Studying Asian-American politics with public opinion data is a relatively new phenomenon. Only in the last decade have a number of surveys (collected mostly at the local or regional level) been taken, reflecting expanded interest in the growing Asian-American population and the development of ethnic sampling and interviewing techniques.In this article, the terms “Asian” and “Asian American” are used interchangeably. While most research on Asian-American political behavior focuses on voting, some work examines other forms of political participation. Recent scholarship concerns not only individual characteristics, but also contextual and institutional factors.

Immediately after the 2004 election, with overwhelming majorities in 13 states voting to amend their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage and exit polls showing large numbers saying “moral values” were the most important determinant of their vote, many analysts emphasized religious and cultural divides in the electorate and the importance of the religious right and same-sex marriage in motivating President George W. Bush's base to get out and vote (e.g., Chinni 2004; Cooperman and Edsall 2004; Dao 2004; Manly 2004; McGough 2004; Testa 2004). With more analysis, the consensus seems to have shifted to an emphasis on incumbency, terrorism, and perceptions of character. Both voter turnout and support for Bush rose across a wide array of groups; evangelical Protestants and voters in states with same-sex marriage amendments on the ballot did not disproportionately increase their numbers or their preference for Bush; white women, married women, and Latinos may have played a bigger role in the shift toward Bush (e.g., Abramowitz 2004; Burden 2004; Freedman 2004; Nordhaus 2004; Sherrill 2004; Signorile 2004).

In the 2000 elections, women continued their slow advance into the halls of political power. Today women constitute 13.6% of the House of Representatives, 13% of the Senate, and 22.3% of state legislatures (Center for American Women and Politics 2000). The underrepresentation of women in politics has provoked concern from media commentators, political activists, and feminist scholars who believe that there is a connection between descriptive representation—being a woman—and substantive representation, the advocacy of women's interests (Mansbridge 1999; Phillips 1995; Pitkin 1967; Sapiro 1981). Predictions of the magnitude of women's impact on the policy process span a wide range. The pressure of frequent elections suggests that all representatives, regardless of gender, will zealously advocate the interests of their constituencies. On the other hand, it is possible that female legislators will devote special attention to the interests of women, children, and families. Additionally, women may exhibit a different style of leadership that will have consequences for the very process by which public policy is made. In this essay, I review the evidence concerning the nature of the policy impact of electing women and I suggest directions for future research.

Scholars have used cultural theory (CT) to explain risk perceptions and opinion formation across an impressive array of public issues, ranging from environmental, regulatory, and energy policy to public health and economics. Although disparate, all these issues concern domestic policies. This article breaks with this trend by exploring the extent to which CT can help scholars better understand public beliefs about national security. Of critical importance in debates about national security are perceptions of individual versus collective threat and the appropriate role of authoritative institutions in protecting society from these threats. Because CT provides a framework that explicitly addresses these dimensions, national security issues provide an illuminating canvas for evaluating the theory's explanatory utility.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, a group of social scientists at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) gathered to consider how they might employ their talents to help the country after the shocking events of that morning. The group included economists, political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, demographers, and survey methodologists. Based upon their previous research experience, each of them proposed hypotheses on aspects of American life and individuals' morale and behavior that were most likely to be affected. While they were relatively confident about expected relationships in the short term, we were uncertain about how temporary or permanent these changes might be or how intertwined and mutually reinforcing they could become.

In political science, urban politics is a well-established subfield. And more recently, suburban political behavior has received a fair amount of attention (Gainsborough 2001; 2005; McKee and Shaw 2003; Oliver 2001). But with a few exceptions (see Francia and Baumgartner 2005–2006; Gimpel and Karnes 2006), the political behavior of rural residents has been conspicuously absent thus far in a growing literature on the political role of place. This is quite surprising given the clamoring in the popular press about “red states” versus “blue states” in the most recent presidential contests. All of the post-presidential election maps that highlight red Republican counties and blue Democratic counties display a sea of red covering the vast swaths of rural, middle America. The ocean of Republican red is enough to make one ask: What's the Matter with Kansas? (Frank 2004)—one of those thinly populated plains states with hardly a glimmer of blue on a county-level map of the 2004 presidential election.

