This introductory article investigates the relationship between interdisciplinarity and the study of politics, drawing on the symposium papers. Beginning with a brief historiography of the study of politics/political science, we then explain what we understand by ‘interdisciplinarity’. Next, we explore the potential benefits of an interdisciplinary approach in political research, and also identify some of its shortcomings and potential pitfalls. Finally, while acknowledging the need for more debate, we give some doubtless partial guidance regarding further interdisciplinary research.

The history of interdisciplinarity in international relations (IR) is not a simple narrative. Initially a transdisciplinary meeting place for scholars from many disciplines, IR developed after the 1940s into a closed sub-discipline of political science, and only after 1980 did it once again engage with other disciplines in a sustained way. This article traces these ‘three ages’ of IR, and concludes with a case study of the emerging historiography within IR.

Despite renewed interest in the concept of interdisciplinary research, the social sciences have produced very little evidence for its feasibility or success. Acknowledging the diversity within comparative politics, this article argues that we have scant evidence of interdisciplinarity, some evidence of successful multidisciplinarity in problem-driven research and more frequent examples of cross-disciplinary borrowing, particularly when comparativists have reached a theoretical plateau in capturing new or persisting puzzles. There is little evidence to support the expectation that interdisciplinarity can create a new epistemology that exceeds disciplinary knowledge.

Political science has been detached from philosophy in general and political philosophy in particular. The latter has also ‘celebrated its purity’. But should political philosophy cooperate with empirical political science? This article argues that since political philosophy is part of the study of politics, if it does not cooperate, political philosophy might lose its relevance, create a distorted notion of politics, and commit a methodological mistake. It is further argued that democratising political philosophy is the way to encourage such cooperation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 uses the method devised by Simon Hix to rank the research performance of political science departments on the basis of publications in high-quality journals. We replicate Hix's methodology to assess the performance of politics departments in Ireland from 2003 to 2007. We are very aware that the Hix method provides only a partial measure of research performance and an even more incomplete measure of academic performance generally. However, by examining publications in Hix's list of journals for the period 2003–2007 and by comparing the findings with his 1998–2002 report, we are able to draw some tentative conclusions about the research trajectory of Irish politics departments.

If elections are the hallmark of democracy, political science teachers should not forgo the opportunity to do something with them when they are taking place around the corner. This article therefore seeks to encourage teachers to engage students in doing exit polls within the framework of introductory courses in comparative politics. Exit polls are a perfect way to implement a problem-based type of learning within the political science curriculum and connect theory to practice, as well as bringing together academia and the local community. Below we outline the organisation of two exit polls that were conducted at a Dutch liberal arts college in 2006 and 2007 within the framework of a national and a provincial election. We discuss the logistics of organising the poll both outside and inside the classroom and propose a strategy and timetable to involve the class in drafting the survey. On the basis of student evaluations of the polling experience, we conclude that students are fairly positive about being engaged in such polls and notice that the learning effect is greatest for students early on in their academic career.

Docents often claim to face problems in teaching exchange students. This article focuses on tackling such problems in a comparable course concerning ‘politics and public space’. The concept of public space allows discussions concerning subjects of political science as power, democracy, segregation, privatisation and citizenship. On the other hand, the contributions from different academic fields (sociology, social history, arts) and the use of multiple teachings methods make the course attractive for students of other disciplines. The assignments show that students' eyes were opened not only to Dutch and Finnish spaces but also to those in their home countries.