What is political science, why would you study it, and where is the best place to study, intern or work abroad?

What is political science?

• Political science studies how power, authority, decision-making, conflict, and cooperation shape societies, institutions, communities, and international relations.
• The field connects ideas with practice: political theory, law, public policy, elections, social movements, diplomacy, governance, and public debate often meet in the same questions.
• In an international context, political science helps explain why systems differ between countries, how decisions are legitimized, and how people organize around interests, rights, values, and resources.

What are the main reasons for being active in the field of political science?

• Political science offers a structured way to understand public life, from local councils and national governments to international organizations and civil society networks.
• The field is relevant where societies face questions about representation, inequality, security, migration, climate policy, public health, technology, and human rights.
• Studying or interning abroad can show how political systems work differently in practice, even when they use similar concepts such as democracy, law, citizenship, or participation.
• The discipline often attracts people who want to interpret current events without relying only on headlines, opinions, or national perspectives.
• Work experience in the field commonly involves research, communication, policy support, advocacy, public administration, project work, or analysis of social and political developments.

What skills do you need to participate in political science?

• To analyse: political work often begins with interpreting information, comparing systems, identifying interests, and understanding how decisions are shaped.
• To form an opinion: the field requires careful judgement, especially when evidence, values, public interests, and competing explanations point in different directions.
• To communicate: political ideas need to be explained clearly to different audiences, from academic readers and policy teams to communities and public organizations.
• To be aware of your surroundings: political contexts are shaped by history, culture, language, institutions, informal norms, and sensitive social relationships.
• To have integrity: trust, accuracy, confidentiality, and fairness matter strongly in political research, policy work, advocacy, and public administration.
• To collaborate: political and public work usually takes place in teams, networks, committees, campaigns, offices, or organizations with different responsibilities and perspectives.

What motivates people to study or work in political science?

• Be and feel involved: Political science often appeals to people who want to understand how public decisions are made and how citizens, groups, and institutions take part in them.
• Be and feel meaningful with a sense of purpose: the field connects naturally to questions about justice, rights, public welfare, accountability, and long-term social change.
• Be and feel connected: political study can create a broader understanding of how communities, countries, organizations, and international systems influence each other.
• Be and feel independent and free: the discipline encourages independent thinking about authority, participation, ideology, and the limits of political power.
• Be and feel experienced: internships and study abroad can make political concepts more concrete by placing them in offices, communities, institutions, or public projects.

What are the best countries and locations to study, intern or work in political science abroad?

• Countries and cities with strong international organization and diplomacy contexts: Switzerland, Belgium, France, New York.
• Countries with influential public policy, parliamentary, and administrative traditions: United Kingdom: England, Scotland to Wales, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark.
• Countries where comparative political science, federalism, elections, courts, and civil society are often studied in a broad public setting: United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
• Countries with active regional, developmental, democratic, or post-conflict policy questions: South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda.
• Countries where political change, regional cooperation, social movements, and public policy debates offer useful comparative perspectives: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia.
• Countries and regions where geopolitical science, governance models, development, and regional relations can be studied from non-Western perspectives: India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore.
• Countries where regional political science, diplomacy, security, migration, and historical relations are central to public debate: Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestina.

Where can you find work experience and vacancies for jobs, internships, and voluntary work in political science abroad?

• Government institutions and working in policy abroad: relevant for public administration, policy research, governance support, municipal projects, diplomatic settings, and institutional analysis.
• Civil society organizations and social work abroad: suitable for work around participation, advocacy, community interests, rights, inclusion, and public engagement.
• Research organizations and scientific work abroad: useful for political analysis, survey work, comparative studies, policy evaluation, and academic support tasks.
• Legal organizations and administrative work abroad: connected to constitutional questions, public accountability, migration procedures, rights-based work, and administrative systems.
• Environmental organizations and sustainability abroad: relevant where climate policy, environmental governance, local interests, and international agreements shape practical work.
• Communication organizations and marketing abroad: useful for political communication, public information, campaign support, issue framing, and media-oriented work.

