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This paper argues that out of the ?service learning? movement of the 1980s, a new form of scholarship is emerging known as the ?scholarship of engagement.? Engaged scholarship has two core components which are not fully captured by the concept of service learning: first, it includes other scholarly functions beyond teaching, including research; and second, it focuses on genuinely reciprocal collaboration with communities. This paper defines the scholarship of engagement, creates a taxonomy five forms of engaged scholarship, and documents practices associated with this movement. Informed by a problem-driven, pluralistic approach to engaged scholarship, this taxonomy suggests that the new forms of engaged scholarship each have important contributions to the civic renewal of American higher education, and together make up an exciting and growing movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy study visits - formal visits or tours made by participants to a specific site or sites outside of their own jurisdiction to observe and gather information about a policy or policies in place at the site(s) ? are a form of policy learning through the processes of policy transfer. In this paper we review the research literature in the fields of organizational and policy learning and in policy transfer in order to generate hypotheses about policy study visits and their potential effectiveness. We then set forth a tentative typology of policy study visits and discuss various functions they might serve. We discuss the probable roles played by the visit participants, host, and organizers in affecting the effectiveness of the visit. We define effectiveness to include not only the communication of policy ideas to participants, but also that these ideas are adequately assessed and that conclusions derived from that assessment are utilized in policy making. Finally we describe research we are undertaking to better understand policy study visits and to test the hypotheses we generate in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the current state of qualitative research methods in political science and political communication, through a review of textbooks, conference papers, key earlier works, and recent controversies. Despite advances during the past quarter century, qualitative methods of research, analysis, and writing remain at the margins due to the positive philosophical orientation of political science. Although they have provided a staging ground for complaints against that orientation in recent debates, qualitative approaches to knowledge serve principally as a tool for exploratory work and as a foil to police the boundaries of mainstream political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship explains the impact of Supreme Court precedent on state supreme courts primarily as a function of the typical political preferences of state supreme court justices, the institutional mechanisms governing retention of those justices, and the state?s recent history of conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court, but not the characteristics of the original Supreme Court decision (Comparato and McClurg 2002, 2003). While this research provides interesting evidence on the sources of judicial impact at the lower level, it contradicts the emphases found in a number of case studies (Beavers and Walz 1998; Manwaring 1968; Vines 1965). Additionally, this research operates under the assumption that the mechanisms impacting the state supreme courts are homogenous across states. In this paper, we directly confront the disjoint between qualitative and quantitative work on the sources of judicial impact courts by taking advantage of a ?middle-N? strategy. Specifically, we will use the logic of diversity-oriented research and qualitative comparative analysis as a way of analyzing the relationship between state institutional factors, legal characteristics of Supreme Court decisions, political characteristics of the state and the Supreme Court that influence the decisions of state supreme courts. In this paper, we examine twenty-five different state supreme court cases that cite Illinois v. Gates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper observes that the ‘Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education’ generated by the Association of College and Research Libraries (2000) provides a reasonable set of pedagogical goals to guide the construction and implementation of the undergraduate methods course. Moreover, we argue that the particular context of the undergraduate methods course with its emphasis on developing analytical and data management skills as well as exposure to concepts such as validity, reliability, measurement and bias should be particularly fertile ground for the targeted enhancement of ACRL targeted competencies. Our paper outlines the five information literacy standards (as well as the performance indicators and outcomes associated with each) described in the ACRL paper. We note specifically how they relate to designing student assignments and research projects. A limited natural experiment is conducted using two sections of a methods course and two sections of a non-methods political science course for comparison. For one course in each of these paired sections, the assignments and some course content were varied to reflect the information literacy standards (other course elements including text, instructor and most lecture content were held roughly constant). Student scores on a standardized information literacy questionnaire are presented. Our findings indicate that information literacy oriented courses can improve student performance on standardized competency tests. However, this improvement was equally present in both methods and non-methods courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the art and science of the graphical display of data offers useful advice to political scientists for improving the clarity, meaningfulness, efficiency and truthfulness of their data presentations. Using examples of published political science research, this paper illustrates how data presentations can be improved by the choice of an appropriate chart format, attention to appropriate data sorting, maximizing data-to-ink ratios and eliminating ChartJunk, avoiding data distortion problems, and the use of charts to display regression results. The paper also argues that the large page, 2-column format of the APSR and AJPS often results in charts that are either too large or too small and suggest ways to avoid this problem.

The paper is an extension of work done on the author’s ‘Presenting Data’ website: Presenting Data Website.

