The United States Constitution incorporated elements of the unitary and confederate systems of government to form simultaneously a compound republic, the world's first federal governance system, and a unitary government with complete control over the District of Columbia and territories. Specific powers were delegated to Congress and all other powers were reserved to the states and the people unless prohibited.

The subdiscipline of political theory and political philosophy continues to suffer some misunderstanding within political science as a whole. Notwithstanding its renaissance in the last decade, political theory/philosophy is still too often characterized in terms that obscure its roles and functions within the discipline. Political theory/philosophy is often referred to as “normative theory” as a way of distinguishing its concerns with values from the “empirical theory” and research of political science proper. Where the concerns of political theory/philosophy are not just normative, political scientists often characterize it as “speculative theory” to distinguish it from “empirical theory” that can be confirmed or refuted by reference to observable data. The terms of such a distinction suggest, of course, that theories grounded in certainties can and ought to replace the speculative approaches of traditional political thought. And because political theory/philosophy relies heavily on the history of political thought, many see it as part of history and the humanities rather than political science—interesting and necessary for any culturally literate person, but fundamentally distinct from contemporary political research.

Terminological distinctions such as these solidified in an era in which behavioralist agendas shaped subdisciplinary boundaries, and they reflect the influence that neo-positivist views of explanation once had within the discipline. Since that time, however, we have developed more sophisticated understandings of how theory and philosophy relate to empirical research. These developments have in turn affected the way we understand the explanatory concerns of political science, while also expanding political theory/philosophy beyond its traditional boundaries.

Placing the 2008 election in the context of political development reveals the gendered nature of the presidency and presidential elections. The institution of the presidency is predominantly masculinist. It privileges conventional masculine attributes of strength, determination, and decisiveness. Yet the degree to which the institution requires masculinist leadership attributes varies throughout political development and according to different types of time. Viewed through a chronological linear lens, developments in “historical time” magnify the most masculinist aspect of the presidency—the role of commander in chief. On the other hand, in 2008 “political time” signals the end of the neoliberal era and a shift away from confrontational, partisan politics toward the building of a new consensus that emphasizes domestic welfare. As a result, the nature and stage of the regime cycle or moment in political time favor feminalist features of leadership such as collective engagement, cooperation, and conciliation. In the 2008 election, these two types of time collide, and the collision helps explain the gender-specific character of the campaigns, the candidates, and the next president.

Undergraduate classroom presentations of the scientific method in the social sciences usually involve a lecture on the nature of the scientific enterprise: the discovery of the “truth” (if such a thing even exists) about the relationship between some set of concepts, events, or phenomena by means of generating falsifiable hypotheses and testing them against data. The tendency of faculty, however understandable, to convert the presentation into an abstract discussion of the philosophy of science often obscures the basic issues for students. I present here a simple, active learning classroom exercise which sensitizes students to the difficulties of hypothesizing about and testing unobservable phenomena by appealing to students' intuitive understanding of the nature of knowledge and reality. I first describe the purposes and objectives of the activity in more detail, then discuss implementing this specific activity. Suggestions for activity adaptation and development by other instructors follow, and a brief discussion of sources and resources concludes.

In “The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Role of Canines in the 2008 Campaign,” Diana Mutz (2010) argues that dog ownership made voters significantly less likely to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. We examine this claim further. Although President Obama has owned a dog since shortly after his 2008 election, we argue that Bo's presence most likely did little to improve his owner's chances of being reelected in 2012. Rather, the apparent significance of dog ownership uncovered by Mutz is due largely to key variables being omitted from the analysis. Using the same data, we show that Obama didn't so much have trouble with dog owners in 2008 as he had trouble with conservative, rural, Southern whites, who, for reasons we examine, are more likely than other Americans to own dogs. Accordingly, we suspect that Bo failed to boost Obama's vote tally in 2012. While we recognize the tongue-in-jowl tone of portions of Mutz's article, this tale is an important one, and is consistent with recent research linking racial attitudes to levels of support for Barack Obama. We also argue that while scholars are often wise to include control variables such as “South” in studies of political attitudes and behavior, it is important to consider the variety of politically relevant characteristics that such variables may be capturing.

Incumbent politicians are understandably nervous when electoral rules are altered. In the case of the U.S. House of Representatives, members are well aware that a change in decade is accompanied by the near certainty that their own district lines will be redrawn. These incumbents know that changes resulting from the reallocation of congressional seats among states and the shift of population within states could have a shattering effect on their careers: their districts could be eliminated; they could be thrown into a district with another House incumbent; their district lines could be radically redrawn, destroying their traditional bases of support.

