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The cartoon, comic, or—as influential cartoonist Will Eisner
called it—"sequential art" is an art-form that is
cognitively friendly to contemporary notions of
individualistic-liberal-democracy. Whereas traditional forms of art have
rather hierarchical standards of aesthetics, which then enforce customary
notions of power and the conventional hermeneutic pecking order, the
iconography of comics and cartoons is supportive of a kind of pluralistic
democratic individualism. If, as some thinkers suggest, the world is
understood by cognitive images in the brain, then—as the work of C.
S. Pierce, Scott McCloud, and others support—comics is an art that
allows for the individual self-creation that subsequently supports
democracy.

Although the study of regional and local politics has been largely conducted in the context of the United States (Loughlin 2001), in recent decades, researchers have studied sub-state transformations and multilevel governance in Europe (see, for example, Marks 1993; Bukowski et al. 2003; Weatherill 2005). In this article, I urge professors to incorporate this literature in undergraduate, comparative politics classrooms and I suggest how to do so using the case of Spain. I argue that Spain, and more generally southern Europe, provides an exciting context in which to discuss subnational themes. The article is structured in four sections. First, I explain the Comparative European Politics course in which I discuss the Spanish sub-state. The second section demonstrates Spain's comparative appeal by summarizing its State of Autonomies and situating it within the European context. The third section raises theoretical debates about democracy, subnational institutions, and the European Union. The final section offers accessible lecture examples for European politics courses.

Scholars are sometimes called upon to adjudicate charges of
plagiarism, that is, of the unacknowledged "lifting" of one
writer's words or ideas by another. When literal copying of whole
expressions or sentences is involved, judgments are straightforward. But
when the accuser claims that his or her ideas were plagiarized, as in the
recent court case against Random House over Dan Brown's Da Vinci
Code, the situation is much more complicated. Passing judgment in
such cases requires a reflection on the meaning of
"plagiarism" and the best ways of assessing it, which this
brief article seeks to provide.

The assertion that editorial cartoons do not just mirror politics, but are also themselves a part of the political struggle by the state, media, & social movements to influence the interpretive processes by which individuals negotiate the meanings of the bands is investigated in an analysis of the editorial cartoons in Turkish daily newspapers. Focusing on secularism & Islamism as a political project that seeks to transform & reinstitute the sociopolitical border on the basis of constituted norms is contextualized in a historical narrative that begins with the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The defense of secularism by a pro-state secularist & a mainstream secular Turkish daily newspaper consider it to be an indispensable element of the sociopolitical structure, as well as the exclusion of religion from public life & national identity. The editorial cartoons in these newspapers usually depict the Other with restricted symbols to show an incapability of responding to the needs of society. Comparative analysis of the use of cartooning in a newspaper owned by a moderate religious group identifies a kaleidoscopic, multiple meaning perspective accorded to the reader. The high level of sophistication has been a source of complaints, but a departure from the overt message displayed in the secular media is maintained. The competing frames of the reproduction of the Turkish political context through Turkish editorial cartoons is concluded to be best viewed as modernist projects in which both sides enter into a struggle to apply their projects to the state & society, as well as to make their identities acceptable for a broader community. References. J. Harwell

Evidence suggesting that the growth of civic roots in adolescence may be crucial to the long-term development of citizenship has stimulated research into factors that might influence civic development during this time. One interesting finding to emerge from that exploration is the apparent importance ofdiscussionto the development of civic competence. Adolescents who discuss politics and current events with their parents, peers, or teachers tend to score higher than other youth on measures of civic behaviors, attitudes, and skills. They develop higher levels of political knowledge, show greater intention to vote in the future, and do better on a range of civic outcomes from petitioning and boycotting to raising money for charities and participating in community meetings (Torney-Purta et al. 2001; Andolina et al. 2003).

Spain occupies a prominent position in the teaching of comparative politics. It is a paradigmatic example of a successful transition to and consolidation of democracy, as well as an intriguing study in constitutional development, federalism, and a host of other topics. I have found that it is particularly useful when discussing electoral systems and representation.

On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten
printed 12 editorial cartoons, several of which contained caricatures of
the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. This publication sparked a controversy that
began in Denmark and spanned the globe. The cartoon publications stemmed
from an article discussing the difficulty in finding illustrators for a
book on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. According to the book's
author, cartoonists refused contract out of fear of retaliation from the
Muslim community, citing the example of the 2004 murder of Theo Van Gogh,
a Dutchman, for making the documentary Submission, a film focused
upon the position of women in Islam. In addition to the article,
nationwide debate discussed the right to freedom of speech and the
problems surrounding self-censorship. It was within this context that
Flemming Rose, the cultural editor at Jyllands-Posten, asked
Danish cartoonists to depict the Prophet Muhammad as they saw him with the
underlying purpose to raise the issue of self-censorship and fuel further
debate. The cartoons ran alongside an article on free speech and
self-censorship.