The website is intended to address a serious shortcoming in quantitative methods training in political science that places too much emphasis on classical data analysis emphasizing sampling error, statistical significance, and statistical measures of association and too little attention on practical data analysis skills involving the collection, interpretation and presentation of raw data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research, both within the field of globalization and democratization studies, have highlighted how these processes challenge the state, especially in post-colonial and post-communist countries. The point of departure for this paper is twofold. First, the observation that despite the challenges of globalization and regime transition the state often seems remarkably resilient. Second, the relative lack of integration and cross-fertilization between democratization and globalization studies. Hence, the aim of this paper is to indicate one way of integrating globalization and democratization research through a discussion of the puzzle of relative state resilience in the face of globalization and regime transition. This is done through a thick description of the Indonesian case. Starting with an argument about the importance of ?path-dependency? when analysing state transformation, the paper first considers the specific history of state formation from colonial time to New Order authoritarianism. The impact on Indonesia of different aspects of globalization is examined. I pay special attention to the impact of the global economy ? especially the economic crisis that began in 1997 ? the end of the Cold War, and the activities of global civil society actors. Hence, the paper offers an analysis of the contemporary Indonesian state in a time of globalization and regime transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that political science pays insufficient attention to wildlife conservation as a research topic and political concern. The diminishing range of political science in wildlife conservation is a product of numerous trends, most of which have very little to do with wildlife conservation itself. They include the failure of the mechanisms of the interstate system to treat questions of conservation effectively; the de-politicization of the conservation agenda by non-governmental actors; academic political science's disinterest in methods, scales and issue areas that might generate more work in this area; and some inherent problems in the conservation agenda itself. The paper makes reference to the World Summit on Sustainable Development now underway and to issues of rural poverty alleviation, both for reasons of exposition. The paper ends with some ideas about constructing political models of conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the construction of data sets, and in particular the incentive structures which shape the type and quality of information. The paper is divided into four sections. We begin with a brief outline of some problems with existing data sets and a discussion of why it is important to address these problems. Next we briefly consider non-incentive based reasons for problems with data sets. In the third and fourth sections, we discuss incentive structures which we believe raise serious questions regarding the integrity of data in social science research: the incentive structures among the producers of data ? those who collect and collate the data; and the incentive structures among the consumers ? the users of the data, the academic and the policy making community. We present evidence from a variety of contexts but especially Africa, China, India and Russia and to make this case. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite multiple calls for the use of ?mixed methods,? particularly in cross-national analysis, political scientists have few systematic guides for how to carry out such work. This paper describes an emerging approach in which intensive case analysis is nested within a larger statistical analysis of country-level cases. Not only are the advantages of each approach combined, but the paper argues that there is a synergistic value to the nested research design: For example, statistical analyses can powerfully frame small-N comparisons, and can be used to provide additional tests of hypotheses generated from small-N research; alternatively, small-N analyses can be used to assess the plausibility of observed statistical relationships between variables, to identify the significance of outlier cases, and to explore the role of factors that are difficult-to-measure across many cases. Moving back and forth between research strategies helps to address common problems in small-N research, such as selection bias, and problems in large-N research, such as inadequate measurement and weak bases for causal inference. The nested approach is likely to promote the development of more valid measurement instruments, and greater levels of confidence in causal assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the great interest in the impact of undergraduate research on student development in the literature on higher education, there has not been much work done on the relationship between participation in undergraduate research and the development of political science students. This paper assesses the relationship between student participation in collaborative research projects with faculty and both student learning (operationalized in terms of scores on the Major Field Aptitude Test [MFAT] in political science) and the likelihood of entrance into professional or graduate school. We find that participation in collaborative research with faculty, in general, is associated with improved student learning in political science and a greater likelihood that students will proceed on to graduate/professional school. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did free and fair democratic elections lead to the extrordinarily anti-democratic Nazi Party winning control of the Weimar Republic? The profound implications of this question have led scholars to make the Weimar elections the most studied elections in history and "who voted for Hitler" the single most asked question in elections research. Yet, despite this overwhelming attention, mostly from historians, the Nazi voting literature has treated these elections as largely unique events and thus comparison with other democratic elections as mostly irrelevant. The literature has also ignored most voting behavior theory and research in political science, and it has only rarely used modern statistical methods. In this paper, we adapt existing political science theories and new methods and find that many of the explanations offered in the Nazi voting literature, while probably correct, do not distinguish this election from almost any other, occuring in any country. For example, the prevailing explanation in the literature, that the Nazis were a --catch all party’’ because most social groups shifted in their favor by roughly the same amount, is a characteristic of the vast majority of election swings in every democracy, and so does not provide a useful explanation. We also show that a standard --retrospective voting’’ account of Nazi voting fits the distinctive aspects of this election well, once we recognize that the voters who were most hurt by the economic depression and hence most likely to oppose the government fall into two separate groups that have divergent interests. Those who were unemployed or at high risk of becomming unemployed shifted to the Communists, whose platform was designed to appeal mainly to this group, whereas the working poor, those at low risk of unemployment but still poor because of the economy (such as self-employed shop keepers and professionals, domestic workers, and helping family members), shifted disproportionately towards the Nazis, and accounted for most of the unusual dynamics of this election. The consequences of the election of Hitler were extraordinary, but the voting behavior that led to it was not. