In the wake of the 2008 election, disgruntled conservatives organized opposition to President Obama's policies under a new movement dubbed the Tea Party. As an emerging force in American politics, we seek to understand who supports the Tea Party and the political attitudes these individuals hold. Using a nationally representative survey of respondents during the 2010 midterm elections, we examine whether the emerging narrative surrounding the Tea Party is accurate. The survey included a novel embedded experiment designed to investigate claims that animosity toward racial minorities drives Tea Party opposition to welfare. We find support for the contention that the Tea Party is predominately white, male, conservative, and strongly opposed to tax increases. Tea Party supporters, however, are not simply libertarians. In spite of appeals to freedom and liberty common in Tea Party rhetoric, a strong authoritarian pulse exists among its most ardent supporters. Furthermore, although we find evidence that racial resentment colors Tea Party members' judgments about government aid to the poor, racial animus does not appear to be the primary force behind their opposition to government aid. Lastly, we uncover some evidence of heterogeneity within the movement, with a small minority of Tea Party supporters voicing less-extreme political attitudes and evincing a rejection of negative racial stereotypes.

During the past decade the United States has seen an increase in alternative forms to Election Day voting, including voting by mail. Voting by mail has spurred a number of studies concerning the effects it has on voter turnout and other aspects of voting. However, one important facet of voting by mail has not been examined—when people decide to send in their vote. Because ballots are mailed out weeks before the election, voting by mail creates, in effect, a rolling Election Day. This could have profound effects for campaigns as candidates must determine when to use campaign resources and campaign to an electorate who might have already voted. Using data from the 2008 general election in Washington State, this study examines when voters turned in their ballots and determines if age, partisanship, or other factors play a role in the timing of turning in a ballot.

The emphasis in political science on procedural ethics has led to a neglect of how researchers should consider and treat study participants, from design to publication stage. This article corrects this oversight and calls for a sustained discussion of research ethics across the discipline. The article's core argument is twofold: that ethics should matter to everyone, not just those who spend extended time in the field; and that ethics is an ongoing responsibility, not a discrete task to be checked off a “to do” list. Ethics matter in all types of political science research because most political science involves “human subjects.” Producers and consumers of political science research need to contemplate the ambiguous and oftentimes uncomfortable dimensions of research ethics, lest we create a discipline that is “nonethical,” or worse, unethical.

Within the medical and physical sciences journals evidence suggests that problems of authorship ethics and journal management bedevil the editors of these journals. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that similar problems persist in political science, the extent of these problems within political science is not well established. Here we report the results of a survey of political science journal editors' perceptions of ethical and managerial issues associated with their journals. We find that unlike ethical publication concerns in the clinical and natural sciences fields, these issues are not of significant concern among our sample. Ethical problems are of low concern and editors report high levels of confidence to address these problems. Managerial problems, such as the adequacy of reviewer pools, are of higher concern to our sample.

With the growing size of the “Millennial Generation” and its potential impact on American democracy, the civic education of this cohort deserves study. Using news media and discussion of politics at home and in the classroom at four public high schools in New Jersey, we conducted an experiment to measure changes in media use, political knowledge, and political efficacy. Although the experiment generated useful substantive findings, we also learned important lessons about the challenges associated with conducting research in high schools. We present suggestions to aid in studying a crucial segment of the population: adolescents who are on the cusp of entering the electorate.

This article introduces the writing metaphor and examines why political scientists should consider developing one to describe their own writing process. Drawing on the author's experience with writing accountability groups, it defines the components of the writing metaphor, provides an example, and discusses its advantages and disadvantages. The article argues that the writing metaphor can clarify scholars' implicit assumptions about the act of writing and the writing product and reveal unexpected information about their work habits and thinking process. By doing so, the writing metaphor can increase scholars' productivity and may ultimately enhance their writing experience.

Young adults have particularly low levels of civic engagement. Incorporating experiential learning activities as part of the political science curriculum shows promise to reverse this trend. We analyze the impact of a mock presidential election simulation on the civic engagement of college-aged students. Exit surveys of student participants and a one-year follow-up survey confirm that this experiential learning activity had a positive effect on participants' levels of political knowledge, their interest in public life, and their attitudes about government in general.

Given that students often express a desire for course content to be more “relevant” and applicable to their lives, I describe one method for effectively addressing this concern through the organization of the course syllabus. The content of empirically driven courses can be framed within the context of philosophically driven normative questions. In other words, instructors can explicitly construct course narratives that frame the empirically based course content as an attempt to answer (or, at least, shed new light on) important, relevant, and on-going questions raised by political philosophy. I offer examples from two of my own courses, Political Psychology and Local Politics, and discuss the various pedagogical and instructional advantages of such a method.

