Micheal Giles and James Garand have done us a great service byrevealing many of the complexities involved in using eithercitational or reputational approaches to ranking journals inpolitical science (October 2007).

Organizations of any duration develop norms of behavior. A few arecodified in organizational rules but many remain informal,transmitted to new members through socialization mechanisms. Allnorms, informal norms in particular, are resilient but notpermanent. They change if socialization instruments are no longereffective or if members are aware of established norms but opt to nolonger follow them.

In my three decades in the profession I have served on an uncountablenumber of search committees. In recent years I increasinglyencountered an annoying (to me) practice among applicants, multiplevita entries for identically titled, and thus presumably identicallywritten, conference papers. I originally dismissed such practices asvita padding, a not well socialized, nor particularly wellaccomplished, applicant seeking to make his or her researchperformance look more impressive than it actually is.

As Nelson Dometrius's opening essay suggests, academic standards,like other occupational standards and practices, change over time.These changes may draw fire from both established and youngerscholars trained in the classical tradition. Shifting norms inpolitical science range from different publication standards overtime (few would doubt that the number of publications required fortenure has increased in most schools), to changing ideas aboutjournal quality, to different conference practices. In this essay, Iargue that the increasingly common practice of presenting identicalpapers at multiple conferences is not a negative influence on thediscipline and does not conflict with any of the commonly offeredrationales for conference attendance and participation. In fact, Isuggest that making changes to existing papers—presenting futureversions of a paper—may produce a more focused research agenda andmay battle some potentially negative trends in political science. Ialso argue that this practice is a rational and predictableoutgrowth of the shifting academic incentive structure.Thanks to Nelson Dometrius, ToddCollins, Gibbs Knotts, and Niall Michelsen for helpful commentson an earlier draft of this paper.

For many faculty members, particularly those at researchinstitutions, presenting a paper more than once at a conference haslong been taboo. Peers evaluating tenure requirements or meritrankings may credit a second presentation less, or not at all. Onthe other hand, norms in the discipline vary dramatically acrossinstitution types. We argue that at universities with considerableteaching loads and substantial service expectations, duplicateresearch presentations can be an effective way to maintain an activeresearch agenda, absent other institutional incentives to do so. Wecurrently teach international relations and comparative politicscourses at an institution where the incentives to research remainmodest, and the incentives to teach and spend a considerable amountof time in service related activities are substantial. Our commentsare particularly geared toward this environment. We begin bydefining what we mean by duplicate research presentations. Next, weoutline how the incentive structure at a teaching institutioncreates different priorities, allowing different norms to develop.We then examine how duplicate research presentations can be aneffective tool for overcoming traps common to untenured faculty. Weend with an unabashed defense of the increasingly common practice ofduplicate research presentations, particularly at teaching andservice oriented universities.

When I first was asked to write this piece about “doubleconferencing,” I immediately went to my vita. Looking at theevidence Nelson Dometrius presented introducing this symposium andplacing myself on the degree year list, I found I was in the centerof the controversy, having received my degree in 1998. Had Icommitted the crime of presenting the same paper at two conferences?I skimmed my CV, and yes, there it was: an identically titled paperat both a national and a section conference. Granted, this was theonly one I could find on my CV, there was only a month between thetwo conferences, and we had made some changes based on feedback.However, there was more than enough overlap to place me among thegroup of violators.

An increase in the number of political science papers that arepresented at multiple academic conferences does not, as NelsonDometrius recognizes, constitute one of the major existential crisesof the twenty-first century. Indeed, I doubt that it would even makeit onto anyone's list of the top hundred issues currentlyconfronting the discipline of political science. Nonetheless, itdoes warrant more attention than it has received in the past (which,insofar as I am aware, is approximately none at all).

