Spanish political science through dissertations. Evolution and future prospects

Being the purpose of this article to know the current state of Spanish political science, a descriptive longitudi-nal study on the political science PhD thesis defended in the Spanish universities during the last three decades has been developed. Thus, a 1275-thesis database has been made up from information provided by TESEO and Dialnet, analysing three indicators of scientific production: temporary evolution, university where the thesis has been defended and super-visor's identity. In the present research, likewise, these indicators have been related to the gender of the PhD candidates and their supervisors and to the topics. The results obtained show the following patterns along the aforementioned pe-riod: an irregular growth of the number of PhD thesis defended; a higher number of men compared to women reaching the doctoral degree; a dominant position of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid; a salient group of PhD scholars who have supervised more than ten PhD thesis; and two main topics: actors and political behaviour, and policies and public administration.