What is the primary focus of the ICPSAIR conference?

The conference focuses on advancing research and discourse in political science and international relations, covering a broad range of contemporary challenges and theoretical developments.

Is the conference an in-person event?

Yes, the conference is scheduled to be held in the city of New York, indicating an in-person format.

International Conference on Political Sciences and International Relations ICPSAIR

Name: International Conference on Political Sciences and International Relations ICPSAIR
Start: 2027-01-09T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-01-10T00:00:00Z
Location: Vancouver

Jan 9–10, 2027Vancouver, CanadaIn-person

Registration open

The International Conference on Political Sciences and International Relations (ICPSAIR) is a significant academic gathering focused on advancing research and discourse in political science and international relations. Held in New York, USA, this conference provides a platform for scholars, researchers, and practitioners to present their work, exchange ideas, and foster collaborations across various sub-fields of political inquiry and global affairs. The event emphasizes a broad scope, encouraging submissions that explore contemporary challenges and theoretical developments.

Committees & topics

Topics
Patterns and Drivers of Contemporary International Conflict · Great-Power Competition and the Future of International Politics · Political Conflicts: Internal Polarization and Contested Authority · Political Science: Discipline, Methods, and Policy Relevance · Politics and Society: Inequality, Identity, and Democratic Resilience · International Relations: Theory and Practice in a Multipolar Era · Foreign Policy in an Era of Strategic Competition · Comparative Politics: Regime Types, Institutions, and Development

Why it matters

In an era characterized by rapid geopolitical shifts and complex global interdependencies, conferences like ICPSAIR are crucial for understanding and navigating the international landscape. The event's focus on both political sciences and international relations ensures a comprehensive examination of how domestic politics influence foreign policy and vice versa. This integrated approach is vital for developing robust analytical frameworks and policy recommendations that address issues ranging from conflict resolution to global governance.

The location in New York, USA, a major hub for international diplomacy and academic thought, further amplifies the conference's relevance. It offers attendees unique opportunities for networking with leading experts and institutions. The discussions and research presented at ICPSAIR contribute directly to the ongoing evolution of these fields, helping to shape future academic agendas and inform policy debates worldwide. By bringing together diverse perspectives, the conference facilitates a deeper understanding of the forces shaping our world.

How to prepare

For those preparing to engage with the ICPSAIR, a strategic approach involves not only understanding the core themes but also anticipating the diverse viewpoints that will be represented. Given the broad scope of political sciences and international relations, participants should consider how their research or interests intersect with current global events and theoretical debates. Preparing to discuss the implications of political decisions on international stability, or the role of international organizations in addressing transnational challenges, would be highly beneficial.

Effective engagement also involves considering the various stakeholders involved in international relations, as outlined in our lesson on "what-is-stakeholder-mapping" and "hidden-stakeholders". Understanding the motivations and interests of different state and non-state actors is key to contributing meaningfully to discussions. Furthermore, developing strong "engagement-strategies" will be essential for networking and collaborating with other attendees. Participants should be ready to articulate their perspectives clearly and engage in constructive dialogue, drawing on insights from "dynamic-analysis" to interpret complex political phenomena.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

United States

As the host nation, the USA is a central actor in global political science and international relations discourse, often setting research trends and providing significant academic contributions.

Role in topic

The USA plays a pivotal role in shaping global political and economic structures, making its academic institutions and policy experts key contributors to discussions on international relations theory, security studies, and global governance. Its foreign policy decisions frequently serve as case studies for analysis.

China

China's growing global influence and unique political system make it a critical subject of study and a significant voice in international relations discussions.

Role in topic

China's rapid economic development, military modernization, and increasing diplomatic engagement offer rich material for political science and international relations research, particularly concerning topics like global power shifts, authoritarian governance, and regional security in Asia.

Russia

Russia's geopolitical actions and historical role ensure its prominence in discussions on international security, energy politics, and post-Soviet studies.

Role in topic

Russia's foreign policy, particularly its relations with neighboring states and its role in international conflicts, provides crucial insights into theories of international security, great power competition, and the challenges of multilateralism.

Germany

Germany, as a leading European power, contributes significantly to discussions on regional integration, multilateralism, and humanitarian intervention.

Role in topic

Germany's post-war foreign policy, its role within the European Union, and its engagement in global issues like climate change and refugee crises make it an important case study for understanding contemporary international relations and the dynamics of soft power.

India

India's emergence as a major global power and its democratic framework offer unique perspectives on development, non-alignment, and regional security.