Like everyone else in the discipline, we have seen multipleappearances of a single paper title on conference programs, withinvitas of job applicants, and in tenure/promotion files. Dependingupon the context, our reactions have either been amusement,irritation, or (most frequently) indifference. To bring the entiresituation home, consider the following: About three weeks ago, bothof us submitted (separate) paper proposals to the 2008 AnnualMeeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. And, sometimewithin the next five weeks, one of us intends to submit a proposalto the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political ScienceAssociation, while the other plans to submit a proposal to the 2008State Politics and Policy Meeting. In each case, these will be thesame proposals that we sent off earlier to the Midwest PoliticalScience Association.

The 2006 election will best be remembered for returning Democrats topower in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Byalmost any metric, November 7 was a bad day for the Republicans.After 12 years of Republican majorities, the Democrats picked up 31seats in the House and six in the Senate. While significant GOPlosses were expected, the results on Election Day were essentiallythe best case scenario for the Democrats.

The correspondence between public preferences and public policy is acritical rationale for representative democratic government. Thisview has been put forward in the theoretical literature on democracyand representation (e.g., Dahl 1971;Pitkin 1967; Birch 1971) and in “functional” theories of democraticpolitics (Easton 1965; Deutsch 1963), both of which emphasize theimportance of popular control of policymaking institutions.Political science research also shows a good amount ofcorrespondence between opinion and policy, though to varyingdegrees, across a range of policy domains and political institutionsin the U.S. and elsewhere. This is of obvious significance.Earlier versions of this paper werepresented at the 2006 Annual Meetings of the American PoliticalScience Association, Philadelphia, at the Elections, PublicOpinion and Parties specialist group, Nottingham, England, andat the 2007 National Conference of the Midwest Political ScienceAssociation, Chicago. We thank Vinod Menon for assistance withdata collection and Kevin Arceneaux, Suzie DeBoef, HaroldClarke, Peter Enns, Mark Franklin, Martin Gilens, John Griffin,Will Jennings, Rich Joslyn, Benjamin Page, David Sanders, DavidWeakliem, John Zaller, and the anonymous reviewers forcomments.

The quality of representation the citizenry receives from itspolitical leaders is central to evaluating the character of anydemocratic institution. Moreover, the number of elected members thatcomprise an institution can be vital in determining whether citizenshave access to and can influence the decisions of theirrepresentatives (Dahl and Tufte 1973). TheUnited States House of Representatives has been frozen at 435members for almost a century. This durability of this alignment isastonishing; in its first century of existence, the U.S. Houseexperienced a virtually uninterrupted string of decennial increasesin its membership. Despite the magnitude of the effects of thisstasis on representation, political scientists have not extensivelyexamined this subject (Squire and Hamm 2005). While the House has remained constant in size fornearly 100 years, the nation's population has grown by more than200% over this duration. Members of the House on average representmore than 600,000 citizens; a figure that increases with populationgrowth as long as the size of the body remains constant. Thisdevelopment has sparked a debate among some observers about whetherit is time to increase the size of the House of Representatives.

It is clear from the presidential primary campaign that 2008 canlegitimately be labeled “the year of the spouse as surrogate.” Thesheer number of candidates on both sides of the aisle and theheavily front-loaded campaign season have made using the wives—andhusband—of the candidates a “must.” Never before has media attentionbeen so heavily focused on the spouses. In fact, they have oftenbeen an equal, or in some cases, bigger story than the candidatesthemselves. The same pattern will characterize the spouses of thevice presidential candidates. The bottom line is that use ofpresidential and vice presidential spouses hasbecome an integral part of presidential campaigns. In this article,we detail how the Bush and Kerry camps strategically scheduledspouses in the final days of the campaign—from Labor Day untilElection Day. We conclude with some thoughts about what to expect in2008.

