This article examines the ethics of crowdsourcing in social science research, with reference to my own experience using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. As these types of research tools become more common in scholarly work, we must acknowledge that many participants are not one-time respondents or even hobbyists. Many people work long hours completing surveys and other tasks for very low wages, relying on those incomes to meet their basic needs. I present my own experience of interviewing Mechanical Turk participants about their sources of income, and I offer recommendations to individual researchers, social science departments, and journal editors regarding the more ethical use of crowdsourcing.

In recent years, a growing chorus of voices in the political science discipline has become concerned with the balance among alternative methodological approaches in empirical research and publications. Accordingly, these scholars have issued a call to further develop and refine rigorous methods for qualitative studies, in contrast to studies that rely on quantitative methods and formal modeling (Bennett, Barth, and Rutherford 2003; Yanow 2003; George and Bennett 2005). My own interest and reason for conducting the following survey is rooted in the observation, even frustration, that the literature on qualitative research methods largely focuses on democratic and not on authoritarian regimes or the Middle East in particular. Research in the Middle East is clearly essential and has received increased attention since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, but given how critical this work is and will continue to be in coming years, what are the challenges? Do qualitative methodological tools need to be adapted for research in the Middle East? And, if so, how?The author would like to thank Anna Szczurk for her help in designing the survey and the contributors to the symposium and Melissa Gabler for their help in the research and writing of the article. The author also is grateful to the survey respondents for the time and effort they devoted to answering the questions.

Traditional writing assignments often fall short in addressing problems in college students' writing as too often these assignments fail to help students develop critical thinking skills and comprehension of course content. This article reports the use of a two-part (staged) writing assignment with postscript as a strategy for improving critical thinking in a lower-division political science course. We argue that through well-designed writing assignments, instructors can encourage students to reconsider concepts, critically evaluate assumptions, and undertake substantive revisions of their writing.

Few would dispute that religion has played a fundamental role in shaping our understanding of human relationships, including marriage, and what types of relationships are permitted. However, science, especially biology, has also played an important role in government regulation of marriage (Bittles and Neel 1994; Ottenheimer 1990; Dupuis 2002; Ellison 2004; Strasser 2002). A cursory overview of government regulations of marriage reveals laws that establish age requirements, necessitate testing for diseases, ban nuptials between individuals with biological relations, set limits on the number of spouses, and ban interracial marriage (miscegenation), among other things (Barlow and Probert 2004; Bratt 1984; Cott 2000; Micklos and Carlson 2000; Moran 2001; Ottenheimer 1990; Scott 2000). Certainly some of these policies reflect a religious based morality, but some, such as those that ban marriages between individuals within a family, also reflect a biological understanding of potential problems associated with the offspring of these couples (Bratt 1984; Ottenheimer 1990; Cott 2000; Micklos and Carlson 2000; St. Jean 1998; Scott 2000; Stoddard 2003).

The mission of the social sciences is to understand and ameliorate society’s greatest challenges. The data held by private companies, collected for different purposes, hold vast potential to further this mission. Yet, because of consumer privacy, trade secrets, proprietary content, and political sensitivities, these datasets are often inaccessible to scholars. We propose a novel organizational model to address these problems. We also report on the first partnership under this model, to study the incendiary issues surrounding the impact of social media on elections and democracy: Facebook provides (privacy-preserving) data access; eight ideologically and substantively diverse charitable foundations provide initial funding; an organization of academics we created, Social Science One, leads the project; and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard and the Social Science Research Council provide logistical help.

Recently, new electronic technologies have supplemented older mechanisms of communication between members of Congress and their constituents. These technologies have enhanced members' options for communication, both with constituents and other interested parties. This research examines member use of one specific electronic communication medium: Twitter. Using original data to examine patterns of use, two models predict the probability of a member adopting Twitter based on political, personal, and district-level variables.

The world is undergoing a process of structural transformation in multiple dimensions: technological, economic, cultural, and institutional. This creates as many opportunities as it induces perils. Perhaps the most fundamental problem we now face is the crisis of political institutions in charge of managing the transition. We know the problems, we understand the issues, and in many countries there is enough political will to tackle the questions to be addressed. However, the organizational and institutional tools of governance are either insufficient or inadequate. Furthermore, the crisis of governance is related to a crisis of political legitimacy, characterized by increasing distance between citizens and their representatives. Both crises feed into each other, threatening with political paralysis and opening the way both for authoritarian policies and for demagogic revolts.

Popular accounts of the 2016 presidential election attribute Donald Trump’s victory to the mobilization of angry white men seeking to restore traditional values and social roles. Whereas a majority of Trump voters were male, more than 40% of women who went to the polls on Election Day also supported him. This analysis explores the motivations of these women, asking how partisanship, demographics, and beliefs motivated their vote choice. We found that, although party affiliation was an important predictor of both women’s and men’s vote choice, sexism and racial resentment had a greater influence on voters of both genders. Moreover, the influence of these biases was similar for women and men.

At first glance, the outcome of the 2008 presidential election would appear to be very difficult to predict. For the first time in over 50 years, there will be no incumbent president or vice president in the race. Instead, the Republican Party, which has seen its popularity and electoral fortunes plummet since 2004, is pinning its hopes of retaining control of the White House on Arizona Senator John McCain—an individual who has frequently clashed with his own party's leadership. And McCain's Democratic opponent will be Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the first African American ever to receive a major-party presidential nomination.