What are things to consider when studying or working abroad in political science?

• Political work is context-sensitive; language, local history, institutional trust, media systems, and social tensions can strongly influence how a topic should be approached.
• Neutrality and involvement need careful balance, especially in internships connected to elections, advocacy, conflict, migration, corruption, human rights, or public protest.
• Access to political organizations may depend on citizenship, security checks, language level, confidentiality rules, and the legal position of foreign interns or volunteers.
• Comparing countries can be valuable, but direct judgement from one national perspective often misses the deeper institutional and historical reasons behind political choices.
• Good preparation includes reading about the host country’s political system, recent public debates, administrative culture, and expectations around professional communication.

Further depth: what is political science as a discipline?

What are the main features of political science?

Political science is the study of power in public life. It examines how authority is gained, justified, organized, challenged, and used within societies and between states.

• Power and influence: the discipline looks at who can shape decisions, how influence is exercised, and what consequences this has for people and institutions.
• Governance and institutions: Political science studies the systems through which societies make collective decisions, create laws, distribute resources, and manage conflict.
• Multiple perspectives: the field draws on history, philosophy, sociology, economics, law, geography, and international relations to understand political questions from different angles.

What are important sub-areas of political science?

The field is broad, but several sub-areas appear often in study programmes, research projects, public organizations, and policy-related work.

• Political theory: studies ideas such as justice, freedom, equality, democracy, rights, authority, and the moral limits of political power.
• Comparative political science: compares political systems, parties, elections, institutions, regimes, social movements, and patterns of governance across countries.
• National and regional political science: focuses on the institutions, actors, histories, and public debates within a specific country or region.
• Public policy: examines how public problems are defined, how policies are designed, and how governments and organizations implement decisions.
• International political science: explores relations between states, international organizations, diplomacy, conflict, cooperation, security, trade, and global governance.

What are key concepts of political science?

• Power: the capacity to influence behaviour, choices, rules, or outcomes.
• State: the political organization that claims authority over a territory and population.
• Government: the institutions and officeholders that use public authority to make and carry out decisions.
• Legitimacy: the acceptance that political authority is rightful, lawful, or socially justified.
• Ideology: a structured set of ideas about how society should be organized, such as liberalism, socialism, conservatism, nationalism, or environmentalism.
• Political participation: the ways people take part in public life, including voting, organizing, campaigning, protesting, debating, or joining civic groups.
• Policy: a course of action chosen by public institutions or organizations to address a social, economic, legal, or environmental issue.

Who are influential figures in political science?

• Plato: explored justice, leadership, education, and the ideal political order in classical political philosophy.
• Aristotle: compared forms of government and emphasized citizenship, institutions, and the political nature of human communities.
• Niccolò Machiavelli: offered a realist view of power, leadership, strategy, and political survival.
• John Locke: shaped modern thinking about rights, consent, property, limited government, and social contract theory.
• Karl Marx: analysed capitalism, class conflict, ideology, and the relationship between economic structures and political power.

Why is political science important?

• Understanding public decisions: Political science helps explain how laws, policies, budgets, rights, and public priorities are created and contested.
• Reading political events critically: the field offers tools for interpreting rhetoric, interests, institutions, media narratives, and competing claims.
• Recognizing patterns of power: it helps identify who benefits, who is excluded, and how authority is maintained or challenged.
• Supporting informed participation: political knowledge can strengthen civic judgement, public debate, and responsible engagement with social issues.

How is political science applied in practice?

• Policy work: political knowledge is used to research public issues, compare options, support decision-making, and evaluate outcomes.
• Campaigning and public communication: political analysis helps organizations understand audiences, arguments, participation, and public opinion.
• Journalism and analysis: political understanding supports reporting, background research, interpretation of events, and explanation of institutional processes.
• Advocacy and civil society: the field helps groups organize around rights, interests, reforms, community needs, or public values.
• International and diplomatic work: Political science informs cooperation, negotiation, conflict analysis, development work, and global policy discussions.