The article examines artificial intelligence (AI) narratives of the three most important powers in the emerging global AI order – the US, China, and the EU. It argues that these narratives are central to constructing the meanings ascribed to AI in international politics and therefore to understanding the global competition for AI leadership. Specifically, the article uses a method of narrative analysis to reconstruct the AI narratives of the three powers from government documents and strategy papers. These narratives speak to the worldviews and AI images of the powers, how they view each other’s aspirations and behaviours, and what their objectives and motivations are to engage in AI competition. The relationship between the narratives sheds light on the scope for international AI cooperation and conflict. The results reinforce expectations of an intensifying ‘AI race’ between the US and China for global AI leadership. The EU comes out more as a bystander to this geopolitical competition, but strives to lead the development of international AI norms and standards. The article points to different potentials for cooperation and conflict on different aspects of AI and identifies status-seeking as a possible driver of AI competition.

The inverted classroom model (ICM) is an active learning approach that reserves class meetings for hands-on exercises while shifting content learning to the preparatory stage. The ICM offers possibilities for pursuing higher-order learning objectives even in large classes. However, there are contradicting reports about students’ reactions to this kind of teaching innovation. With the ICM making inroads in political science teaching, this paper discusses how students evaluate this method. We report results from an application of the ICM to an introductory international relations course. In our course, students’ reactions to the ICM varied greatly. Using a regression analysis of student evaluation scores, we find that students’ preference for collaborative learning best predicted their preference for the ICM over the traditional lecture format.

Space matters for global politics but the treatment thereof in International Relations (IR) has been uneven. There is broad interest in spatial aspects across many research communities but only a nascent theoretical discussion and little cross-field communication. This article argues for a fuller engagement of IR scholars with sociospatial concepts and proposes a spatial approach to global politics based on four essential dimensions: a spatial ontology, the constructedness of space, a scalar perspective, and the interaction of materiality and ideas. As one possible way of integrating these aspects into a more specific concept, the article elaborates a framework of spatial practices and uses the example of Arctic Security research to illustrate the upsides of such a spatial approach for IR research.