Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of political science in Switzerland in higher education with a focus on the period from 2000 to 2010. It consists of seven sections and is structured as followed: in the first section, a presentation of the historical and institutional context in which political science operates in Switzerland is given. The second section is devoted to illustrate forms of political science education and its changes in Switzerland during the period from 2000 to 2010 with regard to the introduction of the ‘Bologna model.’ The third, fourth and fifth sections deal with the number of higher education institutions where political science is taught, the number of students as well as the number of research and teaching personnel in political science. Moreover, a brief overview of the situation of post-doctoral political scientists in Swiss Universities is included in section five. The sixth section discusses some contemporary important research areas in political science and discusses by example several research institutions committed to those different research areas in Switzerland.