Excitement about the political science job market builds around the time of the Labor Day Annual Meeting of the APSA, when schools start to post their openings for the next year. As we entered the job market, we found ourselves repeatedly collecting information about available positions as we prepared application materials. We monitored APSA's eJobs website, cut and pasted relevant job information into a single spreadsheet, and assembled letters using that information. Here, we introduce free and open-source tools to automate these data collection and letter generation procedures using R and LaTeX. Our system minimizes manual data entry by extracting and creating a spreadsheet from APSA's eJobs information. We walk applicants through the initial job search steps, including using eJobs, compiling position information, and producing attractive letters.

Local elections in the past four decades have provided valuable data for political scientists to test various hypotheses concerning racial relations in the United States. Past research has shown, for example, that the elections of African American candidates to powerful offices in urban America are closely related to the changing racial demographics of cities (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 2003). More specifically, racial polarization in a city's mayoral election tends to be at a maximum when whites and blacks each compose about 50% of the city's population. On the other hand, a biracial coalition between whites and blacks led by a charismatic black candidate is more likely to win elections when blacks become a clear majority of the city population (Liu and Vanderleeuw 2007). One remaining question that has increasingly drawn attention from scholars is the condition under which a multiracial coalition may be successfully formed.

In this article, I describe my work with Michigan State University undergraduates to produce the Michigan Policy Network, a web-based public service and research program that reports news and information about the political process surrounding Michigan state policy issues. The program empowers undergraduates to oversee website sections devoted to policy issue areas, each of which features background information, research, and current updates on government action, as well as regular blog posts, that aim to make the information accessible to a public audience. I explain how to inexpensively set up such a program and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. I evaluate the four different methods that I have used to integrate the policy network with traditional teaching: (1) working with students as an extracurricular activity, (2) organizing a summer program for government interns acting as researchers, (3) integrating network assignments with traditional homework in topical classes, and (4) teaching a separate class for freshman honors students. My experience suggests that students are motivated to complete work intended for a public audience and are well-equipped to translate government information for public readers. Working on the policy network improves student employment prospects and helps build connections between state government and the university. I recommend that similar programs be developed elsewhere.

Aage Clausen, professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Ohio State University, died in January 2011 at the age of 78. He was an extraordinary person who made major contributions as a scholar and teacher and he was a remarkable individual who was much beloved as a colleague and friend.

The political science discipline lost one of its sharpest intellects and many of us lost a cherished dear friend when George Rabinowitz passed away, on March 18, 2011. George's death was entirely unexpected. He suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in Trondheim, Norway, where he was on leave from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a research fellowship.

As James Madison would not hesitate to tell us, the scale of a polity or jurisdiction is one of the most basic factors organizing political life. By scale, I refer to the number of inhabitants (or, alternately, constituents or voters) in a political unit, although geographic size may also shape political behavior. Large jurisdictional scale implies that candidates for office must campaign in larger constituencies, necessitating more use of paid media, more fundraising effort, and professional campaign advice. To residents of large-scale polities, government often seems distant, remote, and bureaucratic, and the intercession of interest groups, lobbyists, or organized protest activity may be more necessary to access or influence public officials. In these and other ways, the incentives, constraints, and opportunities facing politicians and citizens alike tend to differ systematically depending on a jurisdiction's scale.

This article describes a local government budgeting simulation developed by the author and used in an undergraduate course on the politics and administration of local government budgets. The exercise allowed students to participate in a simulated budget process that provided them with firsthand experience in allocating scarce resources, making collective decisions, and considering the political implications of budget alternatives. The simulation activities also provided students with opportunities to practice their written and oral communication skills, as well as experience in developing arguments to support particular revenue or spending proposals.

