This presentation introduces the analytical framework applied in this symposium for the analysis of publishing trends of European political scientists. Our goal is to ascertain the degree to which the discipline in four contrasting countries (Ireland, Norway, Portugal and Spain) speaks to a wider European or international audience. Is political science insular in these countries, or is it internationalised? On which aspects are the publications similar at the domestic, European and international levels, and on which do they differ? What dynamics have affected publishing habits over time? Is it possible to observe a process of convergence or divergence across levels over time? To face these questions, we set up a cross-national research team composed of graduate students and professors from the four countries, and created a common dataset that collected information on articles published in the highest ranked national, European and international journals between 1999 and 2014. The findings suggest that political science research in these countries has been running in two separate worlds: the domestic and the foreign levels. Also, the analyses point to a divergence between north and south regarding the predominant fields, topics and the interest for Europe, and institutional concentration.

We examine and discuss the state of political science in Ireland, using a new dataset on articles published in major domestic, European, and international academic journals by authors affiliated with Irish institutions during the period 1999–2014. Our main findings are as follows: political scientists in Ireland have generally focused more on comparative politics and international relations than on methodology, political theory, or public policy. In terms of methods and authorship, however, there are some notable differences between articles published in domestic, European, and international journals. Qualitative analysis and single case studies have been more commonly employed in national-level publications, while inferential quantitative analysis and large-N data have been more widely used in international-level articles. Gender balance in authorship is now more the norm in national journals than in European and international journals. Finally, Irish political science has undergone significant changes during the period examined. There have been increases in co-authoring and the use of inferential quantitative methods and large-N data which are typically associated with the approaches taken in the major international journals of political science. In this regard, Irish political science has become more ‘globalised’.

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.

In this article, we present a new dataset containing political science publications on Norwegian, European and international levels by authors affiliated with Norwegian institutions. 564 articles from 1999 to 2014 are coded according to a variety of variables. Using this dataset, we explore questions regarding who publishes and what is published in Norwegian political science. We confirm suspicions that publications in international journals often contain quantitative methods, while publications in national journals use qualitative methods; that it is predominately professors who publish in high ranking international journals and that women are still strongly underrepresented in publications on all levels, despite rise in tenured female academic staff in Norway. However, we see a trend of more mixed-sex research teams on the international level, which can be explained by two interconnected hypotheses: (I) publication on the international level is more prestigious, and will often require collaboration between several researches; (II) there has been a rise in female PhDs while professors are still mostly male. By contrasting findings from Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, we also present the status of Norwegian political science in an international context. We encourage researchers to investigate further the evolution of Norwegian political science using these data.

How was the flow of Portuguese political science publications across national, European and international levels during the last 15 years? Applying the framework proposed by this symposium, our analysis of 182 top ranked articles shows that (i) articles published in top foreign journals present distinctive characteristics as they predominantly rely on the use of quantitative methods, belong to the comparative politics field, confer less attention to democratisation, and are mostly written by mixed teams concentrated in only two institutions; (ii) differently, articles of top national journals present similar features to other local production (predominantly qualitative inward-oriented and written by one male author); and (iii) despite the widespread rapid growth of the discipline in the country, there is no significant change in the nature of these articles within or across the three observed levels during the period of observation.

The past two decades have witnessed a burgeoning of scholarship on perceptions of political corruption and their determinants. Yet despite recent advances in understanding these perceptions and their importance to political life, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the question of how the public understands political corruption. We address this gap by reconstructing the conventional conception of political corruption and by presenting a new empirical tool designed to measure the conceptualizations and conceptions of political corruption held by a given population. We present preliminary findings and explore the relevance of the new tool for elucidating the public’s understanding of political corruption.

Many conflict-data projects are based on narrow or disjointed concepts of political conflict. They either cover only limited segments of reality or put distinct but related forms of conflict phenomena in conceptual ‘bins’ rather than integrating them into a more comprehensive concept. In addition, conflict intensity is frequently measured by only one indicator, the number of fatalities, which represents only part of the consequences and none of the means of violent conflict. Means and consequences, taken together, constitute the intensity of a conflict. They ought to be combined to arrive at a valid measurement. The Heidelberg approach to conflict research addresses both issues, offering a broad yet differentiated and integrative concept of conflict and a multi-dimensional and multi-indicator approach to intensity. This improves our abilities to recognise and classify conflictive phenomena; to capture conflict-transformation; and to arrive at a valid measurement of intensity. The approach is applied in the new DISCON dataset, comprising data on 155 violent and non-violent interstate, intra-state, and substate conflicts in Asia and Oceania from 2000 to 2014, disaggregated into more than 6300 region-month intensities.

Liberal democratic states have three kinds of duties towards migrants and refugees. First, they should enhance their own citizens opportunities of free movement through entering reciprocity-based agreements with other states that are sufficiently similar or with whom they share a political union. Second, they should admit economic migrants if there are expected benefits for the receiving country, the sending country and the migrants themselves. Third, they have to allow for family reunification and to contribute to refugees protection because of their commitments to universal human rights. States can contribute to the latter goal by taking in refugees or by supporting other states that do so. In the international state system, a fair distribution of both types of burdens among all states cannot be secured. In the European Union, however, the principle of sincere cooperation and the need for coordination of refugee flows in the Schengen area of internally open borders combine a normative commitment with self-interests of states to overcome this prisoners’ dilemma. All the more tragic is the blocking of European solutions by unwilling member states who are ready to sacrifice European integration because they are not ready to accept their duties towards refugees.

The benefits of simulation exercises easily outweigh potential weaknesses, and most of these weaknesses can be addressed by careful preparation. This article seeks to encourage instructors in higher education to embrace simulations as a means of encouraging active learning and greater retention as well as improving student and teacher satisfaction. However, there is not to date much helpful guidance, for first-time appliers, as to how to set up simulations. This contribution seeks to contribute to closing that gap by reflecting on the experience of two EU Council simulations that the author has organised. The aim is to openly review things that worked well and things that did not so as to allow colleagues interested in engaging in simulations in the future to see the reasons behind certain choices and perhaps avoid weaknesses of simulations set up by ‘freshers’. In this context, articles are all too often presented as success stories, hiding errors or adaptations in the process, whereas in fact much can be learned from publically exposing and reflecting upon shortcomings and weaknesses of research and teaching design and processes. To finish up, some tips for ‘freshers’ have been compiled.