Alfred Cuzán proposed five “laws of politics” that allegedly govern elections in democracies. Drawing from insights in the general philosophy of science and the philosophy of the social sciences, I argue that—although his empirical evidence is impressive—he failed to develop a convincing argument for calling the five theses “laws.” This article discusses other examples that often are claimed to be “laws of politics” and describes the global picture supporting this analysis.

Despite winning the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump alleged “millions of illegal votes” and other election fraud. He continued using this rhetoric throughout his tenure as president and ultimately suggested that if he did not win reelection in 2020, it would be because it somehow was stolen from him. Through an original survey experiment, this article explores how such allegations of fraud influence the public’s attitudes toward the conduct of elections, election outcomes, representation, and democracy as a whole. In doing so, we found that respondents expressed significantly and substantively more negative attitudes toward elections and democracy after being exposed to claims of fraud (even without evidence). Additionally, Republican identifiers were more likely than Democrats or Independents to doubt that their vote was counted fairly. These results bear important implications for our current understanding of politics in the United States.

I am not sure if surprise, delight, or gratitude best describes my feelings about receiving this great honor. I experienced all of those emotions in full measure. I must begin by sincerely thanking the American Political Science Association (APSA) Public Administration Section for conferring the 2021 John Gaus Award on me and by saying how much it means to me. Looking at the list of previous John Gaus Award winners, I am indeed awed to be included in their number. There are so many names whose work I have deeply admired and others whom I have known quite well. Just three examples are George Frederickson, Vincent Ostrom, and Aaron Wildavsky, all of whom were extraordinarily kind and generous to me and greatly influenced my work. I only wish they were still here so I could thank them for all they did for me. The same is true for other now-departed mentors, including Mary Douglas, Andrew Dunsire, and Bill Mackenzie, to mention only a few.

Matias López and Juan Luna (2021) challenged my comparative analysis of populism’s threat to democracy, its reliance on institutional factors (coupled with conjunctural opportunities), and especially the inference about US democracy’s immunity to populist suffocation. However, their emphasis on structuralist and culturalist factors, which would suggest the vulnerability of the United States, is strikingly selective, theoretically unconvincing, and empirically problematic. López and Luna’s methodological improvement of my analysis does not alter the substantive findings or overturn my sanguine inference about US democracy’s likely resilience. Only their further modifications yield more pessimistic scenarios, but those adjustments stand on shaky theoretical and empirical ground. Indeed, the experiences of 2020–2021 corroborate my theory and its comparative lessons. The US institutional framework held firm and foiled the insistent attempts of President Trump and his most fervent followers to perpetuate the US populist in power. Consequently, US democracy continues to appear quite safe from populist strangulation.

Former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated vote-fraud claims following the 2020 presidential election divided the Republican Party. Numerous Republicans supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, others did not. These futile attempts reached a flashpoint during the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. Even in the wake of such violence, many House Republicans continued to amplify Trump’s baseless claims by voting to exclude the election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania. This article analyzes these roll-call votes to determine the likely motivations for why some House Republicans were still willing to support Trump’s position following the Capitol riot. We then replicate our analysis with the January 13 impeachment and the May 19 vote to establish a bipartisan National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex (January 6 Commission) to investigate the insurrection. Our findings indicate the relevance of constituent preferences, Trump’s popularity, legislator ideology, and the racial diversity of constituents represented by Republicans.

Exponential functions, widely used in the physical sciences, also have been used to model political phenomena. To our knowledge, however, this tool has not been used to replicate the electoral survival of the government or administration in several democracies. This article reports that an exponential survival model is a good fit for the reelection rate of the party that controls the executive office in states, territories, or provinces in three countries: Australia, Canada, and the United States.

This article presents evidence for a secular increase in political engagement in political theory from 1974 to 2019 and analyzes the implications of this growth. Analysis of 385 theory articles published across three periods (i.e., 1974–1976, 2005–2007, and 2017–2019) found a near doubling in topicality among theory articles published in Polity, American Political Science Review, and Political Theory since the 1970s. This change has been substantial, statistically significant, and previously unnoted in the literature. I suggest that the shift toward topicality entails and is entailed by the production of “real events” amenable to and consistent with the theoretical approaches in which successive generations of theorists have been trained. Finally, I explain this shift toward topicality with respect to theory’s responsiveness to real events and to rising levels of professionalization within the field.

