This article examines the legal and normative debates about the Occupy Toronto movement in order to illuminate the issues raised by Occupy Wall Street. It challenges the view that the occupation of parks and plazas was an illegitimate privatization of public space. In both New York City and Toronto, the courts relied on a theory that Habermas called “German Hobbesianism.” This sovereigntist theory of the public was used to justify removing the protesters and disbanding the encampments. The alternative is what I call the populist model of the public, a term which describes the political mobilization of the people outside the institutional structures of the state. While my focus is on public space, I suggest the appropriation of space was the most visible aspect of a broader call for collective control of the common wealth of society. In other words, we should understand the occupations synecdochally as struggles over the meaning and power of public and private.

Immigration has been a salient and contentious topic in the United States, with a great deal of congressional debate, advocacy efforts, and media coverage. Among conservative and liberal groups, there is a vigorous debate over the terms used to describe this population, such as “undocumented” or “illegal,” as both sides perceive significant consequences to public opinion that flow out of this choice in equivalency frames. These same groups also compete over the ways in which immigration policies are framed. Here, for the first time, we examine the use of both types of frames (of immigrants themselves, and the policies affecting them) in media coverage. Importantly, we also test for whether these various frames affect preferences on three different policies of legalization. Our results suggest that efforts to focus on the terms used to describe immigrants have limited effect, and that efforts to frame policy offer greater promise in swaying public opinion on immigration.

I draw on conservative black Christians' claims regarding their co-constitutive racial, religious, class, and sexual subordination to demonstrate that intersectionality is a heuristic that can be used to advance a range of normative arguments. My research rejects traditional understandings of intersectionality as a necessarily progressive analytical framework, as well as recent discussions that suggest that intersectionality's use for conservative ends is evidence of its theoretical underdevelopment. My analysis also reveals that by positing interlocking racism, classism, heterophobia, and anti-Christian bigotry as blacks' “true” experience of oppression, conservative black Christians guide political scientists to consider 1) that intersectional analysis is central rather than antithetical to in-group policing; 2) that we can best interrogate the standards that social groups use to police their boundaries when we adopt a normative-critical conception of power, and 3) that power so defined challenges the erroneous assumption that our role is to either describe or prescribe social reality.

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in state legislation likely to reduce access for some voters, including photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements, registration restrictions, absentee ballot voting restrictions, and reductions in early voting. Political operatives often ascribe malicious motives when their opponents either endorse or oppose such legislation. In an effort to bring empirical clarity and epistemological standards to what has been a deeply-charged, partisan, and frequently anecdotal debate, we use multiple specialized regression approaches to examine factors associated with both the proposal and adoption of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006–2011. Our results indicate that proposal and passage are highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs. These findings are consistent with a scenario in which the targeted demobilization of minority voters and African Americans is a central driver of recent legislative developments. We discuss the implications of these results for current partisan and legal debates regarding voter restrictions and our understanding of the conditions incentivizing modern suppression efforts. Further, we situate these policies within developments in social welfare and criminal justice policy that collectively reduce electoral access among the socially marginalized.

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform.

What is it about oil? Whereas one might think that countries that produce the world's energy have it good, much scholarship has come to the conclusion that countries that produce oil have it bad: they are worse off economically and politically than they would otherwise be. This counter-intuitive idea has become so widespread that the “resource curse” is often discussed in popular outlets, from Thomas Friedman to Stephen Colbert. And yet scholarship is increasingly questioning whether this curse actually exists. After several decades of research on the topic, we still do not have a clear idea what it is about oil—if anything—that causes problems.

The so-called “subprime mortgage crisis” has led to intense scrutiny of American housing policy, mortgage finance, and even the goods of homeownership. Some critics allege that the housing bubble and ensuing financial crisis were consequences of misguided state intervention, while others contend that the sources of the crisis lay in the pathologies of unregulated markets. Both sides, however, treat the crisis and its underlying causes primarily through an economic lens of cost-benefit analysis. Building on the insights of contemporary political theorists and the new institutionalism in political science, we consider American housing policy from the vantage of virtue theory. Not only is housing and mortgage policy inevitably normative, but public policy can be an important tool in fostering what we call the “subprime virtues” of truth-telling, promise-keeping, frugality, moderation, commitment, foresight, and judgment that are absolute prerequisites for any decent society.

