Many important questions in political science require the use of human-coded data or information that has been systematically ordered and quantified by a human being from qualitative sources. This article discusses challenges and recent innovations in collecting and documenting human-coded data. We review five datasets produced within the past 10 years and also reflect on our experiences in collecting a quarterly dataset that tracked state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that scholars can deliberately produce and publish theoretically grounded human-coded data in an accessible format that promotes transparency, traceability, and readability. We highlight several ways that scholars are already doing this, including narratives, source lists, and coding justifications that enhance the quality of their human-coded datasets. We also discuss common issues during coding and how technological innovation through interactive web-based platforms can improve the documentation of coding decisions.

This article investigates the impact of ChatGPT on student writing in the context of Model United Nations position papers, which require extensive research and concise articulation of policies on international issues. By comparing student-written papers and ChatGPT-generated papers, we find that whereas AI-generated papers received higher evaluations overall, award-winning student papers outperformed AI-generated papers. Furthermore, the quality of AI-generated writing is shown to depend on human input, emphasizing the importance of a human-centered approach to AI in education.

The intersection of conflict research and research ethics is already a complex and fraught one, particularly in exchanges between researchers from the Global North and researched communities from the Global South. There are many examples (and years) of exploitation, fraud, and violence in these exchanges, and more recent scholarship on fieldwork ethics has established new norms of reciprocal exchange rather than exploitation in these relationships. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, asymmetric access to health care, and global vaccine inequality has added yet another layer of complexity here. How do we continue move forward with the push to make our research exchanges ethical while dealing with the additional complexity of the pandemic? In this article, I reflect on the ethics of these exchanges and concerns around security for interlocutors in replacing in person fieldwork with virtual fieldwork, drawing from examples of my own doctoral dissertation research in the Pacific region of Colombia, which was interrupted by the outbreak of COVID-19. In this article, I describe how a turn to the digital archives helped mitigate additional ethical and security concerns that arose as a result of the pandemic.

Understanding how institutions shape outcomes is an important skill for students of American political science. Simulations in which students participate in mock elections structured by real-world institutions can serve as an effective tool to aid students’ learning. This article describes a model for a simulated 2020 Democratic Iowa caucus. Following official procedures, students engage in debates about which candidate to support and ultimately come to a final decision for their simulated precinct. The simulation helps students to understand the institutions that structure Iowa’s caucuses and assists them in forming conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of those institutions. This simulation was implemented in a course on political parties and elections in the Spring 2023 semester, where it proved to be an enjoyable exercise for students. It was reimplemented in the Spring 2024 semester as one of several simulated presidential nominations, and it proved to be a helpful teaching tool.

Giving money to candidates is an important but unequal form of political voice. Among those Americans worst represented as campaign contributors are Black women and Latinas. Although inequalities in income and wealth fuel inequalities in campaign contributions, resources are an incomplete explanation. This study investigates, for Black women and Latinas, whether their views on donations to candidates differ from their views on other forms of civic and political engagement. The results, including the absence of a shared norm about giving to candidates, illuminate the challenges and opportunities of mobilizing a more representative group of campaign contributors.

The conflict over abortion in the United States shows no sign of abatement. Both supporters and opponents of abortion rights have mobilized movements, engaged in collective action, suffered defeats and won victories, and survived over many decades. To understand how the current battle is likely to progress, we need to examine the movement/countermovement dynamics that drive the mobilization and outcomes of the opposing movements (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996). This article demonstrates how ongoing mobilization is fueled by the strategies and tactics of each side, which are strongly influenced by the actions of their opponents.

Latin America historically has had some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, making unsafe procedures a main cause of mortality among women and girls. However, in the context of the Green Wave, three countries recently have amply decriminalized access to abortion: Mexico (2021, 2023), Colombia (2022), and Argentina (2020) (Uruguay did so in 2012). The recent wave of decriminalization is the culmination of larger, historical processes that involved the gradual judicialization of reproductive rights in the region. Courts have been a central part of the story. In these three cases, arguments advanced by state and nonstate actors in favor of decriminalization significantly built on jurisprudence developed over many years. The process of abortion decriminalization has been partly a tale of gradual judicialization.

Sweeping changes in abortion politics are underway in the Americas. Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay have legalized abortion in recent years, marking a sea change in the most Catholic region of the world. At the same time, several states in the United States have restricted abortion access following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and numerous Central American countries have moved to fully criminalize the practice. Abortion is now legal in countries where it was long taboo, whereas the United States is characterized by a patchwork of laws that spans from some of the most progressive in the world to near-total bans. What explains this changing panorama in terms of reproductive rights in the Americas?