Students in courses about the Middle East want to learn, and they crave discussion. Yet they enter the classroom with a set of beliefs about the region that interact with their fears of offending or contradicting their peers. Together, these can produce a classroom dynamic that ultimately stymies student learning. In this article, several strategies are described to ameliorate this concern. These range from short lessons that directly confront student biases about the Middle East, to close analysis of journal articles and empirical evidence, to structured debates and simulations, to specific classroom management techniques. Together, these strategies can promote engaged, lively debate; generate student self-awareness of their presuppositions; and enhance learning.

With the 2012 presidential elections approaching, student interest in (and frustration with) the US two-party system is likely to grow. Although many explanations exist for this phenomenon, their number and complexity often overwhelm students. This article describes an iterative game, designed for a single class session, that illustrates one of the major institutional explanations for the US two-party system—Duverger's Law. The game can also spur discussion of some of the major criticisms of the Law.

Simulations are an excellent way to introduce and reinforce complex topics for both novices and experienced students in an international relations class. One such topic, the provision of aid in a humanitarian crisis, can be taught through the use of collaborative and active-learning techniques found in a simulation. This article presents a simulation for an international relations course that models and illustrates the challenges that well-meaning decision makers face when determining an appropriate international response in a humanitarian crisis.

APSA is pleased to recognize the recipients of campus-wide and departmental awards for teaching excellence during the 2011–12 academic year. Usually, Pi Sigma Alpha hosts these recipients each year at the Reception Honoring Teaching at the APSA Annual Meeting; however, due to cancellation of the event, PS is pleased to note the awardees here.

Harriet Fleisher Berger was a trailblazer. She was a curious thinker and a practitioner of feminism before the term became familiar in the field of political science. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1938, married, and raised two sons. After graduation, she became a researcher at the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. This was a pathway for young women at that time since many of the traditional academic pathways were often limited for women. In addition to her research at the ILGWU, she also helped start the first union medical clinic in Philadelphia. Her family came from an aristocratic-type family, who owned a garment manufacturing business in Philadelphia which provided them with a comfortable standard of life. Throughout her life Dr. Berger, in addition to her teaching, actively worked as an anti-colonialist, a liberal, an environmentalist, a conservationist, a labor organizer, and a New Deal Democrat.

Jane Mansbridge's intellectual career is marked by field-shifting contributions to democratic theory, feminist scholarship, political science methodology, and the empirical study of social movements and direct democracy. Her work has fundamentally challenged existing paradigms in both normative political theory and empirical political science and launched new lines of scholarly inquiry on the most basic questions of democratic equality, deliberation, collective action, and political representation. Her three best-known books—Beyond Adversary Democracy (1980), Why We Lost the ERA (1986) and Beyond Self-Interest (1990a)—have become part of the political science canon and remain staples on graduate course syllabi decades after their publication. The importance of Mansbridge's work has been recognized by her colleagues through a trifecta of major APSA awards: the Gladys M. Kammerer Award (1987), the Victoria Schuck Award (1988), and, most recently, the James Madison Award and Lecture (2011).

The APSA Task Force on Democracy, Economic Security, and Social Justice in a Volatile World has released its report Democratic Imperatives Democracy, Economic Security, and Social Justice in a Volatile World. The report argues that in emerging and established democracies alike, the promise of democracy remains unfulfilled. The report focuses on policies and institutions designed to deepen democracy by increasing respect for human rights, promoting participatory governance, and se-curing the economic bases of democratic citizenship. It documents how these measures can help to reduce democratic deficits by making government and politics more responsive, more accountable, and more transparent and by enabling citizens to take a greater role in governing themselves.

At its recent meeting in Madrid, Spain, the council of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) elected 16 new executive committee members for 2012–14 and a new president. APSA member Helen V. Milner of Princeton University was elected IPSA's president. Milner is the B.C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and the director of the Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. She is currently also the chair of the department of politics. She taught at Columbia University from 1986 to 2004. Her Statement of Objectives are posted at www.ipsa.org/news.

The author draws upon his experience and observations outside academia to provide ten suggestions for graduate students in political science who are exploring nonacademic career options. Their mentors may also find this advice useful.

Today I am a researcher at Google and one of a handful of employees, out of a global workforce of more than 30,000, the with a PhD in political science. But less than two years ago, I was a tenure track professor of political science at a research university and could barely have imagined the unusual path my professional life would take. That path has been incredibly rewarding, as well as instructive both of the broad value a PhD in political science (and the social sciences more generally) and of the growing role for quantitative research outside of the academy. I recount much of that path below, with the hope that it might prove useful for those graduate students, post-docs, and professors who might be inclined to apply the knowledge and skills they have acquired in unconventional professional paths of their own.