Political Science Association Annual Research Articles

Coproduction as Pedagogy: Harnessing Community Data Partnerships for the Classroom

ABSTRACTIncreased computing capacity and the spread of computational knowledge has generated the expectation that organizations and municipalities use large quantities of data to drive decision making. However, municipalities may lack the resources to meaningfully use their data for decision making. Relatedly, political science and public administration programs face the challenge of training students for success in this environment. We believe one remedy is the adoption of coproduction as a pedagogical strategy. This article presents a case study of a partnership between a university research team and a municipal emergency communications center as a demonstration of how coproduction can be harnessed as a teaching tool. Findings from this project were presented at the Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, January 8–11, 2020, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Gender Representation and Strategies for Panel Diversity: Lessons from the APSA Annual Conference

Gender representation is a pervasive problem in political science. We draw on evidence from the 2017 and 2018 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting programs to discuss diversity and representation in large political science disciplinary conferences. APSA program divisions differ substantially in their gender representation: although some are representative of their organized section membership, others are not, and some sections are particularly likely to feature manels. We present representation data by organization section, with discussions of what representation looks like and identifying different kinds of representation goals. We conclude by offering guidelines for increasing gender representation, both for future submitters and program chairs.

Lost in the Storm: The Academic Collaborations That Went Missing in Hurricane ISSAC

By exploiting the cancellation of the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, we investigate the role of conferences in facilitating academic collaboration. We assembled data sets comprising 17,467 academics, and in difference‐in‐differences analysis we find that the conference cancellation led to a decrease in individuals’ likelihood of co‐authoring an article with another attendant by 16%. Moreover, collaborations formed among attendants of (occurring) conferences are associated with more successful co‐publications: an effect which is sharpest for teams that are new or non‐collocated. Conferences seem to de‐cluster the co‐authorship network. Altogether, our findings demonstrate the importance of conferences in scientific production.

Lost in the Storm: The Academic Collaborations that Went Missing in Hurricane Isaac

By exploiting the cancellation of the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, we investigate the role of conferences in facilitating academic collaboration. We assembled datasets comprising 17,468 academics and 86 million pairs of conference participants. In difference-in-differences analysis, we find the conference cancellation led to a decrease in individuals' likelihood of co-authoring an article with another attendant by 18 percent. Moreover, collaborations formed among attendants of (occurring) conferences are associated with more successful co-publications: an effect which is sharpest for teams that are new or non-collocated. These findings are novel and demonstrate the importance of conferences in scientific production.

The “Digital Revolution” Reconsidered – NPS Christian Bay Best Paper Award APSA 2015, San Francisco, CA

This article responds to the 2014 American Political Science Association Annual Conference’s theme of “Politics After the Digital Revolution.” It first gives a brief assessment of how the discipline of political science has reacted to the digital revolution. It then seeks to couch the putative revolution in Thorstein Veblen’s theory of a “machine process” in order to recast it less as a discrete phenomenon to be dealt with by the discipline, but instead as part of an evolutionary process of social change that instils habits of mind of those who are subject to it, and who in turn, influence the machine process itself in a co-determinant manner. This article offers the synthesis of Veblen and the Frankfurt School to theorize how the digital revolution might be critically assessed in its evolutionary framework, and speaks towards an evolutionary critical theory for analysing political society beyond discrete events.

The Role of Conferences on the Pathway to Academic Impact: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We provide evidence for the effectiveness of conferences in promoting academic impact, by exploiting the cancellation -- due to 'Hurricane Isaac' -- of the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. We assembled a new dataset of approximately 31,000 articles and quantified conference effects using difference-in-differences regressions. Within one year of being presented at the conference, articles receive an additional 15 downloads. This advantage is permanent, and accrues particularly to authors in their early careers or outside the Top 10 institutions. Moreover, within two years, articles' likelihood of receiving at least one citation increases by close to five percentage points.

