The articles in this symposium present politics as an important intervening variable in the relationship between inequality and development. They highlight the complex and contingent ways in which politics mediates this relationship. The articles examine three key issues: (1) the extent and nature of international inequality and domestic inequality in the developing world; (2) the process through which inequality becomes—or does not become—a salient issue on the political agenda; and (3) the relationship between inequality and development under democratic and authoritarian regimes.

At the same time that the world has reached unprecedented prosperity, issues of economic inequality have attained great political salience. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, there are major differences in opinion regarding the responsibility of the United States and other wealthy countries and what the proper response should be. In July 2008, the Doha round of negotiations at the WTO broke down after developing countries could not reach an agreement with wealthy countries on agricultural trade. The IMF is under pressure to reform its governance to provide better representation to middle-income and poor countries. And development experts admonish the world about the growing gap between the world's affluent countries and “the bottom billion” (Collier 2007). It used to be that economic-development strategies would target economic growth and “let the rising tide lift all ships.” Now, there is growing concern that growth be inclusive in order to make optimal use of societal resources and mitigate the political volatility that results when substantial segments of societies are excluded from the benefits of development.

John Echeverri-Gent's (2009) fine article in this symposium makes a compelling case for a greater focus on the study of inequality by political scientists. A topic we have too often neglected, its dynamics go to the core of our disciplinary concerns and we clearly should have more to offer to its understanding. APSA is to be commended for supporting the work of the Task Force on Difference, Inequality, and Developing Societies (2008), which Echeverri-Gent led, and which, in large part, informs his article in these pages. It should generate a renewed focus by political scientists on international inequality and on the role of domestic inequality in the development process.

In recent years political scientists and economists have spent considerable efforts investigating the impact of income inequality both on political institutions and social conflict (Boix 2003, 2008; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Geddes 2007) and on growth and development (Atkinson and Bourguignon 2000). In this article I focus on the latter question: I discuss the extent to which (that is, the conditions under which) inequality may hinder economic growth. I do so by moving away from the current literature, which models the relationship between development and inequality in a linear fashion—with the latter unconditionally distorting (or boosting) the incentives to invest and therefore reducing (or increasing) the rate of growth. Instead, I claim that the potential correlation between inequality and development will be always conditional on the (mostly political and institutional) causes that generate the existing income distribution to start with. Hence it is not surprising to find instances in which growth and (mostly temporary) inequality come hand in hand as well as other periods and countries where there is both high and persistent inequality jointly with economic stagnation.

Our symposium offers a variety of perspectives, such as on self-perpetuation of inequality in the international system, or on the consequences of inequality for economic growth or for social and political conflicts. This contribution discusses the determinants of domestic policy choices that affect inequality and the consequences of these policy choices. The empirical focus is on Latin American countries, which collectively are characterized by the highest regional levels of inequality in the world, but individually show considerable variation. Different analyses have emphasized different causes of income inequality and of the variation in inequality, such as historical structural roots in land distribution and natural-resource endowments, geography, ethnic divisions, the economic context, demographics, and state action or lack thereof. The role of the state has not received much systematic attention until rather recently, though, despite its essential role in the allocation of resources.

An unequal distribution of income and wealth is an inherent feature of all complex societies, and up to a point, a desirable one. A highly skewed distribution, however, raises questions of serious moral and practical concern: To what extent does socioeconomic inequality undermine the principle of political equality on which democratic societies are based? Under what conditions does it lead to lead to political polarization that retards economic growth or threatens the stability of democratic institutions? And under what circumstances do distributive struggles become the basis for violent social protest or rebellion?

Epic redistributive struggles between the rich and poor lie at the heart of prominent theories of economic development and the emergence of democracy (e.g., Boix 2003; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006). The poor pursue democracy to secure credible redistribution away from wealthy elites; elites, fearing redistribution, but also the costs of revolution, decide whether to repress these efforts or to surrender to them. These theories, and the historical examples of working classes exacting redistributive or political concessions from elites, have been interpreted as suggesting that inequality and redistributive struggles should be central features of development and democratization. Where inequality is high, democracy should be unlikely to emerge, or to emerge and be unstable. Because elites in unequal societies are unwilling to adopt institutions that encourage growth and investment (such as institutions that protect non-elites from predation by elites), incomes should be lower as well.

As the other articles in this symposium demonstrate, a country's level of economic inequality is a function of a complex set of historical, geographic, economic, and political factors. Given this complexity, it is unsurprising that a country's regime type by itself does not tell us much about its level of economic inequality. The predictions of the linear tax model aside (Meltzer and Richard 1981), democracies and non-democracies do not differ greatly in terms of their level and variation in inequality. Research focusing on democracies has helped identify some the sources of this variation, but inequality in authoritarian states remains relatively understudied. The growing body of work on authoritarian politics, however, provides a foundation for research in this area.

While the world is focused on the economic impact of the financial and credit meltdown, what might be its impact on politics? In well-established democracies, probably not more than elections lost by incumbent parties seen as having mismanaged the economy. But what of consolidating democracies that predominate in the developing world, where some forecasts expect the crisis to hit the poor especially hard? This article uses AmericasBarometer survey data from Latin America and the Caribbean drawn on the eve of the crisis to project how it might affect democracy in the region.

