The gender publication gap puts women at a disadvantage for tenure and promotion, which contributes to the discipline’s leaky pipeline. Several studies published in PS find no evidence of gender bias in the review process and instead suggest that submission pools are distorted by gender. To make a contribution to this important debate, we fielded an original survey to a sample of American Political Science Association members to measure participants’ perceptions of political science journals. Results reveal that the gender submission gap is accompanied by a gender perception gap at some but not all political science journals we study. Women report that they are more likely to submit to and get published in some journals, whereas men report as such with regard to other journals. Importantly, these gaps are observed even among scholars with the same methodological (i.e., quantitative or qualitative) approach.

Studies investigating gender gaps in the doctoral training of political science students have focused so far overwhelmingly on the US context. Although important research within this context has made strides in identifying the persistent challenges to women’s incorporation in political methodology, much remains unknown about whether women and men have different experiences in methods training during their PhD programs. We contribute to this debate by analyzing data from an original survey on the methods-training experiences of political science PhD students at different European universities. We assess whether gender gaps exist with respect to PhD students’ methods training and confidence in employing methods skills. Our findings show that women cover significantly fewer methods courses in their doctoral training. When women do participate in methods training, they show levels of method employment similar to their male colleagues. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of European doctoral training.

LGBTQ activists and academics advocate the use of non-binary gender categories to include individuals who identify as neither rigidly male nor rigidly female to reflect the increasing number of people who do not place themselves in these two conventional classes. Although some general-population surveys have begun using non-binary gender questions, research has not examined the consequences of using (or not) a question with non-binary gender categories in surveys and censuses. Our study addresses this gap using a survey experiment in which respondents in the United States, Canada, and Sweden randomly received a binary or a non-binary gender question. We find no evidence of negative reactions to the non-binary question. Moreover, when there is a statistical difference, the reactions are positive. We thus conclude that general-population surveys could use a non-binary question without facing significant adverse reactions from respondents.

We piloted a pedagogical experiment to find out whether students can benefit from explicit demonstrations on critical thinking skills through live debates between two instructors on current political issues that are relevant to but not necessarily a specific part of the curriculum. The empirical results show that, through a series of interventions in the form of explicit demonstrations and debriefs on critical thinking skills in these issue-based live debates, students’ academic performance can significantly improve over a relatively short period of time. Training students’ critical skills through explicit, engaging pedagogy is not only economical in practical and pragmatic terms but also has significant and immediate short-term effects in a setting where there is a high proportion of first-generation undergraduate students of varying abilities and backgrounds.

This article explores the value and application of using comic images to teach difficult political texts. We presented either visual or textual portions of the Constitution to 71 American 18- to 22-year-olds using Survey Monkey Audience, measuring and comparing their knowledge of the Constitution before and after viewing. Respondents viewing the comic of congressional duties experienced statistically significant gains in pretest to posttest mean knowledge scores. Respondents viewing the text also experienced an increase in mean scores pretest to posttest; however, these changes were smaller and not statistically significant. This indicates that students may better comprehend content from visual depictions of difficult texts. We conclude by providing an example of one way that we use comics of political texts as a tool for student learning in an international civics exchange program.

One of the most alarming trends of the past decade has been the rise in authoritarianism and the growing support of strongman politics among citizens of democratic regimes. College instructors have a unique opportunity to challenge such thinking at a time when many of their students are still forming their political beliefs. Using a game, instructors not only can show students the perils of authoritarianism, they also can potentially expand students’ appreciation of democracy. This article describes a game suitable for this purpose. Students take on the role of workers, soldiers, and rulers in a military dictatorship to learn about the “guns-and-butter tradeoff” and authoritarian uncertainty.