The article on the seats-votes curve by Kastellec, Gelman, and Chandler (January 2008,139–45) presents interesting and helpful analysis and data. Especially important is theinsight that incumbency necessarily requires a minority party to receive more than 50% ofthe vote to gain control of the House of Representatives. However the article is misleadingin two respects.

We thank Dr. Arrington for his kind words about our article. In this letter we respond tohis two main criticisms: that our use of the term bias in describing thesituation facing the Democratic Party in 2006 is misleading and that using total vote toassess the results of the election is preferable to using average district vote, as we didin the article.

Reading the results of Lavariega-Monforti and Michelson's study of Latinas and Latinos inthe profession in the January issue (“Diagnosing the Leaky Pipeline: Continuing Barriers tothe Retention of Latinas and Latinos in Political Science”) made for depressing reading.Sadly, their observations are deadly accurate on the experiences of endemic institutionalracism that Latino and Latina political scientists face in American academic institutions.This culture of endemic racism was vibrant in graduate school while I was getting my Ph.D.and appears to have changed little since then. For that reason I am very pessimistic thatthis situation will change in my generation and, frankly, the APSA has been very slow to acton this problem. In my personal experience, in British universities I have been evaluated onmy merits, rather than on my ethnic background. I would urge other Latino and Latinapolitical scientists to consider using their skills in the UK and elsewhere.

In the 1990s I testified before a National Science Foundation (NSF) panel headed by CoraMarrett, then assistant director for the NSF Directorate for the Social, Behavioral andEconomic Sciences. The subject of the panel's inquiry, and this issue's symposium, wassocial science research and the federally mandated but decentralized human subjectsprotection program and its principal actors, institutional review boards (IRBs). Mytestimony addressed the ways in which the regulatory system ill-fit and ill-served politicalscience research. IRBs had expanded their mission to include all research, not just researchfunded by the federal government, enhancing their scope of authority while slowing thetimeliness of reviews. Similarly, and with the same result, IRBs were evaluating secondaryresearch as well as primary research. Although the federal legislation provided for anuanced assessment of risk, the distinction between potentially risk-laden researchnecessitating a full IRB review and research posing minimal or no risk that could be eitherexempted or given expedited review was disappearing. The length of the review processthreatened the beginning or completion of course work and degree programs. IRBs were judgingthe merits of research projects rather than the risks involved. This trend was especiallyproblematic because representation on many IRBs was skewed toward biological and behavioralscientists often unfamiliar with the methods and fields of political science and the othersocial sciences. And the list went on.

Social scientists are well aware of the unintended consequences of public policies. Theprotection of human subjects regulations, which emerged in response to a serious problem inthe medical community, provides an ideal example of such unintended consequences; toparaphrase an old aphorism, “the road to bureaucratic hell is paved with well-intentionedpublic policies.” In this essay I will seek to make three points. First, the protection ofhuman subjects by federal regulation was long overdue. Second, this benefit to society has,in its application, ignored another widely accepted regulatory principle, namely that thecosts of regulation should not outweigh its benefits; a combination of “bureaucratic creep”and litigation phobia has resulted in intrusive and counterproductive regulation of socialscience research, such that the cure has become worse than the disease. Third, ironically,because of institutional review boards' definition of what is and what is not research, theprotection of human subjects is denied to subjects who actually could be at risk.

Political science as a discipline has largely ignored research regulatory policiesassociated with institutional review boards (IRBs). Many political scientists—especiallythose in the senior ranks—are either oblivious to the existence of IRBs or actively decideto sidestep them by not submitting their proposals for review. Based on research conductedsince 2004, we hold that APSA members at all ranks of the profession, along with politicalscientists worldwide, need to be concerned, not to say alarmed, about IRB policy. Why thissense of urgency, and why now?

The governance of research ethics in Canada, including its research ethics boards (REBs),which correspond to the institutional review boards in the U.S., often is portrayed as anexemplary model of cross-disciplinary cooperation and consultation that is altruisticallystriving to protect research subjects from abuses in biomedical, social sciences, andhumanities research. While there is indeed a great deal of altruism and good intention amongthose involved in this governance, power and interests also play a role that is ofparticular concern for political scientists. Governance arrangements have been driven bybiomedical research, which is vastly better funded than social sciences and humanities (SSH)research. These arrangements have been imposed on the SSH research community with littlesensitivity to the distinctive problems of SSH research, despite concerns about suchproblems that political scientists and other SSH researchers have expressed for a decade. Arecent proposal initiated by major research funders to dramatically strengthen researchethics governance has generated even more alarm.

