What are the local political, economic, and social conditions of the communities that sent insurrectionists to the US Capitol in support of Donald Trump? Using a new dataset of the home counties of individuals charged for the Capitol insurrection, we tested two prominent theories of electoral populism and support for populist leaders like Donald Trump—demographic change and manufacturing decline—and whether they also explain violent populism. We also examined the effects of local political conditions. We find that white population decline is a stronger predictor of violent populism and that counties that voted for Trump were less likely to fight for Trump. The effect of white population decline is even greater in counties whose US House Representative rejected the 2020 election results. These findings suggest scholars should resist assuming violent populism is merely an extension of electoral populism, and solutions to one will not necessarily remedy the other.

Former President Trump’s persistent influence over Republican politics divides those who argue that he mobilizes otherwise apathetic voters against those contending he mobilizes Democrats at down-ballot Republicans’ expense. Scholars and pundits alike question whether policy still matters in the face of increasingly strong personas like the former president’s. Using a survey experiment, we find suggestive evidence that Trump’s endorsement in a general election reduces the likelihood of voting for a hypothetical Republican candidate. We also test the effect of policy stances and find evidence that Republican respondents value policy stances over an endorsement, but Democrats show no signs of prioritizing one more than the other. However, when shown a hypothetical candidate with unorthodox policy stances, the mere mention of a Trump endorsement leads members of both parties to demonstrate significant changes in the likelihood of voting for that candidate. Ultimately, we show that elite signals can attenuate support derived from policies.

There exists substantial evidence that technological innovation and, more specifically, innovation creating high-tech exports is a crucial driver for economic growth. However, there is less consensus about the factors that cause high-tech exports to thrive. Most studies emphasize the crucial role played by research and development expenditures, foreign direct investments, trade openness, human capital, and patents. In this article, we instead examine the role of a different determinant, which usually is overlooked in the scholarly debate about governance institutions. We use government effectives (GE) and rule of law (ROL) as measures of governance. We employ a panel-data approach encompassing more than 100 countries between 2007 and 2019. The panel estimates show a causal relationship linking GE and the ROL with high-tech exports.

Open access (OA) publishing makes scholarship more accessible to readers but also presents additional hurdles for authors. This article examines determinants of OA publishing in well-respected, subscription-based journals. We find that research funding provides the strongest explanation for OA publishing, although various aspects of authorship and an author’s affiliation with a European versus a US institution also matter. We discuss the implications of our findings for publishing in scholarly journals in political science.

Since the 1990s, there has been consensus in the literature of a submission and publication gap that favors men. Important research in the intervening years has explored the many reasons for this output gap: imbalanced administrative workloads; bias in top journals against female-dominated subfields and methodological approaches; and lower confidence levels among women, sometimes known as the “Matthew effect.” However, in the intervening period, there has been a notable emphasis on recruiting more women into academia, and the importance of publishing for career development has intensified. Journal case studies have highlighted a growth in output by women academics but show that men are still overrepresented. Using a case study of the International Political Science Review (IPSR), we contribute to the emerging body of work that shows that the gender gap has diminished or even been eliminated. We present data on submissions and acceptances by gender, and we base our comparisons in the gender balance of the departments of submitting authors. The results are clear, for IPSR, the gender gap has closed and women now publish on a par with their men colleagues in their department.

This article develops a blueprint for creating online writing groups (OWGs) to support scholars who are directly and indirectly affected by disaster. Those who are living in regions affected by natural disasters face a severe psychological toll along with physical and logistical challenges. Furthermore, scholars in the diaspora who are watching their colleagues go about daily life while they struggle to meet writing deadlines can also experience detrimental psychological effects, including isolation anxiety. Findings from disaster studies research suggest that communal coping strategies can mitigate the short- and long-term challenges to mental health, including spiraling concerns about productivity that, in turn, inhibit productivity. My research builds on these studies, as well as analyses of virtual platforms used during the COVID-19 pandemic, to identify specific aspects of OWGs that can provide community and structure for scholars in the wake of natural disasters. I draw from my experience of creating and hosting a Zoom writing group for scholars from Turkey and Syria in the aftermath of the February 2023 earthquakes. In addition to participant observation of more than 240 two-hour sessions held over 42 weeks between March and December 2023, I draw from a survey-based assessment and email correspondence with participants to develop a best-practices model that I hope other scholars will replicate.