Experts agree that vaccination is the most effective way to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control. Nevertheless, vaccination rates have slowed nationwide and substantial segments of the population report an unwillingness to get vaccinated. We conducted an online survey experiment to investigate whether endorsement messages from various types of leaders can encourage the unvaccinated population to receive the vaccine. We surveyed 709 unvaccinated registered voters in South Dakota in April 2021 and presented them with identical messages endorsing vaccination from a political, religious, or medical leader. Our results show that messaging from a religious leader had a positive and statistically significant effect on interest in getting vaccinated, whereas messages from a political or medical leader had no statistically significant effect. These results strongly suggest that religious leaders are more effective messengers than other potential messengers and that public health officials would be well served to coordinate their efforts with leaders in faith communities.

Research on gender and politics is becoming increasingly mainstreamed within political science. To document this process, we introduce a comprehensive dataset of articles published in 37 political science journals through 2019 that can be considered “gender and politics” research. Whereas recent related literature has explored the descriptive representation of women in political science by examining authorship and citation patterns, we argue that the identification of publications substantively focused on gender and politics not only illuminates trends but also can contribute to broader conversations about substantive representation and methodological diversity in the discipline. This article highlights the theoretical challenges of identifying gender and politics research and analyzes major trends in the substantive representation of gender in the journals over time. This dataset is useful for scholars who are interested in the evolution of salient topics in gender and politics research and patterns of citation.

Claims about international relations and political science more broadly becoming more globalized coexist with enduring critiques of the discipline being dominated by scholars from wealthier Western countries. This article leverages data on publication patterns between 2008 and 2020 in the Argentine IR community, which we believe is a relevant and potentially representative sample from the Global South, to show that the discipline is becoming more globalized yet also more segmented. We argue that this segmentation is a product of unequal participation in social and professional networks. The norms and information that circulate through these networks shape the inclination as well as the ability of Global South scholars to join a globalizing discipline.

The ongoing “historical turn” in political science makes it more important than ever that we, as a profession, have open conversations about the nature of the evidence we enlist from trained historians. This article emphasizes that “history” should be recognized as an—often speculative and incomplete—interpretation of bygone times and places that we no longer can know for sure. Much of what we commonly believe about the past depends on narrative sources written long after the fact and influenced by later circumstances and points of view, on outdated historical research, or on singular and often biased contemporary sources. Discussing how to respond to this “problem of history,” the article calls for a shift of cognitive style: that is, treating the work of historians in a more self-conscious and critical way and clearly signaling this when we present our research. Three more particular guidelines—be up-to-date, be specific, and be cautious—exemplify this approach.

Political scientists are increasingly using digitized documents from archives. This article is a practical introduction to doing digital archival research. First, it explains when and why political scientists use evidence from archival research. Second, it argues that the remote accessibility of digitized records provides new opportunities for comparative and transnational research. However, digital archival research also risks aggravating five types of biases that pose challenges for qualitative, quantitative, interpretive, and mixed-methods research: survival, transfer, digitization, and reinforcement bias at the level of record collection and source bias at the level of record creation. Third, this article offers concrete strategies for anticipating and mitigating these biases by walking readers through the experience of entering, being in, and leaving an archive, while also underscoring the importance of learning the structure of an archive. The article concludes by addressing the ethical implications to archival research as a type of field research for political scientists.

There is a substantial amount of research examining bias in the peer-review process and its influence on the quality and content of political science journal articles. However, there is limited research examining how students peer review other undergraduate research for publication. To better understand the predictors of manuscript evaluations and build on prior literature, this study examines seven years of undergraduate peer evaluations submitted to the Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics from 2013 to 2020. Empirical analyses reveal that a peer reviewer’s prior service on the editorial board (i.e., experience) and race are consistently and significantly associated with manuscript evaluations. By examining how undergraduate peer reviewers assess anonymized manuscripts, this research reveals potential biases in the political science peer-review process. Additionally, the benefits of undergraduate students participating in the peer-review process are explored and discussed.