Role in topic

India's foreign policy, its strategic autonomy, and its engagement with various international blocs provide valuable insights into the complexities of multipolar world order, economic development, and the challenges of democracy in a diverse society.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Patterns and Drivers of Contemporary International Conflict

International conflict has evolved substantially since the end of the Cold War. Classical interstate wars between major powers have become rarer, while intrastate wars, internationalized civil conflicts, proxy wars, and so-called 'gray zone' confrontations involving cyberattacks, disinformation, and economic coercion have proliferated. Data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and other monitors indicate that the number of active armed conflicts in the early 2020s reached its highest level since 1945, driven by wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, the Sahel, and Yemen. The core dispute today centers on whether the post-1945 architecture — the UN Charter prohibition on the use of force, territorial integrity norms, and great-power restraint through the Security Council — can still constrain state behavior. Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine challenged the territorial integrity norm directly, while U.S.-China strategic competition, contested maritime claims in the South and East China Seas, and the Israel-Hamas war have stretched multilateral conflict-management tools. Sanctions, arms transfers, and humanitarian intervention debates further complicate efforts to de-escalate. Today the debate focuses on conflict prevention, Security Council reform, the protection of civilians, accountability for war crimes through the ICC and ad hoc tribunals, and the regulation of emerging military technologies including drones, autonomous weapons, and offensive cyber tools.

Key players

Great-Power Competition and the Future of International Politics

International politics in the 2020s is widely characterized as a return to great-power competition, ending the brief 'unipolar moment' that followed the Soviet collapse. The United States retains the world's largest economy and military, but China's rise — its GDP grew from under 4% of global output in 1990 to roughly 17% today — has produced a bipolar economic core with Russia, India, and middle powers shaping a more multipolar political map. Institutions built largely in 1945 (UN, IMF, World Bank) and 1995 (WTO) increasingly operate under strain as states pursue industrial policy, export controls, and selective decoupling. The core dispute is over the rules of the international order itself. Washington and its allies frame the contest as one between democracies and authoritarian revisionists; Beijing and Moscow describe it as resistance to U.S. hegemony and a push for a 'multipolar' world. Groupings such as the G7, BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the Quad reflect competing visions. Middle powers — India, Brazil, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Africa — increasingly hedge rather than align. Current flashpoints include Taiwan, technology competition (semiconductors, AI, 5G), the weaponization of finance via sanctions and the dollar system, and contested governance of climate, trade, and digital domains.

Key players

Political Conflicts: Internal Polarization and Contested Authority

Political conflict — distinct from armed conflict — refers to contests over authority, legitimacy, and institutions within and across states. The past decade has seen democratic backsliding documented by V-Dem, Freedom House, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, with affective polarization rising sharply in the United States, Brazil, India, Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Contested elections, constitutional crises, mass protest movements (from the Arab uprisings to Hong Kong, Iran, and the 2024 wave in Bangladesh and Kenya), and military coups in the Sahel have all reshaped domestic politics with significant international implications. The core dispute is whether liberal-democratic institutions can manage deep social cleavages — economic inequality, migration, identity, religion, and information disorder — or whether populist, illiberal, or authoritarian alternatives will displace them. Conflicts over judicial independence in Israel and Poland, executive overreach in Tunisia and El Salvador, and election denial in the United States and Brazil illustrate how procedural disputes can escalate into regime-level confrontations. Today the debate focuses on protecting electoral integrity, regulating political finance and online platforms, safeguarding civic space, and rebuilding trust in institutions amid economic strain and rapid technological change.

Key players

Political Science: Discipline, Methods, and Policy Relevance

Political science as a formal discipline emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the American Political Science Association founded in 1903 and European traditions rooted in earlier work by Weber, Mosca, and Michels. It is conventionally organized into subfields — political theory, comparative politics, international relations, public administration, and methodology — and has grown increasingly empirical and quantitative since the behavioral revolution of the 1950s and 60s and the credibility revolution of the 2000s. The core disputes within the discipline concern methodology and purpose. Debates pit large-N statistical work against qualitative case studies and ethnography; rational-choice approaches against constructivist and historical-institutional ones; and 'positive' analysis against normative engagement. The replication crisis affecting the social sciences, the rise of computational methods and machine learning, and questions about Western-centric theorizing have prompted reflection on what counts as rigorous and globally relevant political knowledge. The contemporary policy debate concerns how political science can inform governance — on election administration, conflict prevention, climate policy, and AI regulation — without sacrificing scientific independence, and how academic communities in the Global South can shape agendas long dominated by North American and European institutions.

Key players

Politics and Society: Inequality, Identity, and Democratic Resilience

The relationship between politics and society has been reshaped by three intertwined transformations: rising economic inequality since the 1980s, mass migration and demographic change, and the digital restructuring of public discourse. World Inequality Lab data show that the top 10% capture over half of global income, fueling distributional conflict; UNHCR records more than 120 million forcibly displaced people worldwide; and Pew and Reuters Institute surveys document declining trust in traditional media and rising reliance on algorithmic platforms. The core dispute is how political systems should mediate between economic, cultural, and identity-based cleavages. Welfare-state retrenchment, the politics of immigration, gender and reproductive rights, racial justice movements, and religious-secular tensions have realigned electorates across democracies. Populist movements on both right and left have channeled grievances against established parties, while authoritarian regimes have used nationalism and surveillance technology to manage social pressures. Current debates focus on platform regulation and online speech, the future of work amid automation and AI, the social contract for ageing societies, climate justice between generations and regions, and the role of civil society and social movements in sustaining democratic accountability.