If challenged to do so, relatively few Americans could probably findNorth and South Dakota on a map, let alone correctly name, spell,and pronounce the capitals of the two states. Nor would they be ableto recall anything interesting about the Dakotas, whose main touristattractions, besides Mount Rushmore, are a drug store, a civic arenafestooned in corn, and a peace garden. Although one of the Dakotasbills itself as “The Land of Infinite Variety,” its socioculturaldiversity consists primarily of different synods of Lutherans whoengage in endless disputation with one another because they are sosimilar. Dakotans prefer their food bland—they consider ketchupdaringly spicy—and their politicians low-key. When they encountersomething new, they call it “different,” which they rarely mean as acompliment, and they wait for it to go away—which, because there isso little to hold it in the Dakotas, it probably will do. They keeptheir opinions to themselves (a typical Dakotan being the fellowfrom Sioux Falls who loved his wife so much that he almost toldher), and they do not like it when people make a fuss aboutthemselves or anything else. Thus, when South Dakotans perceived thepreviously popular Senator George McGovern as having gotten too bigfor his britches by seeking the presidency in 1972, they saw to itthat he would fail to carry his home state, and three decades laterthey voted long-time Senator Tom Daschle out of office as soon as herepeated McGovern's mistake of seeing a president whenever he gazedinto a mirror.

The 11 years from 1994 to 2005 comprised the second-longest periodwithout an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court (Epstein et al.2003, 353). The nominations of JohnRoberts in 2005 and Samuel Alito in 2006 were met with enthusiasm byconservatives, foreboding by liberals, and great interest bypolitical scientists concerned with the Court's future and withchanges in the appointment process since Stephen Breyer'sappointment in 1994.

Almost all economic indicators show that the rise of China is all butinevitable. Many argue that it is already happening. China may rankas the second, or the third, or the fourth largest world economicpower, depending on how one does the counting, after enjoying anaverage annual GDP growth rate of nearly 10% in the past quarter ofa century (1983–2007) (National Bureau of Statistics of China).China currently has the largest foreign currency reserve in theworld, reaching one trillion U.S. dollars (People's Bank of China)and China became the second largest trade country after the U.S. in2007 (Wenweipo2007). In fact, no discussion of worldeconomy is adequate without talking about China. Even though theUnited States is currently embroiled in Iraq and the war on terror,there is no question that the rise of China is still very much inback of the minds of American foreign policy makers and politicalelites, especially during the current presidential campaigns. Forinstance, one survey of American international relations scholarsreveals that while 58% of the scholars believe that the greateststrategically important region for the United States is the MiddleEast right now, 60% of them think it will be China and East Asia in20 years (Peterson, Tierney, and Maliniak 2005). A public survey shows that a majority of thecitizens in many developing countries think it would be a good thingif China were to become as large a military power as the UnitedStates (Pew Global Attitudes Project 2005).We would like toacknowledge the two anonymous reviewers for their helpfulcomments on an earlier version of this paper. We also wantexpress our gratitude to the 132 scholars who participated inour survey.

Graduate students suffer from many pressures when writing adissertation. Deadlines loom, jobs are highly competitive,publishing is always a bonus, and these are often combined withoutside research, teaching fellowships, or other occupations. Inorder to finish a quality dissertation without too much wasted timeor effort it is useful for students to begin early and to think hardabout their projects in a variety of ways. Students may have a broadconceptual interest or field interest without a focused andtractable project. In addition to the normal practice of discussingpotential projects with advisors and mentors, there are several waysto evaluate potential projects that may be overlooked. This essayhelps bring a good dissertation project to the front of severalpotential ideas a student might have by describing severalcharacteristics for comparison across topics. In addition, thisessay provides a rubric by which students can develop and discuss aproject with faculty and colleagues. Without a doubt, one of themost important aspects of preparing a dissertation project is todiscuss that project with faculty mentors and potential committeemembers (Banesh 2001). Between thesediscussions, or before the first discussion of potential projects,students can spend considerable time thinking about various ideasfor their thesis or dissertation. Students approaching their projectsystematically may have many projects they are considering and wishto narrow down those projects to a manageable few before discussingthem with advisors. As a first time dissertation writer, however,most graduate students are unaware of criteria that can be used toevaluate and compare their ideas objectively so they can compareseveral project ideas and narrow down the field. The criteriadescribed here combine and extend other criteria previouslydeveloped, such as developing questions that are important in thereal world and those that contribute to scholarly literature (King,Keohane, and Verba 1994). The criteriadescribed below were developed specifically for dissertationprojects, but are also very useful for students writing theses forother purposes such as undergraduate senior projects. The guideprovided here should enable students to compare several potentialideas objectively to begin to find a viable project. Although theinitial development of a thesis project based on a student'stheoretical or empirical interests is mostly idiosyncratic andpersonal (See King, Keohane, and Verba 1994; Van Evera 1997), once astudent's interests emerge there are some common ways to objectivelyevaluate several dissertation projects. This essay helps studentsdevelop several ways to think about their dissertation projects andcreate a rubric so that several projects can be evaluated oncomparable terms.Thanks to the twoanonymous reviewers and Ronald B Mitchell who made instrumentalsuggestions on improving the text.