The bounce in President Clinton's job ratings that occurred in the initial 10 days of the Lewinsky imbroglio may offer as much insight into the dynamics of public opinion as any single event in recent memory. What it shows is not just the power of a booming economy to buttress presidential popularity. It shows, more generally, the importance of political substance, as against media hype, in American politics. Even when, as occurred in this case, public opinion is initially responsive to media reports of scandal, the public's concern with actual political achievement reasserts itself. This lesson, which was not nearly so clear before the Lewinsky matter as it is now, not only deepens our understanding of American politics. It also tends, as I argue in the second half of this article, to undermine the importance of one large branch of public opinion research, buttress the importance of another, and point toward some new research questions.

Whatever else may have transpired by the time this article gets into print, the Lewinsky poll bounce is something worth pondering. In a half-dozen commercial polls taken in the period just before the story broke, Clinton's job approval rating averaged about 60%. Ten days later, following intensive coverage of the story and Clinton's State of the Union address, presidential support was about 10 percentage points higher.

In the provocatively titled Indoctrination U., David Horowitz argues that radical members of college faculties have “intruded a political agenda into the academic curriculum,” engaging in propaganda rather than scholarship and indoctrinating students rather than teaching them (Horowitz 2007, xi). Although allegations of liberal bias in academia are nothing new, the issue has gained increased attention as the result of efforts by Horowitz and the Center for the Study of the Popular Culture (CSPC) to promote the Academic Bill of Rights for American colleges and universities.

Introduction

The Internet has recently become an important part of the democratic process (Firestone and Corrado 1996; Kamarck and Nye 1999; Rash 1997; Wilhelm 2000). It was only a matter of time until democracy and politics entered the digital world, and now we are moving toward holding elections over the Internet. A major step in this direction took place early in the 2000 presidential election when the Arizona Democratic primary offered the first binding Internet election for public office (Alvarez and Nagler 2000; Solop 2000).

Economists and political observers in recent years have bemoaned the decline of American competitiveness in traditional industries such as steel, automobiles, and textiles. Some of these observers worry that the U.S. economy will increasingly be dominated by service industries. At least one service industry in the United States does appear to be growing and thriving, despite some very adverse economic circumstances. That industry is the non-profit public policy research industry, more commonly known as “think tanks.” The think tank universe has become much more diverse over the past decade, reflecting both new entrants into the marketplace of ideas and changes in these organizations' environment. There are, moreover, inherent tensions in any of the three main models (“university without students,” contract researcher, and advocacy tank) that think tanks may pursue. Attempting to mix the models can be difficult too.

These tensions and environmental changes have created tremendous uncertainty, but also some entrepreneurial opportunities, for think tank managers. Increasingly, these managers must be concerned with finding a viable niche in a crowded, fragmented market. And they must do so while dealing with staffs who may be resistant not only to specific courses of change, but also to external direction of any sort.

How well are women authors represented in the most-recognized journals in political science? To what degree does the presence of women authors mirror women's presence in the discipline? Although a few studies have sought to provide data on the presence of women authors in political science journals (Young 1995; Kelly et al. 1994), more recent work on the visibility of women in the discipline has focused on gender and authorship of edited volumes (Mathews and Andersen 2001), on the participation of women in the APSA annual meetings (e.g., Gruberg 2006; 2004), and on the status of women in the discipline (Sarkees and McGlen 1992; 1999; Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession 2001). All are useful endeavors. This paper analyzes the presence of women authors in six volume years (1999–2004) of eight prestigious political science journals—American Political Science Review (APSR), American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), Journal of Politics (JOP), World Politics (WP), International Organization (IO), Comparative Politics (CP), Comparative Political Studies (CPS), and International Studies Quarterly (ISQ).

This article looks at changes in the size of American news audiences during the 1990–91 Persian Gulf Crisis and the more recent period surrounding the 9/11 attacks. Like the current situation, the Persian Gulf crisis started suddenly, when Iraq launched a surprise invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Since there are clear starting points for both national crises, comparing the percentage of adults watching television news broadcasts before and after each precipitating event should show whether the respective crises prompted changes in levels of popular attention to the news.

While not the worst of political pathologies, corruption is the one most likely to be found thriving in electoral democracies. Not as dangerous as war, nor as urgent as terrorism, some have even argued that the little bit of corruption that comes with democracies makes them work better—by lowering transaction costs, reducing the inefficiencies of cumbersome rules, and generally making things happen (Anechiarico and Jacobs 1996; see also Leys 1965; Huntington 1968).This article draws on Warren (2004).

On Sunday, October 10th, 2004, the New York Times Magazine featured an article with the cover title, “Really, What Does He Think? John Kerry and the Post-9/11 World” (Bai 2004). On the cover of the magazine was a serious-looking photo of Senator Kerry, superimposed with keywords such as “Terrorism,” “Iraq,” “Al Qaeda,” “Multilateralism,” “Nuclear proliferation,” and so on. While the article itself was intriguing, even more intriguing was the magazine's attempt to capture Kerry's core ideas on American national security with the use of keyword graphics—namely, the keywords on the cover, placed in what appeared to be a random order around the photo of Kerry, and the underlining of “John Kerry,” “terrorism,” and “Americans” in the inside title. Catchy graphics, but hardly an accurate depiction of the keywords that might actually represent Kerry's thinking on American national security. And, for all the comparison made in the article itself with President Bush's stance on national security, where were the graphics for George W.? (They did not emerge in the next New York Times Magazine.) The magazine was, nonetheless, making an important point: that words (and the ideas they represent) are emotive—particularly in the highly charged climate of the 2004 presidential campaign.I am grateful for comments and suggestions from Andrew Bailey, Diane Maurice, David Mayhew, and Frances Rosenbluth. I am also grateful to the Georg Walter Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy (Yale Center for International and Area Studies) for funding that initiated this article, and to Mina Moshkeri (LSE Design Unit) for her assistance in preparing the graphs.