Scholars in international relations have failed to note a paradox about the balance of power: the concept of checks and balances and equilibria underlie classical Liberal constitutional and economic theory. Interest balancing interest lies at the core of the Liberal solution to the problem of anarchy, power, and human nature, whether in politics, economics, or the international sphere. Liberal scholars have adopted instead a rationalist utilitarian or a normative democratic approach. At the same time, Realists in international relations predict a balance, which realist scholars in domestic politics, like Schattschneider, have effectively questioned. This intellectual confusion denies Liberal theory a robust view of international politics, not least because the balancing principle is erroneously rejected as conservative. The confusion also undermines the coherence of Realist theory, which has hitherto tried to accommodate opposing predictions (balance of power and power concentrations) under one paradigm. I offer an explanation of how this conflation of theories arose. Conflating Liberalism with idealism leaves Realism as the only prudent alternative in international politics. The relation between the two theories is not zero-sum: both capture important aspects of international dynamics, and each can ignore the other only at serious cost.Deborah Boucoyannis is Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University ([email protected]). For comments and suggestions over the time the article has been in gestation, the author thanks Bear Braumoeller, Tim Crawford, Daniel Drezner, Nisha Fazal, David Grewal, Arman Grigorian, Mark Haas, Russ Hamilton, Michael Heaney, Jacques Hymans, Seth Jones, Andreas Kalyvas, Jacob Levy, Jack Levy, John Mearsheimer, Jennifer Mitzen, Kevin Narizny, Jacob Schiff, Jack Snyder, Kenneth Waltz, Alex Wendt, Bill Wohlforth, and the participants at the Political Theory and PISP workshops at the University of Chicago. Special thanks are due to Monica Toft, John Ikenberry, and Jennifer Hochschild for their support of the article; it was mostly written with the generous support of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

Over the past two decades, scholars have generated a large and sophisticated literature on genocide. Nevertheless, there are still several research areas that require further work. This article outlines a research agenda that analyzes the conditions under which genocide is likely to occur, the multilevel processes of violent escalation and de-escalation, and the ways in which these processes are shaped by, connect to, reinforce, accelerate and impede one another. I argue that scholars should 1) model elite and follower radicalization processes by disaggregating genocidal “intent” over time and space, and exploring how intent emerges rather than taking it as pre-given. Doing so will permit researchers to 2) situate genocide research within a broader context of political violence in order to understand how they are related temporally and spatially, and to decenter analytical domains beyond the standard country level and single victim group in order to gain insight into the dynamics of genocide, including how perpetrator policies vary by group; 3) draw on recent advances in microanalyses of civil war to theorize about subnational patterns of violence diffusion; 4) move beyond problematic contrasts between ideology and rationality to analyze how ideologies frame the strategic choices “available” to genocidal elites.

As the United States begins the twenty-first century, it remains the world's leading immigration country. In 2000 (the latest year for which migration data are available on a global basis) the United States was home to almost 35 million legal and unauthorized migrants, or 2.7 times as many as any other country. Although other nations have higher proportions of foreign-born residents (e.g., nearly 25 percent in Australia and 20 percent in Canada), the globally dominant position of the United States in regard to numbers of new immigrants reinforces its self-image as a “nation of immigrants,” as does the fact that immigration is generally seen as contributing to the country's economic and demographic strength. However, over the past three decades, more and more new arrivals with non-European origins have come to the country (more than four-fifths are Latino and Asian), many with very low levels of education and illegal status at entry. These changes have fueled public concerns and led to heated debates over whether U.S. admissions and settlement-related policies ought to be modified.Frank D. Bean is Professor of Sociology ([email protected]), Susan K. Brown is Assistant Professor of Sociology ([email protected]),and Rubén G. Rumbaut is Professor of Sociology at University of California, Irvine ([email protected]). Some of the research results reported in this paper come from a research project entitled “Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles” and supported by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.

For over two centuries, the evolution of democracy has been marked by repeated democratic waves. Yet these cross-border bursts of revolution and reform have varied widely in their origins, intensity, and success rates. How do we compare cascades of regime change, and what lessons do they offer about the spread of democracy? I lay out a historical framework of democratic waves that focuses on recurring causal mechanisms across time. Thirteen democratic waves are categorized according to two dimensions: 1) the origins of external influence, located in either vertical hegemonic transformations or in horizontal cross-border linkages; 2) the strength of external influence, taking the form of contagion when outside forces dominate and emulation when domestic focal points shape the timing of contention. This approach allows for more meaningful comparisons between these important, recurring, yet seemingly incomparable democratic waves. More generally, it suggests that the global history of democracy cannot be reduced to the sum of its national trajectories.