Papers in the burgeoning empirical literature on distributive politics often focus their analysis on the pattern of distribution of a single patronage good—for example, cash transfers, roads, education spending, electrification, or targeted grants. Yet because governments can favor constituencies through the targeting of multiple public and private goods, drawing general conclusions about distributive politics by investigating just one (or even a few) good(s) can be misleading. We demonstrate the severity of this problem by investigating a particular manifestation of distributive politics—ethnic favoritism—in a particular setting—Africa—and show that the conclusions one draws about who benefits from government allocation decisions can vary markedly depending on the outcome one happens to study. Our findings suggest the need for caution in making general claims about who benefits from distributive politics and raise questions about extant theoretical conclusions that are based on empirical work that focuses on a single distributive outcome. The findings also provide a foundation for a new research agenda aimed at identifying the reasons why political leaders choose to favor their supporters with some public and private goods rather than others.

In the United States we like to ‘rate’ a President,” Richard Neustadt observed. “We measure him as ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ and call what we are measuring his ‘leadership.’ We do not wait until a man is dead; we rate him from the moment he takes office.” Half a century later, that habit has been amplified and accelerated by an unending news cycle and the outsized demand for commentary across the online world. The polarizing figure of Barack Hussein Obama has been catnip here: Observers from all spaces on the spectra of partisanship and sanity began weighing in on the Obama presidency long before he actually took office in January 2009.

Although the subprime crisis regenerated interest in and stimulated debate about how to study the politics of global finance, it has not sparked the development of new approaches to International Political Economy (IPE), which remains firmly rooted in actor-centered models. We develop an alternative network-based approach that shifts the analytical focus to the relations between actors. We first depict the contemporary global financial system as a network, with a particular focus on its hierarchical structure. We then explore key characteristics of this global financial network, including how the hierarchic network structure shapes the dynamics of financial contagion and the source and persistence of power. Throughout, we strive to relate existing research to our network approach in order to highlight exactly where this approach accommodates, where it extends, and where it challenges existing knowledge generated by actor-centered models. We conclude by suggesting that a network approach enables us to construct a systemic IPE that is theoretically and empirically pluralist.

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform.

Political science is far behind the other social science disciplines in incorporating neurobiological concepts, techniques, and theory. In recent years progress has been made in closing this gap but many in the political science mainstream view the movement with concern or even horror. Though a healthy dose of skepticism is appropriate and beneficial to the scientific endeavor, negative reactions to viewing politics through a neurobiological lens are often based on fundamental misconceptions regarding both neurobiology and politics. In this Reflections essay, I address ten of these misconceptions, including the beliefs that biology is deterministic, reductionist, unnecessary, irrelevant, normatively dangerous, and ideologically biased. The goal is to encourage a constructive dialogue on the relevance of neurobiology to political life—a dialogue that would in turn improve research in the fledgling subfield and lead to innovations in political science by encouraging new ways of conceptualizing and analyzing the variables at the discipline's core.

In a careful paper, John R. Hibbing makes a strong case that political scientists—who have learned lessons from many other disciplines—need to make room for biology. While his paper is reassuring on many counts, two matters cause concern. First, Hibbing argues that the open acknowledgment of the biological basis of group differences would lead to greater tolerance. It is easy to adduce examples to suggest that it is unrealistic to expect that people, especially people with political concerns and objectives, will begin to focus on the diversity within groups rather than the differences between groups. Second, it is not clear the extent to which investigations into the biological basis of politics would illumine the great questions of political analysis.

