This paper explains the key themes and areas of debate covered by this symposium. While the focus of these papers is predominantly on the US higher education system – with just one paper from the context of a UK HEI – it is clear that some common themes and issues can be identified from the various case studies that are discussed. The question of how to define internationalisation; the process of how to encourage and measure internationalisation; and the design and delivery of an internationalised curriculum – particularly in relation to study abroad schemes – are themes that run across the five papers. Drawing from the work undertaken in this symposium, this paper concludes by suggesting a number of areas and questions that merit further investigation and evaluation.

This article reviews and evaluates the process and experience of embedding internationalisation in a UK, HEI School of Social Sciences curriculum. It reflects upon the merits and limitations of using of a peer-reviewed checklist approach compared with alternative approaches, such as the provisioning of online toolkits, resource lists and internationalisation centres or units. Through an evaluation of the peer-reviewed checklist approach, this article sheds light on the gap between the desire by institutions to embed a richer understanding of internationalisation into the curriculum, and the uptake, awareness and implementation of this material by academic teams on the ground. The article asserts that in order to be effective, efforts to internationalise the curriculum need to be embedded in routine academic processes. It favours a ‘mixed’ approach, suggesting that a predominantly quantitative checklist approach can, in certain circumstances, prompt further (qualitative) reflection and engagement by those using the checklists, and, by so doing, act as a tool for change rather than simply providing a means of assessing or measuring internationalisation.

In 2005 the American Council on Education asked the American Political Science Association (APSA) to work towards internationalising undergraduate education. Since almost a decade has passed since these initial efforts, it is crucial to examine how far the discipline has come in internationalising the curriculum. This article will discuss and evaluate how to assess and understand what faculty, departments, and schools have done in pursuing the internationalisation of the undergraduate curriculum through the use of an online survey. It will examine the process of creating the survey instrument and the issues around doing so. The results of the survey, while not the focus here, will inform this discussion in the article. Competing definitions of internationalisation, differences in conceptualisation from American and other, mostly European, perspectives, and questions about how to internationalise at the course, department, or programme level were issues that the survey revealed needed more discussion. Moreover, the article seeks to discuss how to move forward in the assessment of internationalisation efforts.

This article examines how the political science department of a small, regional university (Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania) has tried to develop activities that will help internationalise the student body and the campus. The article examines, in an attempt to prepare and internationalise students, the departments’ short-term study abroad opportunities. In particular, the article evaluates one course as a case study and proposes a new method aimed at trying to assess its efficacy. In doing so, this article will review the literature on the impact of study abroad, focusing on short-term study (or faculty-led) experiences and discuss the pedagogical motivations of such courses. Finally, the article will propose, and preliminarily test, a new method of assessing short-term study about courses. The conclusion of this article speculates on the final results and details the substantial barriers to replication and augmentation of these programmes.

In light of recent trends in the internationalisation of post-secondary education, the rising popularity of short-term study abroad programmes, and the persistent lack of diversity in study abroad, this article presents an option for a short-term, hybrid study abroad programme. The article highlights the Oregon University System Cuba programme and its use of a ‘double hybrid’ model utilising both in-person and on-line coursework and on-campus and study abroad courses aimed to internationalise educational opportunities statewide and to diversify populations participating in international programmes. Though early in its evolution, the ‘double hybrid’ model has much to offer educational institutions, faculty and students alike, either in its entirety or in part.

Curriculum internationalisation involves diverse pedagogical and programmatic efforts, and we focus on two complementary initiatives. ‘The Politics of Happiness’, a large lecture course designed to introduce students to the diversity of contemporary approaches to advancing human well-being and happiness, overviews the varied thinking and experience of nine polities. Using a ‘hybrid, learner-centred delivery model’ that relies on an iBook, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, ‘The Politics of Happiness’ brings cross-national comparative political experience to the localised lecture hall, providing contextual information, images, and ideas that transcend students’ own national setting and life experience. This on-campus internationalising experience complements the ‘Arizona in Yalta’ study abroad programme, a 4-week academic experience that permits 1–2 dozen students to intensively engage the Slavic world in Yalta and the Crimea. In juxtaposing these two substantively interconnected initiatives, we argue for the value of an internationalised modern undergraduate curriculum.

This article examines Albert Hirschman’s exit, voice and loyalty hypothesis within a supranational context. It makes use of an original 2012 data set drawn from ‘The Europeanisation of Everyday Life: Cross-border Practices and Transnational Identities among EU and Third Country Citizens’ (EUCROSS) project, which was conducted across six European Union (EU) democracies. The article finds that supranational loyalty to an entity other than one’s own nation state enhances citizen participation in national elections, while greater transnational mobility has no significant impact on national voter turnout. These findings have two important implications. First, supranational loyalties do not always discourage individuals from honouring their national political commitments. Second, member state nationals who are loyal to the EU may not show up at the supranational ballot box if national institutions are perceived to be more powerful to influence decision-making in Brussels.

In this research note, we propose studying a new trend of Europeanisation in national parliaments within the European Union (EU). We argue that further integration, combined with the opportunities and challenges presented by the Lisbon Treaty and the financial crisis, created pressure on national parliaments to expand the scrutiny process beyond European Affairs Committees. In this new phase of Europeanisation, parliaments are increasingly ‘mainstreaming’ EU affairs scrutiny, blurring the distinction between national and European policies and involving larger numbers of MPs. Following a review of existing research on the Europeanisation of national parliaments in the post-Lisbon era, we propose studying four dimensions of mainstreaming: the rising involvement of sectoral committees in European affairs; the adaptation of parliamentary staff to EU policy-making; the growing salience of European affairs in plenary debates; and increasing inter-parliamentary cooperation beyond European affairs specialists. We argue that this trend has significant implications for research that studies the roles of national parliaments in the democratic functioning of the EU.

The lecture looks at the problem of democratic legitimacy. It concentrates on the eroding reliability of contemporary, democratic policymaking, which is involved in a conflict between two different formulas of legitimacy – the logic of self-regulation, originating in the notion of the market and the idea of public judgment, and the logic of public debate. It begins by posing the following question: is democratic policymaking based on reliable ‘truths’ that can ensure a sense of purpose and security, or is it involved in a drama of contingent, petty manoeuvring? However, the focus of this lecture is not on day-to-day practical matters. It is intended to embrace the cultural and philosophical premises of current political dilemmas. Political matters are connected to more fundamental questions, referring to the predicament of late modernity.

In this review symposium, Pinar Bilgin, Ann Towns and David C. Kang discuss Barry Buzan and George Lawson’s The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations. In the book, Buzan and Lawson set out to provide a history of how we came to think about international relations in the way we do today. They explore the roots of our contemporary conceptions of the state, revolution, the international and modernity. They identify the long nineteenth century, from 1776 to 1914, as the key period in which the modern state and international relations as we know them today were forged. This was a global transformation in that it reshaped the bases of power, thereby also reshaping the relations of power that govern the relations between states and other agents today, across the world. In carrying through this project, Buzan and Lawson show us not only how the modern world was transformed, but also the kind of object it became for the discipline of International Relations. As such, this is also a book about the assumptions that have shaped, and continue to shape, that discipline.