This article shows that judicial review has a democratic justification, although it is not necessary for democratic government and its virtues are controversial and often speculative. Against critics like Waldron and Bellamy, it shows that judges, no less than legislators, can embody democratic forms of representation, accountability and participation. Hence, judicial review is not undemocratic simply because it enables unelected judges to over-rule elected legislators when people disagree about rights. Against recent defenders of judicial review, such as Eisgruber and Brettschneider, it shows that democratic arguments for judicial review do not require judges to be better at protecting rights than legislators. Hence a democratic justification for judicial review does not depend on complex and inevitably controversial interpretations and evaluations of judicial as opposed to legislative judgments. Democratic government does not demand special virtue, competence or wisdom in its citizens or their leaders. From a democratic perspective, therefore, the case for judicial review is that it enables individuals to vindicate their rights against government in ways that parallel those they commonly use against each other. This makes judicial review normatively attractive whether or not it leads to better decisions than would be made by other means.

Political scientists have been caught by surprise by some of the world’s most dramatic political transformations. To assess how the discipline fared in explaining two of the most large-scale and unexpected developments of the past decades, we compare scholarship around the time of popular mobilization in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Arab world in 2011. We argue that while scholars cannot be expected to predict utterly extraordinary events such as revolutions and mass mobilization, in these two cases disciplinary trends left scholars ill-prepared to explain them. Political scientists used similar paradigms to study both regions, emphasizing their failure to develop politically and economically along the lines of Western Europe and the United States. Sovietologists tended to study the communist bloc as either anomalously totalitarian or modernizing towards “convergence” with the West. Likewise, political scientists studying the Arab world focused disproportionately on the prospects for democratization or the barriers to it, and they now risk treating the 2011 protest movements essentially as non-events if they are not clearly tied to institutional democratic reform. By broadening their research agendas beyond a focus on regime type, political scientists will be better prepared to understand future changes in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Scholars have long expressed concern that the ascendance of the modern presidency since the New Deal and World War II, by hastening the decline of political parties and fostering the expansion of the administrative state, portended an era of chronically low public engagement and voter turnout and an increasingly fractious and impotent national politics. Presidents' inattentiveness to the demands of party-building and grassroots mobilization, coupled with their willingness to govern through administration, were seen as key obstacles to the revitalization of a politics based in widespread political interest and collective responsibility for public policy. This article argues that George W. Bush's potent combination of party leadership and executive administration, foreshadowed by Ronald Reagan's earlier efforts, suggests the emergence of a new presidential leadership synthesis and a “new” party system. This new synthesis does not promise a return to pre-modern party politics; rather, it indicates a rearticulation of the relationship between the presidency and the party system. The erosion of old old-style partisan politics allowed for a more national and issue-based party system to develop, forging new links between presidents and parties. As the 2006 elections reveal, however, it remains to be seen whether such parties, which are inextricably linked to executive-centered politics and governance, can perform the critical function of moderating presidential ambition and mobilizing public support for party principles and policies.Sidney M. Milkis is Professors of Politics ([email protected]) and Jesse H. Rhodes is a doctoral student ([email protected]) at the University of Virginia. The authors would like to thank the anonymous readers who reviewed the manuscript for their thoughtful and constructive comments.

How does a comparative politics of gender improve our understanding of political representation? I map the existing feminist literature on this topic, which asks questions like why there are so few women elected to political office, whether women in politics represent women as a group, and how the presence or absence of women in politics affects voter perceptions and opinions. I then consider how scholars—both feminist and non-feminist—might generate new insights on political representation by expanding what is thought of as a “case” and what is meant by the term “gender.” I recommend increasing the scope of comparison by (1) opening up the definition of a case to include a broader range of units and events and (2) connecting the study of a single unit to patterns generated by the study of other similar units. I suggest moving away from equating women with gender by exploring (1) relations between women and men and (2) the impact of masculinities and femininities on the conduct of political life. While developed in relation to research on representation, this approach offers broader advice for capturing the diverse and gendered nature of political dynamics observed around the world.

Do political outcomes respond more strongly to the preferences of the rich? In an age of rising inequality, this question has become increasingly salient. Yet, although an influential literature has emerged, no systematic account exists either of the severity of differentials in political responsiveness, the potential drivers of those differentials, or the variation across democracies. This article fills that gap. We analyze 1,163 estimates of responsiveness from 25 studies and find that, although this research collectively suggests that political outcomes better reflect the preferences of the rich, results vary considerably across models and studies. The divergence in results is partly driven by partisanship and the model specification, while we find no significant variation across either policy domains or general/specific measures of political outcomes. Finally, and against theoretical expectations, published research suggests that differentials in responsiveness are weaker in the United States compared to other developed democracies. The article contributes to our understanding of differential responsiveness by clarifying the main debates and findings in the literature, identifying issues and gaps, and pointing to fruitful avenues for future research.

