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

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

The emphasis in political science on procedural ethics has led to a neglect of howresearchers should consider and treat study participants, from design to publicationstage. This article corrects this oversight and calls for a sustained discussion ofresearch ethics across the discipline. The article's core argument is twofold: thatethics should matter to everyone, not just those who spend extended time in thefield; and that ethics is an ongoing responsibility, not a discrete task to bechecked off a “to do” list. Ethics matter in all types of political science researchbecause most political science involves “human subjects.” Producers and consumers ofpolitical science research need to contemplate the ambiguous and oftentimesuncomfortable 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 problemsof authorship ethics and journal management bedevil the editors of these journals.Although anecdotal evidence suggests that similar problems persist in politicalscience, the extent of these problems within political science is not wellestablished. Here we report the results of a survey of political science journaleditors' perceptions of ethical and managerial issues associated with theirjournals. We find that unlike ethical publication concerns in the clinical andnatural sciences fields, these issues are not of significant concern among oursample. Ethical problems are of low concern and editors report high levels ofconfidence to address these problems. Managerial problems, such as the adequacy ofreviewer pools, are of higher concern to our sample.

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

This article introduces the writing metaphor and examines whypolitical scientists should consider developing one to describe their own writingprocess. Drawing on the author's experience with writing accountability groups, itdefines the components of the writing metaphor, provides an example, and discussesits advantages and disadvantages. The article argues that the writing metaphor canclarify scholars' implicit assumptions about the act of writing and the writingproduct and reveal unexpected information about their work habits and thinkingprocess. By doing so, the writing metaphor can increase scholars' productivity andmay ultimately enhance their writing experience.

Young adults have particularly low levels of civic engagement. Incorporatingexperiential learning activities as part of the political science curriculum showspromise to reverse this trend. We analyze the impact of a mock presidential electionsimulation on the civic engagement of college-aged students. Exit surveys of studentparticipants and a one-year follow-up survey confirm that this experiential learningactivity had a positive effect on participants' levels of political knowledge, theirinterest 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 thisconcern through the organization of the course syllabus. The content of empiricallydriven courses can be framed within the context of philosophically driven normativequestions. In other words, instructors can explicitly construct course narrativesthat frame the empirically based course content as an attempt to answer (or, atleast, shed new light on) important, relevant, and on-going questions raised bypolitical philosophy. I offer examples from two of my own courses, PoliticalPsychology and Local Politics, and discuss the various pedagogical and instructionaladvantages 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 interactwith their fears of offending or contradicting their peers. Together, these canproduce a classroom dynamic that ultimately stymies student learning. In thisarticle, several strategies are described to ameliorate this concern. These rangefrom short lessons that directly confront student biases about the Middle East, toclose analysis of journal articles and empirical evidence, to structured debates andsimulations, to specific classroom management techniques. Together, these strategiescan promote engaged, lively debate; generate student self-awareness of theirpresuppositions; and enhance learning.

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

Simulations are an excellent way to introduce and reinforce complex topics for bothnovices and experienced students in an international relations class. One suchtopic, the provision of aid in a humanitarian crisis, can be taught through the useof collaborative and active-learning techniques found in a simulation. This articlepresents a simulation for an international relations course that models andillustrates the challenges that well-meaning decision makers face when determiningan appropriate international response in a humanitarian crisis.

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

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

Jane Mansbridge's intellectual career is marked by field-shifting contributions todemocratic theory, feminist scholarship, political science methodology, and theempirical study of social movements and direct democracy. Her work has fundamentallychallenged existing paradigms in both normative political theory and empiricalpolitical science and launched new lines of scholarly inquiry on the most basicquestions of democratic equality, deliberation, collective action, and politicalrepresentation. Her three best-known books—Beyond AdversaryDemocracy (1980), Why We Lost the ERA (1986) andBeyond Self-Interest (1990a)—have become part of the politicalscience canon and remain staples on graduate course syllabi decades after theirpublication. The importance of Mansbridge's work has been recognized by hercolleagues through a trifecta of major APSA awards: the Gladys M. Kammerer Award(1987), the Victoria Schuck Award (1988), and, most recently, the James MadisonAward and Lecture (2011).

The APSA Task Force on Democracy, Economic Security, and Social Justice in aVolatile World has released its report Democratic Imperatives Democracy,Economic Security, and Social Justice in a Volatile World. The reportargues that in emerging and established democracies alike, the promise of democracyremains unfulfilled. The report focuses on policies and institutions designed todeepen democracy by increasing respect for human rights, promoting participatorygovernance, and se-curing the economic bases of democratic citizenship. It documentshow these measures can help to reduce democratic deficits by making government andpolitics more responsive, more accountable, and more transparent and by enablingcitizens to take a greater role in governing themselves.

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

The author draws upon his experience and observations outside academia to provideten suggestions for graduate students in political science who are exploringnonacademic 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 aglobal workforce of more than 30,000, the with a PhD in political science. But lessthan two years ago, I was a tenure track professor of political science at aresearch university and could barely have imagined the unusual path my professionallife would take. That path has been incredibly rewarding, as well as instructiveboth of the broad value a PhD in political science (and the social sciences moregenerally) 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 forthose graduate students, post-docs, and professors who might be inclined to applythe knowledge and skills they have acquired in unconventional professional paths oftheir own.