Search

This article adds to ongoing discussions about the gender gap in political science publishing. Through a systematic examination of 80 years worth of data, I show how evolving trends in authorship and coauthorship have changed the nature of publishing in the Journal of Politics. I build on previous studies by incorporating into this analysis a decade's worth of submission data provided to me by the journal. Second, I use a latent Dirichlet allocation topic model to identify how the content of published articles has shifted in recent decades. I describe how these moves have affected the publication prospects of both men and women. Although progress has been made, the balance of evidence suggests that there remains unevenness in terms of both who and what is published in the pages of the Journal of Politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) is an almost 50-year-old organization. Its history is rooted in challenging racial discrimination and exclusion of people of African descent in the political science discipline and profession. Over time, the organization also has sought diversity and inclusion in various forms, whether through inclusion of intersectional identities and expressions or philosophical perspectives. This article describes the significance of signaling inclusive values through the institutionalization of the organization. It also offers best practices for the #MeToo movement through accounting for inclusive practices of NCOBPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the first five decades of the Journal/Revue, with particular emphasis on patterns of change and continuity. The article presents a quantitative analysis of the articles published in the Journal/Revue, looking at, among other things, the balance of articles published in English and in French, the proportion of articles authored by women, the location and institutional affiliation of authors and the subject matter of published articles. Significant continuities emerge from the data, such as the predominance of Canadian-based authors writing on aspects of Canadian politics and the dominance of authors from large research-intensive universities. Yet change is also evident, for example in the number of women publishing in the Journal/Revue and in the emergence of articles in subfields not found in the Journal/Revue’s earlier days, most notably Aboriginal politics, gender and politics, and race and ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The annual conference of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) is a disciplinary bellwether that helps us trace the evolution of political science scholarship. This article analyzes research presented at the conference between 1965 and 2015. It shows growth in the gender and politics sub-field and in the presence of women in leadership positions in the CPSA. At the same time, gender-related research is often presented in gender-focused panels and not incorporated across the discipline's sub-fields. This means that gender scholars typically present their work to like-minded researchers, and scholars in other sub-fields have little exposure to gender perspectives. That such siloing occurs at the earliest stages of research dissemination is an important contextual factor in understanding gendered citation patterns, departmental hiring and rates of tenure and promotion. For Canadian political science to remain relevant, more needs to be done to incorporate gender perspectives across the discipline's sub-fields. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Feminist political science scholarship has burgeoned internationally since the 1980s, evidenced by the volume and diversity of work published in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals, editions and book series. In New Zealand we have witnessed a plethora of feminist analyses that have focused on some element of the 'political'. However, feminist engagement with 'mainstream' New Zealand politics has been more limited, while traditional New Zealand political science has tended to view 'official' politics within and between states as gender neutral. This article explores this historically tense relationship and what it has meant for the development of New Zealand feminist political science. I identify four strands of feminist scholarship in New Zealand politics that have emerged in recent years. However, I suggest that despite increases in this scholarship, in the number of women hired, and in the work undertaken by the women in New Zealand's political science professional association to address the concerns of women in the discipline, these contributions have remained on the margins of New Zealand political science. Reasons for this marginal status may include the relatively small size of the field, and that there are few senior feminists in the field of New Zealand politics. But it may also be that New Zealand feminist political scientists are more comfortable engaging with the gender politics community internationally. I conclude with a brief discussion of what this might mean for the future of feminist political science and New Zealand politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Where do Women Stand? New Evidence on the Presence and Absence of Gender Equality in the World's Constitutions" by Amy Raub and colleagues in the 2014 issue is presented.

