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Volume 48 - September 2015

Contents

Page 3 of 9

Features

  • Strategic Voting and the Role of Polls: Evidence from an Embedded Web Survey

  • Timothy S. Rich
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 April 2015, pp. 301-305

  • What motivates people to vote strategically? Although a broad literature addresses this question, few studies capture the point at which individuals shift from sincere to strategic voters. Furthermore, the influence of polling information remains debated. The analysis in this article tackles strategic voting with an original embedded experiment in a web survey. Empirical analysis finds that respondents who were told of the margin of error in preelection polls were more likely to vote strategically. This analysis also suggests the limits to strategic voting even in ideal settings.

Symposium: Research and Undergraduate Teaching: A False Divide?

Profession Symposium: How Political Science Can Be More Diverse

Section II: Changing Incentives

The Teacher

  • The “Crossfire Approach”: Attracting Political Science Majors in Large-Lecture Sections of Introductory Courses

  • Jody C Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 October 2015, pp. 612-616
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  • In this article, we chronicle our experience in team-teaching large-lecture sections of “Introduction to American Government.” A dual-instructor approach allows us to accommodate 250 students, which obviates the need for five separate sections (and instructors) of the course. In addition, our “Crossfire Approach,” in which we engage one another in frequent and unstructured political debate, generates student interest in the course and in the political science major. Students who were enrolled in this course from 2007 through 2011 were significantly more likely to declare political science as their major than those who took it from any other instructor or either of us teaching it individually. This approach conserves departmental resources while simultaneously growing the program—a clear win-win situation.

Features

  • The BDS Campaign against Israel: Lessons from South Africa

  • Joseph E. Yi, Joe Phillips
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 April 2015, pp. 306-310

  • The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is animated by a pragmatic strain that views external sanctions as effective pressure against a small democratic state and by a moralistic Manichean strain that portrays Israelis as oppressors. Both strains hearken back to the earlier campaign against apartheid in South Africa. We argue that doing so misreads the lessons of South Africa. Sanctions may have contributed to ending apartheid, but they operated in conjunction with improved security and interpersonal trust among negotiators. Key contenders moved from a discourse of oppression to one that humanized one another as partners with legitimate concerns. These conditions are missing from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Both sides consider their security to be precarious and they are locked in competing narratives of victimization, which further erode mutual trust and security. Measures to improve the parties’ security and trust would contribute to mutual concessions and greater justification for sanctions if the Israeli government is intransigent.

The Teacher

  • The Political Is Personal: Using Political Life Narratives to Engage Students

  • Sarah Combellick-Bidney
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 October 2015, pp. 617-620
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  • To involve students in the process of grounding abstract concepts in their own concrete life experiences, I began working with a type of reflective exercise that I call the “political life story,” in which students create and share narratives around the political phenomena that have shaped their own lives. Building on the experiences of other political scientists who have used active-versus-passive learning to disentangle conceptual ambiguity—as well as similar best practices of student-centered pedagogy that are well established in the discipline—I offer these reflections in the spirit of deepening the conversation about methods of reflective group learning with diverse students in both classroom and online contexts. My observations reinforce the consistent finding in the wider pedagogical literature that diverse classrooms provide a conducive environment for deep learning when particular emphasis is placed on the lived experiences of students.

Section II: Changing Incentives

Profession Symposium: How Political Science Can Be More Diverse

Symposium: Research and Undergraduate Teaching: A False Divide?

Profession Symposium: How Political Science Can Be More Diverse

Section II: Changing Incentives

Profession Symposium: Reinventing the Scholarly Conference: Reflections from the Field

Symposium: Research and Undergraduate Teaching: A False Divide?

The Teacher

  • Fantasy Presidents: A Game That Makes Research More Exciting

  • Dave Bridge
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 October 2015, pp. 621-625
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  • Using the core principles of fantasy sports, I propose the notion of using fantasy drafts in political science classrooms. I begin by introducing the basic concept of fantasy leagues. Then I describe an original 30-minute game in which students draft US presidents and “compete” against one another along a number of dimensions. Next, I present possible writing assignments related to the game. The conclusion discusses the contributions of “Fantasy Presidents”—namely, it offers interesting essay prompts and informed discussions, and it encourages students to take the initiative in their own learning.

Symposium: Big Data, Causal Inference, and Formal Theory: Contradictory Trends in Political Science?

Section II: Changing Incentives

Profession Symposium: Reinventing the Scholarly Conference: Reflections from the Field

The Teacher

  • Simulating the Bargaining Model of War

  • Kyle Haynes
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 October 2015, pp. 626-629
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  • This article outlines a classroom simulation for teaching the bargaining model of war. This model has become one of the most important theories of international conflict, but the technical notation often used to illustrate it is troublesome for some students. I describe a simple card game that can be integrated into a broader strategy for conveying the bargaining model’s core insights. I also highlight ways in which the game can be modified to focus on different aspects of the model’s logic.

  • Finding the Invisible Women: Gender Stereotypes versus Student Interest in Foreign Policy and Security Subfields

  • Renee L. Buhr, Nicholas Sideras
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 June 2015, pp. 473-477
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  • Foreign policy and security studies typically are considered male-dominated domains in the discipline of international relations (IR), yet many women work in these policy domains, particularly in the United States. The “invisible women” working in foreign policy often come from fields such as IR, in which gender stereotypes may influence their understanding of the careers available to them. This research project seeks to understand student assumptions about gender roles in IR and the effects of those assumptions. Survey data collected from students in IR courses in 2011 and 2012 reveal that stereotyping of IR subfields is common but that individual students’ academic and career interests often diverge from those stereotypes. This finding is relevant not simply because it may explain the presence of women in foreign-policy careers but also because it provides useful pedagogical information for instructors in the IR field.

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