Key players

International Relations: Theory and Practice in a Multipolar Era

International relations as both a practice and a discipline took modern form after World War I, with the founding of the first IR chair at Aberystwyth in 1919 and the establishment of the League of Nations. The post-1945 order built on the UN Charter, Bretton Woods institutions, and a dense network of regional bodies, alliances, and treaty regimes. Realist, liberal, constructivist, and critical traditions have offered competing explanations of state behavior, cooperation, and change. The core dispute concerns how to understand and manage a system that is simultaneously more interdependent — through trade, finance, climate, pandemics, and the internet — and more contested, with great-power rivalry, regional wars, and erosion of arms-control regimes such as the INF Treaty (collapsed 2019), Open Skies, and elements of New START. The relevance of liberal institutionalism, the resilience of alliances such as NATO and the U.S.-Japan-ROK partnership, and the rise of issue-specific minilateralism (AUKUS, IPEF, Quad, BRICS+) are central questions. Today's agenda includes climate diplomacy after Paris, global health governance after COVID-19, AI governance, sovereign debt distress in developing economies, and reform of the UN Security Council, IMF quotas, and global trade rules.

Key players

Foreign Policy in an Era of Strategic Competition

Foreign policy — the goals, instruments, and decisions by which states pursue external interests — has shifted markedly since the 2008 financial crisis and the 2014 and 2022 Russia-Ukraine ruptures. States have expanded the toolkit beyond traditional diplomacy and defense to include sanctions, export controls, investment screening, industrial policy, development finance, and cyber operations. The U.S. CHIPS Act, EU Global Gateway, China's Belt and Road, and Russia's pivot to Asia all illustrate the fusion of economic statecraft with strategic objectives. The core dispute is between approaches emphasizing alliances, rules, and integration versus those emphasizing sovereignty, transactionalism, and balancing. Debates over de-risking from China, conditional military aid to Ukraine and Israel, engagement with the Global South, climate finance, and the use of secondary sanctions have divided governments internally and split traditional partners. Domestic political polarization increasingly constrains foreign-policy continuity, as seen in shifts between U.S. administrations and in European coalition politics. Today's foreign-policy agenda centers on managing U.S.-China competition without bloc rigidity, supporting Ukraine while addressing Gaza, stabilizing energy and food markets, governing emerging technologies, and rebuilding development cooperation amid fiscal strain.

Key players

Comparative Politics: Regime Types, Institutions, and Development

Comparative politics studies political systems across countries to explain why states develop different institutions, regimes, and policy outcomes. The 'third wave' of democratization identified by Samuel Huntington saw the number of electoral democracies grow from roughly 40 in the mid-1970s to over 90 by the early 2000s. Since around 2006, however, V-Dem and Freedom House have tracked a sustained democratic recession, with more countries autocratizing than democratizing in most recent years. The core disputes concern the drivers of regime change and stability: the role of economic development (modernization theory), institutions (presidential vs. parliamentary, electoral systems, federalism), political culture, colonial legacies, and elite bargains. Comparative work also examines varieties of capitalism, welfare-state design, party-system fragmentation, populism, ethnic conflict management, and the governance of natural-resource wealth. Cases such as China's developmental authoritarianism, India's electoral democracy under strain, Tunisia's reversal after the Arab Spring, and Chile's recent constitutional debates serve as central reference points. Current debates focus on hybrid regimes, the durability of competitive authoritarianism, the comparative politics of climate adaptation, and how AI and surveillance technology reshape state-society relations across regime types.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on Political Sciences and International Relations ICPSAIR.

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

Canada January 2027

By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Conference on Political Sciences and International Relations ICPSAIR

Jan 9–10, 2027Vancouver, CanadaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Patterns and Drivers of Contemporary International Conflict · Great-Power Competition and the Future of International Politics · Political Conflicts: Internal Polarization and Contested Authority · Political Science: Discipline, Methods, and Policy Relevance · Politics and Society: Inequality, Identity, and Democratic Resilience · International Relations: Theory and Practice in a Multipolar Era · Foreign Policy in an Era of Strategic Competition · Comparative Politics: Regime Types, Institutions, and Development

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

United States

As the host nation, the USA is a central actor in global political science and international relations discourse, often setting research trends and providing significant academic contributions.

Role in topic

China

China's growing global influence and unique political system make it a critical subject of study and a significant voice in international relations discussions.

Role in topic

Russia

Russia's geopolitical actions and historical role ensure its prominence in discussions on international security, energy politics, and post-Soviet studies.

Role in topic

Germany

Germany, as a leading European power, contributes significantly to discussions on regional integration, multilateralism, and humanitarian intervention.

Role in topic

India

India's emergence as a major global power and its democratic framework offer unique perspectives on development, non-alignment, and regional security.

Role in topic