In every modern political system, power is shared to a greater or lesser extent between levels of government. These power sharing arrangements are perhaps most explicit in formal federal systems like the United States and Canada, where federal constitutions define the relative powers of central and subnational governments. They may be no less important, however, in unitary democracies and even authoritarian regimes where central governments require local actors to implement policy on the ground and often delegate significant authority to them. Indeed, in any large and complex modern society, effective governance requires some sharing of power between higher levels of government, capable of coordinating many disparate actors and interests, and lower levels of government, capable of responding to local conditions.

Community engagement through service learning has become well institutionalized in American education, yet there has been considerable debate over its effectiveness, especially with regard to its impact on explicitly political engagement. While participation in community service and volunteerism clearly has a positive impact on the propensity of young people to dedicate themselves to further service, the evidence of the effects of service on political engagement is, at best, mixed.

There often exists a problematic gap between more theoretical works on war-to-peace transitions, and the practical challenges that peacebuilding operations face in the field. This article describes the use of classroom simulation to highlight the complexity of contemporary multilateral peace operations. It describes the content and mechanics of the simulation, the issues that can arise in its operation, and strategies for most effectively integrating such a simulation into overall course objectives.

I spent the 2004–2005 academic year in France, culminating with the May 29th referendum on the European Union constitutional treaty. Fifty-five percent of voters rejected it. Three days later, 62% of Dutch voters followed suit. These were unexpected results, especially in France, a country where 80% declare themselves in favor of European integration. In other member states, a simple rule generally applies: those whose priority is to strengthen the EU are on the “yes” side, while the “no” is identified with those who emphasize national interests. In the Netherlands, though the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic radical was a factor, the “no” forces won essentially because they persuaded enough people that the direction the Constitution would take the Netherlands went against Dutch interests. To do so, they played on the resentment that Brussels took their money but ignored Dutch concerns—“the same people who fooled you with the euro are fooling you now with this constitution.”

This study used a sample of 467 middle and high school students (Mage = 15.26) from a mid-Atlantic state. Structural equation models controlling for demographic variables (age, gender, and parents’ education) examined associations between three developing sociopolitical values (spiritualty, patriotism, and authoritarianism) and adolescents’ social and moral judgments (obligation and social praise) concerning four civic activities (community service, standard political involvement, social movement, and community gathering). Spirituality was associated with judgments for community service and community gathering involvement while authoritarian values were associated with the prioritization of all forms of civic activity. Multigroup analyses indicated that associations between authoritarianism and both community service and social movement judgments were stronger for younger adolescents while spirituality was more strongly associated with community service judgments for older adolescents. Patriotic beliefs were associated with civic judgments for children of college-educated parents, but not children of noncollege-educated parents.

Online learning in postsecondary institutions has increased dramatically across the United States and Canada. Although research demonstrates the benefits of online learning for student success, instructors face challenges in facilitating communication, delivering course content, and navigating outdated and cumbersome technologies. The authors examine the use of a free third-party platform called Slack as a tool to facilitate better communication among students and faculty, enable the delivery of diverse and dynamic course content, and reach students in an online course that supports both independent and collaborative learning. The authors present a case study of Slack’s use in an online second-year environmental politics course taught at a large Canadian public university. There is a significant and growing literature on how to best engage students in online learning, including active and social learning models as promising approaches to digital teaching. The authors argue that using collaborative social technologies such as Slack—which both replicates and integrates the online and social-media environments that students already inhabit—can assist faculty in meeting their pedagogical goals online. The article documents the instructors’ experience in managing discussion and involving students in their online learning through active learning exercises. Best practices are examined.

In the summer of 2010, 52 Republican members of the US House of Representatives joined the newly formed Tea Party Caucus, bringing the first institutional voice to the Tea Party movement. To understand both the policy orientations of the organized Tea Party (in its caucus manifestation) and the institutional strength of the caucus's membership, we assess the extent to which caucus members are distinctive from their fellow Republicans in the US House of Representatives. Our results suggest that membership in the caucus is primarily driven by ideology and economics. Specifically, we find that Tea Party Caucus members are Republicans who are ideologically oriented toward limited government and lower taxes and who hail from particularly prosperous congressional districts. We find no evidence that Tea Party Caucus members serve safer districts or have greater seniority or institutional stature than their Republican colleagues who are not members of the caucus. These findings, we believe, speak not only to the nature and orientations of the Tea Party Caucus, but to the wider Tea Party movement itself.

It is important to take stock of the status of women in the profession because the integration of women into the professional ranks of political science achieves two important goals: first, it opens the profession to the very best political scientists without regard to gender; second, it enables the profession to take account of the contributions of women to politics and so keeps the profession on the cutting edge of new gender-related research.

The September PS symposium addresses the uses and abuses of political science data, and the rules or standards, if any, the profession should adopt to preserve the integrity of political science research and to advance knowledge. The ability to verify research findings by reanalyzing original data or to replicate findings by analyzing new, independently collected data has been the focus of debate among political scientists since Gary King distributed his initial version of “Replication, Replication” in 1992. The PS verification/replication symposium is the latest but most public round of the ongoing debate.

The arrival of Hurricane Sandy within a week of the 2012 presidential election caused unprecedented disruption to the final days of the campaign and Election Day in areas that were affected. The precise impact of the storm on those areas hit hardest was not necessarily clear. Contrary to prior research on the effect of disasters on electoral outcomes, we find that the president's vote share was ultimately increased in storm-affected areas by about four percentage points, plus or minus two points. While those states most heavily affected were unlikely to give their electoral vote to Romney because of other factors, we present counterfactual analyses that show that such a storm could have had a significant impact on swing states: although the storm only affected some areas, we show that Virginia would likely have been won by Romney were it not hit at all, whereas North Carolina would likely have gone for Obama had it been directly in the storm's path.

Many political science students struggle in quantitative methods courses because they have never been taught how to learn math. Learning math is different from learning in other fields, so the techniques students have used successfully in other classes are inappropriate in mathematically oriented classes. However, most students have never been told this, so they blame their difficulty with math on the impenetrability of the subject rather than tactical studying errors. This brief article discusses some of the reasons that common studying techniques do not work in quantitative methodology classes, and discusses some simple techniques to help students develop learning habits that are better suited to quantitative courses.

To what extent do political cartoonists use popular culture references to make sense of political culture? Seeing images in 2004, depicting Vice President Dick Cheney as Darth Vader from Star Wars, John Edwards as the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, and John Kerry as Frankenstein's monster, it is clear that some editorial cartoonists make connections between our popular culture and our political culture. Why, and with what possible consequences?

This article describes the current debate on the practice of preregistration in political science—that is, publicly releasing a research design before observing outcome data. The case in favor of preregistration maintains that it can restrain four potential causes of publication bias, clearly distinguish deductive and inductive studies, add transparency regarding a researcher’s motivation, and liberate researchers who may be pressured to find specific results. Concerns about preregistration maintain that it is less suitable for the study of historical data, could reduce data exploration, may not allow for contextual problems that emerge in field research, and may increase the difficulty of finding true positive results. This article makes the case that these concerns can be addressed in preregistered studies, and it offers advice to those who would like to pursue study registration in their own work.