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IR theory, it is argued, has an historic vocation on which it is has failed to fully make good. Drawing on a larger research project, this paper suggests that this failure is due to an inadequate appreciation of the problem of reification: a problem with links to complexity theory, and central to Frankfurt school critiques of both normative social theory and social science. With that in mind, the present paper argues for a particular kind of multi-paradigmatism in IR, which could reconcile the problem of reification with both existing disciplinary research traditions and practices, and the discipline's longer-term vocational aspirations. It proceeds in five sections. In sections 1 and 2, I define the notion of vocation that underpins this project, and the related notion of sustainable critique. In sections 3 and 4, I explore the notion of reification at greater depth, and define a theoretical mindset - chastened reason - which I hold could meet the challenge framed by sustainable critique. Section 5 then builds on a particular form of multi-paradigmatism - as set out in Graham Allison's Essence of Decision - with an eye to meeting the problem of reification, and considers its prospects for contemporary scholarship. In my panel presentation, I will relate this discussion to problems of normativity and complexity in world politics through a retrospective discussion of the work of Ernst Haas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about two interpretive hypothesis is presented. It explores the concepts of permanent campaign and opinion climate. It tests the application of these two hypothesis in a study of the 2006 election campaign in Italy that has been won, against the incumbent Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, by the center left coalition runby Romano Prodi.

A conference paper about the role of area studies research in comparative political and social science is presented. It develops a model of how regional differentiation occurs historically. It also suggests ways to think about regions no merely as geographically proximate states, but clusters of interacting institutional forms. It proposes two practical strategies for inter-regional comparative research.

Women form a small minority of all political representatives worldwide, but in recent years, political parties and legislatures in a growing number of countries have adopted various kinds of quota policies aimed at increasing the proportion of women in political office. To date, most research on these measures has focused on features of these reforms and reasons for their adoption in diverse countries around the globe. Given the relative newness of this phenomenon, much less research has addressed quota implementation, despite the fact that - as a group - quota policies have not resulted in uniform increases in the numbers of women elected worldwide. To fill this gap in the literature, this paper surveys existing explanations for variations in quota implementation and then draws on these to theorize three broad sets of factors - structures, practices, and norms - that together play a role in shaping quota impact. To model how quota adoption affects existing dynamics of political recruitment, the paper (1) develops an alternative perspective on candidate selection based on configurations of three categories of gendered institutions, (2) proposes that the three types of quotas - reserved seats, party quotas, and legislative quotas - reform different kinds of political institutions, and (3) illustrates through three sets of paired comparisons how quotas affect existing institutional configurations such that some policies are more successful than others in altering women's access to political office. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 9/11, terrorism studies has undergone a rapid transformation from minor sub-field of security studies to a significant stand-alone field of teaching and research, with terrorism studies degree programmes, an ever-increasing cohort of dedicated PhD students, major research projects, the establishment of academic posts and specialised research institutions, and new scholarly journals. However, past and recent review exercises have generated a number of serious epistemological, methodological, and political-normative criticisms of the field as it currently stands. At this time of tremendous growth and expansion, this paper makes the argument that it is time for an explicitly 'critical' terrorism studies to overcome many of the identified weaknesses of orthodox terrorism studies. To this end, the paper explores some of the central weaknesses of contemporary terrorism studies, examines what a critical turn would involve, and reflects on the potential pitfalls of a critical terrorism studies, including how to manage the critical turn without discarding the best of orthodox terrorism studies. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda which would interrogate more effectively some of the key assumptions in both mainstream and critical fields about the political use of terror. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global agenda setting (also described as issue emergence) has largely been overlooked by researchers in international politics, contrary to the vast amount of research into domestic agenda setting by scholars studying U.S. politics. One of the reasons global agenda setting has been neglected stems from a lack of a standard approach to agenda setting that can be used in the international arena. This paper identifies a way to study international agenda setting through the use of framing. Using the framing perspective allows us to examine change and continuity in frames over time as opposed to the rather idiosyncratic way global agenda setting research has been examined in the past. The paper proposes understanding issue emergence by looking at the moral, analytical, and temporal aspects of a frame and their dominance in international discourse. In addition, the paper describes the most likely influences on frame dominance as sources for hypotheses to guide future research on international issue emergence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a series of sophisticated studies on the interface between bureaucracy and electoral institutions, Dan Wood, and Dan Wood along with Rick Waterman, concluded that it had been established that electoral institutions can control the bureaucracy, and research was now needed to move to the more interesting questions about what factors facilitate or limit this control. Since this call to arms, little progress has been made - probably because taking Wood's proposal seriously requires an extensive data set that measures a wide range of variables such as bureaucratic expertise, external political support for the bureaucracy, political preferences, clientele support, budget autonomy, and incentives - among others.Using a unique data set of over 1000 public organizations, plus an interrupted time-series assessment of political control that is analogous to those used by Wood, this paper systematically tests several hypotheses about political control of the bureaucracy. All other things being equal, theory suggests that one would expect political control to be enhanced when a) bureaucrats share values with politicos; b) organizations exhibit relatively less cohesion, leadership, technical expertise, and external political support; and c) organizations are small, less complicatedly bureaucratic, and centralized. Resources available to the bureaucracy can also be expected to matter for political control. This paper tests a series of such hypotheses from spatial theory, Rourke's theory of bureaucratic power, and organization theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to build bridges across quantitative, qualitative, and interpretive traditions. I engaged this task to find common ground for communication with a range of colleagues from different disciplines; to demonstrate the varieties of quality available when social science is applied well; and to use multiple methods to produce policy. In re-reading the paper, I find that the first two tasks were possible, but the third has escaped me. It is certainly possible to find bridges across social science disciplines; they are not incommensurable, as some would argue. There are also ways in which we can recognize quality in research of different traditions. Still, these traditions look at the world differently when it comes to their answer to the basic question, "what should we do next." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between immigrant incorporation regimes and noncitizen political engagement through a review of the most significant research advances in this area. Rather than make definitive conclusions, this paper is meant to serve as a roadmap for more detailed investigations in the future. The first two sections identify and analyze the various components of immigrant incorporation regimes in advanced industrial democracies and the modes of noncitizen political engagement that have emerged over the past two decades. I then provide an overview of the present state of comparative scholarship on noncitizen political engagement, highlight key arguments and disagreements, and finally, offer some suggestions for further research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to review issues regarding the field of Health Services Research, so as to set the stage for more extensive discussion, perhaps based on original research. The method of this paper is an unsystematic review of literature, particularly in mainstream journals, in order to make a series of comparisons. These comparisons are between HSR and (a) traditional academic disciplines; (b) the field and institutions of policy analysis; (c) biomedical research; and (d) experts within administrative systems. I argue these comparisons show that some of both the promises made by and disappointments experienced by HSR advocates are based on expectations that are either inconsistent or simply unrealistic. We can divide HSR into two pretty distinct subfields: Health Policy Research (HPR) and Medical Decision-making Research (MDR). The problems of HPR are predictable from the comparison to policy analysis. The difficulties of MDR derive partly from its competition with the biomedical establishment, yet the best way to understand them is through comparison to expertise within administrative systems. Forms of MDR such as the Outcomes and Evidence-Based Medicine movments have little effect partly because of their own internal weaknesses, but also because they seek to change the administration of a system that is not administered in the first place. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the discipline's near rejection of the case-study method is based on a restrictive view of the social sciences. Critiques of the case-study method are usually predicated on the assumption that the primary task of social science research is theory-testing (hypothesis-testing). In contrast, I demonstrate the utility of the case-study method for theory-building and theory-elaboration (or theory-reconstruction). I also answer the critics' two main criticisms of the case-study methd- the lack of "internal validity" and the lack of "external validity." The paper argues that the first criticism is only valid if the explicit purpose of analysis is the formal testing of causal relationships or hypotheses. I argue that the "internal validity" of case-study findings is predicated on the plausibility of analysis, the logical nexus between the independent and dependent variables, and the explantory utility of the findings. The second main criticism- the lack of "external validity"- is only valid if the explicit purpose of the research is enumerative extrapolation from a statistical sample to a parent universe. I argue that another purpose of social inquiry is analytical extrapolation by which causal processes occurring within one case are used to explain a particular social phenomenon, and also reevaluate theories about the general phenomenon in question. The "quasi-judicial" method and collegial review are ways to determine both "internal" and "external" validity. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the power of constitutional courts all over the world is increasing, we still know very little about support for emergent courts and especially support for supranational courts develops. So in order to better understand the development of support for constitutional courts, this paper compares the sources of confidence in constitutional courts in four cases. The comparison extends both cross-nationally and cross-institutionally by contrasting public support a well-established constitutional court ?the Federal Constitutional Court or Bundesverfassungsgericht in West Germany ? to support for three emergent courts ? the Bundesverfassungsgericht in East Germany and the European Court of Justice in both West and East Germany. Building on previous quantitative analysis that demonstrated a link between support for the national and the supranational link, the legitimacy transfer hypothesis is tested against additional, qualitative evidence that is lower in external validity, but higher in internal validity. These qualitative data consist of focus group interviews designed to explore why and how people might link support for national to support for supranational courts. Based on preliminary results from a series of focus groups conducted in West and East Germany, people do indeed make a functional connection between the national and the supranational court. Unlike the other institutions of government both courts are seen as neutral, technical arbiters of the law that are fundamentally trustworthy. The European Court of Justice is considered as the functional equivalent of the Federal Constitutional Court at a different level of government. There are some differences between East and West Germany, but they are slight. Even though the results are still preliminary, the evidence corroborates a functional connection between the two levels of courts, supporting the legitimacy transfer hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technicism of conventional welfare policy research is incapable of addressing major questions such as what is the role of race in welfare reform. The paper reviews the available research on racial disparities under welfare reform in a way that highlights how an alternative form of research, one that places race and welfare in historical context and highlights the role of race as a discursively constructed construct, enables us to see welfare reform as implicated in reproducing racial disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper encourages development of a research agenda to explain consequences of party change by developing a number of testable propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) was created to help federal agencies focus on results, service quality, and public satisfaction. The GPRA required federal agencies to develop and submit three plans, 1) a six-year strategic plan, emphasizing the agency’s mission, due by 1997, 2) an annual performance plan, outlining the goals for the following year, due by 1998 and, 3) an annual performance report which compares the program goals with the actual performance for each program activity. The first performance reports were due in calendar year 2000. The GPRA represents an effort to move away from the traditional, financially-driven budget process and shift to a performance-oriented management approach. However, debate has surfaced about whether the GPRA helps federal agencies meet their objectives or whether the GPRA is another symbolic governmental reform initiative. This paper examines the hypothesis that the GPRA has positively impacted the service quality of each federal agency. With the Department of Transportation (DOT) as the sample federal agency, this quantitative study analyzes the results of the DOT’s annual performance measures. This natural experiment analyzes two sets of performance results: 1999-2001 (post GPRA implementation) and 1990-1992 (pre-GPRA implementation). This study builds upon previous research, which emphasized the difficulty in measuring the performance of a federal agency, highlighting intergovernmental relations and congressional issues. Furthermore, the empirical data from this research evaluates the impact of the GPRA from a quantitative perspective. This research will compliment the existing body of qualitative research, which illustrates the challenges of successfully implementing the GPRA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benjamin I. Page and Dukhong Kim ’’Go it Alone’ Won’t Go with the American Public’ Recent U.S. foreign policy has widely been seen as having a unilateralist, ‘go it alone’ tendency. Three decades worth of national surveys by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, supplemented by other survey data gathered since the invasion of Iraq, indicate that large majorities of ordinary Americans prefer quite a different foreign policy: one that relies chiefly on cooperative, multilateral, and diplomatic methods. Majorities of citizens favor cooperation and joint decision making with allies, especially European countries; having widespread diplomatic relations, even with official enemy states like Iran and Cuba; pursuing diplomatic methods (as well as, and perhaps in preference to, military methods) in the struggle against terrorism; and dealing even-handedly with Israel and the Palestinians, including establishing a Palestinian state. Most Americans hold the United Nations in very high esteem and favor strengthening it by a variety of means, including a standing UN peacekeeping force and a small direct tax on international transactions. Most favor a strong UN role in the reconstruction of Iraq. Most Americans back a number of international treaties and agreements that have been rejected by U.S. officials, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the treaty to ban land mines, the Kyoto agreement on global warming, and the International Criminal Court. The public’s preferences for cooperative policies have generally been quite stable over time. They tend to fit together coherently in support of what can be called ‘global governance,’ in which a network of international treaties and institutions are used to encourage the collective provision of global public goods. At the individual level, these preferences tend to reflect ‘purposive belief systems’ in which people’s policy preferences are linked to logically related goals and perceptions of threats. The concluding section of the paper asks how the foreign policy of a democratic country could get out of harmony with the wishes of its citizens. It suggests that the reasons may lie in non-democratic features of U.S. elections, including the crucial roles of political party activists and money givers; the relatively low salience of some of these foreign policy issues; the success of public officials’ rhetoric at persuading citizens that their wishes are not in fact being flouted; and the willingness of many citizens to acquiesce in policies they dislike, unless and until major negative results begin to appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers tentative answers to four questions: 1) Why do we need to study causal mechanisms? 2) What are causal mechanisms? 3) How can causal mechanisms be used in empirical research? 4) What are examples of causal mechanisms? