August 19, 2020, marks the centennial of ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of sex. The Nineteenth Amendment did not radically transform women’s political activism; rather, it was a product of women’s political activism. Women won the franchise in a 72-year battle fought at both the state and national levels. By the time the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, women had been voting for almost 50 years in localities where they already had secured the right to vote.1 The 100th anniversary is an opportune time to reflect on women’s continued involvement in politics.

Conflict, postconflict settings, and other risky research sites are important with wide-ranging policy implications. Microlevel, field-based research lends critical insights to how conflicts work and the mechanisms behind macrolevel correlations that underpin quantitative political science. This article identifies how the risks associated with conflict and postconflict contexts influence researchers’ choices by theorizing the existence of distinct adaptive strategies. Specifically, researchers facing elevated risk generally manage it through three main strategies: outsourcing risk, avoiding risk, and internalizing risk. We argue that these strategies systematically shape and circumscribe outputs. We conclude by discussing how the relationship between risky fieldwork and what we know about conflict is poorly acknowledged. Thinking about how we manage risk should play a larger role in both our preparation for and interpretation of research, particularly in conflict and postconflict contexts.

This article examines the factors that influence whether members of Congress tweet about the #MeToo movement. Whereas social-identity theory suggests that congresswomen would be more likely to tweet about #MeToo, congressional research argues that increased polarization has resulted in congresswomen bucking gender stereotypes and embracing more partisan behavior than might otherwise be expected (Pearson and Dancey 2011). We examine how gender, partisanship, and ideology shape the Twitter activity of members of Congress surrounding the #MeToo movement using an original dataset of their tweets since October 2017 when the #MeToo movement gained prominence on Twitter. Our findings show that gender and ideology are the strongest predictors of whether Congress members tweet about the #MeToo movement. Liberals—particularly liberal women—are leading the charge in bringing prominence to the #MeToo movement on Twitter.

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.

The realization that policy and law are tightly intertwined dates at least to de Tocqueville’s observation that, in the United States, political questions often become judicial questions. Scholars have shown consistently that courts, both federal and state, play a role in public policy decision making. This is observed in social policy (e.g., same-sex marriage and abortion), environmental policy (e.g., Environmental Protection Agency regulations), economic policy (e.g., New Deal Era decisions), and more. Too often, however, graduate programs in public policy fail to prepare students for the role of the courts in the policy process. This study examines the requirements and core competencies from Masters of Public Policy programs to determine to what extent, if any, judicial policy making is taught. We find that there is a significant gap between the theory about the role of courts in the public policy process and what public policy programs teach their students. We conclude with recommendations for possible changes to curricula to close this gap.

Although 2018 has been called another “Year of the Woman,” increases in women’s representation that year were party-specific. Historically, women’s organizations fought to expand women’s representation in both parties; however, the fruit of these efforts is currently concentrated among Democrats. Indeed, women contributed funds in record numbers in 2018, but the majority of women donors supported Democratic women candidates (Haley 2018), and liberal women’s political action committees (PACs) played a prominent role in raising those funds.

This research offers a post-mortem on political advertising in 2018, providing important context for 2018’s “blue wave.” In a majority of US House of Representatives races, there were more pro-Democratic than pro-Republican ads, including in the most competitive contests. The one theme that united pro-Democratic advertising was health care, which was mentioned in nearly three of every five Democratic ads in the fall campaign. Contrary to the narrative that television is declining, a record number of television ads aired in the 2018 midterms, whereas digital spending still constituted a small percentage of overall advertising spending for most candidate campaigns. Finally, there was a healthy volume of outside-group spending in 2018, with “dark-money” groups increasing their involvement—especially in support of Democratic candidates.

When women gained the national right to vote 100 years ago, remarkable possibilities for their voice and presence in politics opened. However, despite gains in women’s representation, numerous gaps continue to exist in which adult women engage less in politics than men. In identifying and explaining adult gender gaps, little attention has been given to whether gaps emerge among children. This is a pressing issue because children’s perceptions are likely to influence their participation as adults. This article explores whether and how girls and boys differently view politics and their role in it. We report survey data from more than 1,600 children ages 6 to 12 to explore basic gender gaps in political interest and ambition. We argue that these results may reveal the roots of a larger problem: 100 years after women gained suffrage, girls still express less interest and enthusiasm than boys for political life and political office.

