Year: 2016

MPSA Blog: Top 10 Posts from 2016

Regardless of your research interests, your academic (or Alt-Ac) role, or your aspirations for the new year, there is something on this list of MPSA’s most popular blog posts from 2016 that is sure to pique your interest: Q&A with the Founder of Women Also Know Stuff Recommended Reading:…


On the Eve of the 2017 Conference Season

As the Fall semester comes to a close, most academics in our field are readying for the upcoming hectic conference schedule starting with SPSA in New Orleans in January, ISA (February) in Baltimore, MPSA (April) in Chicago, and ending with WPSA (April) in Vancouver. Keeping this in mind, this post…


Why White Americans Love Their Guns

Before we get to why many Americans are so attached to firearms, there are some facts to know about guns in America. First, there are 250-350 million firearms in private hands (Cook and Goss, 2014). Since we don’t allow gun registration, the numbers are fuzzy; but that is a lot of guns. Second,…


Policy Implementation, Representation, and Democratic Governance

At last year’s MPSA conference, Pamela McCann of USC Sol Price School of Public Policy was kind enough to ask me to participate in a roundtable discussion with other prominent scholars. The focus of the panel was “Why Do We Have No Theory of Policy Implementation?”. I agreed to participate and…


Election 2016 Lesson for the Media: New Journalistic Norms Needed to Cover Elections

The 2016 U.S. presidential election will stand out in the nation’s collective memory as a highly unusual event for many reasons. It featured two unique candidates, an election campaign that completely overturned the norms set by previous elections, a neglected voter base that showed an…


Recommended Reading: Themes from Election 2016

In the week since the election of Donald Trump, many citizens and political scientists are trying to understand both the underlying causes of the win while thinking about the implications for the citizenry and policy going forward. Here, we do not offer a full accounting of the election, but…


MPSA Member Interview: Emily Kalah Gade

Emily Kalah Gade is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington at Seattle and has recently been awarded a Moore/Sloan Data Science and Washington Research Foundation Innovation in Data Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. She also competed at the 2012 Olympic Trials (rowing) in the lightweight…


Supranational Courts: Are they the New Legal Titans?

The Hague, Netherlands - August 2, 2016: The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial branch of the United Nations. Seated in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. In October 2016, South Africa followed Burundi in withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC) asserting…


Political Science: The Cure for Election Anxiety

Reporters are discovering a new phenomenon this year: election anxiety.  This year’s contests, particularly the one for President, have Americans worried and minds racing. The cure is right here: political science. It is the key to calming mental chatter, reducing stress, re-centering energy, and…


One PhD Candidate’s Roadmap for Successful Co-Authorship

All of us at one point or another have either considered or have been involved in a co-authored project. With the way academia is evolving, co-authorship is not only encouraged but it is fast becoming the norm especially in Political Science. But we hardly see discussions on how it works and the…