American Political Science Association

Robert J-P. Hauck
Director of International Programs, APSA

A dimension has been added to the political science discipline and the activities of the American Political Science Association (APSA) as both the discipline and the Association have developed a stronger international orientation over the last decade or two. The internationalization of political science and the international activities of APSA will continue well into the foreseeable future.

The International Focus of the Discipline

The internationalization of political science in recent years has meant two things: 1) the discipline and profession are spreading abroad; and 2) the boundaries of once-parochial subfields are more porous. The spread of the discipline and profession are easy to see: As late as the 1950s, only 8 national political science organizations existed; today there are over 50 national learned societies. There soon will be more as political science departments, centers, and study groups emerge throughout the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, East Europe, and Asia.

The permeability of once narrowly drawn subfields is seen in the number of panels with international themes organized by traditionally domestically-oriented divisions for APSA’s 1994 annual meeting. For example, the political economy division offered “Game Theoretic Applications to Problems of Development”; the race, gender, and ethnicity division organized “Minority Politics in Europe,” and “Race and Politics in the Americas”; and the federalism and intergovernmental relations division organized “Federalism in Post-Communist Societies,” “A Europe of Region?” and “The Issues of Divided Nations: International Status and Intergovernmental Relations.” The four divisions of the annual meeting program devoted to political theory offered panels such as “Citizenship in a Revolutionary World,” “Citizenship in a Post-Communist World,” “Global Change, Participatory Action, Democratic Spaces,” “New Political Identities in a Changing World,” and “Political Integration and Coordination in a Changing World.”

The Internationalization of APSA

Founded in 1903, APSA provides members services to facilitate research, teaching, and professional development. Its services like its membership have become global. There are several indicators of the international dimension of the organization:

• Fourteen percent of the Association’s individual, nonstudent members reside abroad in 75 countries. The largest contingent is from Canada (291), followed by the United Kingdom (122), Germany (120), and Japan (118). APSA’s international membership is almost twice the number of non-American members in the International Political Science Association (IPSA), and the countries represented are more numerous.
• Some 1,000 international libraries and schools are institutional members of APSA, approximately one-third of total institutional membership.
• Twenty-five percent of the Association’s individual members identify comparative politics as their primary field of interest, and an additional 17 percent identify with international politics, so that two-fifths of the membership now specialize in fields outside U.S. government and politics.
• Comparative politics has the largest individual membership among APSA’s 37 Organized Sections created around common scholarly and professional interests.
• Eleven of the 47 divisions of the official program of the 1994 APSA annual meeting, the theme of which was “Politics and Political Science in a Changing World,” organized 117 panels on international issues, 24 percent of the total program.

The International Activities of APSA

APSA’s international activities were closely identified with the International Political Science Association (IPSA), formed in 1949 under the auspices of UNESCO. IPSA is a non-governmental organization whose objectives are to promote the advancement of political science throughout the world, by such means as the establishment of national associations; to organize triennial world congresses; to facilitate the spread of internationally planned research; and facilitate contacts among political scientists throughout the world.

APSA is a founding member of IPSA and is one of the 40 national associations that are “collective members” of the organization. APSA-appointed representatives regularly serve on the IPSA Council and Executive Committee, and APSA contributes a large portion of total collective member dues. In 1988, APSA hosted the IPSA’s 14th IPSA World Congress in Washington, D.C. The Congress was held in tandem with APSA’s 84th annual meeting. The two meetings drew over 5,000 participants and set attendance records for hoth APSA and IPSA.

The year 1988 was a watershed in APSA’s international activities. The Association added to its IPSA activities with the creation of the Committee on International Programs as a permanent standing committee. Since then, APSA’s international activities have been concentrated in six overlapping areas: 1) collaboratives with other national associations; 2) research conferences; 3) teaching, training, and curriculum development; 4) material support; 5) special projects; and 6) member services.

1. Collaboratives Among National Associations

APSA has explored or initiated bilateral programs with the national associations of the Soviet Union, Peoples’ Republic of China, Japan, Hungary, Ukraine, Vietnam, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Korea, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and the former Yugoslavia. The bilateral approaches have varied in their focus and term:

• U.S.S.R.: A three-year project involving 25 scholars in research conferences on political leadership, evolutionary and revolutionary change, and political participation.
• China: A three-year project focusing on the development of the political science discipline and profession. The project included a workshop for Chinese faculty on the U.S. Congress, using 26 half-hour television programs, Congress: We the People, for faculty training and classroom use.
• Japan: A four-year-old, ongoing project involving the exchange of participants in APSA’s and the Japanese Political Science Association’s annual meeting. Currently engaged in developing an electronic network for scholarly communication between APSA and JPSA members.
• Hungary: A six-year series of research workshops dealing with participant-selected themes including political change and political participation.
• Ukraine: Formal agreement to commence cooperative projects on political science training.
• Vietnam: Two-year-old, ongoing project with the National Center for Social Sciences (Hanoi) on the uses of political science training to improve public administration and educational reform in Vietnam.

2. Research Conferences

APSA organizes conferences and workshops with international themes and participants. Whenever possible the conferences are held in conjunction with the Association’s annual meeting in order to ensure the broadest possible impact. In 1990 a portion of the year’s annual meeting program was organized around the theme of political change in East Europe and the Soviet Union. Participants included scholars from East Europe and the U.S.S.R. In 1992, APSA sponsored an interdisciplinary, international symposium on the human dimensions of global environmental change in conjunction with its annual meeting. Plans are afoot for an international symposium in 1996 on the Pacific Rim in conjunction with the planned San Francisco meeting.