As the US Supreme Court was preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a series of sweeping rulings to liberalize abortion—part of a larger trend across Latin America (Daby and Moseley 2022; Fernandez Anderson 2017; Reuterswärd 2020; Ruibal 2014). Mexico has created a nationwide standard of access to abortion services, whereas the United States has abandoned universal legal abortion and embraced a patchwork system in which each state has different laws regulating reproductive healthcare. Why are these two neighbors on such divergent paths? This contribution to the symposium compares the ways that federalism and judicial politics have interacted in Mexico and the United States to explain the different trajectories of abortion policy. The divergent paths of the United States and Mexico can be explained by the two countries’ different experiences with democracy and political and institutional differences between the judiciaries. A different civil-society and constitutional context also has played a role.

The Southern Cone has been at the forefront of the fight for abortion rights in Latin America. Due to the legacies of Hispanic legal traditions and the overwhelming political influence of the Catholic Church, the region historically has been known for its restrictive policies on abortion and reproductive rights more broadly.1 However, in the past 15 years, Southern Cone countries began to challenge those restrictions and embarked on a feminist revolution that led to what is now widely known as the “Green Wave” because of the color embraced by abortion-rights activists. Uruguay began this trend of legalizing abortion on demand in 2012, followed by Argentina in 2020. Chile experienced a moderate reform in 2017 when it moved from a total ban to a system of exceptions. Feminists have been trying ever since to pass abortion on demand through both legislative and constitutional reforms, which have not yet yielded the expected results.

Across Latin American countries, there is remarkable heterogeneity in abortion legislation, ranging from full prohibition to legal elective abortion.1 However, abortion policy does not seem to clearly map onto implementation on the ground. On the one hand, even in countries with very restrictive abortion laws, (clandestine) abortion rates are comparatively high, and legislation that criminalizes abortion is rarely enforced (Blofield 2006; Htun 2003). On the other hand, in countries that allow abortion under all or some circumstances, access to abortion is not guaranteed. In Argentina, for instance, different reports have stressed the difficulty in accessing abortion procedures both before and after legalization was enacted in early 2021.2

In 2023, both Democratic and Republican elected officials supported banning official use of the gender-neutral term “Latinx.” Using a nationally representative survey sample, this study examines whether opposition to the gender-neutral term “Latinx” suggests a potential wedge issue that cuts across partisanship. We find that opposition to “Latinx” is significantly higher among Republican partisans, those who disapprove of Joe Biden as president, and those with “colder” feelings toward Democrats. Opposition to “Latinx” generally converges with factors that predict existing partisan divisions; where it diverges, it does not affect respondent evaluations of Biden or feelings about Democrats. Based on these findings, we conclude that gender-neutral language currently shows little potential as a wedge issue.

How can political scientists rigorously evaluate the predictive power of theories? Many peer-reviewed political science articles include predictions about future outcomes, and scholars make predictions on social media and other public forums. The prevalence of predictions suggests that scholars recognize the utility of leveraging theories for this purpose; however, the predictions often are not made in a manner that allows for rigorously evaluating their accuracy. Building on the increasing popularity of study preregistration in the social sciences, this article proposes “prediction registration” as a means for scholars to publish falsifiable, systematic, and verifiable theory-based predictions. Increasing the rigor of predictive theory testing can advance often-circular debates about accuracy and presents a “win-win” for scholars who aim to test the predictive power of theories. With a more rigorous approach, correct predictions would better demonstrate a theory’s ability to forecast outcomes, and missed predictions would reveal information that can be used to calibrate the theory.

Twitter has been a prominent forum for academics communicating online, both among themselves and with policy makers and the broader public. Elon Musk’s takeover of the company brought sweeping changes to many aspects of the platform, including public access to its data; Twitter’s approach to censorship and mis/disinformation; and tweaks to the affordances of the platform. This article addresses a narrower empirical question: What did Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform mean for this academic ecosystem? Using a snowball sample of more than 15,700 academic accounts from the fields of economics, political science, sociology, and psychology, we show that academics in these fields reduced their “engagement” with the platform, measured by either the number of active accounts (i.e., those registering any behavior on a given day) or the number of tweets written (including original tweets, replies, retweets, and quote tweets). We further tested whether this decrease in engagement differed by account type; we found that verified users were significantly more likely to reduce their production of content (i.e., writing new tweets and quoting others’ tweets) but not their engagement with the platform writ large (i.e., retweeting and replying to others’ content).