The introduction of the symposium sets out a possible research agenda on producing systematic empirical evidence of the effect of active learning tools to the discipline of political science, inspired by and drawing from educational research. It discusses the core research questions of such an agenda. Do active learning environments enhance political science students’ learning outcomes? Does the introduction of active learning in political science curricula make a difference for cognitive, affective, and/or regulative learning outcomes? In addition, it draws attention upon which conditions make active learning tools more or less effective? What are the inhibiting and stimulating factors? Are there differential effects according to specific student attributes such as gender, prior knowledge, prior education, or prior results? In short, it discusses the dependent variables (effects on what learning outcomes exactly), the independent variables (such as student dispositions), the intervening variable (types of active learning environments), methods and data, and the teaching context (such as level of education and intra- and extra-curricular contexts). Finally, we introduce the papers of the symposium, which are illustrations of how this agenda can be implemented in the field, covering a variety of effects, learning environments, methods, data, and contexts.

The extensive scholarship devoted to the congruence of mass-elite policy preferences lacks consensus about the meaning, comparison, and measurement across political settings. This makes comparisons difficult and raises obstacles to advancing the debates. This symposium aims to identify the diversity of methodological choices and to reflect systematically on several key choices of particular importance in understanding the congruence. The contributions to the symposium compare and contrast how several types of measurement fare in diverse political contexts in Eastern Europe, Latin America, North Africa, and East Asia, and what we can learn from those methodological choices.

Over the last two decades, several Romanian political parties advertised inclusive and open candidate selection but often ended up with decisions taken by central-level elites. Demos, a party formed in 2018, is the first to use deliberative democracy for candidate selection. The deliberation included the party members and took place online in December 2018–January 2019, with several moderators and facilitators coming from the party ranks. This article analyses the effects produced by this deliberation process for the internal life of the party and for its external image. The analysis uses interviews conducted with party members who coordinated or were actively involved in the deliberation process.

In this symposium, we invite political science instructors to consider reflection as a useful pedagogic resource for achieving complex long-term educational goals. The authors of this collection have found reflection to be a suitable response to different teaching challenges, such as helping students achieve a nuanced understanding of social processes and decision-making, transfer knowledge between courses and gain self-awareness as active participants in learning. The three papers composing this symposium focus on different formats of reflection: a learning diary; reflection accompanying board games used as a teaching exercise; and short reflective assignments about connections between courses in a study programme. We present and discuss the design and implementation of reflective activities in the undergraduate political science curriculum, expose the strengths and weaknesses of using reflection and provide advice to instructors interested in using this teaching tool.

This article investigates the combined effect of experiential and reflective learning on student learning in international politics. It proceeds from the premise that students need a more realistic view of decision-makers so as to understand the logic and context of foreign policy-making better. A board game was used to model the foreign policy decision-making environment, and written and oral reflections were utilised to link students’ personal experience to abstract concepts of foreign policy analysis. Using a quasi-experimental design, both qualitative and quantitative data were used to test the hypotheses about students’ altered views of decision-making and their interest in and learning about foreign policy analysis. Results show that, in comparison with the impact of traditional lecturing combined with discussions, the benefits of experiential and reflective learning are very small. The little support for the existence of such benefits that was uncovered comes from qualitative data and a few statistical measures based on student self-evaluation. Quantitative analyses based on objective measures provided little evidence for a difference between the two teaching approaches. The article concludes with a call for improving the effectiveness and evaluation of reflective learning methods and putting the theories of reflective learning into practice more profitably in international relations.

The Czech Pirate Party is one of the most electorally successful Pirate parties in the world. In this article, we analyse the effect of its intra-party deliberation preceding participation in an executive coalition in the second biggest Czech city, Brno, after the 2018 local election. The study relies on a combination of party open online discussions and discourse from local party elites. We focus on the effects on the coalition formation process, especially the relations with coalition partners, the intra-party effects on the whole party, and the local party organization.

The study of mass-elite policy congruence has been limited by the lack of comprehensive data on the preferences and priorities of individual legislators. The University of Tokyo-Asahi Survey fills this lacuna through elite surveys whose response rates exceed ninety per cent. This article applies this data to comparing mass-elite policy preferences on constitutional revision, a core ideological dimension in post-war Japan. It shows that legislators generally follow the party line on policy position but veer closer to swing voters on policy prioritisation. This trend is stronger for electorally insecure legislators, who depend on independent voters to secure victory.