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asserts that how think tanks set their issue agenda and allocate resources are important processes under both issue network and advocacy coalition theories of public policy-making. I advance a framework of four forces that shape these processes: experts, events, funding, and entry. This framework is then explored in the context of a major new set of issues that emerged in the 1990s. In this case, experts dominated agenda-setting and resource allocation at the largest think tanks, leaving a gap that corporate-funded new entrants have filled. Events and other kinds of funders exerted a much weaker influence in aggregate, although there are some exceptional cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The apparent tension between the individual as unit of analysis in survey research and the communal or ethnic group starting point of many studies of ethnic conflict has rendered survey research an underdeveloped tool for studying levels of ethnic conflict. In earlier studies, we pointed out the difficulty of using common cross-national surveys - the World Values Survey (WVS), the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), and the Comparative Study of Electoral System (CSES) - to study ethnic mobilization because of the inconsistent or ad hoc manner in which these surveys treated subnational identities. In this paper, we assess how each of these major surveys (which are multi-wave or intended to be so) address the issue of ethnicity and what the consequences are for those doing research on ethnicity. By identifying and understanding the extent to which these datasets collect information on ethnicity, we hope to reveal and to evaluate the potential for theoretically driven hypothesis-testing concerning ethnic differences in the political attitudes and behavior in cross-national research. At the same time, we hope to inform designers of the major collections how greater attention to ethnicity might improve the quality and usefulness of the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A functioning theoretical and methodological pluralism requires communication across epistemological divides. Often, however, how scholars think and talk about "knowledge" implies that only their side can be right. The context of the discipline, from how we train doctoral students to how we think about "theory," encourages this attitude--to the detriment of genuine pluralism. In this paper, I use the cognitive framework of Brown (1976) to analyze common knowledge metaphors (e.g., the blind men describing an elephant), comparing them to one I offer (knowledge-as-an-actress) as superior for promoting pluralism. Though no single metaphor for a concept as abstract and complex as knowledge should be endorsed, I show how the metaphor, knowledge-as-an-actress, challenges existing hierarchical understandings of knowledges and promotes communication across existing research traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While wireless communication and other information linked technologies have rapidly achieved widespread levels of adoption, a significant array of stakeholder groups have been effectively excluded, not by as much by active intent as by inadvertent oversight and lack of awareness. Many of these technologies routinely used by the general population are frequently inaccessible to persons with disabilities. Barriers to the use of these technologies by people with varying disabilities may be subtle and unintentional, but never the less very real. This paper presents preliminary results of policy research designed to develop a framework for assessing the status quo, developing inclusive policy initiatives, and evaluating the efficacy of the research approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to better understand the actions of states, and the decisions that lead to those actions, require not only consideration of a wide range of variables but, also, an evaluation of which data sources might provide insightful, as well as accurate, information about decision-making processes. This paper examines one type of frequently used but often-criticized data source-political memoirs. In order to assess the utility and validity of memoirs as a resource, I compare the results of two different analyses of one research question, relating to the inclusion of international law considerations in foreign-policy decision making. One of the analyses uses a range of primary and secondary sources, while data for the other analysis was gathered only from relevant memoirs. By comparing the results of these analyses, we are provided with a more clear understanding of what memoir-reliant research can and cannot reveal, relative to a broader sampling of sources. This comparison demonstrates that memoirs do, in fact, appear to be an accurate and appropriate data source for examining the factors that affect top-level decision makers during periods of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the linkages between political science research and campaign finance reform. It addresses the following questions: Is there a body of knowledge about campaign finance that is widely accepted by the research community? Do these research findings have policy implications? Do political scientists themselves draw these policy implications and advocate or oppose specific reforms? Was the new campaign finance law shaped in any noticeable way by the work of political scientists? Is the financing of election campaigns an area in which serious-minded political scientists can make a constructive contribution to the improvement of our democracy? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a suggested teaching model enabling students to conduct extensive, hands-on survey research as the basis of part or all of a political science class. The model emphasizes active student learning and development of applied skills. The components of this model can be modified for utilization in a broad array of undergraduate political science courses, such as political science methods, campaigns and elections, public opinion, and public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the diverging public roles of Chilean social scientists who opposed the Pinochet regime. Following years of collaboration among intellectuals in the battle to re-establish democracy, the transition created new professional opportunities for some social scientists as politicians and consultants; these reflect and/or entail a shift toward the pragmatic in their politics. Others have maintained traditional professional positions in academia or private research centers, and have lost some influence with power brokers as a result. The classical public roles of intellectuals as social critics and visionaries whose work is based on theory or ideology have now been joined by a third category: technocrats who seeks to resolve concrete social problems, and for whom a theoretical framework is of secondary importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines findings from a research project undertaken to examine the resource planning process, resource allocation and the implementation of the Malawi National HIV/AIDS Framework 2000-2004 (NSF) throughout the PRSP Process and implementation of the Malawi Poverty Reduction Paper (MPRSP 2002). Implementing the NSF was said to be dependent on adequate, equitable, timely financing and expenditure for HIV/AIDS Action Plans. It was found that the PRSP process supported accountability for resources allocated for the implementation of the NSF.

