North Dakota’s unique statewide parking-meter ban was instituted by initiated measure in 1948. The 2017 legislative session witnessed the most credible effort to repeal the ban in decades. The legislative debate centered on tradition, the state’s long-standing urban–rural split, and its lingering populist roots. The authors place this debate within a larger rural-consciousness literature and examine how the politics of rural resentment contributed to maintaining the parking-meter ban, as well as the willingness of state lawmakers to use preemption as a tool to constrain the authority of larger cities. The authors also examine the complexity surrounding individual place-based identities. The extent to which urban residents in a rural state can simultaneously identify as “urban” relative to state-based policies and politics and “rural” relative to federal-based policies and politics merits further consideration.

The US Senate is unique in the United States and rare internationally for its total disregard of population differences among its representational units. To analyze malapportionment’s policy impact, we devised a hypothetical reapportionment scheme that more closely approximates state population but remains favorable to small states. We developed a formula to reweight senators’ roll-call votes to reflect better state population differences. We recalculated 804 key US Senate votes between 1961 and 2019 and found that state equality in the Senate systematically biases policy outcomes toward Republican preferences.

This study conducted a bibliometric analysis of Chinese politics research from 2001 to 2020 (N = 11,285) using Social Sciences Citation Index data. The number of publications in the field by scholars from Mainland China surged in the past 20 years; however, their influence on academia remained limited. Chinese institutions serve as the major hubs of collaborative networks. Using structural topic models, we identified 25 research topics that can be categorized in three clusters. In the past 20 years, scholars from Mainland China steered the focus of Chinese politics by causing a reduction in the proportion of international relation topics and an increase in the proportion of political economy topics. Domestic politics topics had the most citations. Scholars from Mainland China have made contributions to better research methods in the field. This article is a comprehensive view of Chinese politics research using a tool that is rarely used by political scientists. It depicts how studies of Chinese politics influence academia from a bibliometrics perspective.

This article discusses the remarks by James Madison to Virginia’s ratifying convention in June 1788 as they relate to the Electoral College. Madison’s remarks in Richmond shed light on his rarely highlighted expectations of the workings of the Electoral College and provide insight into the Constitutional Convention’s debate on the legislative selection of the President.

This article considers from a Wuffeauldian serio-comical point of view some fundamental insights into governance and public policy.

The United States took an active role in promoting some countries for a United Nations Security Council seat as part of its struggle with the Soviet Union during the early Cold War. Did these US-backed countries act in the interests of their promoter when they voted in the Council? Were these efforts of the United States advantageous? By studying the voting behavior of the US-backed countries between 1946 and 1965, this article answers the question of whether promoting some states to international institutions is beneficial for the great powers.

Mail-delivered get-out-the-vote (GOTV) field experiments have been found to increase voter turnout in some but not all contexts. We hypothesize that mail-delivered GOTV interventions are more successful in low-salience elections and test this in a systematic way for the first time. Relying on a systematic literature review and a meta-regression framework, we find that primary elections have a strong and significant positive impact on the success of mail-delivered GOTV interventions, whereas other commonly used measures of election salience, such as voter turnout, margin of victory, and a dummy for local elections, do not. These results highlight the possibility of fostering voter turnout using GOTV mail messages, especially in primary elections.

There is a growing consensus around both the importance of researcher positionality for the conduct of research and the intersectional and variable salience of positionality and its effects. However, at the same time, static assumptions of “insider” and “outsider” status prevail. This article presents a productive and two-fold intervention in these discussions. First, we show that the insider/outsider distinction is fraught on logistical and conceptual grounds. Relying on our experiences in conducting interview research from rural villages to diplomatic offices, we show that these elements of status are fluid and dynamic. Second, we suggest an alternative to this dichotomy through the aspirational status of a “credible visitor.” We define this as a performative aspect of positionality founded on humility and reflexivity and enacted through showcasing competence and engaging in transparency. We describe how this approach to performing status may facilitate access as well as fruitful and ethical research interactions.

In October 2021, the US Census Bureau piloted a new set of questions to operationalize sex and gender identity. This move follows a larger trend across the social sciences to rethink how surveys ask about sex and gender. Although this step is normatively positive, it complicates well-established protocols for weighting survey data. This article explores the likely pitfalls for survey researchers that accompany a shift in how the US Census Bureau measures gender. A preliminary empirical investigation of survey weighting indicates that using more inclusive gender categories will not negatively affect weighting metrics. Whereas the creation of a new set of US or even global best practices in measuring gender may be helpful to survey researchers, at this stage, there remain important empirical and ethical questions that are not well understood.

