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A first and somewhat unexpected finding is that the degree of digitalization and adoption of ICT in a country does not seem to be a valid predictor for the influence on teaching (adoption of digital tools in teaching, including digital topics into to the curricula, installing new programs on digitalization in the political science departments) or for the influence on research (here: digitalization as an instrument for publishing etc. or as a research subject) in the discipline of political science. Thus, countries performing like frontrunners in ICT penetration (Finland, UK, South Korea or USA – see Internet Worldstats 2018, ITU 2018) are not necessarily avantgarde when the digitalization of our discipline is concerned.

[17] Interestingly, other factors seem to be more relevant; one of them is the institutionalization of the discipline in the country. Thus, those countries where political science rather constitutes a younger discipline (because during a dictatorship it has not been present or suppressed like in several Latin American countries, Poland, and Tunisia) and where in consequence the discipline is rather weakly institutionalized, the access to digital tools and online learning provides welcomed opportunities for academic development. On the contrary, in countries which displays a longer period and therefore also a higher level of institutionalization teaching and research of political science can be influenced less, even if the society is highly permeated by digital tools (like the UK or France). Against the backdrop of the long history of political science in these countries, digital media are a very new phenomenon. There exist long standing teaching structures and political issues in which f. e. the British political science focuses traditionally. Apparently, a high level of institutionalization in combination with a long tradition of the discipline delays the adaptation of new phenomena. Another sub-factor of the disciplinary institutionalization is the degree of autonomy, and this feature seems to be very strongly shaped by the historical tradition and the genesis of the discipline. Two paths can be identified: firstly, the emergence out of law studies, Staatswissenschaft or public administration (like in several European countries, Latin America, Tunisia and Japan) which seems to make it more difficult for adapting new issues into the research agenda; and secondly, an early separation as an autonomous discipline (USA, UK and Belgium), which in contrast, increases the acceptance of new research topics.

Other institutional factors are – by nature – the structure of the national university system and here especially the existence of public and private universities. As already mentioned, in some regions like the Americas (and here North as well as Central and South), the gap between the digital teaching infrastructure, between the ‘modernization’ of curricula, and the inclusion of digital aspects into the didactical and pedagogical approaches can be immense between private universities with larger resources and public universities. There is only one country, namely, Mexico, where the author stated that digitalization of content may occur in public universities faster than in private universities.

Nearly all authors pointed to a critical factor for digitalization: the central actors – mainly the professors – and their attitude towards the usage digital tools in the classroom or their research interest in the topic of digitalization. Thus, this “human” factor plays an prominent role. Even if the universities provide the infrastructure (like e-learning management systems), digitalization's impact depends to a large extent on the professor if and how digital tools are integrated into the teaching. Furthermore, professors themselves need preparation for this new kind of teaching system. Here, a generational gap becomes evident. This refers possibly even more to digitalization as research topic constituting rather a “playing field for younger scholars” as several authors emphasize. Another central actor in this regard are, of course, the universities or the governments (always depending from the national system on higher education and who has the responsibility). Thus, the Belgium case (which results show to be the best performer in our sample) shows the existence of universities with high ambitions in promoting the digitalization of science and on regional political actors “that are pushing for more use of digital tools”. Moreover, the national political science association, the Belgium Political Science Association (ABSP) is also a very ambitious actor. Thus, here seems to prevail a positive conjuncture of several actors pushing for the adoption of digitalization on different levels. Big research centres like the Oxford Internet Institute in UK or the German Waizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society might also function as an incentive for other initiatives in the field. For a lot of cases (see Latin America) however, a national strategy for digitalization would be needed (including national resources).

[18] Park and Kang, as well as Jalali, raise two interesting points when it comes to a possible correlation between teaching and research. Thus, Park and Kang hold that “(P)art of the reason for the relatively little attention paid to digital revolution in teaching is related to the lack of research activity on the subject. That is, we cannot expect an opening of an independent course when there is not enough original research work or researcher who is interested in the subject.” In their understanding, research interest in digitalization would constitute a factor for developing curricula and programs, installing professorships etc. Thus, the lesser the degree of research on digitalization, the less we could expect the influence of digitalization in the field of teaching. This would be worth testing in other countries beyond South Korea.

Jalali points to the fact that publications as outcome of scholarly work have a greater impact on academic career paths than innovations in teaching. Therefore, scholars interested in digitalization would rather dedicate to research – conducting projects or produce publications instead of investing time and resources into new didactic and pedagogic approaches. This is an explanation for the asymmetric relationship between a rather low digitalized teaching and a high interest in digitalization as research topic. The question thus becomes: How important is the argument of a higher benefit for the academic career? And how strongly do scholars separate their research subjects from the interest in teaching? This question, or course, is a more general one, but possibly is more acute in the field of digitalization.

As a last bundle of aspects, it is interesting to look at structural factors like geography or demography. Naturally, the level of economic development is expected to be tightly linked to the level and quality of ICT infrastructure. But even here, we can find contradictory results: Portugal and Spain – both countries heavily affected by the economic crises of 2008 and the following years – seemed to have dealt differently with the austerity measures. Jalali demonstrates that austerity impeded investment into the digitalization of Portugal's higher education system, while Luengo shows that f. e. the adoption of free open source software and the Moodle platform were induced by the economic crisis when universities across Spain had to cope with reducing budgets. But beyond economic factors, some authors point to others structural aspects. Remarkably, for South Korea, a forerunner in digitalization, the authors consider factors like the aging population, the decrease in the number of young students, and – in consequence – the increasing pressure of reducing the size of political science faculties or even abolishment of the department as a hindrance for taking policy initiatives for pushing forward political science in education and research. On the other hand, for a lot of societies – especially with a different demographic structure like in Latin America as well as for Africa – the digitalization of especially education could represent a huge potential. This is even more true if the geographical size of a country – like Brazil and India – comes in. For a dispersed society, virtual universities or virtual learning systems could have a substantial benefit.

All in all, the contributions clearly show that the potential of digitalization is not yet fully exploited – neither for education nor for research. The degree of influence of digitalization on the respective national cases depends on several factors that refer to historical paths and structural factors as well as the individual interests of relevant actors such as professors, scholars, and governments. As Tanaka writes, “Digitalization is a useful means, but it is no magic bullet that will by itself solve problems that should be addressed in other dimensions”.