Event data has been proven to be fruitful for the analysis of political interactions that follow the pattern 'who did what to whom and when'. Traditionally most often applied in international conflict studies and international relations, event data provides a wide set of variables and measurements that can also be applied to other research areas. Moreover, automated coding systems today allow for the coding of the data nearly in real time. This paper applies event data analysis to environmental policy and demonstrates how this method can be valuable for the study of environmental policymaking. In particular decision-making on global environmental problems such as climate change involves a complex set of actors with myriad interests, comprising both state and non-state actors on the international, national, regional and local level, as well as various forms of interactions between these actors. Event data analysis may uncover cooperation and conflict patterns between these actors and groups of actors that are concerned with climate change in different ways over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doing field research in polarized societies presents a number of challenges for the researcher. When collecting data from informants the position of informants is especially important and it effects the ability of the researcher to evaluate truth-claims. This is especially so when there is so serious a breakdown of trust that a Rashomon problem exists, one in which even factual accounts differ. The paper argues that trying to understand political action and policies in such environments through an investigation of political imaginaries can help. It does this by analyzing contemporary Venezuelan politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the range of undergraduate political science coursework, research methods classes are often afforded minimal priority, as many professors opt to devote the bulk of their teaching efforts to more "substantive" areas. This trend is reflected in the comparatively small number of methods courses offered to undergraduates in a considerable portion of the political science programs at colleges and universities nationwide. While earlier works have addressed this pattern and its implications with respect to graduate level coursework, we contend that the short shrift given to the teaching of methodology at the undergraduate level can also have negative and far-reaching effects on the discipline. In this study, we examine the discrepancy between the number of methods courses taught at the undergraduate level and the expectation that students at the graduate level should be familiar with political science research methods (as is often exemplified in admission requirements). A cursory review of political science course offerings and requirements at U.S. colleges and universities suggests that American political science programs are seemingly hypocritical in their stance on the importance of research methodology; they expect that incoming graduate students should be well versed in research methods, yet are simultaneously unwilling to provide sufficient methods courses for their undergraduate students. This paper provides evidence that such a pattern exists and also attempts to draw attention to the potential obstacles this may present to the future of political science. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some countries more technologically innovative than others? The dominant explanation amongst political-economists is that domestic institutions determine national innovation rates. However, after decades of research, there is still no agreement on precisely how this happens, exactly which institutions matter, and little aggregate evidence has been produced to support any particular hypothesis. This paper will review the equivocating evidence for domestic institutions explanations of national innovation rates. Its survey will show that, although a specific domestic institution or policy might appear to explain a particular instance of innovation, they generally fail to explain national innovation rates across time and space. Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that certain kinds of international relationships (e.g. capital goods imports, foreign direct investment, educational exchanges) affect national innovation rates in the aggregate, and that these relationships are not themselves determined by domestic institutions. In other words, explaining national innovation rates may not be so much a domestic institutions story as it is an international story. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the shift from a women and politics research comparative agenda to a gender and politics one from an institutional perspective. It outlines the importance of gender to political institutions and suggests a mult-directional comparative research strategy for furthering our understanding of the relationship between gender norms and institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodological advice suggests that a "pathway case" nested analysis is appropriate for maximizing external validity when developing a mechanisms-based account of interventions in civil war. Yet only the most general guidelines are given with regard to the specific issues that arise when trying to apply the pathway case design. This paper discusses four such issues—model specification, measurement validity, the indeterminacy of case selection, and the question of generalizability—and proposes strategies to deal with them. If properly addressed, the pathway case remains a fruitful research design. By incorporating a mechanisms-based causal logic in a nested analysis, the pathway case mixes methods in terms of both data and epistemology. As such it is an appropriate response to the large-N research programme on civil war. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many faculty members avoid teaching research methodology at the undergraduate level and at the same time many students fear the research methods course and express difficulty in grasping the often abstract constructs of research. Institutions that offer undergraduate methodology do so through one or two courses usually at the junior or senior level that includes design, methods, statistics, and theory. Little wonder faculty avoids teaching the course and students express antipathy toward the course. Teaching undergraduate methods is different from graduate methods in that at the undergraduate level, faculty place greater focus on the logic of research and design. One way to capture the undergraduate attention is to emphasize the learning experience by making methodology real and mentoring the undergraduate student through the research process i.e. learning by doing. A pedagogical approach as such creates a culture of ownership over the research process and excites students as they engage in the collaborative experiential process. This paper discusses an experiential and problem-based approach and outcomes of teaching undergraduate