Growing attention is given in IR theory and diplomatic circles to the ambivalent role of religion in world politics. However, there is a need for more analytical clarity, identifying at least four different domains: religions and inter-state relations; religions and internationalism; religions and trans-nationalism; and religions and globalism. The most promising approach is the one that concentrates on the transnational projection of religions, connecting it to the way religions address global issues to influence international actors.

The paper examines the challenges of teaching about the impact of nuclear weapons on international relations to students who were born after the Cold War and suggests a variety of pedagogical approaches for helping them understand this impact including readings, media, and simulations. We first discuss the value of a multi-methods approach to teaching about nuclear weapons and then discuss resources for these different approaches. For readings, we identify key writing framed as debates that have worked with undergraduates like Waltz and Sagan as well as key articles and literature reviews and historical literature about the actual use of nuclear weapons during World War II. We then discuss different multimedia such as movies and music. Finally, we discuss in class simulations with a focus on Nuclear Diplomacy, providing some examples of student reaction to playing these simulations.

This paper advocates a holistic approach to assessing international relations in undergraduate education, which revolves around: (a) essays and (b) active learning-related tasks, such as simulation reflective statements/reports and performance. The paper argues that, on the one hand, academic essays are far from irrelevant and it is difficult to overestimate their practical significance. On the other hand, active learning-related tasks are best utilised as a supplementary assessment, expanding the students’ range of transferable skills. The assessment structure advocated in this paper results from a holistic approach to assessment design, which includes teacher’s own experience, familiarity with pedagogical scholarship and input from students. This last element is the least common even though it makes sense to understand how students see their own assessment. To that end, the paper shares the results of a pilot project run at one of the UK universities, which engaged students as partners in rethinking their assessment.

The Hunger Games has become a pop culture phenomenon. To a greater extent than many of the other books in the young adult fiction genre, The Hunger Games series has themes relevant to the study of politics. This study explores the usefulness of The Hunger Games trilogy for teaching and learning about international relations. In particular, I examine The Hunger Games in relation to major paradigms of international relations and normative issues related to war. As a series rooted in conflict in the arena and more broadly in Panem, the trilogy raises a number of questions relevant to the study of war, peace, and justice.

This article introduces the Debate on editing and publishing (in) Political Science and International Relations journals in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Debate brings together editors of PoliSci and IR journals published in four CEE countries to examine the practice of publishing (in) these disciplines and explore the diverse strategies journals, and their editors employ to navigate the semiperipheral context of CEE. Going beyond structuralist accounts of semiperipheral inferiority, we introduce CEE journals as institutions endowed with agency, self-reflection and responsibility towards their academic communities. The Debate discusses if and in which sense these journals try to become (limited) innovators, how they are bound by different conditions stemming from the national or regional contexts, how they work with or challenge them and which opportunities they exploit to advance their goals.

Analysing transatlantic relations from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (KP) to the 2009 Copenhagen accord, the article identifies underlying explanations for the divergences between the EU and US during international climate negotiations. It traces how a climate divide opened between the EU and the US in the early 2000s, involving confrontation over the implementation of the KP. However, a phase of EU–US rapprochement closed the climate gap in the late 2000s, leading to common positions during the 2009 COP-15 negotiations. Yet the Copenhagen Accord served to reinforce American influence, while undermining the coherence and credibility of the European stance. This led to multiple rifts in the post-Copenhagen landscape concerning climate treaty architecture, policy implementation and international relationships, jeopardising the success of future negotiations.

How do active learning environments—by means of simulations—enhance political science students’ learning outcomes regarding different levels of knowledge? This paper examines different UN simulations in political science courses to demonstrate their pedagogical value and provide empirical evidence for their effectiveness regarding three levels of knowledge (factual, procedural and soft skills). Despite comprehensive theoretical claims about the positive effects of active learning environments on learning outcomes, substantial empirical evidence is limited. Here, we focus on simulations to systematically test previous claims and demonstrate their pedagogical value. Model United Nations (MUNs) have been a popular teaching device in political science. To gain comprehensive data about the active learning effects of MUNs, we collect data and evaluate three simulations covering the whole range of simulation characteristics: a short in-class simulation of the UN Security Council, a regional MUN with different committees being simulated, and two delegations to the National Model United Nations, for which the students prepare for 1 year. Comparative results prove that simulations need to address certain characteristics in order to produce extensive learning outcomes. Only comprehensive simulations are able to achieve all envisioned learning outcomes regarding factual and procedural knowledge about the UN and soft skills.

The article analyses publication patterns according to gender in three Political Science and International Relations journals based in Britain (Political Studies, British Journal of Political Science, and Review of International Studies). Examining publications from 1991 to 2011 in terms of authorship, seniority of author, and number of citations and responses, our findings suggest that women are less likely to be published as sole or lead author than their male counterparts are but that they are just as likely to be cited. Furthermore, since 2000, women are now over-represented in comparison with their presence within the discipline in publications that have at least one female author.

The text identifies the main issues that undermine the position of the Czech Political Science and International Relations journals. We argue that structural factors such as the delayed start of the discipline, lack of contact with the international environment, the transfer of inadequate theoretical and methodological knowledge has significantly affected the functioning and development of professional journals in the Czech Republic. The authoritarian regime limited the development of the social sciences, and Czech (Slovak) Political Science endured an extremely negative attitude from the authorities. Thus, journals in the field of Political Science and International Relations were founded without deeper insight into Western practice. Furthermore, their strive to move from the scientific periphery has also been limited by the lack of human capital and financial constraints. To close the gap, which persists even today, the authors came up with a series of recommendations, such as the language of publication, topic specialisation, insisting on scientific rigour, and emphasising communication with the academic community, both domestic and international. By discussing the practice and the meaning of ‘catching up with the West,’ the paper contributes to understanding hierarchies and dependencies between the global Political Science and International Relations core and CEE as a scientific semiperiphery.

