Woodrow Wilson is the only American political scientist to have served as President of the United States. In the time between his political science Ph.D. (from Johns Hopkins, in 1886) and his tenure as president (1913–21), he also served as president of Princeton University (1902–10) and president of the American Political Science Association (1909–10). Wilson is one of the most revered figures in American political thought and in American political science. The Woodrow Wilson Award is perhaps APSA’s most distinguished award, given annually for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs published in the previous year, and sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation at Princeton University.

Wilson has also recently become the subject of controversy, on the campus of Princeton University, and in the political culture more generally, in connection with racist statements that he made and the segregationist practices of his administration. A group of Princeton students associated with the “Black Lives Matter” movement has demanded that Wilson’s name be removed from two campus buildings, one of which is the famous Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (see Martha A. Sandweiss, “Woodrow Wilson, Princeton, and the Complex Landscape of Race,” http://www.thenation.com/article/woodrow-wilson-princeton-and-the-complex-landscape-of-race/). Many others have resisted this idea, noting that Wilson is indeed an important figure in the history of twentieth-century liberalism and Progressivism in the United States.

A number of colleagues have contacted me suggesting that Perspectives ought to organize a symposium on the Wilson controversy. Although we do not regularly organize symposia around current events, given the valence of the controversy and its connection to issues we have featured in our journal (see especially the September 2015 issue on “The American Politics of Policing and Incarceration”), and given Wilson's importance in the history of our discipline, we have decided to make an exception in this case. We have thus invited a wide range of colleagues whose views on this issue will interest our readers to comment on this controversy. —Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor.

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

I extensively agree with Lieberman’s main argument and especially with his recommendations to graduate students and journal editors, which come at a critical time for our discipline’s development and future relevance. However, I depart from Lieberman on two issues. First, I argue that the research cycle is circular, and not teleological as Lieberman implies. For instance, randomized control trial (RCT) studies could be the start (and not the end) of a research cycle that leads to more descriptive and qualitative analysis in order to improve our understanding of causality. Second, I believe that the size of effects in RCT studies does matter, among other reasons because small effects might be symptoms of defective conceptualization of the main research problem.

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

Woodrow Wilson is the only American political scientist to have served as President of the United States. In the time between his political science Ph.D. (from Johns Hopkins, in 1886) and his tenure as president (1913–21), he also served as president of Princeton University (1902–10) and president of the American Political Science Association (1909–10). Wilson is one of the most revered figures in American political thought and in American political science. The Woodrow Wilson Award is perhaps APSA’s most distinguished award, given annually for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs published in the previous year, and sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation at Princeton University.

Wilson has also recently become the subject of controversy, on the campus of Princeton University, and in the political culture more generally, in connection with racist statements that he made and the segregationist practices of his administration. A group of Princeton students associated with the “Black Lives Matter” movement has demanded that Wilson’s name be removed from two campus buildings, one of which is the famous Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (see Martha A. Sandweiss, “Woodrow Wilson, Princeton, and the Complex Landscape of Race,” http://www.thenation.com/article/woodrow-wilson-princeton-and-the-complex-landscape-of-race/). Many others have resisted this idea, noting that Wilson is indeed an important figure in the history of twentieth-century liberalism and Progressivism in the United States.

A number of colleagues have contacted me suggesting that Perspectives ought to organize a symposium on the Wilson controversy. Although we do not regularly organize symposia around current events, given the valence of the controversy and its connection to issues we have featured in our journal (see especially the September 2015 issue on “The American Politics of Policing and Incarceration”), and given Wilson's importance in the history of our discipline, we have decided to make an exception in this case. We have thus invited a wide range of colleagues whose views on this issue will interest our readers to comment on this controversy. —Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor.

I extensively agree with Lieberman’s main argument and especially with his recommendations to graduate students and journal editors, which come at a critical time for our discipline’s development and future relevance. However, I depart from Lieberman on two issues. First, I argue that the research cycle is circular, and not teleological as Lieberman implies. For instance, randomized control trial (RCT) studies could be the start (and not the end) of a research cycle that leads to more descriptive and qualitative analysis in order to improve our understanding of causality. Second, I believe that the size of effects in RCT studies does matter, among other reasons because small effects might be symptoms of defective conceptualization of the main research problem.

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

This response to Prof. Lieberman’s essay questions its analogy between “biomedical research” and the academic discipline of political science. Focused on the disanalogy of scope and scale between the two, it takes issue not with the “criterial framework” he offers, but with the quality of argumentation that leads us there. Supplementing the essay’s impressionistic account of editorial practice with evidence drawn from the New England Journal of Medicine and the publishing history of APSA journals since the 1960s, I suggest that the issue here is not simply editorial virtue and professional norms, but differences in the material and institutional bases of the journals’ alternative publication models.

This response to Prof. Lieberman’s essay questions its analogy between “biomedical research” and the academic discipline of political science. Focused on the disanalogy of scope and scale between the two, it takes issue not with the “criterial framework” he offers, but with the quality of argumentation that leads us there. Supplementing the essay’s impressionistic account of editorial practice with evidence drawn from the New England Journal of Medicine and the publishing history of APSA journals since the 1960s, I suggest that the issue here is not simply editorial virtue and professional norms, but differences in the material and institutional bases of the journals’ alternative publication models.

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?

Sometimes political theorists like to imagine that they are lonely humanists misplaced in social science departments. In fact, political theory was created as part of a political science composed of both humanistic and social-scientific elements. Rather than trying to locate political theory somewhere between the humanities and the social sciences, we should instead dismantle the boundary between the two and create a unified discipline of questioning that embraces both kinds of inquiry.

Contemporary political science has generated extensive literatures on the themes of war, civil war, contentious politics, and social movements. But these literatures are often segregated in particular subfields, like International Relations and Comparative Politics, and typically speak past each other rather than to each other. Sidney Tarrow’s War, States, & Contention: A Comparative Historical Study (Cornell 2015) offers a single, synthetic perspective on these topics. As Tarrow states, “I hope to show that the advent of war is sometimes driven by social movements; that movements often affect the conduct of war and sometimes change its directions; and that wars often trigger the rise and expansion of movements in their wake.” Few topics are more important than the ones considered in this book, and so we have invited a range of political scientists, from a variety of subfield and methodological approaches, to comment on the book.

Sanford Schram’s The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy (Oxford University Press, 2015) is an ambitious effort to link together three important political realities of our time: the rise of new forms of neoliberal governance, the associated rise of new forms of social and economic insecurity, and the recent development of organized forms of political resistance symbolized by the figure of “Occupy.” The argument is relevant to all subfields of political science. And so we have invited a range of experts across the discipline to comment on the book and on the broader question the book poses: Are we confronting a new form of capitalism that engenders new forms of politics, and if so, what does this mean for political science?