As the primary emphasis in international climate politics has shifted from the agenda of mitigation of to that of adaptation to global warming, this introduction describes the UN COP15 summit in Copenhagen as the symbolic turning point towards what is conceptualised as the politics of unsustainability. The article sketches the meaning of the concept, provides a common framework for the more detailed analyses that follow and outlines the research agenda for the symposium that is portrayed here.

European Studies (ES), the academic field that deals with European issues in general and European integration in particular, is controversial by nature. For some, European integration is but an ideology. Others believe it to be an ‘n’ of 1 that cannot be compared or imitated. For the majority, European integration is a moving target and an unfinished undertaking, whereas a growing number of academics and pundits speak no longer of integration but governance. Notwithstanding these epistemological and methodological disagreements, top universities in Europe and around the world have put in place departments and programmes devoted to the study of the historical developments, institutions, processes, policies, and challenges of the EU and the politics and interdependence of its member-states. No other regional organization has won such a place of honour in academic curricula. In this symposium, we are interested in scrutinizing how ES have been studied and taught outside Europe. We have collected contributions from distinguished scholars from six significant world areas in order to ensure a balanced geographical spread of our insight to these academic developments: the United States, Russia, China, Australia (and New Zealand), Israel (and the Middle East) and (Southern) Latin America.

The articles presented in this symposium explore approaches to political science education that involve students in experiential learning through placements, service learning and community engagement projects. This introduction identifies key themes emerging from the articles and situates these within the wider context of debates on politics, teaching and learning.

This article introduces a discussion on defining, measuring, and assessing the quality of democracy. Providing a short overview of the papers of the Symposium, it places them within a broader context of current academic debate on various methodological, theoretical, and policy outreach dimensions of the topic.

In the current theory and practice of politics work placements in the UK a great deal of emphasis is placed on lengthy placements and the cultivation of ‘key’ or ‘transferable skills’. This article presents an alternative model of short research-based placements, which provides tangible benefits for students of politics in terms of both employability and personal development, and which gels with recent attempts to provide a richer account of the nature of employability.

This study explores the polarised nature of climate change politics in the USA. First, it describes the opposing stances on climate change taken by Republican and Democratic leaders. It then uses survey data to show that Republican and Democratic citizens hold widely differing views on climate change and that these differences are greatest among the most educated. Partisan polarisation poses a challenge to those seeking to build support for new policy efforts on climate change.

This article explores the institutional development of European studies in the United States. We show the extent to which the study of European integration reflects the deep roots that sustain the vitality and strength of the transatlantic relationship since the end of World War II. Outside Europe, the United States is still the country where studies on European integration have the most prominent place in the research agenda of scholars.

This articles sets out the main principles, mediating values, and pillars of the democracy assessment framework developed by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). It discusses the tradition of democracy assessment, the efforts at measuring democracy, lays out the key strengths and differences of the IDEA framework, and reflects on its application in over twenty-five countries. The article argues that in addition to an assessment function, the framework has been useful in initiating and sustaining democratic reform in a number of countries.

This article analyses how European studies were introduced in Australia, examining teaching, research and research training. It surveys policy and curriculum developments since the introduction of the study of the European Union (EU) in the Australian university curriculum in the early 1990s. It profiles Australian research on the EU. Australia's position – and that of New Zealand – in the Asia Pacific region has provided a useful context to understand the EU as an international actor and as a context for comparative regional integration.

Diamond and Morlino (2005) propose a quality of democracy framework that includes eight dimensions, but they restrict use of opinion data to measuring only one of these: ‘responsiveness’. However, we argue that citizen experiences and evaluations are essential pieces of data that may also enable us to capture valid ‘insider’ measures of procedural and substantive dimensions that may be missed by expert judges and macro-level indicators. We develop indicators based on public attitude data for all eight dimensions of democracy. Substantively, this mass perspective on the Quality of Democracy gives us insight into what Africans themselves want out of democracy, and how they prioritise its various components. As we explore the places where citizen and expert evaluations diverge, we conclude that both individual and expert assessments of the quality of democracy deserve to be carefully interrogated. We cannot conclude that either experts or ordinary citizens provide the ‘true’ or ‘correct’ assessment, but rather that both perspectives are essential to fully understanding today's democratic experience, and the shape of the democratic future, on the continent.

This article seeks through constructive criticism to consider how the ‘knowledge exchange’ agenda might be harnessed for the progressive goal of political education. The article discusses ‘Making Politics Matter’, an initiative that seeks to encourage active learning and teaching of politics, facilitate the development of social network capital among students, and to reach out to the wider community, with the aim of promoting public discussion of political issues.

