DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

This project seeks to learn the impact of publicly engaged scholarship and contribute to diversifying the academic community. The study will measure the social and research impact of public engagement, or scholars communicating beyond academic audiences and sharing their expertise with a broader, more general audience. There is a small but growing academic literature that shows scholarship that is publicly engaged can have greater academic and societal reach, but there is little empirical evidence of this relationship between engagement and reach when it comes to social science research. To examine whether and the extent to which there is such a relationship, this study will use a randomized controlled trial involving different public engagement strategies that publicize social science scholarship and measure indicators of academic and societal reach. The study will include a survey...

Causas urgentes dialogó con la politóloga de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Ely Orrego Torres acerca de los desafíos que se presentan entre la religión y la política, principalmente en Latinoamérica, en el marco del curso que inicia el 31 de agosto y se denomina "Estado laico en América Latina: perspectivas feministas" el cual se encuentra enmarcado en una Escuela de Formación junto a la ONG “Otros Cruces” mediante un contexto crítico.

American democracy is at risk, Stanford scholars and others have warned. A Stanford-led project has identified a number of strategies that are effective in reducing Americans’ support for undemocratic practices and candidates. (Image credit: Getty Images) Many studies have found anti-democratic attitudes and support for partisan violence are at concerning levels among the American public, partisan animosity is growing, and Americans are willing to compromise democratic principles for partisan gain. Stanford sociologist Robb Willer is among those worried about what these attitudes mean for the stability of democracy in the U.S. To counter some of the risks Willer and many Americans are troubled by, Willer launched a massive, three-year project to test a variety of simple and scalable ways to counter anti-democratic beliefs that threaten the country’s political future.

ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) today announced the selection of 10 research projects for its inaugural Center for Antisemitism Research Fellowship, which engages leading university researchers in identifying new approaches to combating antisemitism in society. Does correcting misinformation or cultivating empathy reduce antisemitism? Dr. Catie Bailard, associate professor of media and public affairs, George Washington University; Andrew Thompson, assistant professor of political science, GWU; and Rebekah Tromble, Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics,...

One thing he offered was proof that it is possible to break out of entrenched ways of thinking about one’s place in the world. He brought the Cold War to an end by refusing to see the world as a zero-sum status contest with the U.S. He came to leadership in a world where it was taken for granted that the U.S. and the USSR were in competition with each other. “This competition was seen as natural, inevitable and zero-sum. Both governments chose their policies on the assumption that the most important thing was to keep up appearances of being stronger than the other. Gorbachev seemed to know that there was nothing inevitable about fighting for scraps of status around the world, and that the costs of doing so were unacceptable. And so he stepped out of the competitive paradigm and sought to invest in improving domestic conditions instead. He scrambled American foreign policy by refusing...

Local election officials are trying to share voting information with the public on social media but may be missing some key platforms – and the voters who use them. In early July 2022, for instance, young voters in Boone County, Missouri, complained that they had missed the registration deadline to vote in the county’s Aug. 2 primary election. They claimed no one “spread the word on social media.” The local election office in that county actually has a social media presence on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. But its accounts don’t have many followers and aren’t as active as, say, celebrity or teenage accounts are. As a result, election officials’ messages may never reach their audience.

A Northwestern University-led research team has received a $5 million grant over five years from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop new methods to help mitigate the effects of climate change on the Great Lakes and its surrounding natural ecosystems. By partnering with Indigenous and Native American scientists, conservation agencies and government agencies, the team will focus on manoomin (the Ojibwe word for wild rice), a critical — yet declining — part of the Great Lakes ecosystem and a sacred food that connects Native communities to the land.

Michelle Bueno Vasquez is a Ph.D. candidate in political science and a Master’s candidate in statistics. Michelle’s research explores the development of racial categories transnationally between the United States and Latin America. Her work deals specifically with the export of white supremacist and anti-Black standards through U.S. military occupations in the area and their influence on the political and social development in Latin American nations. She also explores the evolution of Census racial categories, particularly looking at Afro-Latino erasure in statistical methodology. In her dissertation, she examines these themes through the case study of the Dominican Republic and its diaspora in the U.S., providing insights into how Afro-Latinos make sense of their racial identity and Black consciousness in the here and now.

The last decade has given rise to substantial concern about democratic backsliding in the U.S. Manifestations include decreased trust in government, conspiratorial beliefs, contentious protests, and support for political violence. Surprisingly, prior work has not explored how these attitudes and behaviors relate to gun-buying, an action that provides people with the means to challenge the state. The researchers address this topic by focusing on individuals who took part in the unprecedented gun buying surge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a survey with over 50,000 respondents, they find that— relative to other Americans—pandemic gun buyers are more likely to distrust government, believe in conspiracies, protest, and support political violence. Moreover, the authors find that gun buyers who hold anti-government views and attend protests are especially likely to say they bought guns...

As the West debates defence spending to counter China and Russia, an affordable approach for constructive influence is possible through advising missions that create Sustainable Development Engineering Corps (SDECs) in militaries throughout Africa. Through interviews and surveys of defence officials, Nils Zimmermann, Ivor Wiltenburg and Jahara Matisek find strong support for using European militaries for cost-effective contributions to Western global force posture by creating and deploying advisor units focused on helping African partner militaries establish SDECs.