric) and deliberative (voice-centric) innovations. While Australia is often recognised as a global pioneer in electoral innovations, experimentation with deliberative democratic reform at the federal level remains rare and sporadic. This article identifies two contextual features that help explain the limited pathways for embedding deliberative innovations into national governance: first, the adversarial and non-deliberative nature of the Westminster-inspired majoritarian system of government and, second, the enduring influence of Australia’s settler-colonial status. Together, these factors sustain a political culture that tends towards non-listening. The article suggests ways to counter these factors by drawing insights and inspiration from creative community innovations emerging in Australia.

Democratic innovations have gained popularity in Finland, especially during the last 15 years, at the national and subnational level. However, research on Finnish democratic innovations is still fragmented, focusing on isolated methods, case studies, and experiments. Our article aims to provide a first comprehensive outlook of the diffusion of democratic innovations in Finland. From the 1980s onwards, we identify five legislative milestones that illustrate the gradual institutionalisation of various innovations. Furthermore, we trace the historical roots of three sets of innovations – direct democratic instruments, participatory budgeting, and deliberative mini-publics – and describe their scope and patterns of dissemination. Our inspection shows that democratic innovations have created truly novel channels for citizen influence, but their impact varies greatly. While policymakers still have doubts of citizens’ competences, our analysis suggests a growing role for democratic innovations in Finnish politics, supported by their institutionalisation as well as pragmatic adaptation.