Interactive visualizations are used widely in the natural sciences to facilitate discovery in “big-data” research. This article introduces a project that applies the same data-driven discovery approach to politics. Lawmaking is a complex process that can be difficult to convey in a constructive way, whether the audience is the general public, students, or researchers. Legislative Explorer (available at http://www.legex.org) visualizes the progress of more than 250,000 congressional bills and resolutions introduced since 1973. Users of all abilities can engage with actual data to discover how bills become law. Filters designed by domain experts guide them toward key insights. It is our hope that Legislative Explorer promotes greater understanding of a much-maligned institution.

With the prevalence and accessibility of film today, we must wonder how film affects its audience. In particular, how does film influence an audience’s perceptions of the government? Regardless of the content, research demonstrates that film has the power to shape perceptions of its moviegoers on a range of subjects. In this study, two recent films, Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, were chosen as case studies to explore how Hollywood portrays the intelligence community in film and shapes opinions about the government more broadly. This research found that about 25% of viewers of the two films changed their opinion about the government after watching one of the movies. Additionally, many of those changes are reflected in an improvement in the sentiments about the government and its institutions. This exploratory research provokes interesting discussions about the ability of film to influence the perceptions of an audience.

The digital revolution has made it easier for political scientists to share and access high-quality research online. However, many articles are stored in proprietary databases that some institutions cannot afford. High-quality, peer-reviewed, top-tier journal articles that have been made open access (OA) (i.e., freely available online) theoretically should be accessed and cited more easily than articles of similar quality that are available only to paying customers. Research into the efficacy of OA publishing thus far has focused mainly on the natural sciences, and the results have been mixed. Because OA has not been as widely adopted in the social sciences, disciplines such as political science have received little attention in the OA research. In this article, we seek to determine the efficacy of OA in political science. Our primary hypothesis is that OA articles will be cited at higher rates than articles that are toll access (TA), which means available only to paying customers. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the mean citation rates of OA and TA articles from eight top-ranked political science journals. We find that OA publication results in a clear citation advantage in political science publishing.

Based on a recent survey of political science professors in the United States, women tend to win teaching awards at higher rates than their male counterparts. This may seem like good news for female faculty, particularly amid continuing reports of gender gaps in publications and citations as well as the “leaky pipeline” phenomenon within promotions. However, a closer look at these findings suggests that in cases in which such awards might be most beneficial to women, they are less likely than their male colleagues to receive such acknowledgments. In fact, women are more likely than men to receive these awards only in institutional contexts in which research output is more important for tenure and promotion than teaching. Thus, the achievement of teaching excellence may have an overall negative impact on the advancement of female faculty by reducing their time and focus available for research.

Given the growth of international studies (IS) programs and the reciprocal relationship between political science and IS, this article explores perceptions of IS among political science department chairs. We found that the relationship between political science departments and IS programs is largely positive—that is, a majority of chairs supports the existence of IS at their institution, believes the job prospects for political science and IS majors are about equal, and perceives a low level of financial competition between programs. However, we discovered two points of contention: (1) the perception of lower academic rigor of IS programs, and (2) a high level of competition for majors and the “best students.” Perceptions of IS programs are related to a host of factors, including whether a program is housed within the political science department. Finally, we provide suggestions for improving the relationship between political science and IS.

Despite positive findings, small-group activities continue to lag behind lectures in political science classrooms. This article argues that one barrier to wider adoption of more innovative activities is uncertainty about how to efficiently and fairly create teams that each are heterogeneous and as a set are balanced across relevant characteristics. We first describe recent findings and strategies for creating teams; we then detail our concrete, general approach for incorporating several student characteristics into team creation. We then describe implementations of this approach using freely available software in two undergraduate political science courses—one in American politics and one in political methodology. In these applications and in a variety of simulated data, we demonstrate that teams created using our method are better balanced than those created by randomly allocating students to teams.

This article describes guidelines for assignments designed to build and improve policy-oriented writing skills of college students. Based on our experiences as Franklin Fellows at the United States Department of State, we developed strategies for teaching writing skills that are transferable to the workplace. The pedagogical approaches highlighted in this article will equip students with the analytical and writing abilities needed in a variety of employment situations. First, we offer insights into the qualities that we believe are important for success in a policy-oriented work environment. Second, we link those skills to the challenges and gaps that students face. Third, we propose assignments that can address those gaps.

One of the challenges of teaching American undergraduates in an “Introduction to International Relations” course is finding a way to make topics and themes seem relevant to students. This article recounts the author’s experiences using the board game “Diplomacy” in his course. The game places students in the role of decision makers in the international arena and simulates the international politics of pre-World War I Europe. In addition to being a powerful simulation of the difficulties of international relations, the game teaches students about one of the most debated wars in the history of the discipline.

The ideal of the “democratic classroom” has been discussed in educational circles for several years. This article answers the question of whether there are specific advantages to be derived from a democratization of the political science classroom, especially one in which democracy itself is a focus of study. Can giving students more power over course content enhance their understanding of democratic authority and process? The author approached these questions by adding several “democratizing” elements to a seminar course, most notably a “democratic syllabus” in which students determined discussion topics, led class sessions, and submitted work of their own choosing. Student surveys and the author’s reflection suggest that the democratic syllabus was a success in terms of the classroom dynamics that it engendered and the thinking about democratic politics and citizenship that it encouraged. Both students and professor agreed that the democratic syllabus presented challenges that should be considered by anyone thinking about creating or modifying a course on this model. Yet this article argues that many political science courses would benefit from similar endeavors in classroom democratization.

The use of both tablet devices and social media is increasingly popular among the American public. With this in mind, this article discusses our use of the technologies in a course about the 2012 US election campaign. We provided all students in our course with an iPad, created a private Facebook group, and devised a variety of approaches for integrating the technologies into the course. Surveys at the beginning and the end of the course showed that students frequently used their iPad for political and instructional purposes and that their self-confidence in using tablet devices, apps, and social media for political purposes increased during the semester. Open-ended responses and our own observations also suggest that use of the technologies fostered active online conversations about course material. In particular, use of the iPad and the Facebook group in combination during in-class video screenings, guest speakers, and debates facilitated lively, creative interactions among students and between students and instructors.

This essay consists of idiosynratic reflections on research methodology based on a long career.