How do active learning environments—by means of simulations—enhance political science students’ learning outcomes regarding different levels of knowledge? This paper examines different UN simulations in political science courses to demonstrate their pedagogical value and provide empirical evidence for their effectiveness regarding three levels of knowledge (factual, procedural and soft skills). Despite comprehensive theoretical claims about the positive effects of active learning environments on learning outcomes, substantial empirical evidence is limited. Here, we focus on simulations to systematically test previous claims and demonstrate their pedagogical value. Model United Nations (MUNs) have been a popular teaching device in political science. To gain comprehensive data about the active learning effects of MUNs, we collect data and evaluate three simulations covering the whole range of simulation characteristics: a short in-class simulation of the UN Security Council, a regional MUN with different committees being simulated, and two delegations to the National Model United Nations, for which the students prepare for 1 year. Comparative results prove that simulations need to address certain characteristics in order to produce extensive learning outcomes. Only comprehensive simulations are able to achieve all envisioned learning outcomes regarding factual and procedural knowledge about the UN and soft skills.

While typical academic skills such as research and writing are commonly monitored in Higher Education, generic skills such as teamwork, critical thinking or communication receive less attention. This is problematic in light of discussions on students’ further career development. It is often said that active learning environments facilitate the training of such skills. Having a tool to monitor skills progression is an important prerequisite to properly test such claims. At Maastricht University, we developed a self-assessment tool to raise awareness about skills required to take full advantage of the active learning environment, and to initiate self-reflection on the side of students. While the current tool achieves these objectives, it is less suited as an instrument for measuring skills development. In this article, we propose a re-developed self-assessment tool and test its merits through a quasi-experimental study. A group of sixty-two students was asked to complete both the old and new version of the tool. Students and mentors were subsequently asked to evaluate which score represents students’ skills level best. We evaluate if the new self-assessment tool provides a better insight into students’ generic skills development in an active learning environment.

This study investigates whether reflective journals can stimulate students to reflect on their learning and ultimately to make a conceptual change in understanding international relations concepts and problems. The article reports on the experience of using journaling in two courses by triangulating data from analysis of student journals, assignments, feedback forms and a teacher’s journal. It details the documented benefits and drawbacks of journal-keeping for student learning, setting it into the framework of the existing literature on reflective learning and conceptual change. The article concludes with recommendations for how to make journals an effective learning tool.

The Danish political party Alternativet is an example of a party based on deliberative values, which quickly gained electoral success after its formation in 2013. It has been represented in the national parliament since 2015 and subsequently in local councils. One of the party’s stated goals is to promote a “new political culture”, which is embedded in six debate principles that stress the importance of listening sincerely to arguments and always providing justifications for ideas. This article analyses how the party has juggled with upholding these ideals whilst also maintaining electoral competitiveness and pursuing influence in legislative assemblies.

Contexts outside the advanced developed democracies present a challenge to assessing how well party systems reflect voter preferences across over-arching policy dimensions because not all electorates readily interpret political conflict in dimensional terms. In this contribution, I advocate an approach suited for such contexts that combines deductive and inductive elements: It starts out with what observers consider the most important dividing lines in a party system, and then goes on to operationalize these dimensions in an inductive fashion by drawing on all theoretically relevant items that are available in mass and elite surveys. I devise a relative-fit measure of responsiveness that can be compared across space and time, even if positions at the elite and mass levels are measured on different scales. To illustrate the usefulness of the strategy, I show how it leads to novel contrasts in terms of programmatic responsiveness among four Latin American countries, namely Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, and Bolivia.

This article argues for inductive exploration of mass–elite differences in new democracies. Grounded in the “delegate model” of political representation, I do this by studying issue positions and issue salience of masses before turning to elites. The article demonstrates this approach using Tunisia, the only Arab democracy, by analysing survey data and originally coded party manifesto data. From an issue position perspective, the article uncovers mass–elite incongruence on the democratic–authoritarian and secular–Islamist political dimensions. From an issue salience lens, there is mass–elite congruence on the economic dimension. How mass–elite incongruence unfolds might affect the future of democracy in Tunisia.