Advocates have been striving for decades to improve the representation of women and people of color in the academy. The results in political science have been fairly limited. From 1980 to 2010, the proportion of women among white political science faculty grew from 9.6% to 24.8% (APSA 2011, 44). Even with this sizable increase, women constituted fewer than a quarter of white political scientists. Within their respective ethnoracial groups, women of color made up a greater proportion of political science faculty but remain woefully underrepresented in the profession, with only 79 Latino, 161 African American, and 117 Asian American female political science faculty nationally in 2010 (APSA 2011, 44–46). Overall, the proportion of scholars of color within political science during this period, male and female, has remained largely flat; in 2010, 88.9% of political science faculty were white. In this essay, I argue that an intersectional approach to thinking about this issue—one that acknowledges the marginalization and privilege that cut across faculty within departments and universities—raises the possibility of changing the conversation about inclusion, potentially opening up new possibilities for making substantive change within political science departments and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J. R. R. Tolkien once suggested that “short cuts make long delays.” While Tolkien was not talking about improving the situation of women in political science, this essay argues that those of us interested in making political science less alienating for women would do well to heed his advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of marginalized groups are experts on attitudes, behaviors, practices, and institutions that resist inclusion and reproduce bias. Many scholars who study marginalization also work from first-hand experience of it. Although academic experiences of marginalization usually occur in sites of middle-class privilege, the effects can be profound. Women in the U.S. political science profession continue to be underrepresented, and women of color severely so. This sends the message to all students that women lack the capacity to be scientists. Women in academe often internalize that message and too rarely seek leadership positions. When they do, their achievements are characterized as tokenism and devalued, revealing a hostile gender climate that enables bias to flourish. That bias is reflected in salary discrepancies, resource distribution, and service responsibilities (e.g., APSA 2011; Monroe et al. 2008). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with scholar and foreign policy analyst Anne-Marie Slaughter is presented. When asked about women's role in global governance, she posits that equal representation of women would improve conflict resolution and direct the focus of policy towards education, poverty, and health. Details on the roles of women in peace negotiations are presented. She also discusses differences between gender relations in Eastern and Western cultures.

Mihaela Miroiu is a Romanian political theorist and East Europe's most prominent feminist philosopher. She is the author of twelve books published in Romanian, including Road to Autonomy: Feminist Political Theories (Polirom, 2004), Priceless Women (Polirom 2006) and Convenio: On Women, Nature and Morals (Alternative Publishing House, 1996). She has also edited or co-edited nine volumes, most of them on feminism and feminist theory. Born in Romania in 1955, she was raised during the communist era under the Ceausescu regime, and emerged after 1989 as one of the country's leading feminist voices. She founded the country's first gender studies Master's program in 1998, and helped to organize two of its earliest independent women's nongovernmental organizations: AnA. -The Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses and The Center for Gender Studies FILIA. Professor Miroiu is an expert advisor to both UNESCO and the European Union, and has won prestigious international fellowships at Cornell University, Indiana University, Oxford and Manchester Universities, and at the Central European University in Budapest. In 2010, the U.S.-based Association of Women in Slavic Studies awarded Professor Miroiu its Outstanding Achievement Award for her accomplishments as a philosopher and her mentorship of a new generation of young Romanian feminists. The European Institute for Gender Equality also featured her in its "Women Inspiring Europe" 2011 calendar. On May 16, 2010, Kristen Ghodsee, an American scholar of East European women's movements and the John. S. Osterweis Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College, accompanied her to a public protest in front of the Romanian presidency against a government plan to cut state subsidies to mothers of young children. The following day, Ghodsee interviewed Professor Miroiu in her home in Bucharest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Relations / Uluslararasi Iliskiler is the property of International Relations Council and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An interview with Carole Pateman, professor of political theory, is presented. When asked about her book "The Sexual Contract" and how she became interested in political theory, Pateman shares that the book is the second that she has written about theories of original contracts, and her interest in political theory begun when she discovered it at Ruskin College. She describes her experience as the first woman president of the International Political Science Association. She also shared her views on third wave feminism.

