Each year BJPIR showcases and rewards the best article published by the Journal. In an initial selection, we identify the three full-length BJPIR articles having received the most hits on the synergy web-site in a twelve month period running from January to January. In a second step, the articles thus chosen are ranked by a panel drawn from the editorial team. The winning article is directly accessible through Blackwells synergy website and the author receives a £50 Blackwells book-token.

The panel are asked to evaluate the articles on three criteria: contribution to the advancement or understanding of British political science; topicality; originality; accessibility; each out of a possible 10 points. The top score out 40 wins.

The BJPIR Best Article Award for 2009 has been awarded to David Hastings Dunn of the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Birmingham for his article,Assessing the Debate, Assessing the Damage: Transatlantic Relations after Bush.
Dunn's article is published in BJPIR Vol. 11, No. 1:
Transatlantic relations during the Bush administration sank to the lowest point in the post-war period following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This article provides an analysis of both the current state of that relationship and the academic debate which accompanies it. Arguments over the impact of various factors are analysed to determine the extent of transatlantic divergence. Thus, demographic change in America and Europe, divergence of political values between Europe and America, power differences, post-war geopolitical realignments, European integration and American unilateralism and exceptionalism are all analysed and evaluated. While some of these arguments presented are challenged, the article argues that the process of constructing separate European and American identities from within the transatlantic community is the single most significant contemporary challenge to transatlantic relations.

The Award for 2008 was awarded David Owen in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Southampton for his article, Pluralism and the Pathos of Distance (or how to Relax with Style): Connolly, Agonistic Respect and the Limits of Political Theory.

Owen's article is published in BJPIR Vol. 10, No 2:
This article addresses Connolly's project in democratic theory against the background of Aristotle's reflection on the nature and limits of ethical and political theory and, within this context, focuses specifically on Connolly's appropriation of Nietzsche's ethos of agonistic respect as integral to a pluralist ethics of democracy. The Aristotelian framing makes clear the general difficulties that Connolly confronts and the pressures that this places on the rhetorical character of his project, while the issue of Connolly's appropriation of Nietzsche allows a focus on a particular lacuna or gap in Connolly's project concerning the relation between pluralism and the pathos of distance. It is argued not only that the diagnosed problem in Connolly's use of Nietzsche can be overcome through resources that Nietzsche makes available, but also that overcoming this problem provides criteria on the basis of which Connolly's project can be more closely aligned to issues in political science concerning institutional design and political policy.