In recent decades, instructors have increasingly adopted the use of “serious” games in their classrooms. Typically, these games take the form of role-playing simulations or wargames. However, online computer-run games have opened up new possibilities: to explore complex conceptual relationships, to utilize and display asymmetric information, to be playable anywhere and by anyone, and more. This article describes the game, Dark Networks, and shows why this type of game is valuable as well as how it has been used for pedagogical gains.

Over two decades ago, anthropologist Gayle Rubin began a now-classic article with a deceptively simple declaration: “The time has come to think about sex” (1984). Although Rubin was not the first thinker to place sex at the center of her work, her systematic sketch of Western sexual ideology made it possible to think about the political ramifications of sex in new and productive ways by disentangling the physical acts of sex from gender and sexuality (i.e., how we understand, interpret, and ascribe meaning to those acts). Among her many useful insights was the recognition that sex and sexuality are part of a hierarchical value system that serves as the basis for other forms of social, economic, and political power. Sex is the starting point of all human life and, consequently, sexuality subtends all other institutions from marriage to families, communities, states, and international organizations. What Foucault (1978) called biopower—the regulation of bodies, including sex—has continued to change and expand, giving rise to new forms of biopolitics—the regulation of populations and sexuality. Such regulations include moral policing and criminal sanctions, biomedical intervention, family and immigration laws, and a host of other tools that have tended to establish heterosexuality as the only normal and sanctioned sexual behavior. Regulating sex, and particularly reproduction, is an essential objective of the state because, ultimately, sex and reproduction are key to how the state regulates the fundamental element of its own composition: citizenship.

Films used for political science instruction are typically political or historical and are selected to examine concepts developed by the filmmaker within the context of a curriculum. This approach may not be appropriate for introductory American government classes given students' weak foundation of political knowledge and lack of interest in politics. This article examines an alternative model of film use employing the seemingly nonpolitical film The Big Lebowski. Viewed early in the semester, the film highlights the ubiquitous presence of politics in society and government's relevance to everyday life. Clip montages of the movie characters were used to enhance discussion of the First Amendment, voter identification, social capital, and foreign policy throughout the semester.

Undergraduate research labs have long been recognized as having educational and professional benefits, but much less attention has been given to how they can promote diversity and inclusion. Without a conscientious effort to promote these goals, labs are likely to replicate and perpetuate existing inequalities. This article discusses our experiences and lessons from launching an undergraduate research lab in a political science department at a research-oriented state university. It concludes with suggestions for other departments interested in starting undergraduate research labs. Promoting diversity and inclusion by working with undergraduates is unlikely if faculty are recruiting students individually outside of a lab, if the burden is on students to approach faculty, or if labs do not take practical steps to make this happen.

Given the extraordinarily competitive academic job market in the United States, this article explores a relatively new prospect for American-trained political science PhD graduates: teaching at a foreign institution. The article proceeds in two parts. First, it discusses various benefits and challenges associated with working abroad. Second, it provides practical guidance for candidates considering the international job market.

This article highlights the contribution of randomized, quantitative sampling techniques to answering qualitative questions posed by the study. In short it asks: what qualitative insights do we derive from quantitative sampling processes? Rather than simply being a means to an end, I argue the sampling process itself generated data. More specifically, seeking out more than 220 geographically dispersed individuals, selected though a randomized cluster sample, resulted in the identification of relationship patterns, highlighted extant resistance-era hierarchies and patronage networks, as well as necessitated deeper, critical engagement with the sampling framework. While this discussion is focused on the study of former resistance members in Timor-Leste, these methodological insights are broadly relevant to researchers using mixed methods to study former combatants or other networked social movements.

Competitive elections are essential for democratic accountability, yet most US House of Representatives elections are uncompetitive. Using district-level data from 1982 to 2018, I examine the relationship between redistricting institutions and election competition. I extend the work of Carson, Crespin, and Williamson (2014) by separating independent and political commissions and find that, relative to legislative redistricting, independent commissions are 2.25 times more likely to have competitive elections, and they decrease incumbent party wins by 52%.