Introduction

Recommendation 5: That the character and implications of ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity and the international and transnational dimensions of particular problems and policies be addressed in all relevant courses—“main-streamed,” in the pedagogical vernacular—not treated as a separate and unique problem to be dealt with in a particular course or two or by a particular faculty member. (Wahlke 1991, 53; emphasis in original) The idea for this Critical Perspectives section came from a short course at the 2011 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, “Teaching Gender and Politics: Views from the Field.” In one of the panel discussions, a senior feminist international relations scholar mentioned the above-quoted Wahlke Report, and most participants—almost all of whom identify as gender scholars, many of whom are senior in the field—were surprised not only that APSA recommended gender mainstreaming in the political science classroom, but also that it happened so long ago. Despite this now twenty-year-old recommendation, the available data on gender mainstreaming indicate that gender as a powerful theoretical and analytical construct remains outside the mainstream of political science education (Cassese, Bos, and Duncan 2012). It is illustrative to note that our workshop participants were not the only political scientists who seem to have missed Wahlke's recommendation on inclusion of gender and ethnicity; it was not highlighted in either the immediate aftermath of the publication of the report or in more recent evaluations of the report's influence (Bennett 1991; Ishiyama 2005; Ishiyama, Breuning, and Lopez 2006; Kaufman-Osborn 1991). Given the many benefits of gender mainstreaming—from improving democratic citizenship to increasing the number of women in the profession—our goal for this Critical Perspectives section is to bring renewed focus to the subject of gender mainstreaming in political science education. We hope to start new conversations: What are the benefits of mainstreaming? How can faculty approach mainstreaming? What tools do faculty need in order to mainstream effectively? In the following essays, the authors approach these questions from a variety of viewpoints.

RETRACTED: The Rhetoric of Political Conservationism: The Post-Reagan Era

The substantial portions of the text came from Dr. Thomas Sowers research, “The Rhetoric of Political Conservativism in the Post-Reagan Era” presented at the Louisiana Political Science Association Annual Meeting in 2001. This article has been retracted to straighten the academic record. In making this decision the Editorial Board follows COPE's Retraction Guidelines. Aim is to promote the circulation of scientific research by offering an ideal research publication platform with due consideration of internationally accepted standards on publication ethics. The Editorial Board would like to extend its sincere apologies for any inconvenience this retraction may have caused. The full retraction notice in PDF is preceding the original paper, which is marked "RETRACTED".

How To Be a Peer Reviewer: A Guide for Recent and Soon-to-be PhDs

AbstractPeer review is central to political science. In this article we collect the ideas of journal editors in political science and several recent PhDs, who met as a panel at the 2011 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting to discuss the principles of the review process. This includes why reviewing is important to the development of one's own scholarship but also offers some nuts and bolts on reviewing.