The justification for studying faculty research productivity is that it affects individual advancement and reputation within academe, as well as departmental and institutional prestige (Creamer 1998, iii). Publication records are an important factor in faculty performance evaluations, research grant awards, and promotion and salary decisions. The phrase “publish or perish” encapsulates the importance of research productivity to academic careers. In addition, questions are sometimes raised about whether an individual's status as a minority within academia (e.g., being a member of an underrepresented ethnic or racial group or being female in a male-dominated profession) affects his or her ability to publish or likelihood of publishing (Cole and Zuckerman 1984; Bellas and Toutkoushian 1999). Finally, most previous work that tackles the productivity causality puzzle comes from disciplines other than political science. Thus, one of the purposes of this report is to explore whether the existing findings about research productivity in other disciplines apply equally well to research productivity in political science.

Reality television programming has become a pervasive part of popular culture. Although such programming may seem to be mindless entertainment, it can serve as a tool to introduce political lessons in the classroom. This article examines how the concepts of alliance behavior and strategic voting can be explored by using the television program Survivor. An analysis reveals that contestants often behave strategically when forming alliances and voting, in ways that are similar to the strategic behavior of nation-states and individuals residing in democracies, respectively. This article does not suggest that reading political science texts should be replaced with viewing reality television, but rather that instructors can introduce abstract concepts to undergraduate students through popular culture. Such a technique can spark students' interest in politics and demonstrate the broad relevance of political concepts, leaving students with the desire to delve more deeply into the investigation of political phenomena.

Simulations are useful tools in the classroom for an assortment of pedagogical reasons. I have devised a mock constitutional convention for use in introductory American government courses to better engage students and spur critical thinking about the U.S. Constitution. This article details the particulars of the simulation and its outcomes.

The financing of political campaigns has been extensively studied on both the national and state levels. With the advent of campaign contribution and expenditure databases, scholars have a wealth of data to use in examining the importance of money for electoral success, the influence of campaign contributions on legislative roll call voting, and the effects of campaign finance reforms. Much less research has been conducted on the local level, largely because of a lack of available data. Research on local campaign finance is necessary, however, because local governments are not just smaller versions of their state and federal counterparts, but rather have unique political and cultural institutions that create idiosyncratic electoral dynamics. Furthermore, variation across local jurisdictions generates opportunities to study campaign finance in different contexts, allowing for a deeper understanding of how contextual variables influence the role of money. In this article, I outline an agenda for local campaign finance research that addresses central questions in the campaign finance and urban politics literatures.

Robert E. Hawkinson died May 22, 2011 of an apparent heart attack at the age of 68. At the time of his death Prof. Hawkinson was Emeritus Dean of Campus Life/Associate Professor of Politics at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He was also Kaneko Faculty Commons Mentor, a position created as part of the Residential Commons system initiated by Prof. Hawkinson during his tenure as Campus Life Dean at Willamette. During his nearly thirty years at Willamette, Bob Hawkinson was a fixture on campus and one of the most revered educators, advisors, and mentors, reaching out to generations of students through his inspired teaching and committed dedication to the intellectual life of the university community. Although Bob was rewarded with emeritus status in 2009, he continued to teach in the Politics Department at Willamette for the remaining two years of his life.

The eighth annual APSA Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, February 11–13, 2011, with 226 attendees onsite. The theme for the meeting was “Making Sense of Politics and Political Science.” Using the working-group model, the TLC track format encourages in-depth discussion and debate on research dealing with the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The challenges of teaching introductory-level U.S. politics to reluctant audiences are well known and widely lamented. This article investigates the pedagogical potential of political satire, specifically The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in engaging students in this tough-to-teach course. Based on a review of available literature and student survey data from the fall 2008 term, I argue that using this popular program in the classroom can enhance an introductory U.S. politics course. A review of both these survey data and student papers based on the program suggests promising possibilities for encouraging students' political engagement and critical-thinking skills. This preliminary examination demonstrates that further study on the program's potential both for student engagement and student learning outcomes is warranted.