This paper draws on a study of gender and politics in the Australian parliament in order to make a contribution to methodological debates in feminist political science. The paper begins by outlining the different dimensions of feminist political science methodology that have been identified in the literature. According to this literature five key principles can be seen to constitute feminist approaches to political science. These are: a focus on gender, a deconstruction of the public/private divide, giving voice to women, using research as a basis for transformation, and using reflexivity to critique researcher positionality. The next part of the paper focuses more specifically on reflexivity tracing arguments about its definition, usefulness and the criticisms it has attracted from researchers. Following this, I explore how my background as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1987 to 1996 provided an important academic resource in my doctoral study of gender and politics in the national parliament. Through this process I highlight the value of a reflexive approach to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the need for new institutional approaches and theories on feminism. It argues that new theories and tools will help feminist scholars address key issues on power, gender and change. It discusses gendered approach and how its understandings have moved feminist research from individual to institutional levels of analysis. It also states that feminist political science is concerned with transforming power inequalities while changing the institution's dynamic process, therefore opening up possible dialogues with feminist political science. The author inquires feminist institutionalism as a promising approach for gender and institution studies.

The article discusses the integration of discursive institutionalism framework for feminist political analysis. It states that historical institutionalism (HI) and discourse analysis complement one another in terms of solutions. It stresses the advantages of integrated feminist discursive institutionalism and the merits of gender-sensitive historical institutionalism. Furthermore, it explores the two feminist scholars who attempted to apply discourse analysis onto the political field. The author presents her opinions on gender discursive institutionalism which serves as an arena for communication.

The article discusses the incorporation of elements of sociological institutionalism (SI) into feminist institutionalism. It states that any institutionalism on its own is insufficient to undertake the questions of power, gender, strategic action and change. However, feminist political science (FPS) and SI share a common ground in social constructionist approach in relation to the analysis of the institutions and actors. It cites the elements for discovering the dynamics of institutional continuity and change which include norms, ideas and informal rules. It also points out the problems of a straightforward feminist SI such as tensions, conflicts and gender inequality.

The article discusses how historical institutionalism (HI) could serve as a tool for feminist political scientists. It explains how the institutions are created and changed and why they existed. It cites some of the factors that hinder some scientists to pursue gendered comparative studies such as lack of understanding how to undertake the studies and methods in medium and large-n studies. The contributions and advantages of HI on feminist comparative politics and political science are discussed. It outlines some of the characteristics of HI which are useful for scientists involve in comparative politics.

Objectives. The article examines the factors that influence the frequency whereby scholarly articles published by Canadian political scientists are cited. Method. We collected data on 1,860 journal articles published between 1985 and 2005 by 758 Canadian political scientists and listed in the Social Science Citation Index. Using these data, we performed OLS and tobit estimations to identify factors influencing citation frequency. Results. The regressions show that the reputation of the journal in which the article is published, though important, does not explain everything. The gender of the author(s), the number of authors, the geographical focus of the article, the field, and the methodology also matter. Conclusion. An article is more likely to be widely cited if it is published in a prestigious journal, if it is written by several authors, if it applies quantitative methods, if it compares countries, and if it deals with administration and public policy or elections and political parties. Faculty members who belong to larger departments and those who are women are more cited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Hannah Arendt's concept of power. Arendt understands power in a both non-hierarchical and non-instrumental way, as much distinct from domination as from violence. By stressing the essential relational and potential character of power, Arendt shows the impossibility of human omnipotence. Her analysis of violent action as an instrumental, mute and solitary activity, which can destroy, but never generate power, and which, therefore, can never be more than a poor substitute for acting together, is discussed.

The article presents the response of the author to the reviews of her book "Feminizing Politics." She says that the reviews by Julie Morgan and Ann Widdecombe show the differences between political scientists and politicians. She argues that as a political scientist, she needs to declare and explain the ideas that influence her work and report all that she has learned even if it does not support her preferences. She states that Widdecombe asserts that she hates the book because by drawing attention to her sex, it makes a token of her. The author says Widdecombe has misread her book.