This study explores the application of role-play simulations (RPS) in addressing complex challenges (e.g., the climate crisis) beyond traditional educational settings. Drawing from pilot simulations involving 12 scientific experts and 12 policy makers, the article identifies three key challenges in conducting RPS with elite participants and provides practical strategies for overcoming them. Namely, the article emphasizes the importance of adapting the scenarios to sociopolitical contexts, choosing an ethical recruiting method to ensure inclusivity, and managing group diversity while maintaining a balance between the playfulness and the seriousness of the simulation. Overall, our study underscores the potential of RPS to foster dialogue between scientific and political actors and provides practical guidance for their effective use.

Focus groups have become increasingly popular in political science alongside the growth in field experimental and other causal inference-oriented work in comparative politics. Yet, scholars rarely provide details about recruitment processes and descriptive statistics on focus-group participants. This situation is problematic given the likelihood of self-selection and the fact that scholars often use focus groups to pretest or refine experimental treatments or survey questionnaires. By leveraging a series of focus groups that were recruited from a pool of large-N survey respondents, this article demonstrates a method for assessing which variables drive the decision to participate. I recommend that scholars diagnose self-selection into focus groups whenever possible; that they compare participants to relevant baselines when working with samples of convenience; and that they always provide descriptive statistics and details on how focus-group members were recruited.

Scholars recognize the important role that diasporas play in conflict dynamics, including efforts to build peace in conflict-affected communities. Broader academic research emphasizes a focus on local conditions and actors, as well as site-specific understandings of peace and peacebuilding practices. This focus on specific communities and contexts often draws on qualitative, narrative-driven data, predominantly collected through interviewing. This article identifies some of the core challenges related to data collection encountered during semi-structured interviews in a study of Somali diaspora members in Melbourne, Australia. We emphasize how issues associated with cross-cultural and gendered understandings of concepts related to peacebuilding can affect each stage of a research project, from the preliminary collection of data to the analysis and discussion of research implications. Specifically, we address challenges related to instances of conceptual dissonance that occur when researchers employ cross-cultural and gendered concepts—in this case, peace, peacebuilding, and leadership. The findings will benefit conflict researchers who work with socially distant groups and ethnically divided populations more broadly, along with those who employ interpretivist methodologies that focus on how meaning making might ultimately influence peacebuilding practices and outcomes.

Engaging with audiences and communities beyond academia is now a common practice for political scientists. Yet, political scientists rarely are trained in how to conduct public or policy engagement, and we know little about the impact that training programs have on their preparedness to communicate with the public and policy makers. In this study, we evaluate whether professional training equips scholars with the skills needed to perform public and policy outreach. We find that a four-day training program generates remarkably large increases in the number of participants reporting that they possess high levels of knowledge, preparation, and confidence for public and policy engagement. This finding suggests that investments in public-engagement training by universities and the discipline of political science have the potential to significantly boost public outreach by faculty members.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered rapid transformations across the globe. Probably no other event in the past 50 years has changed the working environment more comprehensively. When the pandemic started in February and March of 2020, university campuses all over the globe shut down in less than a week. Most remained closed or had heavily restricted access for almost two years, depending on the country and the city. Overnight online teaching replaced in-person instruction; all professional and student interactions moved to Zoom, Teams, or Skype; academic conferences either did not take place or moved to an online format; and field research became almost impossible. In addition, contact restrictions, lockdowns, curfews, and homeschooling were unprecedented challenges for many people, especially members of the academic community who had small children (Del Boca et al. 2020). It is important to note that even in normal times women bear the greatest burden of childcare, social care for older people, and general household tasks. The COVID-19 pandemic quickly amplified these disparities (Ohlbrecht and Jellen 2021; Yerkes et al. 2022). Discussions emerged in many sectors, including academia, about specific ways that the pandemic was impacting professional lives, especially those of women. Given the acute pressure to publish in most higher-education institutions, it is important to evaluate the effect that the pandemic had on this central aspect of scholarly careers.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars predicted that this transboundary crisis would cause enormous change and disruption, not only to global health but also to many areas of productivity, including academic life (Donina and Antonowicz 2022; Lewis 2021; Witze 2020). Although the impact has been widespread and devastating to public health, it has not triggered the dramatic changes to the academy that might have been predicted, particularly in the areas of scholarship.