If you could start a political science program from scratch, howwould you do it? Given no institutional history, how would youdesign graduate and undergraduate programs? How would you grow yourfaculty? How would you attempt to build a reputation in the absenceof a reputation at time t-1? In aninterdisciplinary environment, with which disciplines would you workmost closely? For most political science professors, these might beinteresting hypothetical questions to consider. For the two of us,these questions are very real and have dominated our recent worklives as we have just finished our first year as the foundingpolitical science faculty at the brand new University of Californiacampus, UC Merced.We thank CarissaHansford, Shawn Kantor, and Jennifer Nicholson for helpfulcomments and suggestions.

Intellectual exchange is central to progress in any discipline,including political science. The transfer of knowledge, ideas, andtechniques takes place in many forums (e.g., advisor-studentmeetings, conferences, department lounges) and it is no simple taskto systematically identify or quantify this interchange. In generalthough, the fruition of a successful or insightful idea is apublished journal article or book. The way in which the author(s) ofa published piece of work acknowledges previous or contemporary workthat contributed to its development is via references or citations.Thus, while we cannot easily keep track of theentire process of intellectual exchange thatleads to publication, citations inform us of other (usuallypublished) work that influenced and contributed to the articles andbooks that make up the research output of the field.We thank two anonymous referees for helpfulcomments on content and structure.

This paper discusses an arms control simulation that formed a centralpart of the course, Controlling Chemical and Biological Weapons.Based on the experiential learning approach this simulation soughtto (a) provide an active learning context for students to acquire anin-depth understanding of central aspects of biological armscontrol, and (b) gain an appreciation for the complexities ofmultilateral diplomacy in general and arms control negotiations inparticular. I taught this course in spring 2006 to a group of 16final-year undergraduate students. The arms control simulationcomplemented the weekly one-hour lectures and replaced the standardone-hour student-led seminar sessions. At the beginning of thesimulation I supplied students with a set of confidential countryinstructions to approach the simulation, which was subdivided intotwo negotiating rounds of three sessions each and a draftingexercise towards the end of the semester.

For many faculty members, the move by universities toward greaterreliance on online and hybrid courses raises questions of coursecontent and quality. Many faculty, socialized to deliver informationto students in a manner described as “chalk and talk,” wonderwhether moving courses out into the online environment somehowcompromises the education students receive. In fact, there is asmall but growing body of information in political science and othercognate disciplines that addresses these questions and offersevidence that online courses, while different from more traditionalface-to-face classes, can offer rich learning opportunities in theirown right. This article seeks to contribute to that body ofknowledge by reporting the results of a quasi-experiment comparingstudent success and satisfaction in online and face-to-facecourses.The author gratefullyacknowledges the support of the UWM Center for Instructional andProfessional Development and the assistance of Anthony Ciccone,Connie Schroeder, and the anonymous reviewers.