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What are the ethical responsibilities that social science researchers have, not only to the people we study but also to ourselves as scholars and other scholars? This article argues that as political and social scientists, we need to expand our notion of research ethics, to adopt a notion that embraces treatment of our subject–participants and ourselves as researchers. This study is anchored in the still-growing literature on research ethics in fieldwork and draws on political science work on the ethical implications of the risks and realities of sexual violence for scholars who conduct fieldwork. The article looks beyond political science to feminist-informed research in the social sciences as it develops the argument about the ethical responsibilities of social scientists. In investigating the overarching question, the article addresses resources for survivors of sexual harassment and assault during field research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article emphasizes the need of equality and equity to create a positive climate for women, scholars of color, LGBTQ+ identified, and other underrepresented individuals in political science.

The article discusses the significance of climate and context in political science and distinguish between equity and equality for political scientists at the departmental and university levels.

This article examines politicians' changes of party labels during the life of a legislature. The authors view a legislator's choice of party as a strategic decision recurring throughout the parliamentary cycle. In their approach, individuals are open to switching parties as they pursue goals specific to the stage in the parliamentary cycle. Analyzing Italy and Russia, they identify among legislators in both countries patterns of heightened switching for office benefits, policy advantage, and vote seeking at distinctive moments in the parliamentary cycle. The commonalities across the two systems provide compelling support for their theoretical framework. The evidence also points to a midterm peak in switching in both countries. Differences appear, however, in the timing of preelectoral positioning--contrasts that the authors attribute to differences in the degree of party system institutionalization, the age of the democratic regimes, and thus the information available to players in electoral politics. Keywords: legislative parties; party switching; Russia; Italy; parliamentary cycle; midterm effect

Why do informal rules emerge alongside - and at variance with - the formal constitutional constraints that shape bargaining over coalition governments? The presence of informal rules at odds with formal rules appears as an anomaly within both institution-free and institution-focused theories of coalitions. The author argues that politicians create informal rules in order to alter formal institutions that do not function to their benefit. The costs of a formal change in institutions offer incentives to politicians to invent informal rules as alternatives to such change, and repeated interactions teach politicians what to expect and then invent. The author's emphasis on the manipulability of rules echoes long-standing themes in the study and practice of politics.