Scholars of political science often lament the difficulties associated with finding the most appropriate data to test theories about how the political world works. The study of local political participation and, more broadly, elections is certainly no stranger to this quandary. However, considering that the nearly 90,000 units of local government generally hold regular elections for a wide array of political offices, this field of study should offer an embarrassment of riches; we should never be at a loss for a way to examine the questions that are central to the functioning of democracy.

Dr. Peter Mair, Professor of Comparative Politics and Government at the EUI (Florence) has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, 15 August 2011, at the age of 60. He leaves behind his wife and 3 children. The political science community in Europe and beyond grieves this loss of an outstanding academic, journal editor and teacher. Peter Mair, born 3 March 1951, was a native of Ireland, a graduate of University College Dublin and enjoyed a distinguished academic career and was the author of a large number of books, chapters and articles on comparative and European politics and on party democracy in particular. It is a sad loss to European political science. He graduated in 1974 and began his career as an assistant professor at the University of Limerick. He subsequently lectured at the universities of Strathclyde and Manchester before moving to the European University Institute of Florence in 1979. He moved to the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1987 and was appointed professor of comparative politics in 1992. In 2005 he returned to Florence and was appointed head of the department of political and social sciences in 2007. Prof Mair specialised in the study of party and party systems and has written a number of books on the subject. He was co-author of Representative Government in Modern Europe, the fifth edition of which was published this year. He was also co-author of Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability, which was awarded the prestigious Stein Rokkan prize. Peter Mair served the comparative political science community by editorships of the internationally reputed European Journal of Political Science and of West European Politics. Peter was a person of great charm, a congenial colleague and always encouraging students. We grieve over his loss and sympathize with his family he left behind too early and too soon.

The majority of Ph.D. programs in political science in the United States provide some kind of teaching training for graduate students, which ranges from assisting other instructors to designing and teaching new courses. In most cases, departments make an effort to guide these students in their new role as instructors; however, first-time teachers whose first language is not English do not usually receive any special guidance on how to successfully address the challenge of communicating effectively with their students—an all-too-real problem for many foreign instructors. This article provides some basic tips for improving the communication process that develops in the classroom, and is particularly tailored for individuals whose first language is not English and who are about to take the first steps of their teaching careers.

G Bingham Powell's core intellectual contribution to the study of politics has been to help us understand fundamental normative tradeoffs that are inherent to institutional choice in democratic political systems. The tradeoffs involve dimensions of political performance of central concern in the discipline, including political violence, political participation, political representation, political accountability, and political stability. In offering innovative insights about these substantive topics, Powell's research has played a crucial role in shaping the subfield of comparative politics by offering important lessons about how to advance the study of democratic systems.

In 2004, 40 political scientists gathered in Washington, DC, to inaugurate the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC), which aimed to explore how we teach and how students learn best within the discipline. A common theme linking the active-based curriculum to political science over the past eight years has been the theory of experiential education. Over time, the vibrant conversation within this track has included community-based learning, service learning, civic engagement, community-based research, simulations, case studies, problem-based learning, and internships. The discourse has also shifted away from asking what civic engagement is and how we can integrate it into the curriculum toward questions such as:

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping declared that China's future depended on gaige kaifang (reform and opening up to the West). By any standard, China has reformed its economic system and prospered handsomely by integrating into the world economy. With less fanfare, China has taken steps to restructure its political system and committed substantial resources to harmonizing relations with its neighbors. Given these changes, China's insular tradition, and Communist government, this article considers how the country's reemergence has impacted the teaching of international relations (IR) at Chinese universities. Using primary and secondary sources, including university Web sites written in Chinese and English, and about a dozen semi-structured interviews conducted in Beijing and Xi'an, this study concludes that although China has become actively engaged in IR and the internationalization of universities is evident, the government has yet to endorse fully the importance of IR as a discipline, and universities have not systematically adopted the theoretical toolbox developed outside of China to describe, explain, and predict behavior in IR.