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the most severe global economic downturn since the Great Depression. The crisis has provoked soul-searching among economists, yet international political economy (IPE) scholars have been relatively sanguine. We argue that IPE has strayed too far away from studying the geopolitical and systemic causes and consequences of the global economy. IPE must explain the generation and transformation of global financial orders. Both the distribution of political power and the content of economic ideas will shape any emergent global financial order. A Kuhnian life-cycle framework of global financial orders permits a systemic approach to global finance that integrates the study of power and social logics into our understanding of markets.

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform.

For the past decade, concern about a crisis in civic education and engagement, especially among young people, has been rampant. In 2003, The Civic Mission of Schools report sounded a clarion call for greater attention to citizenship education in K–12 schools and touched off a national campaign, joined by such luminaries as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, advocating improvements in the way we educate American youth for participation in democracy. Two years later, the work of the American Political Science Association's Committee on Civic Education and Engagement culminated in the publication of Democracy at Risk, which examined growing trends toward civic disengagement and proposed reforms to reinvigorate political participation in the United States. Just last year, a joint effort by the US Department of Education and the Association of American Colleges and Universities produced A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy's Future, once again chronicling a “civic recession” across the land and issuing a “National Call to Action” for higher education to do more to educate young citizens for democracy.

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform.

Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis, edited by Bent Flyvbjerg, Todd Landman, and Sanford Schram, is an interesting read in the context of the current assault on both the scientific status and the practical utility of social science in general and political science specifically. In it, the editors collect examples of social scientific work that embrace what Flyvbjerg and others have described as phronetic social science. This approach makes creative use of the Aristotelian intellectual virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom, which the editors identify with the knowledge of how to address and act on social problems in a particular context. Rather than emphasizing the universal truth (episteme) that has traditionally been the summum bonum of social scientific inquiry, or fixating on the know-how (techne) that is characteristic of methodologically driven approaches, Flyvbjerg, Landman, and Schram present examples of social scientific research where contextual knowledge, deep understanding of embedded power dynamics, and immediate relevance to political reality take center stage. In so doing they give the lie to those who would deny the practical relevance of social research. At the same time, however, the editors develop an understanding of phronesis that marginalizes valuable elements of Aristotle's understanding of the intellectual virtue, most notably its basis in self-examination, while simultaneously bringing phronesis much closer to techne by seeking to develop their phronetic social science along methodological lines.

Through a discussion of the 2008 mortgage crisis and its similarities to the Great Depression of the 1930's and the Great Recession of 2007–09, I argue that the very notions of economic “crisis” and “recovery” are politically and ideologically constructed, and that conditions of vulnerability, often simply taken for granted as part of the normal social landscape when they affect marginalized populations, become regarded as crises when they affect dominant groups. Each of these crises, I argue, reveals different facets of the ways in which the power, normativity, and privilege of those perceived to be affected by economic hard times serve (1) to construct some economic troubles as “normal” and others as “crises;' (2) to prevent economic problems related to structural inequalities from being treated as crises by dominant political actors and institutions; and (3) to shape ideas about the ostensible solutions and ends to economic crises. By calling attention to these features of economic “crisis,” I aim to demonstrate the relevance of scholarship on race, class, gender, and intersectionality to the understanding of fundamental questions of contemporary political economy not often viewed from this perspective.

Though I am sympathetic to the program of research that John Hibbing advances, I raise four issues with the claims he presents. I argue that political science has not been slow to adopt an interest in biology. I argue that like all perspectives on how to advance knowledge, neurobiology must win its place by generating demonstrable results central to our understanding of politics. In agreeing with Hibbing that some hold misperceptions, I note that this is hardly uncommon, even if it is unwelcome in a scientific community. And, finally, I note that narratives of explanation often serve a variety of masters. While those derived from science are meant to restrict the consideration of competing narratives to those that are testable with empirical data, even members of scientific communities find that other claimants have some sway. Among the non-scientific purposes that narratives serve are: achieving simplicity; sustaining communities of mutual agreement; and advancing indulgent doctrines of ennoblement.