3. Teaching, Training, and Curriculum Development

Through its Committee on Education and Committee on International Programs, APSA has organized the following:

• A six-part distance learning project using television and satellite communications links in order to direct discussions of themes in political science to an audience of students and faculty in Moscow (1994);
• Summer Institutes on American Government for international educators, carried out in 1993, 1994, and 1995, in cooperation with American University;
• 1990 and 1992 workshops on introducing the study of Japan into the comparative politics curriculum, followed by a symposium in the APSA journal, PS: Political Science & Politics;
• 1991 workshop on introducing South African politics into the political science curriculum;
• Support for IREX clearinghouses in the U.S.S.R. and Russia providing information on graduate training opportunities in the United States, including survey of departments interested in receiving students;
• 1994 workshop on American politics for students from The Netherlands;
• 1993 workshop on developing graduate political science programs in Hungarian universities;
• 1989 workshop on constitutional democracy for teachers in Germany; and
• Expansion of the APSA’s Congressional Fellowship Program to include participants from Asia, Germany, and France, as well as an annual parliamentary intern exchange program with Canada.

4. Material Support

To facilitate the international development of political science, the Association contributes materials and funds to departments, libraries, and individuals. APSA contributes 25 subscriptions to the American Political Science Review and PS: Political Science & Politics to the ACLS/AAAS Sub-Saharan Africa Journal Distribution Program. An additional 28 subscriptions to the two journals are donated to the East and Central Europe Journal Donation Project of the New School for Social Research. APSA’s members are encouraged and advised on how to donate books, journals, videos, etc., to Bridges to Asia. Subscriptions are donated by APSA to institutions identified by members, e.g., the Russian-American Press and Information Center, Moscow. Members are encouraged to purchase memberships for international scholars so that they might receive the APSA journals. This has been effective in East Europe and the Baltic States. APSA has also donated its course syllabi collections to the Curriculum Resource Center of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

APSA supports participation in its and other international scholarly meetings. For American scholars wishing to attend international conferences, the Association administers ACLS’s travel grants and regularly offers travel grants to participants in IPSA world congresses. APSA offers travel support for international scholars and foreign graduate students studying in the United States to participate in its annual meetings. For the past decade, some 40–50 scholars and 50–80 students have participated in each year’s meeting through APSA grants.

Before the creation of the APSA’s International Committee, it distributed 10,000 copies of Project ’87’s magazine, This Constitution, to all USIS posts. Lessons on the Constitution was distributed by USIA to college and law school faculty abroad. Since 1993 APSA has worked with USIA to distribute abroad its annual meeting program. Approximately 1,500 programs are sent abroad each year. The USIA field offices have also distributed other APSA publications including: Graduate Faculty and Programs in Political Science, Directory of Members, Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science, Political Science Journal Information, and the comprehensive survey of the discipline, Political Science: The State of Discipline II.

5. Special Projects

These activities involve a range of programs not easily categorized. In 1990 APSA organized a group of scholars to serve as observers of the Hungarian national elections. APSA staff regularly meet with public- and private-sponsored international visitors to discuss political themes and the organization of a scholarly society. APSA consults with USIA to identify participants in the Amparts program. APSA features panels and journal pages on the Fulbright program and other international opportunities.

6. Member Services

APSA’s international activities logically include member services. APSA actively recruits international members and includes them in the triennial Directory of Members. Funders of workshops and summer institutes are regularly asked to buy memberships for international participants as a way of keeping the international participants in touch with research and teaching in the discipline.

Canadian institutions and faculty are included in APSA’s Graduate Faculty and Programs in Political Science. Canadian, Hong Kong, Swiss, and New Zealand institutions are also members of the Association’s Departmental Service Program providing them with publications and access to the Personnel Service Newsletter and the Placement Service at APSA’s annual meeting.

A section of PS: Political Science & Politics has been set aside for articles on international political science. Scholars from abroad are encouraged to submit manuscripts for all other sections of PS and the American Political Science Review.

APSA works to have scholars living abroad represented on its Council, program committee, standing committees, and editorial boards. The increasing use of electronic communication should facilitate this effort, as funding international travel to meetings has proved prohibitively expensive.

External Support for APSA Activities

APSA’s international activities are funded by grants from private enterprises, private foundations, and public agencies. Among the foundations and agencies are: Ford Foundation, German-Marshall Fund of the United States, Abe Foundation, United States Information Agency, Exxon Foundation, Campbell Corporation, Asia Foundation, Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, International Research & Exchanges Board, Institute for International Education, Huang Hsing Foundation, National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Mobil Oil Company, Washington Hilton and Towers, Sheraton Washington Hotel, Pew Charitable Trusts, and Argonne National Laboratories.

Commitment to Expansion of International Programs

APSA will continue to expand its international activities just as the discipline as a whole will continue to internationalize. Addressing the APSA Council before the 1994 annual meeting, APSA President Charles O. Jones, of the University of Wisconsin, identified international programs as one of the core areas of activity for the Association in the last decade of the twentieth century as well as for the century to follow.

Appropriately, plans are in place to mark the Association’s centennial in 2003 by creating the Centennial Center, a Washington facility for visiting international and American scholars pursuing their own research. The Center will offer opportunities to scholars from abroad to share their ideas with American scholars, thereby contributing to the internationalization of knowledge. The Center will emerge as a spawning ground for collaborative research.