A discipline cannot pretend to be such if political borders are reflected in its organisation, methodologies or practices. While pluralistic approaches are highly desirable, it is crucial for any discipline worthy of the name to professionalise itself. This article argues that in spite of imperfections, drawbacks and differentiated development, huge progress has been made towards this goal through the setting up of common standards, improved Ph.D. and post-doctoral training and international mobility. Cross-national organisations or pan-European programmes have played a major role in this (incomplete) transformation.

Political science has developed rapidly in the last half-century, but this has posed at least three serious problems. First, almost no attention has been given to political activity in private bodies: the scope of political analysis is narrowed as a result. Second, the connection between political science and ‘policy analysis’ is wholly unclear, which raises the danger that political science may want to cover too much or too little! Third, political science has always been concerned with norms, yet aims to be a science: this is no easy relationship.

This article argues that political science was far less narrow and parochial before the founding of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in 1970 than is often thought. It emphasizes the importance of the interaction between younger European scholars and American political scientists in the 1950s and 1960s. It singles out the substantial American contribution to the establishment of the ECPR and stresses some vital choices made at its inception. On the basis of a statement of the author as outgoing Chairman of the ECPR in 1979, it probes the extent to which problems then foreseen were resolved or not, and raises some new ones.

The early 1950s and the late 1960s saw the setting up of many European political science organisations. The first wave was that of the foundation of an International Political Science Association and several national associations. The second was that of the creation of a Pan-European organisation: the European Consortium for Political Research. The rationale behind these two waves was different: it was very political in the 1950s and based on more properly scientific considerations in the 1960s.

In this article, we present an overview of the major changes occurring in electronic publishing, with a focus on open access. We shall argue that the notion itself of publication is undergoing a deep transformation, as it is no longer the monopoly of a limited number of specialised companies and institutions, but, through the web, it has become an option available to an infinite number of collective and individual actors.

This article first reviews the history of political science teaching in Europe before going on to consider a range of recent developments in the teaching of political science, including cross-national joint programmes; technologically enhanced learning; placement learning and problem-based learning. The last section considers a range of issues facing political science teachers, including financial pressures; EU and national government policies; Bologna and quality assurance. The article concludes by suggesting that particular attention needs to be paid to what is taught at master's and doctoral levels.

This paper explores what makes relevance difficult to deliver. Researchers can be victims of the play of politics in policy settings and organizational blockages limit the numbers of academics that seek to achieve relevance. In addition the scholarly arguments for relevance are underdeveloped leaving scope for sustained doubts about the project. Crucially political science lacks a design arm and as a result it is deficient in the intellectual foundations needed to proffer solutions to political problems.

Starting from the first ‘Women in Politics’ workshop, Berlin 1977, the article looks at the development of this new research field within the framework of the ECPR. From a young gender blind political science in the 1950–1970s until today's situation, where papers applying a gender perspective are presented in almost every ECPR workshop, and as many as 300 scholars participated in the First European Conference on Gender and Politics’, organised by the ECPR Standing Group on ‘Women/Gender and Politics’. The article scrutinises the discussion about ‘the male oligarchs of the ECPR’ and the accusation of ‘separatism’.

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.

There are five levels in social inquiry: ontology; epistemology; approaches; methodology; and methods, which we see as means of gathering information. There is no determinate relationship such that one school will consistently choose the same options all the way down. We can cross between what are often seen as competing world views at various of these levels. Natural sciences have not arrived at a unified field theory and there is no reason why social sciences have to do so.

Reflecting on the current state of political science – and the place of European political science within it – this piece considers the capacity of the discipline to respond to the challenges thrown up by real-world events in an era of acknowledged interdependence. It argues that the European tradition of political science is, if anything, better placed than its more narrowly disciplinary Northern American counterpart to respond effectively to those challenges, dispositionally more inclined as it has always been to acknowledge interdependence.