The task of reviewing public policy research in Eastern Europe borders on the impossible. For one thing, public policy is an extremely broad field, and analysis might cover anything from the memos of government advisors to the manifestos of NGOs. Second, there is the problem of language. There are ten working languages for the ten candidate countries alone. Third, because members of the policy analyst ‘elite ‘ often work as consultants, the best East European public policy research usually comes out of projects run by assistance organisations, including the World Bank and the OECD. As such, their work tends to be contaminated (not necessarily in a bad sense) by the latest ideas and methodologies propounded by these organisations, and it becomes difficult to distinguish what is purely ‘Eastern’ from what is ‘Western’. The widespread complaint that the East was ‘intellectually colonised’ by the West after the fall of the Wall is clearly well founded in the case of public policy research.

Twelve years after the introduction of reform policies in China and two years before the next expected major change at the summit of the country's leadership, China's political system is facing a series of tremendous changes. Perhaps one of the most important challenges is rooted in the effects of new information technologies on political decision-making and above all on relations between people and rulers.

The potential impact of these changes can perhaps best be explained by an example. In March 2001, the international media published reports of a deadly explosion in Fanglin school in a remote eastern Chinese mountain village. Official reports (including a statement by Premier Zhu Rongji) blamed a ‘lone madman’ for having set off two bags of explosives in a third-grade classroom. ‘ Here comes a madman’ was the immediate reaction on the Internet in China. Angry users of Internet chat rooms did not buy the story.

The trends prevailing in Central and East European (CEE) social science research at the time of the collapse of communism were markedly different from those in the West. First of all, social science disciplines in the former Soviet bloc were dominated, to varying degrees, by Marxist-Leninist ideology. By definition there was almost no work at all done on ‘capitalist’ integration. Prior to the collapse of the communist regimes, only a very few studies, mainly in economics, had addressed (Western) European integration. Political science in general was underdeveloped, and ‘European integration’ and/or ‘European studies’ were truly terra incognita. Since the, an ongoing dialogue between several groups of scholars has led to numerous research projects investigating European integration. This article aims to provide an overview of the research in this area in Eastern Europe.

Identifying CEE research on European integration is no easy task. First of all, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches prevail, and it is very difficult to draw clear boundaries between political science and the other social sciences.

Italy went to the polls on 13 May 2001 to elect its parliament and the mayors of many of its major cities (Turin, Rome, Naples, Catania). As in the case of the British general election held less than a month later, the result had long been thought by many to be a foregone conclusion. In the Italian case, the choice facing voters was between a centre-right alliance, the House of Freedoms (La Casa delle Libertà) led by media tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, on the one hand, and a centre-left alliance, the Olive-tree Alliance (I'Ulivo) led by former Mayor of Rome, Francesco Rutelli, on the other. Unlike the British election, however, the Italian election (and in particular, the election campaign) did not turn out to be a dull affair but, rather, an eventful one. This was less because of the actual results, than because of what was made possible by the complex electoral system, and because of the personalities involved, the use of media techniques and the policies addressed.

As a narrative text, film provides an important in structional tool, helping us gain insight into political authority and violence. Race, gender, and class conflict often provide the content of film examinations of dominance and violence. Frequently, however, the message of popular media conveyed in sexual and racial metaphor dims the viewer’s awareness of domination, distances the viewer from political debates and decisions, and depresses theviewer’s sense of political efficacy.

Several attempts have already been made to evaluate International Relations (IR) studies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (Drulák and Druláková, 2000; Sergounin, 2000), where it is still a fledgling discipline compared to its mature cousins in the US and Western Europe. In this article, we examine IR studies in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Romania. By looking at the most prominent scholarly journal published in each country, as well as each country's more important research institutions and think tanks, we attempt to illustrate several of the common features of IR research. Following our discussion of the national-level features, we present some observations on regional level developments. Here, we focus on three IR institutions that may be seen to represent the CEE region as a whole. Hopefully, this study will shed light on the construction of national and regional disciplines, especially in terms of their strengths, research topics, and principle actors. We also hope to have a better understanding of the external and extra regional influences on the discipline.

