In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001, it is worth considering the impact of the events for our understanding of politics and international relations theory. The attacks have sparked a slew of analyses from a bewildering range of perspectives across the humanities and social sciences that call for a broad range of policy responses. A complete discussion of all the implications and perspectives would clearly be impossible, so this article will focus primarily on the ramifications for international politics.

During the year 2000, the furore following two apparently unconnected decisions revealed that Greece was undergoing a crisis of redefinition of national identity. In May, an independent administrative agency ruled that the inclusion of religious affiliation on the identity cards carried by all adult citizens violated the law on the protection of personal data. In October, the teachers at a secondary school chose the student with the best grades to carry the flag in the national holiday parade, although he was not a Greek citizen.

The Danish general election of 20 November 2001, held at the same time as the municipal and county elections, marked a turning point in Danish electoral history.

Staunchly supportive of the welfare state, the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, have traditionally supported the Social Democrats - the largest party in all three countries since the 1920s. The election in Denmark broke this tradition. A massive swing to the main bourgeois party, Venstre (the Liberals), allowed the latter to overtake the Social Democrats and to secure a majority for the rightist parties for the first time since 1929 (Table 1).

The one thing no one questions is that the disciplined study of politics is in influx. Political scientists, politologues, Politischewissenschaftler, politólogas and politologi seem, even more than their brethren in the other social sciences, to have to deal with a major crisis in their discipline and, hence, to be ‘condemned to live in interesting times’ - as the Chinese proverb puts it. I can sympathise with those who find their pet paradigms in ruins or their a rea of specialisation virtually eliminated in a burst of ‘creative destruction,’ but I am confident that in the long run this turbulence will improve the discipline.

Recently Philippe C. Schmitter and John G. Gunnell took issue with the New Handbook of Political Science (Goodin and Klingemann, 1998). Schmitter (see previous article) characterised the Handbook as representing an ‘American’ science of politics. In his opinion this is at the expense of ‘…those who want to practise a political science that is critical of established power, sensitive to the distinctive nature of its subject matter and capable of explaining the complexities of political life to real people’.

One of the oldest chairs in government in Europe was established in 1622 at the University of Uppsala. Although it was only in the late nineteenth century that political studies in their more modern form began to take shape, there is no doubt that the Johan Skytte chair in eloquence and government owes much of its prestige to this heritage. Johan Skytte has also given his name to the Johan Skytte Prize (also known as the ‘Nobel Prize in Political Science’) awarded annually since 1995, the 2001 recipient being Brian Barry.

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.

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.

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.

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).

The exponential growth of the Internet - or World Wide Web - was heralded, in the 1990s, as revolutionising the production and dissemination of information. It has stimulated a great deal of discussion, debate and experimentation. Far-ranging discussions concern both the political implications of the Internet for access to knowledge and its ramifications for teaching subjects such as politics and related fields.

The relationship between the political and social attitudes of Scotland and the rest of Great Britain has long been an area of interest in Political Sociology (Dickson, 1989; Brown et al., 1999 : ch. 4). In particular since the 1974 general election, at which the Scottish National Party (SNP) placed itself firmly on the political map, there has been interest in the extent to which the four party system in Scotland not only produced different electoral statistics but also reflected and helped sustain a distinctive political culture.