A Coauthorship Analysis of Internationalization in Political Psychology Through the Lens of ISPP Dissemination Activities

Internationalization is a key aim of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). This article uses bibliometric techniques to explore international collaborations in the Society's core activities, namely the journal Political Psychology and annual meetings. We explore how authors from different regions of the world are interconnected through coauthorship, using country information extracted from authors' affiliation and coded as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) or non-WEIRD. Study 1 analyzes coauthorship in the Society's journal Political Psychology from 1985–2014 (30 years), with 1151 authors from 42 countries and 1337 coauthorship ties between them. Study 2 mapped the coauthorship relationships for annual meetings for which documentation was available, eventually collecting data from 2006 to 2014 (9 years). In total, 4260 authors from 74 countries were represented, with 6884 collaborative ties. Annual meetings reflected more international collaboration than the journal on several dimensions, including a large internationally connected giant component of collaborating authors evident in annual meetings, but not the journals. In annual meetings, there were more collaborations between WEIRD and non-WEIRD authors. However, even at annual meetings, deep internationalization involving non-WEIRD authors was rare, and the activities of the Society primarily represent academics from WEIRD countries, particularly the United States.