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Editor: George Gunton. ; Title from cover. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The simple act of voting—and its barriers, costs, benefits, and
mobilization—continues to be central to politics and political
science (Kelley and Mirer 1974). The Supreme Court case Crawford vs.
Marion County Election Board (2008) and a well-attended
panel on the topic at the 2008 APSA annual meeting in Boston
highlight the pertinence of voter-ID issues to the polity and
discipline for the 2008 and future elections. As simple as voting
is, it is also "of the most fundamental significance under our
constitutional structure" (Burdick v. Takushi
1992).

ABSTRACTMost political scientists conduct and publish qualitative research, but what training in qualitative methods do political science doctoral programs offer? Do scholarly views converge on the proper content of such training? Analysis of methods curricula and syllabi from 25 leading US political science doctoral programs reveals a troubling gap: only 60% of top departments offer any dedicated graduate training in qualitative methods. Departments can remedy this disjuncture between scholarship and training by enhancing their basic qualitative methods curricula. Our research shows that scholars agree broadly on the content of such training, effective pedagogical practices, major alternatives for curriculum design, and a menu of focused topics. Graduate programs that aspire to train professionally competent qualitative and multi-method researchers now can orient their reform efforts on shared disciplinary standards for qualitative methods training.

ABSTRACT: That political science tends to fall short when applied to the non-West is writ large to academics in the field. Patterns emerge when documenting past failures of political science and international relations theory (IRT) in the global periphery. These patterns can be categorized into the five limitations suggested in this paper: western bias, historical amnesia, scope, willful othering, and political ontology. Ranging from questions of methodology to the nature of the field overall, the five limitations of political science when applied to the non-West illuminate origins to shortcomings in major theories. Understanding these limitations motivates a sharpened lens for adapting theories towards superior robustness.

Of all the freedoms for which the cold war was fought, free enterprise was deemed sufficient for acquisition of all the other freedoms. The task of political science should now be to expose the loose and insecure moorings of economic ideology and to develop an approach more appropriate to the realities of our time. Our new millennium is a corporate millennium that has been interpreted in the hegemonic model to mean private and free (that is, unregulated) markets. However, any theory capable of incorporating the corporation has to be one of political economy. The first section of this article identifies six state-provided assumptions homo economicus has to be able to make prior to making or entering a market, without which homo economicus stays home. The second section puts the issue in a global context by identifying three developmental tracks—macro, meso, and micro. Their existence denies the possibility of a pure economic theory of globalization. The third section describes the distinctive politics of each of the three tracks, demonstrating still more conclusively that political economy is the only approach competent to deal with the new corporate millennium. In conclusion, the author argues that political economy is and should be the new political science that this new era requires.

Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method, Sanford F. Schram and Brian Caterino, New York: New York University Press, 2006, pp. 304.Making Political Science Matter is a response to Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again by Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor of Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Making Political Science Matter is a collection of fourteen essays on methodological issues in political science. Its overarching aim is "to move the conversation forward in the hopes of seeing the possibility of a rejuvenated political science" (11).