This article is a poetic retelling of insight gained as a Black woman surviving graduate school. The purpose of this autoethnographic narrative is to document a few pivotal graduate school experiences that illustrate all that it means to become disciplined in and by higher education. Although the violence committed in such a privileged space may seem trivial, the hurt is real and needs to be given voice. Written to warn and to inspire those not yet overcoming, the metaphor of Persephone and Demeter (as adapted by Rita Dove) is invoked in this essay to demonstrate how it is more than possible to reign in the midst of pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about Islam and liberalism. When asked about how she perceived liberalism interacting with Islam, Ali argues that liberalism should prevail as the the two doctrines are incompatible. She says that her next book "Shortcut to Enlightenment" is about the political philosophy of Islam, and compares the experience of living in the United States with the experience of living in Holland.

The importance of exploring the 'gender' dimension in political research has achieved a level of acceptability over the past few years as more women become part of the political mainstream as elected representatives. Rather than being viewed as lone mavericks who at best operate as honorary men and at worst function as idiosyncratic (but powerful) leaders guided by whimsy and their menstrual cycle, women politicians are now viewed as legitimate foci for analysis. As women are achieving political incorporation into parliamentary democracies, if not always power to effect change once they are there,they inevitably become targets for media and academic interest. This paper explores some of the tensions which arise for a feminist researcher intent on pursuing a feminist politics but where the theory-practice dissonance is sometimes hard to handle. This becomes especially so where her interviewees do not always share the same political values and when they sometimes engage with precisely the same kinds of power games associated with male elites. When disclosure of personal values elicits an over-empathising (and sometimes slanderous) testimony by interviewees, such revelations carry their own ethical and moral dilemmas for the feminist researcher. The paper begins by discussing the key themes in feminist research practice, including problems of definition,before moving on to consider someof the issues which arise when doing interview-based work with elite women. It explores the lack of congruence which can arise between 'established' feminist principles relating to interviewing women 'subjects' and the reality of working with 'professional' interviewee groups such as women politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though not a united body of thought, feminism insists on the importance of women and the need to combat their oppression. This agenda has underlain feminists' attempts to identify an appropriate research method and their criticisms of traditional social science methodology. In some cases it has led to the repudiation of ‘male’ science and epistemology altogether. Feminist political scientists to date have shown less interest in methodological issues. Instead they have concentrated on questioning their discipline's understanding of the nature, behavioural forms and location of politics. While not amounting to a ‘revolution’, taken together these feminist criticisms do expose both the frequent scientistic pretensions and the conceptual narrowness of traditional political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1893, when the first woman took a Ph.D. in political science, and 1945, about 150 women became political scientists. Support for their professional lives came primarily from other women who were their teachers or their colleagues in Women's colleges. Most early women did not marry; those who did found domestic roles detrimental to their careers. Graduate departments channeled women back to women's colleges and did not recruit women for their own faculties. Women are included in the professional organization primarily as representatives of women's colleges. The condition of entry into a secure academic life was to remain single and accept a sex-segregated place; but this security did not provide the necessary credential of a prestigious home department for leadership of the nationally organized profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which examined the status of women political scientists in nonacademic posts in the U.S. as of 1971. Social and demographic characteristics of survey respondents; Perception of the women on the presence of sex discrimination in the workplace; Examples of discriminatory office practices against women.

Presents a study which analyzed the discrimination against women in the academic professions, particularly in the field of political science, in Western U.S in 1969. Identification of participants to the academic recruitment process; Student distribution and attrition in the West; Status of women faculty members in Western political science; Perceived obstacles and encouragements to the career advancement of women faculty members.

The author reflects on her motivation for doing activist work as a feminist political scientist.

The article celebrates the life and work of Maríe Muller, the political scientist who died on March 4, 2013.

Statistics on the review and publication of articles in this journal for the past three years are analyzed, and the number of female authors of articles is compared with the figures from the preceding three years. The presentation of the 500 euro Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (International Relations Journal, ZIB) award for best article published between 2006 and 2011 to political scientist Niklas Schörnig at the DVPW political science congress in Tübingen, Germany is announced.

The article focuses on Hannah Arendt, a political and philosophical thinker during the twentieth century. Topics discussed include Arendt's book "The Human Condition," which exposes pluralism as a fundamental quality of action, her theory of human activities, and her views about political violence and political power.

Two obituaries are presented for political scientist Ellen Turkish Comisso.