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"Inspired Citizens enhances our understanding of how political role models function and affect political behavior in the United States. It explores what impact role models have on political participation and on candidate emergence, building a political science theory of role model effects which the author terms Inspired Citizenship Theory"--

ABSTRACTBoth social media use and the civic disengagement of college students continue to be on the rise, posing instruction challenges around how and what students are interested in learning in their college classrooms. This pedagogical case study examines the effectiveness of using Twitter to develop a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) that incorporates the use of social media learning—specifically using social media to expose students to a greater depth and breadth of contemporary topics—as a tool of instruction in a political science curriculum. I assess whether social media learning equips students with media literacy skills that aid them in engaging in civic dialogue, understanding public policy, and identifying stakeholders on all sides and aspects of an issue—potential precursors to deeper civic engagement. I find that students seem to overestimate their ability to learn about political issues and are skeptical of social media. However, the use of social media as a component of a PLE (1) provides a pathway for enhanced media literacy and deeper learning, (2) makes learning about an issue more appealing, and (3) engages students who are less interested in a traditional classroom delivery.

In the United States, women have long held the right to vote and can participate fully in the political process, and yet they are underrepresented at all levels of elected office. Worldwide, men's dominance in the realm of politics has also been the norm. To date, scholars have focused on supply-side and demand-side explanations of women's underrepresentation but differences in how men and women assess electoral risk (the risk involved in seeking political office) are not fully explained. To fill this gap, I explore how evolutionary theory offers insights into gendered differences in political ambition and the evaluation of electoral risk. Using the framework of life-history theory, I hypothesize that both cognitive and environmental factors in human evolution, particularly as they relate to sexual selection and social roles, have shaped the psychology of ambition in gendered ways affecting contemporary politics. Cognitive risk-assessment mechanisms evolving in the hominid line came to be expressed differently in females and males, in women and men. These gendered expressions plausibly reflect differentiable environmental pressures in the past and may help explain behaviors in and barriers to women's electoral political activity in the present. If so, then the success of efforts to increase such activity — or, regressively, to suppress it — may be better understood.

Abstract
In the United States, emphasizing their families and talking about parenthood can be a potent strategy for political candidates as voters use information about a candidate's family life to make assessments of the candidate's personal attributes and issue competencies. We nonetheless know little about how a candidate's race affects these assessments. We thus consider how Black women use and benefit from politicizing motherhood, and we argue that the unique intersectional identities of Black women shaped jointly by their race and gender can give Black women a stronger strategic advantage from highlighting motherhood compared to white women. Using both observational and experimental data, we apply this intersectional framework by examining motherhood messages. We identify the extent to which Black women rely on messages about motherhood and how voters respond. Our results show that Black women are just as likely to use motherhood messages relative to white women, and that Black women receive positive evaluations from voters from a message emphasizing motherhood. White and minority voters are equally likely to positively rate Black women who emphasize motherhood.

Strengthening citizen participation in West Africa is an increasingly important aspect of democratic development – especially in mitigating setbacks arising from poor governance. This article uses Round 4 Afrobarometer data to explore what stimulates local-level participation by examining determinants against the backdrop of eight West African nations: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal. Using a negative binomial regression model, our results are evaluated within the framework of good governance, and show that local context, specifically relative to citizens' perceptions of and attitudes about the performance of local government, matters when it comes to local political participation.Points for practitionersThis study provides public administrators with a framework for understanding what drives local-level, non-electoral citizen participation in West Africa, and helps them understand how to increase local citizen engagement and build a more democratic society through the pursuit of good governance principles. In addition, this study highlights the critical importance of local government performance, and the role of citizens' attitudes and evaluations, in local civic engagement.