Politics and International Relations (IR) tend to be discussed as separate disciplines. Rather than emphasising their shared divisions and methodological differences, dominant narratives separate the two, but these narratives also serve to reinforce and legitimate (to slightly differing degrees) the dominance of American positivism. As such, it is argued that if we are to understand the contemporary state of both disciplines, it is useful to reflect on their historical development. The aim of this article is (briefly) to map critically the development of Politics and IR as disciplines that, while having differing historical beginnings, have developed as parallel rather than integrated disciplines facing similar internal epistemological, methodological and cultural divisions. It is noted, however, that their parallel development is uneven, with challenges to the mainstream coming far earlier in IR than Politics, and as such opening the way for much greater acceptance of the notion of methodological pluralism in contemporary IR (outside the US) than in the study of Politics. Further, it is argued that the writing of histories of the disciplines thus far have served to legitimate and reinforce dominant Western conceptions of IR and Politics both descriptively and normatively.

This article discusses recent moves in political science that emphasise predicting future events rather than theoretically explaining past ones or understanding empirical generalisations. Two types of prediction are defined: pragmatic, and scientific. The main aim of political science is explanation, which requires scientific prediction. Scientific prediction does not necessarily entail pragmatic prediction nor does it necessarily refer to the future, though both are desiderata for political science. Pragmatic prediction is not necessarily explanatory, and emphasising pragmatic prediction will lead to disappointment, as it will not always help in understanding how to intervene to change future outcomes, and policy makers are likely to be disappointed by its time‐scale.

This article assesses the evolution of the study of international relations (IR) in France during the twentieth century, before proceeding with an examination of the present state of the field. It is concerned with both substantive issues and institutional developments. It concludes that France has much to offer and is taking its proper place in the international development of the field. An appendix offers a taste of the French IR literature.

International relations (IR) as a discipline have had a troubled history in Italy. Indeed, the previous academic literature on the topic has highlighted how the lack of critical mass and influence of Italian IR scholarship have negatively impacted its visibility at the international level (Lucarelli and Menotti in Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 32(1):32–82, 2002; Friedrichs in European approaches to international relations theory: a house with many mansions, Routledge, London, 2004). However, there are few systematic studies that focus on the scientific publications of Italian scholars in IR. In order to fill this gap, the article presents the results of a study assessing Italian scholars’ impact in peer-reviewed international journals. Specifically, this work aims to make a broader assessment of Italian scholars’ publications from 2011 to 2017 using a database that includes 25 high impact-factor international peer-reviewed journals and five Italian journals. It also aims to identify the gender, geographic origin, affiliation and academic role of Italian scholars, as well as the topic, area, theoretical approach and methodological underpinnings of each article, so as to generate previously unexplored findings on the solidity and impact of Italian IR research both in Italy and abroad.

The aim of this paper is to explore the complex situation regarding the state of the international relations (IR) discipline in France. The paper analyses the development of IR within French academe, reviews the scholarly output of IR teaching and research institutions and makes proposals that could contribute to improving the situation.

As other authors have said, analysing publications is a suitable method for illustrating the development of a discipline because publications are among the most important aspects of a branch of learning. To answer the two major questions posed in the introduction to this symposium – what is published? and who publishes? – we examine the evolution of Political Science in Spain, by focusing on the Political Science and International Relations articles published in top-ranked journals in Spain and at the European and international levels for the period 1999–2014. The relevance of this work is twofold. On the one hand, this symposium focuses on the evolution of the discipline in non-leading countries, providing new knowledge and data, as this has previously been neglected by discipline. On the other, our approach complements previous work that focused on other aspects of the field in Spain, such as institutionalisation and the status of women. In general, our data indicate that Spanish Political Science publications are concentrated at the country level, and there is low presence in European and international journals. Concerning the temporal patterns of publications, little change over time is observed at the national level but at the European and international levels a recent rising trajectory can be seen.

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.

European Studies (ES), the academic field that deals with European issues in general and European integration in particular, is controversial by nature. For some, European integration is but an ideology. Others believe it to be an ‘n’ of 1 that cannot be compared or imitated. For the majority, European integration is a moving target and an unfinished undertaking, whereas a growing number of academics and pundits speak no longer of integration but governance. Notwithstanding these epistemological and methodological disagreements, top universities in Europe and around the world have put in place departments and programmes devoted to the study of the historical developments, institutions, processes, policies, and challenges of the EU and the politics and interdependence of its member-states. No other regional organization has won such a place of honour in academic curricula. In this symposium, we are interested in scrutinizing how ES have been studied and taught outside Europe. We have collected contributions from distinguished scholars from six significant world areas in order to ensure a balanced geographical spread of our insight to these academic developments: the United States, Russia, China, Australia (and New Zealand), Israel (and the Middle East) and (Southern) Latin America.

The question ‘What is Politics and International Relations?’ often goes unasked, potentially leading to varied interpretations across universities. The review of the Quality Assurance Agency’s (QAA) Subject Benchmark Statement for Politics and International Relations in early 2022 provided a key moment to define the discipline. For over three decades, benchmark statements have been crucial in the UK higher education, guiding learning assurance and disciplinary self-definition. Despite their significance, the development process and impact of these benchmarks at a disciplinary level are underexplored. This article explores the history, development and influence of benchmark statements on Politics and International Relations, illustrating how they balance commonalities and differences across the UK institutions. It addresses concerns about the potential restrictiveness of these benchmarks and emphasises their voluntary nature. Through insights from four members of the Subject Benchmark Statement advisory group, the article aims to provide a thorough understanding of how benchmark statements shape and reflect the evolving landscape of the teaching of Politics and International Relations.