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The problem of women's access and participation in politics is extremely important today and has received considerable attention worldwide. Gender equality in politics is a fundamental indicator of a modern democratic society. According to international standards, both men and women should have equal rights and opportunities to fully participate in all aspects of the political process. In practice, it is difficult for women to gain access to the politics, and this is a violation of human rights. According to statistical data, states where number of women in political positions is equivalent to the number of men demonstrate stronger economy and successful development, as well as in domestic and foreign policy.

"Constitutions in Latin American Politics" published on by Oxford University Press.

In the the spring 2018 issue of Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Martin Gainsborough's "Malesky vs. Fforde" offers to adjudicate a supposed dispute between two highly cited scholars of modern Vietnamese politics. Purportedly drawing on the philosophical traditions of ontology and epistemology, Gainsborough claims that we can gain traction as a field by looking closely into the preexisting belief systems that scholars bring to their research questions. Along the way, Gainsborough questions the plausibility of my own work and claims that I smuggle "liberal" values into my writing on Vietnam. In this response, I discuss five dimensions in which Gainsborough and I disagree and why they matter for studying Vietnamese politics. I do so by contrasting my choices with Gainsborough's scholarship (both in "Malesky vs. Fforde" and other work), illustrating how Gainsborough's research decisions lead him to faulty and damaging conclusions about my work.

This special issue overcomes the still existing reservations to analyze children's perspectives on politics and society. Dealing with different topics, research questions, and new data, the articles provide new insights and open the discussion for questions of children's involvement in civil society. The findings of these articles should be relevant for all researchers of childhood sociology, for civic educationalists and students of political learning and behavior. Questions investigated are, among others, how do children think about politics, democracy, and society? How do they express their political attitudes? What do children's political orientations and behavior look like? How politically knowledgeable are they and what are the reasons for between-group differences? What are important democratic learning contexts and factors that shape these orientations? And, last but not least, what methods can we use to analyze children's political involvement in an adequate manner?

The controversy over mixing religion and politics has not kept religion apart from government. Religious groups participate in a wide variety of political activities. But religious groups in the United States are not organized as political parties or political machines. There is a relation between religious affiliation and party affiliation. The correlation, however, does not usually indicate a "religious" vote. In part, the relation reflects socio-economic status. For Catholics and Jews it is very much a result of awareness of minority status. As minority awareness declines, trends in voting change. There is no pattern of voting for or against candidates because of their religion. The importance of religion in a presidential election cannot be assessed on the basis of other elections. The election of a Catholic president would not change the nature of our government, but it would have an effect on American politics.