Elite theory enjoyed a remarkable revival in East Central Europe, and also in international social science research, during the 1990s. Many researchers, belonging to a variety of schools of thought, turned to the analysis of rapid political and social change and ended up doing elite-centred research. In East Central Europe, during the decades of dictatorship, official sociology advocated a simplified version of Marxist class theory. Official sociologists talked about ‘Old Class’ theories, while dissident sociologists used ‘New Class’ theories to discredit the former approach and to criticise the then existing statesocialist regime.

The revival of elite theory in the late 1980s came as a surprise. Scholars stopped using the heavily ideologised discourse in the social sciences because it was regarded as the language of the old regime. Since transition and elite transformation seemed to be parallel processes, it was understandable that the sociologists and political scientists of the region started to use elite theory.

Since the invention of the first ‘moving pictures’ more than a century ago, films have served political purposes for governments, political parties, special interest groups, and mass movements. From the crude propaganda ‘flickers’ that showed the destruction of the battleship Maine at the time of the Spanish-American War to the slick battle scenes from the recent blockbuster, Pearl Harbor (2001), the film medium has informed, manipulated, and deceived audiences throughout the world.

As far as the composition of the House of Commons is concerned the 2001 British general election was a rerun of its 1997 predecessor. Labour won 413 seats, almost two-thirds of the total, and their 167 seat majority represents only a marginal change in the 179 seat majority they achieved in 1997. The hapless Conservatives had a net gain of only one seat and they remain as far from government as ever with only 161 seats in the House overall. The Liberal Democrats picked up a useful additional six seats and now have their largest representation in the House of Commons since the 1920s. With very minor changes in the representation of other parties, the 2001 House of Commons looks a lot like the 1997 House of Commons, as can be seen in Table 1 .

In one crucially important respect, however, the 2001 election was very different from its predecessor.

In a little-cited chapter in Peter Merkl's Western European Party Systems, Stephen Fischer noted that the study of small or minor parties was neglected for four main reasons: concentrating on large parties delimited analysis of party polities, and thus made it more manageable; data collection problems were reduced; minor parties were thought to be irrelevant; and minor parties were considered dysfunctional elements of a system (1980: 609-10). Since 1980, two families of minor parties have come under considerably greater scrutiny, namely Green parties and Extreme Right parties (ERPs), not least because whilst in many cases they may still be small, they are no longer regarded as minor. It is still true, however, that at least as far as the latter family is concerned, data collection and dysfunctionality are two facets, which inform much, if not all research into the constituent parties.

The Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) was born out of the activities of the original Manifesto Research Group (MRG). This group is not to be confused with the more recently formed MRG, the ECPR Standing Group on Party Manifestos, concerned with the computerised analysis of political texts, founded by Paul Pennings of the Vrije University in Amsterdam a couple of years back. The first MRG began its activities under the aegis of the ECPR at the Florence Joint Sessions in 1980, and continued throughout the 1980s to collect, code, and analyse party manifestos (election programmes) for nineteen countries from 1945 to 1983. The democracies covered were mainly in Europe but also included the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Sri Lanka and Japan. The basic idea at first was to see what cleavages divided the parties, how many cleavages there were, and whether parties had converged or diverged along them during the post-war period.

The primary purpose of this article is to motivate teachers to use political films in their courses. A good film can illustrate important concepts in a dramatic way that will motivate students to think harder about important political issues. Furthermore, the use of Internet-based research tools allows students to flesh out their understanding of the issues presented in film with up-to-date, real-world evidence.

In the following, I present some proven teaching methods for using the Battle of Algiers film.

