A clear majority of Ph.D. students in the United States still aim to enter the domestic job market. Nonetheless, a growing number of graduates choose to teach at universities in other parts of the world. Despite this apparently upward trend toward relocating abroad, few graduate programmes in the United States prepare their students for an academic career outside of the States. Having made the transition from a doctoral programme in the United States to a university position in Europe, I outline what I have learned from my experience in order to provide information for Ph.D.s who are considering an academic career in Europe.

In the UK academics are being urged to embrace interdisciplinarity in their research and teaching activities. In the case of public policy, there is a tension between the epistemological formations from the parent discipline of politics and garnering the benefits of interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, interdisciplinarity in public policy cannot and should not ignore cleavages in existing policy pathways. These concerns are discussed in the article by assessing the public policy of obesity in England and Wales.

During the era of George W. Bush, American religion was very diverse, including membership in many religious traditions and variation in religious traditionalism within these religious traditions. Both kinds of religious differences were highly politicised and embedded within the major party coalitions at the mass and elite levels. This pattern is likely to persist, but may not always benefit the Republicans as in the Bush era, as revealed by the religious elements of the 2008 election.

In a search for the ‘good European citizen’, the prevalent views of European Union (EU) policymakers, civil society bodies, and citizens are confronted. The civil society and ordinary citizens are both content with strengthening the position of civil society and not increasing the participatory demands on citizens. Ideas among EU policymakers about civil society as a means to integrate citizens and to close the gap between citizens and the EU are misplaced and incongruent with other images of the ‘good European citizen’.

Health care governance constitutes the central domestic problem in the US from both a socio-political and an economic viewpoint. Compared with other post-industrial countries, it is inefficient, ineffective and characterised by an inequitable ‘particularism’ in dealing with different classes of citizens. Utilising the cultural theory of American exceptionalism, this article discusses why there is no compulsory universal insurance in the US, by reconstructing the structural developments of the health care system during the last century, and documenting the anti-social medicine ideological positions of the providers. The idea of a balanced combination of rugged individualism and reformist liberalism producing satisfactory collective outcomes does not appear to work in this case. There is a severe imbalance between the interests of the providers and those of a fragmented and stratified public thus far incapable of acting cooperatively in the pursuit of better collective outcomes. President Obama's proposal for a clearly defined and potentially satisfactory collective outcome is confronted by formidable resistance from the vast constellation of providers which will not be easy to dismantle.

There has been a recent effort to establish a critical approach to terrorism. While this represents a welcome development, this nascent project has thus far understood critical as alternative to a mainstream rather than a genuinely critical approach to the study of terrorism. This article seeks to make the case for the latter.

This article consists of a short summary of the notable historical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of political science as an academic discipline in the UK. We provide an assessment of the state of the discipline today, focussing upon curriculum developments and quality, student recruitment, the impact of the Research Assessment Exercise, and the UK Political Studies Association’s membership and activities (with particular emphasis on the role of specialist groups and activities, which reach beyond the purely academic community). In doing so we draw upon data from recent surveys, reports and benchmarking exercises to illustrate areas of particular strength within the discipline in the UK and areas where more can be done to facilitate engagement and excellence in both teaching and research.

Denouncing the persistence of nationalist reflexes in order to explain the crisis of European integration is much too simple, as is the critique of a mercantile Europe deprived of solid social and moral foundations. Yet, these interpretations, oversimplified as they are, do point to some aspects of our liberal civilisation, which are under pressure in the current trajectory of developments shaping Europe. Seen as symptoms of a widespread malaise, these perspectives should be taken seriously.

Doctoral candidates in political science have a universe of potential career options to choose from. These include not only academia, but also the non-governmental sector, political consulting, and government work. When I obtained my doctoral degree in 1993, little did I imagine that within fifteen years I would have tried my hand in all of these fields, including serving as a cabinet minister. In this article, I reflect on how this professional whirlwind came about, how each field helped and/or hindered the others, what these wanderings taught me about post-communist democratic politics, and particularly what lessons a political scientist learned from entering, albeit briefly, the ‘real world’ of politics.

This article provides advice on how young scholars should approach academic publishers, and outlines how publishers go about evaluating, contracting and producing books. It gives important information about changing a thesis into a publishable book, and points out many of the common mistakes made when approaching publishers for the first time, and how to avoid these.

European integration can be seen as a largely ‘liberal’ project. Since its inception, this project has, however, strongly emphasised the features of economic liberalism, neglecting other essential elements of the liberal tradition, including the limitation of political power, the defence of individual freedoms (not only in the economic sphere) and the promotion of life chances for all the members of the polity. The ‘economistic sliding’ of European liberalism is partly responsible for the current malaise of the European Union and should be countered by launching a comprehensive agenda of ‘liberal’ transformation, in the richer and wider sense of the word.

The Lewis Fry Richardson Lifetime Achievement Award is a triennial prize to honour scholars, who have made exemplary contributions to the scientific study of militarised conflict. This essay presents the third winner of the award – Nils Petter Gleditsch – and commemorates on his scholarly achievements over the last four decades.

Member-states' ideas and discourse about the European Union's (EU's) ‘liberal project’ vary over whether they envision the EU project as mainly about market, community, rights, or global action. Can these be reconciled? Perhaps, but only if the EU itself is reconceptualised as a ‘regional state’ made up of overlapping policy communities, and reformed to allow graduated membership. This could facilitate enlargement in the periphery plus closer cooperation for an inner core, with democracy enhanced by allowing all members an institutional voice in the areas in which they participate.

This article questions the so-called ‘crisis’ in French policy analysis, a sub-field that supposedly suffers from its closedness with respect to the international mainstream. Through a bibliometric analysis, we confirm that policy analysis has established itself as an important research area in French political science. Then, we demonstrate that the level of internationalisation of French policy analysis has grown considerably despite domestic authors’ and approaches’ continued monopolisation of this sub-field.

This article outlines and discusses the bibliometric indicator used for performance-based funding of research institutions in Norway. It is argued that the indicator is novel and innovative as compared to the indicators used in other funding models. It compares institutions based on all their publication-based research activities across all disciplines. Specific incentives are given to researchers to focus their publication behaviour on the most ‘prestigious’ publication channels within the different fields. Such aims necessitate a documentation system based on high-quality data, and require differentiated publication counts as the basic measure. Experience until now suggests that the indicator works as intended.