Accusations of conspiracy are nothing new in American politics, but examples in which the government—usually cast as a key player in conspiracy theories—goes on record to corroborate that a conspiracy occurred are rare. I leveraged an experiment that randomly exposes both college-student and general-public subject pools to information about the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassination report of a probable conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I find that those exposed to government corroboration of a conspiracy (1) are more prone to anger in response to the government report; (2) engage in an increased search of available media information about the assassination; and (3) are more likely to agree with the conclusion of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s murder. Implications for additional research about government pronouncements on controversial issues and follow-on public reaction also are discussed.

This article responds to King and Persily’s (2019) proposal for a new model of industry–academic partnership using an independent third party to mediate between firms and academics. We believe this is a reasonable proposal for highly sensitive individual-level data, but it may not be appropriate for all types of data. We explore alternative options to their proposal, including Administrative Data Research Facilities, Data Collaboratives at GovLab, and Tech Data for Social Good Initiative at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. We believe social scientists should continue to explore, evaluate, and scale a variety of industry–academic data-sharing models.

Google Books Ngrams data are freely available and contain billions of words used in tens of millions of digitized books, which begin in the 1500s for some languages. We explore the benefits and pitfalls of these data by showing examples from comparative and American politics. Specifically, we show how usage of the phrase “political corruption” in Italian, French, German, and Hebrew books strongly correlates with Transparency International’s well-cited Corruption Index for France, Italy, German, and Israel. We also use Ngrams to show that the explosive growth in usage of the phrases “Asian American,” “Latino,” and “Hispanic” correlates with real-world changes in these populations after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. These applications show that Ngram data correlate strongly with similar data from well-respected sources. This suggests that Ngrams has content validity and can be used as a proxy measure for previously difficult-to-research phenomena and questions.

After a more than seven-decade battle, American women secured the right to vote in August 1920. The struggle for women to have a voice in elections was not over, however. The Nineteenth Amendment states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The amendment gives Congress the power to enforce the law by appropriate legislation. It does not, however, empower or charge any government office or actor with ensuring that women can and do cast ballots. This article argues that this reality, often taken for granted, has serious implications for both the incorporation of women into the electorate and the representation of their political interests.

Researchers often want to increase the broader societal impact of their work. One way to do that is to discuss research findings directly with practitioners. Yet, such interactions are voluntary and do not regularly arise, which raises a key demand question: Under what conditions do practitioners want to connect with researchers? This article shows that relational considerations affect these decisions—that is, what practitioners expect the interaction will be like. I partnered with a US-based civic association to conduct a field experiment. I find that group leaders in this association are more likely to speak with researchers after learning that the researchers will (1) efficiently share information during the interaction, and (2) value practitioners’ knowledge. The results provide actionable guidance for how researchers should approach practitioners and also demonstrate one powerful way that social science evidence can inform efforts to bridge research and practice.

A growing body of research investigates the factors that enhance the research productivity and creativity of political scientists. This work provides a foundation for future research, but it has not addressed some of the most promising causal hypotheses in the general scientific literature on this topic. This article explicates the latter hypotheses, a typology of scientific career paths that distinguishes how scientific careers vary over time with respect to creative ambitions and achievements, and a research agenda based on the preceding components for investigation of the publication success of political scientists.

One hundred years after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the ability of women to effectively exercise the right to vote is far from guaranteed. Although 1920 may mark the historical moment when women’s suffrage was added to the Constitution, the past century has been rife with obstacles preventing many women, particularly women of color, from exercising their right to vote. Scholars have noted that for these women, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 was pivotal in more fully securing the right to vote (Hewitt 2010; Junn and Brown 2008; Montoya 2018; Smooth 2006). With a resurgence in voter-suppression efforts and a US Supreme Court ruling that weakened the VRA, voting rights again are imperiled. Although the role of race and class justifiably have been placed at the center of analysis, little attention has been given to the potential gendered considerations. This article argues that gender is still a salient part of the story, and intersectional analysis is necessary for a more thorough understanding of the impact that restrictive laws might have in order to counter them.

Women earn approximately half of all bachelor’s degrees in political science but they comprise only 22% of full professors. Scholars have offered various likely explanations and proposed many interventions to improve women’s advancement. This article reviews existing research regarding the effectiveness of these interventions. We find that many of the proposed interventions have yet to be fully evaluated. Furthermore, some of the policies that have been evaluated turn out to be ineffective. Women’s mentoring and networking workshops are the most promising of the fully tested interventions. The potential for failure underscores the need for additional evaluation of any proposed intervention before widespread implementation.