The Internet offers an unparalleled opportunity to use film for instruction in political science. Compared to other means of delivering film to students, the Internet is particularly flexible and convenient. This article discusses some of the more technical aspects of using film in various teaching contexts, including distance learning.

This paper seeks to start a debate about how political scientists in Europe might continue to help each other develop, and how the discipline might begin to tackle the challenges posed by the Sorbonne and Bologna agreements. We believe it is important that political science and political scientists face these challenges, because otherwise it is likely that the answers will be provided for us by others less familiar with the needs and demands of the discipline itself.

Higher education today is confronted by a number of challenges. The ICT revolution is one such major challenge, in that it has revolutionised the way in which knowledge can be transmitted - no lecturer worth his salt is now unfamiliar with PowerPoint as an aid to presenting material, whilst most students regularly trawl the Net in search of information for essays and seminars, if not for the essays themselves.

Until the 1980s, there were two generalisations that could be made about Universities in the United Kingdom. First, they were heavily dependent on public funds. Second, they enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. They enjoyed an arm's length relationship with government through the University Grants Committee. Since the 1980s, the reliance on public funds has diminished, relative to the scale of its past dependence, as the degree of external regulation has increased. Universities have to survive in an environment that is not only more competitive than before but also more highly regulated. Far from enhancing the quality of research and teaching, many academics believe that the methods employed for accounting get in the way of delivering those key services.

The principle of being accountable for the receipt and spending of public funds is difficult to gainsay. Public funding accounts for sixty-two per cent of the funds received by higher education in the UK.

As is widely known, the Bologna Declaration - signed by thirty-two European ministers in charge of higher education - constitutes a joint commitment to the establishment of a European Higher Education Area by 2010. There are six important objectives underlying the Europeanisation of higher education. These are, the adoption of a system of readable and comparable degrees; the establishment of a system of credits; the promotion of mobility; the promotion of European co-operation in the field of quality assurance; the promotion of a European perspective in higher education; the adoption of a system essentially based on two main cycles, undergraduate and post-graduate. The achievement of the first five undoubtedly depends upon the implementation of the sixth. A degree structure based on two main cycles (bachelor's/master's) is the corner stone of the entire, ambitious programme.

Dutch political science claims early roots. In 1613 Daniel Heinsius became Professor of Politics at Leiden University. The various sciences bearing a relation to the state were then regarded as one body of ‘scientia politica'. During the nineteenth century, however, the juridicallegalistic point of view began to predominate in the theory of the state, and between roughly 1840 and the end of the Second World War, Dutch universities almost completely neglected political science proper.

Immediately after the war, the University of Amsterdam established a new Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. Its two founding fathers were both historians but as early as the 1930s one of them, Jan Romein, had become well acquainted with American political science. The holders of the first three chairs in political science in the Netherlands, established between 1948 and 1953, had themselves studied law. It was only in 1963, with the appointment of Hans Daudt in Amsterdam, that the first professor of political science who had himself studied political science was appointed.

The central aim of my research is to investigate why certain right wing extremist parties in Western Europe perform better at the polls than others. I decided to embark on such a project because I felt that, although most people can think of a number of reasons as to why some of these parties are electorally more successful than others, there have been no studies that have comprehensively dealt with this question. Instead, the main focus has been on trying to explain the rise of the extreme right (e.g. Betz, 1994; Ignazi, 1992).

In this article, I discuss some of the thoughts and experiences I have had over the past decade both through my work at the ZA-EUROLAB and as a former Erasmus free mover student. The first idea I introduce concerns the necessary prerequisite for the enhancement of mobility in Europe: the harmonisation of qualifications. With the imminent entrance of the East European states into the EU this seems an increasingly pressing issue. Second, I address the need for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences. Third, I discuss the importance of interational vertical and horizontal networks. Finally, I highlight the role that institutions such as the ZA-EUROLAB have in addressing some of these issues. However, before turning to these topics, I would like briefly to discuss why research mobility in the early stages of one's career is so important for later mobility.