Research on the political science profession has shown that homophilous research networks—that is, those organized along the lines of gender and race/ethnicity—reproduce hierarchies. Research networks composed of white men experience the most prestige and lead to the most opportunities. This study documents homophilous networks in a setting where they likely are nurtured: academic conferences. Drawing data from the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, we examine the correspondence between the gender and the racial/ethnic composition of section members, panelists, and audience members for four research sections: Political Methodology; Political Psychology; Race, Ethnicity, and Politics; and Women and Politics. We find that attendees’ and panelists’ gender and racial/ethnic identity largely mirror the dominant gender and racial/ethnic group in their section. These findings indicate that homophily manifests at academic conferences and that efforts to diversify research networks should consider who listens to whom in these settings.

Questions of racial, gendered, and class-based inequality in political science are more salient than ever. This article contends that climate surveys can be a useful tool for developing effective equity and inclusion strategies within academic departments. We offer advice on political, procedural, and messaging issues to consider when undertaking a departmental climate survey.

Start-up packages vary enormously, particularly across institutions, and not all faculty know what items they may negotiate for to support their probationary period. To demystify this part of the hidden curriculum, we discuss the components of start-up packages and other benefits that may be provided to new faculty at the time of hire. We focus on five broad topics: compensation and personal support, general support, research support, teaching support, and service and professional development. Drawing on the results of a survey of tenure-track assistant political science professors in the United States, we also provide an overview of the prevalence of a variety of items at different types of institutions and discuss other considerations in the negotiation process to close the knowledge gap for candidates during negotiations.

The misalignment of goals among researchers, external organizational partners (OPs), and study participants is thought to pose a challenge to the successful implementation of collaborative research projects. However, the goals of different collaborative team members almost never are elicited, making identification of misalignment and its potential consequences a difficult task. In this evaluation of a United Nations Nonviolent Communication Program conducted in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka, I collected qualitative and quantitative data on OPs’ and study participants’ expected program impacts. I find that there are differences in OP and participant goals and that misalignment appears to bear some responsibility for participant dissatisfaction with the program. I also observe evidence that as the program progressed, participants’ expected program impacts began to more closely approximate those of the OPs. I conclude with thoughts on the benefits of explicitly measuring research team goals and expectations and addressing their misalignment.

Graduate students are primarily socialized into the political science profession in departments, with networks of peers and informal mentors providing crucial sources of support. This article describes one model of departmental professional socialization that the authors have led—the Graduate Student Caucus—which can improve graduate students’ day-to-day lived experiences. In this model, a small cross-cohort group of students is elected for a year-long term to develop professional and social programming for graduate students and to assist them in navigating university bureaucracy, teaching and research responsibilities, and the job market. The Caucus also regularly compiles and presents student concerns to their department administrators to steer the program’s direction. We describe the structure of the Caucus and its activities to highlight the benefits of this model and its adaptability to other institutional settings. Governance mechanisms like a Caucus cultivate trust, boost confidence, and demystify the “hidden curriculum” in the profession.

Although ethnographic methods have yielded important insights into the inner workings of many political institutions, their use in the study of institutions engaged in national security policy making and practice has been more limited. Common features of security institutions raise methodological and ethical concerns for participant observers: they are hard to access, handle classified information, and their proximity to the use of violence creates challenges for researchers who adopt critical perspectives toward the framing and practice of national security. This article reflects on how critical ethnographers might respond to these challenges, drawing on experiences from a 14-month ethnographically influenced study of UK government departments involved in national security policy making. I argue that even though questions of informed consent and avoiding harm are complicated by the core functions of security institutions and their cultures of busyness and secrecy, navigating these tensions can itself generate useful ethnographic insights into institutional cultures.

How can scholars conduct field research when there is limited access to the field? This article first identifies how limited and uncertain field access can affect field research and then provides recommendations to address these challenges. We focus on conducting field research in Japan because of our substantive expertise, but we believe that the problems and solutions outlined in this article are applicable to a broad range of countries. Our hope is that this article contributes to the developing literature on conducting research during times of emergency and to the larger literature on best practices for field research.