Prior research in political science and other disciplines demonstrates the pedagogical and practical benefits of active learning. Less is known, however, about the extent to which active learning is used in political science classrooms. This study assesses the prioritization of active learning in “gateway” political science courses, paying specific attention to simulations, structured debates, and the case method. Nearly five hundred individual course syllabi for introductory-level political science courses are examined. Although the level of active learning prioritization is surprisingly low, the dimensions on which it varies suggest opportunities for adoption across subfields and classes of varying size.

Throughout the twentieth century, American scholars and political pundits have argued that the survival of democratic political institutions and an ethic of concern for the welfare of others in the political community depended on ensuring all citizens received a high-quality civic education. Despite repeated efforts to act on this concern, empirical evidence suggests that a substantial number of Americans continue to be ignorant of how best to express their political demands, lack essential factual knowledge about political institutions and policies, and fail to acquire more information about politics and policy (Barber and Battistoni 1993, 235; Battistoni 1985).

Recently, service learning has been put forward as a means for increasing students' limited knowledge about democratic politics and general sense of civic responsibility. Service learning is a form of experiential education that combines structured opportunities for learning academic skills, reflection on the normative dimensions of civic life, and experiential activity that addresses community needs or assists individuals, families, and communities in need (Eyler and Giles 1999, 3-5; Gray et al. 1999, 4-5, 7-8; Jacoby 1996, 5-10). Many proponents of service learning argue that it provides experiences that can change students' frame of reference for or perspective on people and their problems; leads students to see links between theory and practice; teaches students social problem-solving techniques, interpersonal skills, and critical thinking; provides students with education in citizenship; engages the school as well as the student in democratic governance; and involves schools “sympathetically and productively” with the communities they serve (Eyler and Giles 1999, 7-19, 23-163; Gray et al. 1999, 1-2).

In the wake of the 2008 election, disgruntled conservatives organized opposition to President Obama's policies under a new movement dubbed the Tea Party. As an emerging force in American politics, we seek to understand who supports the Tea Party and the political attitudes these individuals hold. Using a nationally representative survey of respondents during the 2010 midterm elections, we examine whether the emerging narrative surrounding the Tea Party is accurate. The survey included a novel embedded experiment designed to investigate claims that animosity toward racial minorities drives Tea Party opposition to welfare. We find support for the contention that the Tea Party is predominately white, male, conservative, and strongly opposed to tax increases. Tea Party supporters, however, are not simply libertarians. In spite of appeals to freedom and liberty common in Tea Party rhetoric, a strong authoritarian pulse exists among its most ardent supporters. Furthermore, although we find evidence that racial resentment colors Tea Party members' judgments about government aid to the poor, racial animus does not appear to be the primary force behind their opposition to government aid. Lastly, we uncover some evidence of heterogeneity within the movement, with a small minority of Tea Party supporters voicing less-extreme political attitudes and evincing a rejection of negative racial stereotypes.

The relationship between sex and political behavior has been discussed only in passing in the political science literature, if it is discussed at all. There has been little evidence from the 1940s to the 1970s that gender plays a role in determining issue positions, candidate evaluations, or candidate preference, as a quick perusal of some well-read political science works would confirm.

Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee in Voting, the seminal work on opinion formation in a presidential campaign, discovered no relationship between vote preference and sex. The researchers did discover a difference in reported interest in the 1948 campaign between men and women early in the campaign, but even that difference faded as the election drew near.

Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes in The American Voter make no mention of either the existence or non-existence of sex difference in policy or candidate preference. They focus instead on differences in turnout, involvement and efficacy. Although they suggest that at one time opinions about Prohibition may have separated men from women, the authors conclude, “In the current era, there is no reason to believe that women as women are differentially attracted to one of the political parties.”

Pomper in Voters' Choice does find a relationship between sex and one issue dimension–the dimension of war and peace. But Pomper, Campbell and Berelson agree that any sex differences cannot, by definition, be long-lasting. Berelson cites the lack of differentiation in the way policies affect the sexes, the lack of differences in intergenerational transmission, and the lack of segregation between the sexes.