Incumbents' unease is transformed into serious worry by one additional fact: de jure control of redistricting is out of their hands. State legislatures and governors, the Justice Department (for those states falling under the Voting Rights Act) and ultimately the courts determine the fate of incumbents.

Of course, the ostensible purpose of congressional redistricting in accordance with the decennial census is to ensure that congressional representation reflects the changes in the geographical distribution of the nation's population and thus to ensure that the members of the House from each state represent approximately the same number of citizens. Putting that principle into practice creates opportunities for the parties to increase their strength in the House but it also causes tremendous uncertainty among incumbents.

Looking at political science research on the effects of redistricting on the fortunes of incumbents, one might wonder why they worry. In 1972 I reported findings of my study on incumbents who lost their elections after redistricting.

Interactive visualizations are used widely in the natural sciences to facilitate discovery in “big-data” research. This article introduces a project that applies the same data-driven discovery approach to politics. Lawmaking is a complex process that can be difficult to convey in a constructive way, whether the audience is the general public, students, or researchers. Legislative Explorer (available at http://www.legex.org) visualizes the progress of more than 250,000 congressional bills and resolutions introduced since 1973. Users of all abilities can engage with actual data to discover how bills become law. Filters designed by domain experts guide them toward key insights. It is our hope that Legislative Explorer promotes greater understanding of a much-maligned institution.

The conventional wisdom about political science international education assumes that students choose between short “island” study abroad programs that are accessible but have only superficial impact, and longer immersion programs, achieving a greater effect. This article argues that well-designed study abroad programs can combine the best of both models to achieve significant impact even in a short program. It proposes a “bridge model” for reconceptualizing study abroad not as a discrete event with more or less impact on student learning, but as a key intervention that furthers a student's overall development within an internationalized curriculum. The article examines the case of a peacebuilding study abroad program in Ecuador. It measures alumni perceptions of impact, objective outcomes, and alumni network development. The key finding is that solid program design and structured cross-cultural interaction produces the type of long-term effect and networks traditionally associated with immersion programs.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (joined so far by ten states and DC) would replace the current presidential-election system, based on the electoral college and the winner-take-all rule, with nationwide plurality rule, and it would do so by changes in state law, not a Constitutional amendment. The mischief that would create (especially procedural instability, noncompliant electors, nation-wide recounts, vote manipulation, and narrowed support), the compact’s questionable Constitutionality, the weakness of its defense, and the availability of less calamitous alternatives are reasons enough to reject it.

This article melds a well-studied area of research (political mobilization effects on voter turnout) with a subject rarely discussed in political science (the effects of meteorological variability on mood, productivity, and fatigue) to argue that weather at the time of mobilization influences individual voters' turnout odds relative to other contacted voters. Using panel data totaling 39,769 registered voters contacted by unions across 14 months and five elections, quantitative analysis is used to measure the effects of temperature, seasonableness, and precipitation during contact on vote likelihood, controlling for known turnout influences. Results indicate that variations in all three weather conditions during contact affect vote odds. Mobilization effects are weaker as temperatures rise and weather becomes unseasonably hot; mobilization is also less successful as precipitation increases. Outcomes vary by contact type; door-to-door visits are more negatively influenced by hotter and less seasonable temperatures, whereas phone calls are more negatively affected by higher precipitation.

Rapidly changing technology has created countless new opportunities for political scientists in teaching and research. One such innovation is the development of web surveys. Web surveys are accessed online by respondents and the data can be downloaded directly into a statistical program such as SPSS. While web surveys require respondents to have Internet access, which precludes conducting general population surveys via the web, in fact many of the populations of interest to political scientists such as interest groups, elected officials, and bureaucrats have near universal access to the web. The purpose of this article is to review the advantages and disadvantages of this technique and to outline important design and implementation considerations relevant to political science.

Journalists consider the importance of events and the audience’s interest in them when deciding on which events to report. Events most likely to be reported are those that are both important and can capture the audience’s interest. In turn, the public is most likely to become aware of important news when some aspect of the story piques their interest. We suggest an efficacious means of drawing public attention to important news stories: dogs. Examining the national news agenda of 10 regional newspapers relative to that of the New York Times, we evaluated the effect of having a dog in a news event on the likelihood that the event is reported in regional newspapers. The “dog effect” is approximately equivalent to the effect of whether a story warrants front- or back-page national news coverage in the New York Times. Thus, we conclude that dogs are an important factor in news decisions.