1. Improvement of the quality of academic research in an international competitive environment;

2. Increase in visibility of the Faculty as a high-quality research institution, contributing to the vision of a university based on research, and creating a base for the constant  improvements in the quality of teaching;

3. Increase in research competencies of the academic staff and students;

4. Improvement of institutional cooperation with foreign universities and other institutions with the purpose of overcoming existing informal and fragmented cooperation based on individual contacts of faculty members;

5. Development of institutional capacities for the development, management and implementation of European projects within the framework programme Horizon 2020 and for support of other forms of international cooperation.

a) European projects: within the Seventh Framework Programme the Faculty is participating in the project BEUcitizen: All Rights Reserved? Barriers towards EUropean Citizenship, and the project SPECTRESS: Social PracticE Cultural Trauma and REestablishing Solid Sovereignties. While the former is a collaborative research project, the latter is primarily oriented towards the exchange of teaching staff. The Faculty is also active in several projects within the academic and research network of the European Union COST, as well as in other projects financed by the European Union, the European Council and other European institutions.

b) bilateral agreements: aside from bilateral agreements within the University of Zagreb, the Faculty has signed separate agreements with the faculties of political science in Belgrade and Ljubljana.

c) individual research cooperation: according to preliminary results of mapping of research activities, in the past five years researchers at the Faculty have, in different roles, taken part in 40 international research projects of different size.

d) longer and shorter stays and international scholarships for the teaching staff and students: the teaching staff of the Faculty uses a range of scholarship programmes for research work and academic visits abroad (International Višegrad Fund, DAAD, Open Society Foundation, Scholarship of the Republic of France, the European Council, Chevening Scholarship, Marie Cure Fellowship, Danish Government Scholarship, Fulbright and other). Students primarily use programmes of the European Union (ERASMUS), the Open Society Institute and the Central European Exchange Programme for University Studies - CEEPUS.

e) organisation of international conferences: as part of research projects and activities of research centres, the Faculty frequently organises international conferences.