The Department of Political Science at UC Irvine has a very innovative Ph.D. program with strong interdisciplinary emphases.  Graduate students can pursue studies in democracy studies, international relations, political economy/games and decisions/public choice, political psychology, and race and ethnic politics. The Ph.D. program offers big payoffs to our graduate students because of the extended range of inquiry an interdisciplinary program affords.  
   
One aspect of the department’s strong interdisciplinary emphases are the two M.A. Programs to which students in the Political Science Ph.D. program are eligible to apply for admission. While each of these programs is completely independent of the Political Science Department, each is structured in such a way that graduate students in political science can largely simultaneously satisfy the M.A. requirements for this program while completing their Ph.D. requirements. These are the M.A. in Demographic and Social Analysis, which involves many faculty from the Sociology Department as well as from the School of Social Ecology who are interested in demographic trends and tools of demographic analysis, including geographic information systems; and the M.A. in Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, which, in addition to political science faculty, involves  faculty from Economics, Logic and Philosophy of Sciences, and other departments, who have an interest in games, decisions, and dynamical systems, as well as faculty from Sociology who study the formal and empirical properties of social networks.

In addition to the traditional sub-fields of political science (American Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Political Theory), the department offers interdisciplinary emphases in democracy studies, political economy and public choice, political psychology, and race and ethnic politics.  Department faculty actively mentor doctoral students and encourage them to become productive, publishing scholars before completing their graduate studies.  Our Ph.D. graduates have established themselves in academic careers at both research universities and liberal arts colleges in the U.S. and abroad, in government service, and in the private sector.