A Look at the Centennial Center for Political Science & Public Affairs

Wendy Ginsberg is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently at the Centennial Center working on her dissertation, entitled “Roll Out the Barrel: A History of Earmarks as More Than Pork, But Why There's Still Beef.” The project uses qualitative and quantitative research to trace earmarking's drastic growth and its impact on the arena of juvenile justice. Specifically, the project links a loss of bureaucratic autonomy and power to the explosion of earmarks in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s.

Do “vote-buying” activities of locally elected legislators in developing countries crowd out the representation of mass policy preferences? If a legislator can buy a citizen's vote with a material benefit, does he really have an incentive to represent the interests of his constituents in legislative decision-making? Imagine the following setting: A slum neighborhood near Bangalore city center in Southern India. A group of women in worn-out sari-s, domestic servants who clean houses for a living, sit chatting outside their one-room concrete shacks with tin roofs. They have no bathing or cooking facilities in their shacks. They share the same water tap with hundreds of neighbors. Their toilet is the nearby railroad track. A well-dressed man exits a car and approaches.

Mentor and leader, Paula D. McClain has significantly contributed to the study of multi-racial and multi-ethnic populations in the political science discipline through her service in multiple organizations and dedication to the growth of future members of the profession.

Ten outstanding students from the 2007 Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) presented their research at the American Politics II and Teaching and Learning Poster Session at this year's Annual Meeting in Chicago. This year's class of RBSI students and the research they presented at this year's meeting:

Dianne Pinderhughes, the President's Distinguished Professor and Full Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and Political Science at Notre Dame University, became the Association's 104th president on September 2 at the close of the Association's Annual Meeting. Robert Axelrod of the University of Michigan, APSA's outgoing president, symbolically passed the gavel to Pinderhughes at the Association's Business Meeting on September 1. Joining Pinderhughes in guiding the Association are six new officers. Eight new members of the council will be elected in an all-member election during the month of October. Details on the results of the election will be available on the web and in the January issue of PS.

The APSA journals, American Political Science Review, PS: Political Science & Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, began using the web-based editorial management system Editorial Manager in July 2007 to accept new manuscripts; invite and receive peer reviews; and edit and manage the journals. Authors should use Editorial Manager to submit new manuscripts to APSA journals; they can be accessed at www.editorialmanager.com/apsr, www.editorialmanager.com/ps, and www.editorialmanager.com/pop. Reviewers will be invited via email to review and will be directed to Editorial Manager to express their their willingness to review and to access manuscripts.

Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society, proudly announces the following award winners for 2007.

In an effort to increase graduate student participation in the Annual Meeting, the Association awarded 77 Advanced Graduate Student Travel Grants for the 2007 meeting in Chicago. The names and institutional affiliations of the 2007 winners follow.

Someone was absent from the 2007 Annual Meeting. Following 34 years of service to the profession, Joyce Williams retired from APSA at the end of August. Many knew Joyce Williams as the mainstay of the Association's professional placement services. And so she was.

In addition to awards conferred at the Association's Award Ceremony on Thursday, August 30, the following recognitions are being made at the business meetings and receptions of APSA's Organized Sections.

The APSA remains a healthy and active association—programmatically and organizationally. We have a rich agenda of continuing programs to support the discipline. Because our forthcoming Annual Report will feature all of our operating programs, I will make only passing reference in this Executive Director's report to many of these core activities. I will focus here on some of the thinking behind how the Association approaches to issues facing scholars and the discipline, on some of the newest developments in our programming, and on APSA's operating status, which remains very strong financially and organizationally.

Once again, I am pleased to report that our Association's financial condition remains healthy, providing a resource base sufficient to continue current operations, while expanding the Association's activities in new directions as needed. Since my last annual report, we have seen our endowment and real estate holdings grow in value to about $30 million (as of August 2007), against which we are carrying just $1.6 million in mortgage debt. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007, we estimate that total operating income ($4.7 million) was slightly above budget, with expenditures slightly below. Our broad membership base continues to be the most important reason for our healthy financial condition, while the Annual Meeting and APSA publications also provide substantial income. In short, we are in the enviable position of enjoying stable membership, while holding substantial income- and growth-producing assets with minimal long-term liabilities. All of these factors combine to produce an operating budget which hews closely to anticipated income and expenses, year after year.

Total international membership in APSA continues to reach new highs in absolute and relative terms, surpassing December's record number of 2,031 to reach 2,081 for the first time in August 2007. This represents 14.1% of APSA total membership, also a record high.

Location and date: Boston, Aug 28–August 31, 2008

Conference theme: Categories and the Politics of Global Inequalities

Program chairs: Jane Junn, Rutgers and Ed Keller, UCLA

Website: www.apsanet.org/2008

Call for papers Deadline: December 17, 2007.

Location and date: Boston, Aug 28–August 31, 2008

Conference theme: Categories and the Politics of Global Inequalities

Program chairs: Jane Junn, Rutgers and Ed Keller, UCLA

Website: www.apsanet.org/2008

Editor's Note: The following is reprinted from AAUP's July–August 2007 issue of Academe with the permission of the AAUP. A more detailed history of the censure list can be found on the AAUP web site, 〈www.aaup.org〉.

APSA Council Meeting final minutes.

Recognizing excellence in the profession is one of the most important activities of the American Political Science Association. The Association's Annual Awards Ceremony and Luncheon took place on Thursday, August 30 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. The Luncheon is for Award winners and their guest by invitation. The Ceremony was open to all registrants beginning at 12:45 p.m. It was made possible through the generous support of the Policy Studies Organization.