Political Behavior is the official journal of the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior organized section of the American Political Science Association. It publishes research on the political behavior of citizens, political activists, and political officeholders in the United States and around the world. From the perspective of its Journal Impact Factor, the journal’s reputation and impact have grown steadily in recent years. The first and last listed authors of this article served as co-editors-in-chief of Political Behavior from 2019 through 2022. The middle three listed authors served as editorial assistants during this same period.

In the summer of 2019, two of us began our term as co-editors of Politics & Gender. We were excited to manage the top journal in the study of women, gender, and politics; help to shape our field; and advance outstanding scholarship. Before our first year ended, the global COVID-19 pandemic disrupted normal routines for many professions, including within the academy. Access to offices, professional networks, and fieldwork was halted or severely limited. Both new and experienced teachers quickly transitioned to online teaching. Scholars became ill or cared for sick family members. Faculty with preschool or school-aged children spent many hours on childcare and homeschooling, leaving them with less time for research and writing. Not all impacts were necessarily negative: those without caretaking responsibilities enjoyed more flexibility and often had more time for research and writing as in-person events were canceled and lengthy commutes disappeared.

On June 1, 2020, a little more than two months after the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 pandemic declaration, our editorial team assumed the leadership of the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although this confluence of events makes it difficult to isolate the pandemic’s effect on new submissions and review processes, this article describes submission and review patterns in the two and a half years before and after the onset of the pandemic and the editorial transition. It describes our preliminary observations regarding what the patterns suggest about the pandemic’s impact on the APSR.1

Political science instructors have started to make use of the “staff ride”—that is, the combined study of a military campaign, structured visits to related sites, and after-action analysis. Our study is the first examination of the potential utility of this pedagogical tool in civilian political science programs. Although the specific knowledge and skills that any given staff ride promotes depend on its content and structure, the potential benefits include four student learning outcomes: (1) staff rides show students how we might draw lessons from the past and apply them to present or future problems; (2) students may derive an enhanced ability to empathize with military and civilian decision makers; (3) staff rides can highlight the normative stakes in politics; and (4) they can foster connections among the participants. This article describes potential benefits of a staff ride, provides detailed instructional models based on the Battle of Gettysburg and the Tet Offensive, and considers ways to replicate these experiences in more accessible formats.

Simulations are increasingly prominent in classrooms, and research shows that such activities provide an array of benefits. In general, simulations tend to situate students as “lab rats” (Asal 2005) who get to discuss the experiment. We call for bringing students into a simulation not as lab rats but instead as “mad scientists.” We specifically propose using a simulation’s debriefing step as an opportunity for students to imagine how they might revise the simulation that they experienced and to defend their revisions using concepts from class. We argue that such student-led revisions cultivate agentic engagement, a form of engagement in which students recognize themselves as co-constructors of knowledge with and for their peers. To test this notion, we modified the “Isle of Ted” with an expanded post-simulation debriefing. We found that our approach cultivated student engagement and buy-in, required students to think of concepts dynamically, and was relatively simple to implement. Our study contributes to the literature on simulations as effective and engaging classroom tools, and it also emphasizes the potential for simulations to spark agentic learning.