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.

Carole Pateman is awarded the 2012 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for outstanding contributions to the discipline. She is awarded the prize for “in a thought-provoking way challenging established ideas about participation, sex and equality.”

A preview of some of the articles in the July 2012 issue.

A. Stephen Boyan, Jr., Associate Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), died on November 7, 2010 in Burlington, Vermont, following a long illness. Steve was a much valued member of the UMBC Political Science Department for thirty-one of the forty-four years it has been in existence. Steve's area of political science was constitutional law, with a particular focus on civil liberties and First Amendment issues. Much more than most contemporary political scientists, Steve applied his political science training and expertise beyond the reach of the university and the discipline to the wider world of public affairs and political engagement.

Books by our readers.

We report on the journal's operations during the year from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011. We once again express our thanks to the APSA: Presidents Brady and Pateman, the staff (especially Michael Brintnall and Polly Karpowicz), Council, and Publications Committee. (While we have enjoyed ready access to previous presidents, it has been a new experience to have an APSA president right down the hall from the lead editor.) Members of our Editorial Board, this year as last, have given us wise counsel on more than a few submissions. Joseph Riser, our senior editor, has continued his seemingly tireless and unflappable service; and our editorial assistants, Joslyn Barnhart, Darin Dewitt, and Beltrán Undurraga, have pulled together in harness as have few previous teams, keeping our technical processing rapid and our backlog almost always at zero. As rotation on the panel of co-editors continues, we express our profound gratitude to departing editor Jeff Lewis, who exhibited a new level of masochism by becoming UCLA department chair, but who also agreed to finish (and since has finished) all of his pending assignments and to be available for consultations on an “as needed” basis. We also thank, once again, the authors who submitted their papers for consideration, the referees who reviewed them, and the patience, dedication, and forbearance that all demonstrated.

During the past decade the United States has seen an increase in alternative forms to Election Day voting, including voting by mail. Voting by mail has spurred a number of studies concerning the effects it has on voter turnout and other aspects of voting. However, one important facet of voting by mail has not been examined—when people decide to send in their vote. Because ballots are mailed out weeks before the election, voting by mail creates, in effect, a rolling Election Day. This could have profound effects for campaigns as candidates must determine when to use campaign resources and campaign to an electorate who might have already voted. Using data from the 2008 general election in Washington State, this study examines when voters turned in their ballots and determines if age, partisanship, or other factors play a role in the timing of turning in a ballot.

In 2011, PS: Political Science and Politics published articles covering a vast range of topics. The journal's commitment to publishing articles on pedagogy and the profession, as well as exemplary topical scholarship on a spectrum of issues, call for an equally broad stable of reviewers. PS cannot publish such diverse work without the outstanding work (and openmindedness) of our peer reviewers. The peer-review process relies on the professionalism and generosity of those who contribute their time and knowledge to read and evaluate the work of others. In 2011, 451 reviewers were asked to review, 132 agreed and completed their review. The editor and staff of PS thank the following scholars who served as manuscript reviewers between January 1, 2011, and December 31, 2011.

How can political scientists reconsider the ideals attached to representation? What impedes the realization of those ideals in practice? How can we address these questions with a focus on renewal? Exploring these questions and many others related to the theme “Representation and Renewal” will be the focus of the 2012 Annual Meeting. Developed by program chairs Lynn Vavreck, University of California, Los Angeles, and John Carey, Dartmouth College, the 2012 theme statement calls for research that addresses questions about representation, asks what representative relationships can and cannot achieve, and explores how these relationships might be renewed, reformed, or retooled.

The emphasis in political science on procedural ethics has led to a neglect of how researchers should consider and treat study participants, from design to publication stage. This article corrects this oversight and calls for a sustained discussion of research ethics across the discipline. The article's core argument is twofold: that ethics should matter to everyone, not just those who spend extended time in the field; and that ethics is an ongoing responsibility, not a discrete task to be checked off a “to do” list. Ethics matter in all types of political science research because most political science involves “human subjects.” Producers and consumers of political science research need to contemplate the ambiguous and oftentimes uncomfortable dimensions of research ethics, lest we create a discipline that is “nonethical,” or worse, unethical.

Carl Quimby Christol, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, a faculty member for almost 40 years at the University of Southern California, died at his home in Santa Barbara on February 22, 2012, of natural causes at the age of 98. One of the world's foremost authorities on the international law of outer space, Professor Christol was a prolific scholar greatly admired by colleagues and students around the world.

The annual executive director's report documents APSA's activities and directions for the year. The traditional core activities for a learned society are its journals and conferences. APSA, like its counterparts, also supports the discipline and the professional interests of members in a variety of ways: support for department chairs and academic programs, engagement with federal policymaking on support for scholarship and education, and attention to the pipeline of prospective new scholars in the discipline. Some of these initiatives focus on resources for individual political scientists, such as our mentoring initiative, and many are built around management of the commons of the discipline and efforts to assure that we collectively address matters that affect the discipline. APSA is active on many of these fronts, and this report in particular highlights those APSA activities that help support the disciplinary community as a whole.

Within the medical and physical sciences journals evidence suggests that problems of authorship ethics and journal management bedevil the editors of these journals. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that similar problems persist in political science, the extent of these problems within political science is not well established. Here we report the results of a survey of political science journal editors' perceptions of ethical and managerial issues associated with their journals. We find that unlike ethical publication concerns in the clinical and natural sciences fields, these issues are not of significant concern among our sample. Ethical problems are of low concern and editors report high levels of confidence to address these problems. Managerial problems, such as the adequacy of reviewer pools, are of higher concern to our sample.

Our publisher's report for PS: Political Science & Politics for 2011 gives us some insight into what you, our readers, are reading here in the pages of PS. In total, more than 101,000 readers completed full-text downloads of online articles in 2011, up nearly 30% from 2010 and 26% compared to 2009 figures. This figure only represents electronic downloads; we know that print is very important too and we hope to report on that readership in the future.

Join your colleagues in the political science community at APSA's 2012 Annual Meeting. With nearly 900 panels and roundtables, attendees can explore an array of research topics, including this year's theme “Representation and Renewal.” Along with access to timely scholarly research, attendees will benefit from a variety of social events and special programs to encourage networking and professional development. APSA invites you to take advantage of all the exciting features offered at the annual meeting.

The APSA Nominating Committee is pleased to present the slate of nominees for APSA officers. In developing the slate, the committee was guided by the association's constitution that requires due regard to “geographical distribution, fields of professional interest, types of institution, race, gender, ethnicity, methodological orientation, gender identity, sexuality, and other important forms of diversity.”

One of Washington, DC's best-kept secrets is an organization that houses a plethora of programs, initiatives, and resources for students, citizens, and educators, as well as current and former members of Congress: the United States Association of Former Members of Congress (FMC).

With the growing size of the “Millennial Generation” and its potential impact on American democracy, the civic education of this cohort deserves study. Using news media and discussion of politics at home and in the classroom at four public high schools in New Jersey, we conducted an experiment to measure changes in media use, political knowledge, and political efficacy. Although the experiment generated useful substantive findings, we also learned important lessons about the challenges associated with conducting research in high schools. We present suggestions to aid in studying a crucial segment of the population: adolescents who are on the cusp of entering the electorate.

The purpose of this report is to inform APSA's membership about the association's financial health. This report provides an overview of APSA's assets and current financial operations.