Service-learning and civic education have become popular pedagogical themes as higher education attempts to embody diversity and innovation in our teaching models. This trend, however, has resulted in disagreement over the means by which service-learning and the civic education theme should be incorporated into the classroom. Some educators have sought to jump on the bandwagon without really attempting to learn exactly what these tools entail, resulting in a diffusion of their effectiveness.

In the last few years a computing revolution has been started. We have arrived at a point where an individual can have access to a personal computer that has real advantages over larger minicomputers and mainframes for a number of significant applications. When the further step is taken of providing a communications link between that personal computer and those larger systems, the overall result is a combination of capabilities of unprecedented potential.

As in any revolution, there have been problems and mistakes along the path. Indeed there are still shortcomings and hazards to be avoided. Nonetheless, there are personal computing systems available which offer many advantages for a wide spectrum of academic and professional people. This document is intended as an overview of what is currently marketed, providing reference points for the interested individual.

Three of our arguments drew no objection from Dr. Koza. One is that plurality rule—the heart of his proposed reform—can be anti-majoritarian. In our three-candidate example, Libby was the plurality favorite but Maude beat each of her rivals, Libby included, by a majority. A plurality can be a majority, of course, but the Electoral College has never reversed a popular majority.

Gary King has done a great service to the discipline in raising the question of how we meet appropriate standards for assuring that our published work advances the collective knowledge concerning government and politics that is in our mutual professional interest. He has done so in a truly collegial manner, stating his view, raising concerns, and inviting discussion. The editors of PS are using this publication in precisely the proper way by providing a forum in which this professional debate can be aired.

This article discusses the benefits and challenges of offering an onsite seminar on Canadian politics and foreign policy and assesses how this format contributes to achieving the goals of the 2011 APSA report, Teaching Political Science in the 21st Century. First, the author describes the development and requirements of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Global Seminar series at Iowa State University, the structure of the seminar, and its operation in Ottawa. Second, several of the pedagogical and experiential benefits, as well as the challenges, for making the seminar successful are identified and discussed. Third, by weighing these benefits and challenges, the author concludes that such a seminar has the potential to serve as an effective model for increasing an understanding of Canadian politics among American students, as well as to meet several important recommendations for improving the teaching of political science today.

This article uses a case study to illustrate how science fair projects—which traditionally focus on “hard science” topics—can contribute to political science education. One of the authors, a high school student, conducted an experimental study of politics for her science fair project. The other author, a faculty member, was asked to advise the student on the project to allay initial skepticism about its focus on a “soft science” topic. The results of the experiment indicated that exposure to a televised comedy sketch about the 2008 presidential campaign yielded learning effects and fostered political interest among high school students. The authors recommend political science fair projects as tools for introducing precollegiate students to the political science research process and offering political scientists opportunities to educate students beyond the university setting.

In memoriam.

This article addresses the pedagogical value of teaching Aristotle's Politics 4.1 early in an introductory course in political theory that draws texts from the history of political thought. I argue that this chapter provides an interpretive key to understanding arguments made elsewhere in the Politics and can be used to introduce students to the kinds of theorizing that appear in the study of politics more generally. I begin by laying out some common learning obstacles that students experience in introductory political theory courses, using Politics 4.1 to address these issues. I then outline my approach to this text and conclude by reflecting on some of the possibilities and limitations of this method of introducing the nature of political theory to an undergraduate population.

The following essay aims to consolidate the learnings of a year-long internship at The Review of Politics, during which time the author read and wrote reports on some hundred articles submitted to the journal.

Although we often plead with our colleagues and students to be more “systematic,” we may not always be clear about what we mean. In biology, systematics is the “scientific study of the kinds and diversity of organisms and of any and all relationships among them” (Simpson 1961), the most important aspect of which is taxonomy, “the theory and practice of classifying organisms into groups on the basis of their relationships” (Mayr 1969). In political science, our organisms are political institutions. This article is a call for research in political systematics with suggestions for how the taxonomy of electoral systems might be developed.

Institutional taxonomy can play many roles in comparative politics. It can provide an appreciation of the existing and theoretical diversity of political institutions, provide the information necessary to construct a theory of institutional development, systematize the variables that affect and constrain political interactions, and provide the starting point for informed discussions of institutional reform. Current attempts to develop large standardized data sets in comparative politics (Rosenstone 1994), for instance, require institutional taxonomy if the effort is to be effective. Of course, this discussion would be moot if institutional taxonomy were already well established (with or without the term).

In 2011, more than 3% of all black men in the United States were imprisoned, compared to only 0.5% of all white men. Among prisoners ages 18 to 24, black men were imprisoned at a rate more than seven times that of white men (Carson and Sabol 2012). It is becoming increasingly urgent for researchers to understand what accounts for these race-based disparities. While a broad constellation of social problems exist that likely contribute to these disparities in concert, different fields of social science tend to focus on different types of explanations. Political scientists and sociologists have tended to emphasize the role of institutional factors, including criminal justice policies and practices, in maintaining race-based disparities. Social psychologists, in contrast, have tended to emphasize individual factors, including punitive responses to crime by jurors, judges, and criminal justice professionals.

Normatively, democratic constitutions should express how citizens want to govern themselves collectively. Little is known, however, about how citizens’ constitutional preferences can be elicited and aggregated in practice. An intuitively appealing approach is to allow various forms of popular participation during a constitution-making process, including a popular vote to accept or reject the draft constitution (Fishkin 2011). Based on the Chilean experience with democratic constitution making, this article identifies unanticipated and previously unexplored distortions that can lead to incongruence between the preferences of voters and representatives regarding the extent and direction of constitutional change.