This article explores the relationship between the method of process
tracing and the data collection technique of elite interviewing. The
process tracing method has become an increasingly used and cited
tool in qualitative research, a trend that has recently accelerated
with the publication of Alexander George and Andrew Bennett's text
(2005), Case Studies and
Theory Development in the Social Sciences. That book
outlines and explores the process tracing method in detail,
highlighting its advantages for exploring causal processes and
analyzing complex decision-making. Yet while the book presents a
rigorous and compelling account of the process tracing method and
its critical importance to case study research, the value of the
method itself remains contested in some quarters, and there are
aspects of George and Bennett's treatment of it that require further
exploration.

Flipping through the recently published collection of R. K.
Laxman's cartoons chronicling Indian democracy (titled Brushing
Up the Years: A Cartoonist's History of India 1947–2004,
2005), I was intrigued by the dynamic nature of
the material collected together. It is indispensable as a teaching tool
that displays the many vicissitudes of Indian democracy over the years.
But also, the active nature of actual democratic life pulsated through
each and every framed visual satiric political presentation. What is it
about his visual melancholic humor that seems to question democratic
functioning at its kernel? There is nothing funny/trivial about
democratic governance, but by drawing in the comical aspect of a
functioning democracy, Laxman's cartoons draw out a democracy alive
to its inherent possibilities; a democracy laughing at itself for the
aberrations from its idyllic potential.

For more than three decades no commercial nuclear project in the U.S.
was ordered that was not later canceled. Recently, the groundbreaking for
the National Enrichment Facility in New Mexico in August, 2006, the
issuance of the first "Early Site Permit" for a nuclear power
plant in March, 2007, and a massive lobbying campaign in Washington, D.C.
have been signs that the nuclear power industry still dreams of a
renaissance. Nuclear power's momentum was broken in the late 1970s by
several factors, including a grassroots anti-nuclear movement that won
tightened regulations, thus raising the costs of nuclear power plant
construction and operation. Editorial cartoons in the daily press of that
time are only one of a number of fields of cartooning that document this
nuclear power controversy, and not the one that affords the closest look.
Both the nuclear industry and participants in the anti-nuclear movement
published entire comic books to explain their views of nuclear power.
Besides these special-purpose comic books, editorial cartoonists in the
weekly press and representations of nuclear power in mass entertainment
provide further bodies of visual evidence for understanding the steps by
which nuclear power won and lost the "public acceptance" that
it now tries to win back.

The call to the White House came out of the blue. It was a
nondescript email captioned "An invitation"; the sender's address
was: nsc.eop.gov. Having worked Pennsylvania Avenue for 35 years, I
knew the initials meant National Security Council, Executive Office
of the President. This article first
appeared in slightly modified form in the London publication
Times Higher Education Supplement on June
29, 2007, under the title "Mr Bush, this is the way I see
it."

Collaborative institutions, which involve the collective decision-making by multiple political agencies, communities, and stakeholders, are becoming increasingly important for addressing policy dilemmas that are not bound within a single jurisdiction. This is especially true in the environmental arena (Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000; Karkkainen 2002; Koontz et al. 2004; Lubell 2004; McKinney and Harmon 2004; Brick et al. 2001; Sabel et al. 2000). In the water management field, for instance, Sabatier, Weible, and Ficker (2005) have argued that the growth of collaborative efforts among small watersheds is so widespread that it has become a new paradigm of management. A considerable body of policy research, particularly on watershed management, has begun to examine the factors that support the emergence of collaborative environmental governance (Lubell et al. 2002; Blomquist 1992; Ostrom 1990). Understanding what factors affect the performance of collaborative institutions has also become an emerging theme in this scholarship (Sabatier, Leach, Lubell, and Pelkey 2005; Leach, Pelkey, and Sabatier 2002; Conley and Moote 2003; Innes and Booher 1999). Empirically and methodologically however, what is often missing from research on collaborative institutions is a clearer picture of what factors support the endurance of collaborative institutions over time.

This short article outlines why the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI), which governed Mexico for the final 71 years of the twentieth
century, not only lost the 2006 presidential election, but posted a
miserable third place finish by taking only 22.7% of the national vote
versus 36.7% for the winner, Felipe Calderón of the center-right
National Action Party (PAN) and 36.1% for the center-left Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD). It also explains why, despite its recent
electoral results, the once-hegemonic party will continue to play an
important, but reduced political role: as a coalition partner with the
governing PAN to create majorities in both the Chamber of Deputies and the
Senate.

There are many different ways to develop rankings of Ph.D.-granting
academic departments. Perhaps the most common method is
reputational: we simply ask knowledgeable scholars in the discipline
to provide their rankings and aggregate these in some fashion. Other
ways involve more "objective indicators." But, of course,
departments have multiple attributes, e.g., we might be interested
in how good a department is as a place to get a Ph.D., or we might
be interested simply in the research record of its faculty, etc.
Thus, we might want to use different indicators to measure different
aspects of the department.

When the U.S. deploys its forces around the world, an increasingly
important part of its operations is no longer managed by the U.S.
military, per se, but rather by what some call contractors, others
call private military and security companies, and still others call
mercenaries. In this essay, I will briefly describe the private
security industry and the larger global market for force that it is
a part of and how the U.S. military's increasing reliance on private
forces brings both benefit and risk.