Promoting renewable energy sources (RES) has been addressed a key strategy for mitigating climate change, the governing in which has turned out a challenging and protracted task for the EU. There is often an implicit assumption that concern for climate change drives energy policy, but a closer look at the development of European RES policy indicates how EU governors have had to confront a range of governance dilemmas in trying to balance various objectives and conflicting interests. Therefore, while energy security and environmental concerns have provided a rationale for crafting renewable energy as a specific EU policy domain, the main driver for RES policy coordination has been internal market concerns, and not the concern about an impending climate catastrophe. More recently, rising concerns about energy insecurity and climate change have forced the EU to seek greater policy coordination in the context of more integrated energy markets. Although seemingly propitious for further harmonisation, it is doubtful whether the Member States and their citizens are yet prepared to accept new efforts towards deeper integration of European energy policy.

This article shows the outcomes of the first project in Spain aiming to measure the quality of its democracy. The research, led by the Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados (IESA-CSIC), is based on a survey allowing citizens to evaluate the performance of their democracy. The analysis is based on eight dimensions of democratic quality, following the normative framework proposed by Morlino (2009): rule of law, electoral accountability, inter-institutional accountability, participation, competition, liberty, equality and sensitivity (or responsiveness).

This article shows the emergence and development of European Union studies in Israel from its inception until the present, with a secondary focus on the rest of the Middle East. Different aspects are examined, such as developments in education, research and professional meetings. As such, we can draw meaningful conclusions about the fundamental strengths and weaknesses marking this field in Israel.

Analysing transatlantic relations from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (KP) to the 2009 Copenhagen accord, the article identifies underlying explanations for the divergences between the EU and US during international climate negotiations. It traces how a climate divide opened between the EU and the US in the early 2000s, involving confrontation over the implementation of the KP. However, a phase of EU–US rapprochement closed the climate gap in the late 2000s, leading to common positions during the 2009 COP-15 negotiations. Yet the Copenhagen Accord served to reinforce American influence, while undermining the coherence and credibility of the European stance. This led to multiple rifts in the post-Copenhagen landscape concerning climate treaty architecture, policy implementation and international relationships, jeopardising the success of future negotiations.

Signature pedagogies have been defined as ‘types of teaching that organize the fundamental ways in which future practitioners are educated for their profession’ (Schulman, 2005: 3). Applying Schulman's definition of signature pedagogies to political science, this article notes that as an academic discipline it does not seek to train students for a specific profession. It also recognises that political science's signature pedagogy is similar to those traditionally associated with the social sciences and humanities: mass lectures, small tutorials and private study. In recent times newer pedagogies such as problem-based learning, experiential learning and service learning have been introduced in political science programmes to marry theory and practice and promote critical thinking and independent learning. This article focuses on one such approach, service learning, assessing the contribution it can make to teaching in political science with reference to an analysis of its effects in a postgraduate module on democratic civic education in University College Cork, Ireland.

This article reflects on the challenges that social and political disengagement pose within the university environment, and offers an alternative pedagogical solution centred on praxis. To retain the functional role of education for the reproduction of democracy, the article contends that the challenges posed by mass education, the corporatisation of university life and the alienating impact of neoliberal discourse mean that the solution to engagement and participation within university, and beyond, lies in teaching activism.

Democracy measurement is an ever growing and increasingly important research area. Nevertheless, lively discussions concerning the qualities of different measurement approaches are seldom combined with an adequate perspective on the underlying methodological framework. This article argues that a substantial theoretical perspective is only a sufficient condition for improving contemporary democracy measurement. Theoretical considerations have to be accompanied by an equally well-developed measurement concept. On the basis of examples taken from prominent approaches, potential for improvement becomes obvious. Any improvement is not just an end in itself but necessary if these measures are used as variables in all areas of research.

In spite of the strong historical links that connect Europe with South America, EU studies are underdeveloped in the latter region. This article takes stock of how European politics in general, and European integration in particular, are studied and taught in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay in order to assess such paradox and evaluate its prospects.

In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, societies worldwide have to cope with the potential impacts of climate change. The central question of this paper is to what extent our historically grown institutions enable actors to cope with the new challenges of climate adaptation. We present six qualities of governance institutions that are crucial to allow for, and encourage adaptation, and apply them to the National Adaptation Strategies of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden. We conclude that although the governance institutions involved seem to have the basic qualities required, they face five institutional weaknesses, causing tensions on the long term: (1) lack of openness towards learning and variety; (2) strong one-sided reliance on scientific experts; (3) tension between top-down policy development and bottom-up implementation; (4) distrust in the problem-solving capacity of civil society; and (5) wickedness of reserving funding for long-term action.