International communication

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Leanne Cannon in the preparation of this paper. Notes This article was originally published in The Journal of International Communication, vol. 10, no. 2, 2004. 1. See also Boulding (1961 Boulding , K. 1961 ‘National images and international systems’ , in J. Rosenau International Politics and Foreign Policy , New York . [Google Scholar]). 2. See also de Sola Pool (1951 de Sola Pool , I. 1951 Symbols of Internationalism , Stanford . [Google Scholar]). 3. See also Merritt (1972 Merritt , R.L. 1972 Communication in International Politics , Urbana , IL : University of Illinois Press . [Google Scholar]). 4. See also White (1968 White , R.K. 1968 Nobody Wanted War , Garden City , NY . [Google Scholar]). 5. This special issue of The Annals is devoted to articles on the roles, techniques, instrumentalities and agencies of propaganda. 6. For a comprehensive bibliography using communication data and event data in international relations see Burrowes et al (1971 Burrowes , R. , Hoggard , G.D. , Leng , R.J. , Mowlana , H. , Peterson , S. , Phillips , W.R. & Richman , A. 1971 Event-Interaction Analysis: Selected Bibliography of Recent Research, American Political Science Association Annual Meeting , Chicago , September . [Google Scholar]). 7. See also Zinnes (1968 Zinnes , D.A. 1968 ‘The expression and perception of hostility in prewar crisis: 1914’ , in J.D. Singer Quantitative international Politics , New York . [Google Scholar]). 8. See also Osgood (1962 Osgood , C.E. 1962 An Alternative to War or Surrender , Urbana . [Google Scholar]). For the theoretical bases see Heider (1964 Heider , E. 1964 ‘Attitudes and cognitive organization’ , Journal of Psychology , 24 . [Google Scholar]) and Newcomb (1953 Newcomb, T.M. 1953. An approach to the study of communicative acts. Psychological Review, 60: 393–404. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [9. For examples of development using small group communication and workshops in international communication and international relations during this time see Doob (1969 Doob, L. 1969. The Fermeda Workshop: A different approach to border conflicts on Eastern Africa. Journal of Psychology, 73: 249–266. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Walton (1970), Doob et al (1969 Doob, L. 1969. The Fermeda Workshop: A different approach to border conflicts on Eastern Africa. Journal of Psychology, 73: 249–266. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Kelman (1972 Kelman , H. 1972 ‘Problem solving workshop in conflict resolution’ , in R.L. Merritt Communication in International Politics , Urbana , IL . [Google Scholar]). 10. See also Mead (1961 Mead , G.H. 1961 ‘The social foundations and functions of thought and communication’ , in T. Parsons et al. Theories of Society , New York . [Google Scholar]). 11. For UNESCO publications in this area see Mowlana (1971 Mowlana , H. 1971 lnternational Communication: A Selected Bibliography , Dubuque , Iowa [Google Scholar]), pp.86–87. 12. See also Almond and Powell (1966 Almond , G. & Powell , G.B. 1966 Comparative Politics: A Development Approach , Boston . [Google Scholar]). 13. See also Fagen's three articles on mass communication in Journalism Quarterly, Autumn 1964, Winter 1964 and Spring 1965. 14. See also Mishra (1971 Mishra, V.M. 1971. Mass media variables related to urbanization and modernization in developing areas. Journalism Quarterly, 48: 513–518. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 15. See also Deutsch (1963 Deutsch , K.W. 1963 The Nerves of Government , New York . [Google Scholar]). 16. Other discussion includes Rapaport (1960 Rapaport , A. 1960 Fights, Games, and Debates , Ann Arbor , Mich . [Google Scholar]). 17. For international communicators and foreign correspondents see Mowlana (1971 Mowlana , H. 1971 lnternational Communication: A Selected Bibliography , Dubuque , Iowa [Google Scholar]), Chapter X. 18. See also the special issue of the Stanford Journal of International Studies (June 1970) devoted to telecommunication.

Thinking Beyond the Original Bargain: Post Ratification Constitution Making and the Case of Iraq

This paper, submitted in connection with a panel at the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, explores some of the implications of regarding a constitution making exercise as not merely the enactment of a particularly important piece of legislation, but rather the establishment a broad and long lasting national compact. In a society such as Iraq, which is not only divided, but where different communities have radically different visions of an ideal state order, such high stakes can be impossible to manage. As such, one way to address the problem of constitution making in such contexts is to embrace ambiguity and deferral as means to reach consensus among sharply divided communities, thereby creating space for future (partial) resolution of existing disputes. This paper explores representative examples where such efforts have been undertaken in Iraq, and evaluates the extent to which they have been successful.

Interpreting Thomas Hobbes in Competing Contexts

A. P. Martinich's The Two Gods of Leviathan appeared in 1992, and J. R. Collins's The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes in 2005. Martinich offered a revisionist interpretation of Thomas Hobbes's religious commitments. He rebuked the conventional view that Hobbes was an atheist and placed him within particular traditions of reformed Christian theology. Collins's book strongly differed from these conclusions, and reasserted Hobbes's hostility to traditional Christianity as part of a general contextualization of his writings within the period of the English Revolution. The following exchange between Martinich and Collins was first aired in 2007 as a debate at the Southwestern Political Science Association's Annual Conference.

Interpreting the Religion of Thomas Hobbes: An Exchange: Hobbes’s Erastianism and Interpretation

A. P. Martinich's The Two Gods of Leviathan appeared in 1992, and J. R. Collins's The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes in 2005. Martinich offered a revisionist interpretation of Thomas Hobbes's religious commitments. He rebuked the conventional view that Hobbes was an atheist and placed him within particular traditions of reformed Christian theology. Collins's book strongly differed from these conclusions, and reasserted Hobbes's hostility to traditional Christianity as part of a general contextualization of his writings within the period of the English Revolution. The following exchange between Martinich and Collins was first aired in 2007 as a debate at the Southwestern Political Science Association's Annual Conference.

Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics

At what point does one reasonably concede that the “realities” of world politics require compromise from cherished principles or moral ends, and how does one know when an ethical limit has been reached? Since social constructivist analyses of the development of moral norms explain how moral change occurs in world politics, that agenda should provide insightful leverage on the ethical question of “what to do.” This article identifies contributions of a constructivist research agenda for theorizing moral limit and possibility in global political dilemmas.I thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its support of a workshop on Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in September 2005. I thank the participants of that workshop for their input into this article; it is part of a collaborative project and their contributions are too numerous to mention by name. Versions of this article were also presented to the University of Minnesota International Relations Colloquium, the University of British Columbia International Relations Colloquium, at the Australian National University, at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting 2006, and at the University of Chicago Program on International Politics, Economics and Security; I am grateful to participants in these venues for their invaluable questions and comments, as well as to the students in my courses upon whom I vetted a number of the ideas in this project. Thanks also to the reviewers and editors of IO for their rigorous comments. Finally, thanks also to Alana Tiemessen and Scott Watson for research assistance along the way.

Political Science and Beyond: Presidential Address to the American Political Science Association

This is the Presidential Address delivered at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, August 30 to September 2, 2007. The theme is that the discipline of political science has benefited from imports from many other fields, but it also has a lot to offer in the way of exports to other fields. A personal example is the export of cooperation theory to cancer research. The main recommendation is to cultivate your curiosity by: reading up in a variety of fields so your mind will be well prepared, teaming up with others who can help you, loading up on research related to your problem, and lightening up when you need to escape from the problem for a while. Promising opportunities exist for political science to export to public health, cognitive and neuropsychology, and the design of web-based institutions.Robert Axelrod is the Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Professor for the Study of Human Understanding at the University of Michigan (axe@umich.edu). This text is a renamed, footnoted and slightly revised version of his presidential address at the 2007 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. For help in preparing this address, he wishes to thank John Aldrich, David Axelrod, Vera Axelrod, Lily S. Axelrod, Michael Brintnall, Joshua Epstein, Rick Hall, Liz Gerber, Ross Hammond, Rob Hauck, Lisa Koch, Justin McCrary, Ken Pienta, Robert Putnam, Eric Rabkin, Amy Saldinger, Jasjeet Sekhon, and PhillipTetlock. For financial support he thanks the National Science Foundation.

More is Better: The Influence of Collective Female Descriptive Representation on External Efficacy

This study tests the hypothesis that collective descriptive representation has important benefits for strengthening and legitimizing democratic society. Specifically, we test whether increased proportions of collective female descriptive representation in the statehouse and the presence of a female state executive are important to female citizens' attitudes toward government responsiveness, or external efficacy. We hypothesize that an increase in female collective descriptive representation in the legislative and state executive branches of government will increase female citizens' external efficacy but will be unimportant to males. We pooled American National Election Studies (ANES) data from 1988 to 1998 and used ordered probit techniques to test the hypothesis. In addition to our main independent variable of interest, our model includes state political culture, dyadic descriptive representation, dyadic substantive representation, sociodemographics, political participation, strength of partisanship, and electoral dummy variables as controls. Our results confirm that higher levels of collective female descriptive representation promote higher values of external efficacy for female citizens, suggesting that collective female descriptive representation has important benefits to a democratic society.An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, August 30–September 2, 2001, and the International Society of Political Psychology, Seattle, Washington, July 1–4, 2000. We would like to thank the following people for their comments and support: Anthony Coveny, Randall Partin, and Cherie Maestas.

