Background

The actual mobility and internationalization of Political Science in Europe remains largely unknown. Moreover, what is really missing is systematic, theory-driven information about Political Science’s real impact on society. This implies a substantial lack of comparable data about professionalization and social impact.

Thanks to networking, all possible national diversities (in terms of conceptual meanings and institutional structure) can be taken into consideration and led towards the construction of a common basis.

Accordingly, we plan to go beyond the state-of-the-art in regard to 3 main points:

1.  make the existing national data comparable, regarding:  the institutionalization of Political Science in Europe; intra-national and international mobility; the internationalization of research production and diffusion; the various different aspects of the subject’s social impact.
2. design an empirically-based map of the institutional environments in which Political Science operates, in order to understand the conditions under which Political Science may be highly professionalized and may have a significant social impact.
3. design a detailed map of the differences in the degree of professionalization and social impact, in the case of different sub-fields (public policy, comparative politics, European Studies, and International Relations).