In recent years, there has been increased discussion and even debate about how toreconcile a commitment to the ethical conduct of research in the social and behavioralsciences with a regulatory apparatus for the protection of human subjects that seems toooften to fall short of its own aspirations and ideals. The gap between regulations and theirimplementation whether at the federal, state, or local levels is typically grist for themill in political science. When, however, the issues are more in our own backyard—in ouracademic and research institutions—insight, interventions, and even empirical study areharder to come by. The purpose of this essay is neither to applaud what is right nor todecry what is wrong with the current system for the protection of human subjects aspracticed. Our goal is to help further catalyze through this PS symposium aconversation about the need to produce system reform, illustrate some readily doable stepsfor doing so, and entice social science colleagues to work at their own institutions and ata national level for system change.

Atul Gawande is a surgeon who began creating vivid word paintings of the performance ofthe American health care system in The New Yorker's pages while he wasstill a resident. Those of us who are immersed in, and charged with measuring, thatsystem—as I have been for the last decade—find his “Annals of Medicine” column's evocationsof heroic system successes and frightening system failures true to the processes we moreprosaically try to analyze and evaluate. In December 2007 Gawande published a New Yorker essay called “The Checklist,” followed just days later by an op-ed piece inthe New York Times (Gawande 2007a; 2007b).

On the morning of October 30, 2007, Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama, her closestchallenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, by a comfortable margin in everysignificant national poll. That night, however, Senator Clinton, debating in Philadelphia,wandered into an ambush. Asked for her opinion of then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer'splan to allow illegal immigrants to apply for driver's licenses, she first seemed to supportthe idea and then, under withering attack from Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, almostimmediately backed away from her tepid endorsement. Writing shortly after the debate, MarkHalperin (2007) of Time magazineopined that “[i]f [Clinton] loses the nomination, tonight will go down in history as thefirst step to her defeat.”

For years voters and political pundits have grumbled about the lack of real choice betweenRepublicans and Democrats. Scholars have examined party behavior and suggested reasons forconcern. Determining whether there is a real ideological and policy difference between U.S.political parties, and the nature of that difference, is important for political science andfor democratic politics generally. Ultimately, democracy is about choices, and where choicesare few, democracy is degraded. One way to examine the choices that political parties offervoters is by assessing their political platforms. Even in an era of candidate-centricpolitics, political party platforms spell out the general programs offered by the parties,and the platforms are heavily influenced by the policy positions of the candidatesthemselves. In addition, the political platform is the one document that spells out theentire program of the party. Individual candidate speeches capture only snippets (at best)of the policy choices offered to voters. Recent innovations in computerized content analysismake it possible to analyze large bodies of text such as party platforms in a systematic wayby treating words as data, then analyzing them statistically.

Since public election financing was first implemented during the wave of post-Watergatereforms, the burning question has been, “does it work?” Evaluations of public financing havefocused on its primary objectives, which are designed to address familiar grievances:Elections are too expensive and not competitive enough. Corporate PACs and other “specialinterests” contribute disproportionately to incumbents because they are interested inpurchasing influence. Candidates must devote so much time to fundraising that little is leftfor other campaign tasks. Lost in these considerations, however, is the fact that mandatedfinancial parity changes the strategic environment candidates function in, altering theirdecision making and potentially changing the nature of elections. As fully subsidizedelections gain increasing ubiquity in the United States, reformers must decide whether thisis a cost worth bearing.

Stephen Colbert hosts a comedy television program called The Colbert Report (the t at the end is silent—both of them!) in which heparodies personality-based news shows like The O'Reilly Factor that havebecome popular during the last 10 years. In an effort to make fun of these (usuallyconservative) personalities who engage in non-stop self-promotion, Colbert frequently tradesoutlandish claims for laughs. Among these is the claim that anyone who comes on the Report receives the “Colbert bump,” immediately vaulting the guest tostardom, fame, and fortune. Like Midas turning everything he touches to gold, StephenColbert can turn losers into winners, just by interviewing them on his show (but, ahem, hewould never actually interview a loser now would he?).

In the 2004 presidential election, perhaps 54% of the nation's youngest cohort—dubbed“Generation Next” by some pollsters—cast a vote. This was a substantial increase over the42% of eligible 18–25-year-olds who voted in the 2000 election (U.S. Census Bureau 2005; Pew Center 2007). Still, youth voting rates lagged behind the voting rates of those citizensolder than 25–66% made their way to the polls on Election Day in 2004 (Lopez, Kirby, andSagoff 2005). It is likely that voting rates willincrease in the current youth cohort as they age, as has happened in both the Baby Boomerand Generation X cohorts. But transforming more of the large Generation Next cohort intovoters earlier in adulthood could substantially increase democratic participation inupcoming elections and for decades to come, as habits of civic participation developed inyouth often last a lifetime (Miller and Shanks 1996). Two-thirds of young people now enroll in some form of higher education.Colleges and universities of all types would therefore seem to be natural sites to mountefforts to improve youth voter turnout. And because interest in voting among the youngestadult cohort seems to be on the rise, this would seem to be the time to encourage more ofsuch behavior. But how can institutions of higher learning best promote democraticparticipation, especially voting?

