BIAPT's aim is to promote the study of all branches of political thought, including analytical political philosophy, continental and post-structuralist political theory, and the history of political thought.

The study of political thought tends to be dispersed within and across a number of different disciplines – political science, philosophy, history, law, sociology, economics, and cultural and literary studies, among others – and to involve a wide variety of approaches.

As a result, the distinctive interests and concerns of this sub-field risk being lost because much academic policy focuses on addressing the main branches of those disciplines within which political thought is to be found.  The fact that political thought often challenges the boundaries of these disciplines makes it even easier to ignore or marginalise. The foundation of BIAPT was intended to address the three main dimensions of this situation:

• By providing a mechanism for advocating, to relevant policy makers, the concerns of those engaged in political thought
• Through activity intended to overcome the tendency for political thought to be marginalised or to fall between different disciplines (for example, in addressing how support for research and graduate study in the field is divided between the ESRC and AHRC)
• In facilitating scholarly interaction and collaboration amongst the whole range of practitioners in the field.