A major public university is located in or very near over half of American state capitals, and political science departments at these universities advertise the special advantages that such a location brings to their students. For example, the political science department of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln advertises its internship programs: “As Lincoln is the seat of state government, students have an opportunity to observe government in action. Political Science has a vibrant internship program where students may intern with the state legislature, the governor's office, and other agencies of state government. Internships are also available with local interest groups, non-profit agencies, corporations, and political parties” (University of Nebraska-Lincoln 2005). Such opportunities for students are meaningful, however, only if they have some significant effect on student learning or engagement. It is reasonable that colleges and universities would emphasize the advantages that their location in a state capital might offer; colleges use both their campus and their local community to appeal to students (Choy and Ottinger 1998). Yet there is scant research to confirm any of the effects that colleges advertise.An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2005 meeting of the American Political Science Association. The authors thank Lindsey Lupo, Charles Turner, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Politics are ubiquitous in social life, shaping all manner of interactions in so many spheres of human activity. From the playground to the retirement community, from the marketplace to the halls of government, from families to the global economy, we are constantly engaged in political struggles large and small. Political science, in turn, has long been fundamentally interdisciplinary, exchanging ideas, theories, data, and methods with fields from anthropology to zoology;mo;usb;mc; – and everything in between. As political science has become a more self-conscious discipline, it has simultaneously grown more aware of its intellectual debts and on-going contributions to cognate fields of study. The 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association will celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of political science and highlight new opportunities for intellectual exchange across disciplinary boundaries.

The need to recognize institutional limits on presidents' abilities to translate their campaign promises into concrete public policy is a central theme characterizing much of the presidency literature during the past decade (Barger, 1984; Cronin, 1980; Hinckley, 1985; Light, 1983). Scholars have argued that the so-called “text-book presidency” (Cronin, 1980) paints an unrealistic picture of presidential power within the confines of a Madisonian framework of separated powers and checks and balances. Others have said that this unrealistic vision has contributed to the “cult of the presidency” (Hinckley, 1985), which is reinforced by the political socialization process and the media, thus leading to the “no-win” (Light, 1983) or “impossible” (Barger, 1984) presidencies. The notion of a plural executive, whose powers are fragmented throughout our Madisonian system has grown in popularity (King and Ragsdale, 1988). As a part of their recommendations for reform, virtually all of these authors emphasize correctly the potential role to be played by educators in imparting a more realistic understanding of the limitations of presidential power and outlining the potential consequences of hero worshipping for the occupant of the Oval Office. This article suggests an approach to teaching the presidency that rejects the notion that the president is the most important actor in the American political system. Instead, I will argue that we need to ask our students to consider the President as one actor in a highly fragmented political system, and to develop a more realistic view of both the sources and uses of presidential power within the broader context of democratic accountability and the development of citizenship.

Reform sentiments are much in evidence on the American political scene as we approach the end of the century, and improving the way public opinion is represented in political institutions is often the major motivation of reformers. This is clear from the essays in this collection, from the activities of contemporary political elites, and from the mood of ordinary people. Gross dissatisfaction exists with the nature of representation perceived to be offered by the modern political system.

In the assembled critiques, the report of the APSA Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy is labeled simultaneously “dangerous quackery” and a “timid document.” Are we all reading the same report? At least when it comes to Stephen Earl Bennett's commentary (2006), probably not.

On December 12, 2000, for the first time in America's history a court of law determined the outcome of a presidential election. Before an anxious citizenry, the United States Supreme Court issued the decision that would ultimately give George W. Bush the presidency, if not absolute victory. Remarkably, the U.S. Supreme Court justices were not the only jurists pulled into the fray. In numerous lawsuits, several Florida state courts rendered decisions that figured prominently in the 2000 presidential election.

In the constitutional referendum held on October 26, 1992, Canadian voters said “No” to a constitutional package, the “Charlottetown Accord,” contrived explicitly to win pan-regional support. Instead, it evoked pan-regional opposition.

The package Canadians rejected was formidably complex. It became so by a decade's accretion of elements, each calculated to appeal to, or to offset concessions to, groups excluded at an earlier stage—Quebec, the western provinces, and aboriginal peoples. Negotiators hoped that by 1992 they had finally found an equilibrium, a logroll sufficiently inclusive to survive referral to the people. Instead they seem to have gotten the logic of the logroll upside down: they may have overestimated both how much each group wanted what it got and how intensely some groups opposed key concessions to others.

Quebec. At the heart of the package were proposals contrived to induce the political class of Quebec to acquiesce in the political settlement embodied in the Constitution Act, 1982. Although the government and legislature of Quebec had rejected the 1982 settlement, no one contested that it applied to the province. But many agreed, on grounds of either justice or expediency, that the pill had to be made less bitter. The first attempt to bring Quebec on side was the Meech Lake Accord, struck in 1987 and buried in 1990. The failure of this attempt was the immediate background to the 1992 events.