Civil-military relations have long been an important topic for political science scholars. In spite of its long tradition, however, the field has been repeatedly criticised as being too detached from the greater domain of political science and being too conservative in its conceptual, theoretical and methodological foundations. In recent years, however, a new generation of civil-military research has emerged which has considerably promoted the development of the field beyond the confines of the classical texts. This symposium comprises four articles by European scholars who share a conviction to furthering the study of civil-military relations and developing closer links between the mother discipline of political science and its more specific subfields of comparative and theoretical military studies.

Establishing civilian control of the military is an important challenge for new democracies. Surprisingly, however, there is no established conceptual framework for understanding what civilian control entails and how exactly weak or absent civilian control impinges upon democratic quality. This article addresses these lacunae, developing a new concept of civilian control for emerging democracies. It proposes to understand civilian control as the situation in which civilians have decision-making power in all relevant political matters. Differentiating civilian control as consisting of five decision-making areas, this new concept allows for a nuanced analysis of civilian control and comparative analysis. It also provides a comprehensive framework for systematically assessing the impact of incomplete civilian control on the various dimensions of liberal democracy.

The article sets out to answer two closely related questions of why western states do outsource and why they display a variance. Hypotheses will be drawn from historical and sociological institutionalism and probed in two cases: Germany and the US. Historical institutionalism argues that the current contractor support is in keeping with the historical trend. Sociological institutionalism instead argues that states organise their militaries according to a globally shared template. However, the extent to which it is implemented is strongly influenced by the ideational foundations the states are built upon. Comparing these explanations, this study argues that patterns of military privatisation result from globally shared standards and the ideational foundations of the state rather than from historical trajectory and material benefits.

This article addresses the development and trend of thinking in terms of ‘civil-military relations’ towards ‘security sector governance’. The first section reviews political-military and civil-military relations theory from its beginnings to present. The next section examines the post-Cold War transformation of the principle of civilian control by taking into account i.e. its new relevance in international affairs. While the subsequent section briefly discusses the so-called ‘constructivist turn’ in civil-military relations theory, the paper concludes with an outlook related to the security-development nexus and its possible impact on civil-military relations.

The analysis of discursive practices enables us to get a deep understanding of single cases and the characteristics of their particular political context. The case of the military coup in Thailand in 2006 serves here to demonstrate the applicability of discourse analysis to investigations of the relation between civilian control of the military and the process of democratic consolidation.

Authoritarian consolidation is conceptualised as a deliberate state project to improve a regime's capabilities for governing society. It is hypothesised that the durability of an authoritarian regime increases to the extent that regime elites manage to substitute coercion for governing by organisation, regulation and the management of discourses. This provides them with a broader – and less costly – range of options to address social problems and regime challenges than merely intimidating or cracking down on opponents.

This paper arises from the empirical evidence about trends, issues and perspectives in political science to be found in the International Political Science Association's (IPSA) Research Committee 33 book series entitled – The World of Political Science: Development of the Discipline and the papers presented at the 2008 Montreal Conference of the IPSA on New Theoretical and Regional Perspectives on International Political Science. One of the issues raised by this analysis of the discipline's strengths and weaknesses is the question of whether political science is relevant to the outside world, and if not why not? It is evident to the naked eye that in comparison with, say, economists (President Obama has three advisory councils), political science is of relatively little interest to policymakers, the media and the public. We have to ask whether political science is out of step with the world, and if so what might be done about it?

If you examine the changing contexts in which the issue of ‘relevance’ has been posed in the profession, it becomes clear how earlier calls for relevance need to be reconfigured today. After reviewing arguments that show how explanatory/normative activity is intercoded, this essay explores how the accelerated pace of life, new densities of interdependence and a growing fragility of things supports the case for forging alliances between political science and recent developments in complexity theory in a number of allied fields.

In contrast to its quantitative advances, political science has made only modest contributions to addressing salient contemporary issues. Political studies have largely been reduced to a functionalist science of ‘managing’ parliamentary-party government. The article argues in favour of the discipline redefining itself as a science of democracy, the need for partisan visions in attaining a ‘good society’, the need to help citizens grapple with policy alternatives, and that political scientists should take sides when democratic government conflicts with business interests.

The paper deals with a couple of speculations by John E. Trent with respect to the state and impact of contemporary political science. It particularly takes issue with the Trent claim that political science must become more relevant and instead emphasizes the need for an independent science system. Furthermore, it accepts the notion that there is a problem with respect to overspecialization but regards this as a necessity if science and research want to move ahead. The Trent argument about schisms in political science theorizing and research methodology must be taken seriously, but can and should be counteracted by the good will of scholars to seek regular intellectual exchanges also in fields where controversy rages. Finally, it is argued in the paper that the Trent worldview is very much a North American one that should be balanced by looking also at other political science communities around the world.

This article analyses the content and processes of reforms in the university sector in Denmark. It reveals radical reforms combining governance reforms, research policy reforms and educational policy reforms anchored in New Public Management ideas. The reforms introduce values that are alien to prevailing university values. They change decision-making processes and may have problematic constitutive effects on academic practice. The challenge to political science lies in the difficulty of documenting accountability, while still meeting the demand for economic value.

In keeping with practices elsewhere in Europe, Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in Ireland have in recent decades adopted access policies for non-traditional students (not recent school leavers). This paper assesses a particular initiative to facilitate access to HEIs to non-traditional students. However, due to the initiative's origins as a non-accredited certificate for asylum seekers and refugees, specific attention will be paid to the immigrant community. This paper assesses the details of a new programme in Irish politics and political leadership for non-traditional students in Ireland. It will present the curriculum and document the teaching strategies that were selected while exploring the role for universities and political science departments, in particular in facilitating integration. Student-centred learning provides the overarching framework for the curriculum. Three teaching approaches – KWL, service learning, and enquiry- or problem-based learning – have been selected as the pedagogical underpinnings of this Certificate programme. The paper explores all three approaches and provides examples of how these will be employed. Finally, this paper concludes with a discussion of how the programme could be adapted in other jurisdictions and its uses in integrating citizens from new communities across European democracies.

Political science with its rich history, but varying national traditions and contexts, deals with a multi-dimensional and ever-changing subject matter of which we are, inevitably, a part. This poses specific epistemological problems, but also offers the opportunity to contribute to the shaping of political reality by insights and actions. This lecture gives a brief outline of this problematique and then presents, by way of illustration, the findings of a major international research project on the political effects of the Great Depression in Europe in the interwar period. Based on this experience, some (tentative and personal) lessons will be drawn for the state of political science and its potential contributions facing the present world economic crisis.