In 2005 the Republican-controlled General Assembly redrew Georgia's congressional districts in order to gain additional seats in the 2006 midterm election. In this article we present a case study of the effects of redistricting on turnout and vote choice in Georgia's District 8 in the 2006 U.S. House election. It is apparent both from our findings and an elite interview, that unlike the more aggressive strategy employed by Texas Republicans in 2003, Georgia Republicans tried to thread the needle in their goal of winning District 8. Conventional wisdom suggests that if a political party controls redistricting it will maximize its electoral opportunities. But this was not the case in Georgia.

It is assumed that voters blame incumbents for poor economic performance but give credit when the economy is strong. A huge literature shows the impact of economic indicators and economic perceptions on vote choice and presidential popularity, but there is precious little research on whether public perceptions match economic reality. We propose a novel comparison of perceptions with performance by utilizing the Gallup Poll “most important” problem question. The average percentage that mentions unemployment, inflation, and the general economy over each presidential term from 1949 to 2008 is compared against the Presidential Economic Scorecard. The public correctly perceived unemployment and the general economy as salient national problems, but not inflation, and we speculate on why public perceptions do not correspond to actual inflation rates.

In this article we report the results from a new survey of political scientists regarding their evaluations of journals in the political science discipline. Unlike previous research that has focused on data from the United States, we conducted an Internet survey of political scientists in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We present data on journal evaluations, journal familiarity, and journal impact, both for our entire sample (N = 1,695) and separately for respondents from each of the three countries. We document the overall hierarchy of scholarly journals among political scientists, though we find important similarities and differences in how political scientists from these three countries evaluate the scholarly journals in the discipline. Our results suggest that there is a strong basis for cross-national integration in scholarly journal communication, though methodological differences among the three countries may be an impediment.

Combining salary data for permanent non-emeritus faculty at seven departments of political science within the University of California system with lifetime citation counts and other individual-level data from the Masuoka, Grofman, and Feld (2007a) study of faculty at Ph.D.-granting political science departments in the United States, I analyze determinants of faculty salaries. For the full data set the main finding are that (1) base salaries of UC political science faculty are slightly more strongly correlated to citation rates (annualized or total lifetime citations) as a measure of research visibility than they are to seniority measured by years since receipt of the Ph.D.; and (2) that gender differences and subfield differences in salary essentially vanish once I take into account both year of Ph.D. and research visibility (as measured by annualized citation counts), while gender inequities would appear to exist if I did not control for both variables.

Political science, as a discipline, is a relative newcomer to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). We examine authorship patterns of SoTL articles in PS: Political Science & Politics, the Journal of Political Science Education, and International Studies Perspectives from 1998–2008. Our findings indicate more collaborative SoTL articles compared to non-SoTL teaching articles. Authorship patterns reveal a relatively high presence of women, assistant professors, and authors housed in Ph.D. and BA departments for SoTL publications. We conclude that SoTL constitutes an important new field of inquiry in the discipline that is likely to become more prominent as a younger cohort of scholars matures.

This article describes teaching a course called Harry Potter and Politics. Focusing on aspects of political culture, the class tackled themes of identity, institutional behavior, and globalization. Teaching Harry Potter has several benefits. Students are both familiar with the wizarding world and yet have enough distance to examine it dispassionately. The book is driven by ethnic conflict, political power struggles, and dysfunctional bureaucracies. Finally, there is an academic literature on the books. Beyond Harry Potter, teaching politics through popular culture is not only natural for addressing political culture, but taps into the ways undergraduates are increasingly experiencing politics.

Neoliberalism is one of the most pervasive and contested concepts of our contemporary era. Thus, it is essential for students to gain an understanding of its history, meaning, assumptions, and policy prescriptions. In addition to recognizing the importance of neoliberalism in the current political discourse, I argue that the polarized responses to the concept provide opportunities for teaching about critical topics in political science. This article provides suggestions for teaching about six such topics through the lens of neoliberal policies such as free trade, structural adjustment, and privatization.

One of the greatest challenges we face as political scientists is to teach undergraduates how to think comparatively. This article proposes a number of practical, easily adaptable exercises that many of us can incorporate in our teaching to turn curious undergraduates into smart social scientists who think comparatively about the world.

This article proposes a new role-playing exercise for public law courses: a mock-trial simulation using the European inquisitorial system of trial procedure. By exposing students to an alternative method of conducting a trial, numerous pedagogical benefits can be obtained, including stimulating critical thinking regarding the potential inefficiencies in the American trial system. The article provides an overview of the inquisitorial trial system, and also sets out the procedures for conducting the simulation and conducting assessment.

We present two simulations designed to convey the strategic nature of terrorism and counterterrorism. The first is a simulated hostage crisis, designed primarily to illustrate the concepts of credible commitment and costly signaling. The second explores high-level decision making of both a terrorist group and the state, and is designed to highlight scarce-resource allocation and organizational dynamics. The simulations should be useful both in a traditional classroom setting as well as to the larger public. We provide a primer on the subject matter, and all the material necessary to run the simulations.