research methods. The preliminary findings suggest that students who participate in the experiential and problem-based learning on average exit research methods with significantly higher grades than students who did not engage in experiential and problem-based learning and that post test assessment scores between the two groups of students provide evidence of greater content knowledge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the problem of survey items having different measurement propertiesacross individuals or groups of individuals. This problem has rarely been confronted in surveyresearch. A central assumption in much of the extant research has been that group meandifferences reflect true differences on a trait or attitudinal measure, rather than an unaccountedfor bias in the survey itself. To compare groups, however, one must make the assumption ofmeasurement invariance, where a survey item or set of items has equivalent properties acrossgroups. If systematic differences exist in survey-item properties, the invariance assumption isviolated, introducing bias into an additive scale or test. As a result, inferences about groupdifferences may be incorrect, reflecting factors such as how survey items are understood or howdifficult these items are to answer. The term used by psychologists to understand this bias isreferred to as differential item functioning (DIF). DIF occurs when groups or individuals vary inthe probability of answering a question, holding constant true differences in ability or proficiency(Hambleton, Swaminthan, and Rogers, 1991). We examine and implement two strategies todetect DIF, Item Response Theory and Covariance Structure Modeling. Using simulated data, wefirst examine how these approaches hold up under various conditions. We then extend theseapproaches to exploring DIF in Delli Carpini and Keeter's (1996) political knowledge survey.We examine the empirical similarities and differences between these techniques, as well as theimplications of DIF. Our results indicate that conclusions drawn about group differences may beseverely misleading when biased items are included in a scale, and parameter estimates in causalmodels may also be affected by the non-zero correlation introduced between item properties andgroup variables. We conclude by exploring the options available to resolve DIF, and suggest thatDIF is an important factor to consider in future survey research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the use many political scientists have made of agent-based modeling (ABM) and the challenges associated with designing research at differing levels of complexity. We propose and illustrate the application of a typology of research designs --investigating abstract mechanisms, testing theories against ensembles of mechanisms and theories implemented to capture generic problems, or implementing virtualizations of complex situations, or the images experts have of them. Our illustrations are drawn specifically from work done on a family of problems pertaining to the evolution of collective identities and norms and to their contribution to collective action. By increasing the visibility of research design questions and clarifying the choices and opportunities associated with them, this typology of ABM research designs can guide understanding of ABM work, expand the range of its usefulness for political scientists, and improve the correspondence between the problems under consideration and research designs adopted. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years scholars have challenged the intellectual health and vibrancy of the field of urban politics. A recent example of such a challenge is Joshua Sapotichne, Bryan D. Jones, and Michelle Wolfe's provocative article, "Is Urban Politics a 'Black Hole,'?" published in Urban Affairs Review, the official journal of the Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. In this paper, I mount a multi-pronged defense of the urban politics field against the Sapotichne, Jones, and Wolfe challenge. This defense, insofar as it is successful, serves a broader purpose beyond rebutting a single -- albeit high-profile and damning -- challenge. It also seeks to afford a measure of empowerment to our maligned, maltreated, and marginalized urban politics subfield, helping us to gain the kind of intellectual self-awareness and intellectual self-confidence necessary for advancement in our research programs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counterfactuals are hypothetical scenarios that by definition cannot be tested, yet there is also a sense that counterfactuals are more than just fiction and may even be fundamental to causal research. This paper seeks to resolve this tension - to get control of the counterfactual as a tool for causal research and to explore some of the ways it can be harnessed. What follows is divided into four parts. The first part examines the role of the counterfactual in causal analysis, establishing the necessity of addressing the counterfactual and differentiating between the theoretical and literal counterfactuals. The second part investigates the process of selecting those counterfactuals most conducive to a strong causal argument, highlighting those attributes that distinguish one counterfactual from another. The third part surveys several established methods of addressing counterfactuals, noting the various strengths and weaknesses of each. Finally, the fourth part explores the implications of the counterfactual for structuring research projects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys some recent changes that have taken place in libraries and in the general areas of information technology bearing upon knowledge acquisition at institutions of higher learning. We contend that changes in the practices of libraries that have coincided with (and in some respects been driven by) the adoption of online distribution of scholarly communication media create a dilemma for scholars who seek some measure of disciplinary orientation in their research. Scholars who are inclined to use the Internet to break out of established disciplinary fields can find that search technologies - mediated by the practices and judgments of librarians, database providers, and publishers - re-frame their inquiries in ways that recapitulate established disciplinary habits and discourses, usually in ways the researcher is unaware. The myriad access routes to information sources via the Internet have facilitated an explosive lateral transmission of access to information and knowledge, disorienting the researcher. Access to information and knowledge appears part of a larger modal transformation underway in information/knowledge production, diffusion, and consumption. We attend to the manner in which this transformation has played itself out in one institution traditionally central to scholarship, the academic library. We elaborate on some of the political implications of this transformation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]