Does populism threaten American democracy, and if so, what is the nature of that threat? In dialogue with the comparative literature on populism, this article considers the opportunity structure available to populist parties and candidates in the American political system. I argue that compared to most other democracies, the US system offers much less opportunity for organized populist parties but more opportunity for populist candidacies. Today’s major parties may also be more vulnerable to populist insurgency than at other points in US history because of (1) changes in communications technology, (2) the unpopularity of mainstream parties and party leaders, and (3) representation gaps created by an increasingly racialized party system. Although no democratic system is immune to deterioration, the US constitutional system impedes authoritarian populism, just as it obstructs party power generally. But the vulnerability of the major parties to populist insurgency poses a threat to liberal democratic norms in the United States, just as it does elsewhere.

The comparative study of women's movements is developing within the political science subfield of women and politics, largely by drawing on concepts and findings from several disciplines. From political science it borrows theories of the state, political development, democracy, and democratization. Sociology offers insights on social movements and the gendered nature of societies. Women's studies scholarship enables us to understand systematic gendered arrangements of power and privilege, including those fragmented or reinforced by class, race, sexuality, and ethnicity. The subfield of women and politics contributes both feminist theoretical insights and scholarship on elected women, female leaders, and women's policy preferences; these contributions inform comparative research on women's movements.Karen Beckwith is a professor of political science at the College of Wooster ([email protected]). She is coeditor, with Lee Ann Banaszak and Dieter Rucht, of Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State and author of American Women and Political Participation. Beckwith is the founding editor, with Lisa Baldez, of Politics & Gender, the journal of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. The author thanks Jeff Lantis and Kent Kille for extensive comments on earlier versions of this article.

I assess several politically powerful ways of drawing on the past in the search for solutions to problems in the present. To probe these dynamics, I turn to the American jeremiad, a longstanding form of political rhetoric that explicitly invokes the past and laments the nation's falling-away from its virtuous foundations. I begin by focusing on the Christian Right's traditionalist jeremiad, which offers both nostalgic and Golden Age rhetoric in its assessment of the United States' imperiled national promise. I argue that, despite differences in the historical location of their ideals and the significant rhetorical power that they bring to political life, such nostalgic and Golden Age narratives represent a constraining political ideal, one ultimately incapable of doing justice to an increasingly diverse American society. I argue furthermore that there is another strand of the American jeremiad and conclude by sketching a different way of drawing on the past, a progressive jeremiad epitomized by the thought of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Such a jeremiad is also deeply rooted in the American tradition and offers a far more promising contribution to a diverse and pluralistic American future.

What is the impact of the recent Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) initiative and the Journal Editors Transparency Statement (JETS) on scholars working with qualitative data? Analysis finds DA-RT insufficiently sensitive to the needs of qualitative data and focuses on four inter-related reasons why DA-RT needs to be revised before being widely adopted by political science journals: (1) space constraints that hinder full journal presentation of the analysis of qualitative data; (2) ethical concerns about protecting human subjects, and the time needed to prepare such data before publicly sharing them; (3) costs of data collection and the right of first usage; and (4) a potentially chilling effect of DA-RT on certain types of research topics. Analysis of the author’s own journey from econometric and survey analysis to narrative interviews with people in vulnerable situations, facing moral dilemmas, illustrates why DA-RT needs additional safeguards for qualitative data and methods. Given the increasing importance of qualitative data, and its ability to lend insight into critical political topics, the author argues that implementing the current version of the DA-RT initiative could hinder political science’s ability to address important political questions. Thus DA-RT must be modified to address the special needs of qualitative data.

In an era of democratic backsliding, scholars and policymakers wonder if failure to reckon with former authoritarian elites and their collaborators plays a role. Yet without adequate data on the way former autocracies and countries emerging from conflict deal with human rights violators, it is hard to tell if new democracies are unstable because of their failure to reckon with their former authoritarian elites or despite it. We introduce a dataset of personnel transitional justice events that allows scholars to answer such questions, disaggregating these events temporally from the date of a country’s democratization. The time series nature of our data allows scholars to measure key characteristics of states’ dealing with their past and complements existing transitional justice datasets by focusing not only on post-conflict societies and not only on post-authoritarian societies, but on both. To showcase the possibilities our data affords scholars, we use it to develop three novel measures of personnel transitional justice: severity, urgency, and volatility. The granular structure of our data allows researchers to construct additional measures depending on their theoretical questions of interest. We illustrate the use of severity of transitional justice in a regression that also employs data from the Varieties of Democracy project.