In recent years, evolving communication technologies have produced dramatic changes in howscholars communicate. Through mechanisms such as e-mail, wireless networks, and mobilecommunication networks, the volume of information that scholars can send—and the range ofpeople to whom information can be sent—are radically different today than they were forprevious generations. These changes in communicative capacity raise expectations of whatscholars can accomplish. One source of raised expectations is the possibility for dynamic,large-scale, geographically dispersed collaboratories that evolving communicationtechnologies allow. The promise is that large groups of researchers, working together, cangenerate insights more effectively and efficiently than they would if they worked alone oronly with people in their own geographic proximity.

The lack of enthusiasm for the European Union and its proposed constitution among theEuropean people surprised the political elite of Europe. Codifying common beliefs and valuesseemed to be a good way to represent the European identity in written form. The signing ofthe constitutional treaty should have become an important symbolic act, demonstrating thewillingness of the people to bond together. Instead, a so-called Reform Treaty was passed inLisbon in 2007 (to be ratified by all member states by 2009) that specifically abandoned anyallusion to symbolic forms of European representation such as the term constitution, the flag, or a European anthem.

Legislative scholars have a history of stepping back occasionally to examine thedevelopment and state of the sub-discipline (Budge 1973; Gamm and Huber 2002; Loewenberg,Patterson, and Jewell 1985; Mezey 1993; Morris-Jones 1983; Pasquino 1973; Patterson 1989). Many of these existing reviews, althoughvaluable, are predominantly of a qualitative and subjective nature and are, in most cases,now dated. This paper provides a bibliometrical analysis of the state of legislative studiesin the United States and Europe by exploring the content of eight political sciencejournals. I looked at six general political science journals, three originating in theUnited States and three in Europe, as well as the content of two legislative studiesjournals—the American-based Legislative Studies Quarterly and theBritish-based Journal of Legislative Studies.

The American Political Science Association (APSA) has roughly 14,000 members. In fall2002, APSA appointed a “Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy” (TFIAD). Thegroup's 15 members represented various prestigious American universities, including, forexample, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.TFIAD was tasked with assessing the relationship between economic inequality in America andchanges in political participation rates in our representative democracy.

The December 2006 APSA report, “Trends in the Political Science Profession” (Sedowski andBrintnall 2006; Brintnall 2005), noted that the number of political science jobs posted on eJobsreached an all-time high for the academic year. Thirty-six percent of those jobs were inB.A.-granting institutions, institutions most likely to include a focus on liberal artsteaching. Similarly, results from the most recently available department chairs' survey showthat almost one-third of all graduates in 2002, including those in non-academic employment,obtained jobs in B.A. institutions (Lopez 2003).In response to these circumstances, the Political Science Education Section has, at recentAPSA annual meetings, including 2007's meeting, sponsored a short course titled, “Getting aJob at a Teaching Institution—and Then Succeeding!” For this article we have drawn on ourexperiences in the short course—and in interviewing, hiring, mentoring, and evaluatingcolleagues at a range of liberal arts colleges—to compile a list of frequently askedquestions and their answers. B.A.-granting institutions are highly diversified, as evidencedby the authors' own affiliations. Still, after much discussion, we are confident that theadvice offered here is broadly applicable to colleges focusing upon the liberal arts andundergraduate education. However, applicants should always research the mission and thecorresponding commitments of the institutions at which they are seeking employment.

Recent research shows that the Internet, by sharply reducing the real costs of sharinginformation, has profoundly impacted collaboration between faculty in different departments.Using information on spatial-temporal Bitnet connections, Agrawal and Goldfarb (2006) find that Internet connectivity increasedcollaboration between those connected universities by 85%. Extensively analyzing facultyproductivity at the top 25 universities during the last three decades, Kim, Morse, andZingales (2006) report that the Internet hassignificantly lowered department-specific research externalities in economics and finance bygiving those outside of top schools access to productive research colleagues within topschools. Concomitant with this decline in location-specific externalities, they also reportthat salaries at those top universities have increased since the universities are less ableto appropriate any rent based on research productivity created by physically being locatedat that university. One of the reasons that physical location is less important is e-mail.Walsh and Maloney (2003), using information fromfour fields (experimental biology, mathematics, physics, and sociology), find that e-mailhas significantly reduced coordination problems in research collaboration.