The Los Angeles rebellion of 1992 was a flashpoint in which the struggles of blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans converged with explosive consequences. Dubbed the nation's first “multiracial” riot, it drove home the point that racial dynamics in the United States cannot be understood through a simple black–white framework. The events in L.A. were only the most dramatic example of interminority conflicts that have emerged in many American cities during the post-1965 era, as economic restructuring and immigration have brought racial/ethnic groups into more extensive contact with one another, reshaping their identities and relationships and creating new pressure points for conflict. Rapid economic and demographic change has also opened up new possibilities for coalition and cooperation among racial/ethnic groups, from electoral politics to grassroots community activism. Asian Americans, often depicted as an “interstitial” group and a potential “swing vote,” have played and will continue to play a key role in interracial conflicts and coalitions in American politics.Although we focus on the post-1965 period in this article, conflict and cooperation between Asian Americans and other communities of color date back into the 1800s.

Observers of American life have seen a silver lining in the dark clouds that billowed from the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Along with the horror wrought by the terrorist attacks came an outpouring of solidarity and patriotism—a sudden change of heart for many Americans who, prior to that fateful day, had seemed to be drifting inexorably toward individualism, self-absorption, and cynical disinterest in public affairs. As Stanley Greenberg (2001) aptly puts it, suddenly the “we” mattered more than the “me.” People reached out to family members, neighbors, and friends, while proudly declaring their membership in the American national community.

I show herein how to write a publishable paper by beginning with the replication of a published article. This strategy seems to work well for class projects in producing papers that ultimately get published, helping to professionalize students into the discipline, and teaching the scientific norms of the free exchange of academic information. I begin by briefly revisiting the prominent debate on replication our discipline had a decade ago and some of the progress made in data sharing since.My deepest appreciation goes, in addition to my students, to the numerous scholars who have cheerfully, and in some cases repeatedly, responded to my students' queries over many years. Thanks also to the National Institutes of Aging (P01 AG17625-01) and the National Science Foundation (SES-0318275, IIS-9874747) for research support.

The confluences of global flows, by forming new spaces and entanglements of possibilities, have a mutating effect on citizenship. In an ever-shifting landscape configured by mobilities and positionalities, the idea of citizenship tied to the terrain and imagination of a nation-state (Anderson [1983] 1991) is called into question. In theory, citizenship as protected entitlements depends on membership in a nation-state. But increasingly in practice, entitlements and benefits are realized through specific mobilizations and claims in milieus of globalized contingency. The movements of global markets, technologies, and populations interact to shape novel spaces of political mobilization and claims. As rights and protections long associated with citizenship are becoming disarticulated from the state, they are re-articulated with elements such as market-based interests, transnational agencies, mobile elites, and marginialized populations.

Professional journals are central in our professional lives. They are a primary means of communicating new ideas and research findings to other political scientists, and hence help record, however haltingly, our collective progress in understanding the political world. In a business where one's academic contribution is frequently taken as a tally of publications, the journals also function as an important instrument of professional advancement. Counts of vitae entries, however, seem to be generally weighted by judgements of quality; but the quality assessed quite often appears to be of the journal in which an article appears rather than the quality of the specific article. It is interesting therefore, and perhaps prudent to consider how the community of political scientists evaluate the journals in which we publish. This short note presents some data on this question.

Our data were gathered from questionnaires mailed in April 1974 to a sample of 515 political scientists affiliated with Ph.D. granting institutions. The number of usable returned questionnaires is 255 for a response rate of 50 percent. Respondents were asked to rate 63 journals presented alphabetically with additional space provided for the rating of journals not included on the list. The respondents were instructed to rate each journal in terms of the general quality of its articles. The rating scale ranged from 0 to 10 with 0 = poor, 2 = fair, 4 = adequate, 6 = good, 8 = very good, and 10 = outstanding. Respondents were asked only to rate those journals with which they were familiar. In addition to the ratings, information was also gathered on the age, academic rank, academic affiliation, graduate school, recent journal publication information, and areas of professional interest of the respondents.

As an abstract idea, openness is difficult to oppose. Social scientists from every research tradition agree that scholars cannot just assert their conclusions, but must also share their evidentiary basis and explain how they were reached. Yet practice has not always followed this principle. Most forms of qualitative empirical inquiry have taken a minimalist approach to openness, providing only limited information about the research process, and little or no access to the data underpinning findings. What scholars do when conducting research, how they generate data, and how they make interpretations or draw inferences on the basis of those data, are rarely addressed at length in their published research. Even in book-length monographs which have an extended preface and footnotes, it can sometimes take considerable detective work to piece together a picture of how authors arrived at their conclusions.