New scholarship in American politics argues that interest groups should be brought back to the center of the field. We attempt to further that agenda by exploring an aspect of group influence that has been little studied: the role interest groups play on the inside of government as official participants in bureaucratic decision-making. The challenges for research are formidable, but a fuller understanding of group influence in American politics requires that they be taken on. Here we carry out an exploratory analysis that focuses on the bureaucratic boards that govern public pensions. These are governance structures of enormous financial consequence for state governments, public workers, and taxpayers. They also make decisions that are quantitative (and comparable) in nature, and they usually grant official policymaking authority to a key interest group: public employees and their unions. Our analysis suggests that these “interest groups on the inside” do have influence—in ways that weaken effective government. Going forward, scholars should devote greater attention to how insider roles vary across agencies and groups, how groups exercise influence in these ways, how different governance structures shape their policy effects, and what it all means for our understanding of interest groups in American politics.

Given that the fictional narratives found in novels, movies, and television shows enjoy wide public consumption, memorably convey information, minimize counter-arguing, and often emphasize politically-relevant themes, we argue that greater scholarly attention must be paid to theorizing and measuring how fiction affects political attitudes. We argue for a genre-based approach for studying fiction effects, and apply it to the popular dystopian genre. Results across three experiments are striking: we find consistent evidence that dystopian narratives enhance the willingness to justify radical—especially violent—forms of political action. Yet we find no evidence for the conventional wisdom that they reduce political trust and efficacy, illustrating that fiction’s effects may not be what they seem and underscoring the need for political scientists to take fiction seriously.

Relying on post-election surveys, we analyze how class and union membership condition voters’ abandonment of mainstream Left parties and the alternatives chosen by former mainstream-Left voters in the period 2001–2015. Inspired by Przeworski and Sprague’s Paper Stones (1986), our analysis shows that Left parties face a trade-off between mobilizing workers and other voters and that unionization renders workers more loyal to Left parties that mobilize non-workers. By contrast, unionization does not render non-workers more loyal to Left parties that mobilize workers. Union membership increases the likelihood that workers who abandon the mainstream Left continue to vote. It also increases the likelihood that voters abandon the mainstream Left in favor of radical Left parties rather than Center-Right parties. Finally, we show that workers are more likely to abandon mainstream Left parties in favor of radical Right parties than non-workers and that union membership does not affect their propensity to do so. We conclude that reversing the decline of working-class organization should be a long-term objective of mainstream Left parties.

The international relations field has recently taken a communicative turn. Social constructivists, for instance, regularly examine frames, persuasion, and other discursive mechanisms by which actors reach intersubjective agreement. Critical theorists add an overtly normative dimension by embracing the transformative potential of public deliberation. In contrast, realists and neorealists claim that outcomes are determined by the distribution of material power—political communication and discursive ideals are virtually meaningless elements in international politics. Put simply, talk is cheap. Given this view, it is puzzling that many prominent realists participate actively in national foreign policy debates and in that context both implicitly and explicitly embrace views about political discourse that are remarkably consistent with those held by constructivists and critical theorists. In the recent Iraq debate, the realists reveal lies, political spin, and other distortions of the debate promulgated by government elites and their allies. They challenge the legitimacy of established policies and critique excessive secrecy. Most importantly, these neorealists seek to transform public and elite consciousness so as to produce social pressures for alternative outcomes. Realists have apparently rejected their own theoretical presuppositions about the meaning and role of political communication, which has important implications for both policy debate and IR theorizing.Rodger A. Payne is Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville and Director of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order ([email protected]). He would like to thank Josh Busby, Peter Dombrowski, Peter Howard, Jacques Hymans, Piki Ish-Shalom, Avery Kolers, Doug Lemke, John Mearsheimer, Tom Mowle, Stan Scott, and the three anonymous reviewers for offering valuable comments and suggestions. Portions of this paper were previously delivered at the Annual Meetings of the International Studies Association, at Montréal in 2004 and at Honolulu in 2005. Financial and institutional support was provided by a President's Research Initiative Project Initiation Grant from the University of Louisville and by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.

We describe and analyze patterns in the geographical focus of political science research across more than a century. Using a new database of titles and abstracts from 27,690 publications in eight major political science journals from their inception, we demonstrate that, historically, political scientists concentrated their studies on a limited number of countries situated in North America and Western Europe. While a strong focus on Western countries remains today, we detail how this picture has changed somewhat over recent decades, with political science research becoming increasingly “globalized.” Still, several countries have received almost no attention, and geographical citation patterns differ by subfield. For example, we find indications of a greater focus on the United States and large Western European countries in international relations than in comparative politics publications. We also analyze several correlates of a country being the focus of political science research, including the country’s predominant languages, income, population size, democracy level, and conflict experience, and show systematic variation in the geographical focus of research. This unequal focus, we argue, has important implications regarding the applicability of extant descriptive and causal claims, as well as the development of theories in political science.