The Role of Parliaments in the Budget Process

This report comprises papers presented at a Roundtable on The role of Parliaments in the Budget Process at the Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, USA, January 5-9, 2005.In the first paper Joachim Wehner examines data from 43 countries to explain the different institutional arrangements to oversee the budget process. He argues that what determines the division of labor between the legislative and executive branch is not the presidential or parliamentarian mode of government, but the access to information, federalist structures and constitutional provisions affected by colonial rule. Zdenka Mansfeldova and Petra Rakušanova analyse the bargaining process in the legislature of the Czech Republic. Indeed over recent years, the budget process has undergone some great changes. Although the distribution of party-power in the Parliament and the Budget Committee remains of crucial importance, joining the European Union has led Parliament to seek a greater profile and strengthen its auditing functions, and professionalisation of the deputies on the Budgets Committee, has greatly increased the Committee's influence and prestige.Carolyn Forestiere's and Riccardo Pelizzo's paper studies the role of the Italian parliament to examine how institutional and political conditions influence the legislative power over the budget. Drawing on institutional and party system theories, they argue that procedures and ideology provide the greatest incentives for parliaments to deviate from unilaterally supporting their governments during the passage of the national budget. Finally Barry Anderson's paper discusses the potential value of independent analytical budget units for the legislature in increasing the transparency, credibility and accountability of the budget process. After examining a couple of country specific cases, he comes to the conclusion that for them to successfully fulfill a set of core functions, such units need to be at least non-partisan, independent, and objective.

Rowman and Littlefield Award for Innovative Teaching in Political Science and Northeast Political Science Association Annual Meeting

The 2005 recipients of the Rowman & Littlefield Award for Innovative Teaching in Political Science are Barbara Allen and Greg Marfleet of Carleton College.The Northeastern Political Science Association (NPSA) held its annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in November 2005.

Trends in Parliamentary Oversight

This report presents the Roundtable entitled Legislative Oversight: Theories and Practices, organized by the editors as part of the Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, USA, January 7-10, 2004. The papers presented herein reflect the papers presented at that Roundtable. The paper by Pelizzo and Stapenhurst presents the data collected from a survey of 83 countries by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in collaboration with the World Bank Institute. The data analysis reveals that legislatures in parliamentary systems are generally better equipped to oversee government activities than legislatures in presidential and semipresidential systems. The paper also investigates the role of legislatures in preparing and approving the budget. The analysis reveals that legislatures in presidential systems are generally the most active legislatures in the preparation of the budget, while parliaments are the most active legislatures in approving the budget. Thomas F. Reminton's paper examines the use of de facto oversight mechanisms by the Russian Federal Assembly and relates them to institutional performance in the postcommunist Russian state. The paper finds that by contrast with the early 1990s, policy making has become much more efficient. David M. Olson's paper argues that the Polish Sejm is currently the most active post-communist parliament in oversight and administrative review. In the light of the Polish experience, the paper suggests that post-communist parliaments will have increasing capacity to be active in oversight as a result of both the budgeting process and growing international influences upon policy choices. Edward Schneier's paper investigates why the post-reforms Indonesian parliament has not put mechanisms of legislative oversight to effective use. The problem is partially by three sets of factors, namely the legislature's own failure to institutionalize, endemic problems of corruption and a lingering tendency to defer to entrenched elites. Scott W. Desposato's paper investigates how legislatures' ability to engage in effective oversight activities is significantly related to both the formal institutional framework and informal institutional incentives. The paper investigates the impact of the informal institutional incentives on state assemblies'ability to oversee executive activities in Brazil. Mark Shepard argues that in spite of the House of Commons' awareness of its limitations in administrative review and oversight, change has been slow and hampered by the constitutional frame-work, executive hegemony and strong partisanship in the British Parliament. The author further argues that although there have been some important concessions recently, many of the successful reforms have focused on improving efficiency of oversight rather than effectiveness of oversight per se. Timothy J. Power's paper addresses one of the most important issues that constitutional engineers and practitioners are confronted with, that is: is executive dominance irreversible? After discussing some of the historical factors that have created the conditions for executive dominance, Power illustrates how the Brazilian congress managed to do the unthinkable: to reduce the President's authority to issue emergency decrees and, by doing so, to reduce substantially the power of the executive. Keith Schulz's paper raises an interesting issue. He notes that while international agencies' involvement in legislative capacity building represents one of the most critical aspects of their activities, it is not at all clear how the impact of internationally funded programs should be measured. The author also discusses how USAID has attempted in the past couple of years to re-spond to this dearth of knowledge and information.

Evaluating The Bush Menu for Change in the Middle East

These contributions were presented at a roundtable of the Conference Group on the Middle East, “Evaluating the Bush Menu for Change in the Middle East,” at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, September 5, 2004.