A more flexible approach to structuring study programmes across European universities enables students to choose which courses to take, in which combination and order. This flexibility is a step towards fuller self-reliance for students as learners. However, it can also reduce the coherence of studies and fragment the learning experience into units (courses or modules). To prevent the fragmentation and encapsulation of knowledge, we devised a reflective writing exercise we called ‘Building Bridges’. It requires students to detect and present connections between courses in their study programme, relevant to their personal learning progress. We carried out the exercise in three courses in a highly flexible modular undergraduate study programme at the University of Freiburg, Germany. In 54 submitted assignments, students on average identified 3.6 relevant connections per assignment of 700 words. Based on the responses, we identified six types of logical connections between courses: similarity, difference, development, challenge, application and contextualisation. Grading the assignment does not seem to influence the reflection. We conclude that, even with minimal guidance, students are able to build multiple connections between courses. Yet, students found it challenging to present connections between courses in the framework of their individual learning pathway, personal academic interests and goals. These tasks require more training and support.

In civic education and political science classes, simulation games are increasingly recognised as a teaching tool to promote active learning, expecting them to enhance participants’ motivations and to convey transferable knowledge and skills. Furthermore, they have been described as a promising teaching approach with regard to the complex multi-level system of the European Union (EU). Empirical studies have underlined positive effects of simulation games; however, they usually either use purely qualitative or very small-N quantitative approaches. More systematic studies conducted recently didn’t focus on causes of the measured effects and have lacked depth due to a closed items design. The study presented here uses a mixed-method approach, analysing the effects of simulations of European Parliamentarian decision-making conducted with secondary school classes in Germany on students' political knowledge, motivations and attitudes. In addition to a standardised questionnaire with pre- and post-tests (N = 308), qualitative interviews were conducted (n = 12). The paper focuses on the relation between participants' conceptual changes and changes in perceived responsiveness of the EU. The results highlight relevant learning effects students experience in EU simulation games that are not yet captured appropriately by questionnaire studies and can stimulate the development of measurement tools for assessing process-oriented learning outcomes more adequately.

Research on intra-party deliberation focuses extensively on its normative aspects and its potential benefits for democratic quality. Little is known about how deliberation functions in practice and the consequences it has. This symposium aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together four examples of political parties that use deliberative practices: the Czech Pirate Party, the Danish Alternativet, the Romanian Demos, and the Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party. The symposium maps the use of deliberation and identifies effects such as high quality of internal decision-making process, legitimacy of those running for public office, and electoral performance.

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.

The pedagogical benefits of active learning environments such as simulations within university teaching have been widely acknowledged. This paper starts from the premise that simulations can derive benefits when used as an effective university outreach tool to widen participation in and raise aspirations towards entering higher education. We argue that European Union (EU)-related simulations involving students in secondary education can increase their interest in studying European politics and, more generally, political science and international relations at university level. This is seemingly particularly the case with students predisposed to pursuing a degree in these fields. The paper uses data gathered via a pre- and post-simulation questionnaire completed by pupils attending six secondary schools in 2016 who all participated in one of the three simulations included in the study. Empirical investigation reveals three major effects of simulations. First, the simulations can increase participants’ interest in pursuing university degrees in fields cognate to EU politics. Second, simulations can increase participants’ self-assessed knowledge of EU politics. Third, simulations can increase the importance participants place on understanding the workings of the EU. Taken together, these findings support our claim that EU-related simulations may be used as outreach tools to increase interest in pursuing EU-related subjects at university level. Such an increase is desirable despite—or perhaps precisely because—of the ongoing Brexit process, as the understanding of and engagement with EU politics will remain relevant for current and future generations of British students.

This article proposes a mixed-methods measurement of the mass-elite congruence of opinions on the EU based on a combination of speech and survey data. It focuses on two countries (Bulgaria and Romania) that were known for their pro-European profile until their EU accession, but which faced many political difficulties afterwards. The analysis covers the 2013–2017 period that includes a great deal of these post-accession difficulties. The article illustrates how we can make meaningful comparisons between short-term, dichotomous mass, and elite attitudes with timeframes determined by non-electoral events.