My nascent book project seeks to identify and assess the effectiveness of European state strategies since September 11, 2001, to navigate the policy contradictions raised by the securitization of immigration. Framing my research is a nearly universal dilemma for politics and policy in a post-September 11 international and domestic security environment: Is the liberal state's traditional role as the guarantor of the physical safety of its citizens reconcilable with its pursuit of expansive immigration policies and inclusive immigrant incorporation policies? While I cannot answer this question definitively, I hope to illuminate the broad parameters of states' policy making freedom under the unfavorable domestic and transnational security conditions within Europe and, by extension, other advanced industrial democracies including the United States.

“The wrenching testimony of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, accuser and accused, constituted a defining moment for the country that will forever change how the U.S. Senate reviews Supreme Court nominees” (Biskupic 1991, 2948). Thus did sober, factual Congressional Quarterly judge the consequences of the Hill-Thomas hearings. Most news accounts were considerably more fervid. Reporters as well as commentators claimed that the hearings demonstrated that the confirmation process is a complete fiasco.

The Hill-Thomas hearings did not expose some fundamental flaw in the process per se. To be sure, a lot of less than admirable behavior and some procedural misjudgments characterized the latter part of the Thomas confirmation hearings. But a situation such as this one will always be difficult for the Senate or any similar body to handle. Structural changes in the process cannot make it easy or painless. Most of the “reforms” proposed would not work or would be counterproductive.

According to a second theme in the media coverage, the hearings demonstrated that senators—at least the ones on the Judiciary Committee—are incompetent, inadequate for their jobs, and out of touch with the American people. To the contrary, I think that both Democrats and Republicans followed strategies that made excellent sense given the political context in which they operated. Incompetence is not the problem.

If the simple process and personnel-based critiques are off base, was the widespread disquiet the hearings generated misplaced? There are reasons for concern but somewhat more subtle ones than those most often raised.

The 2006 midterm elections were nothing short of stunning. Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress. More surprising than Democratic gains in the House were their gains in the Senate. In order to achieve a majority in the Senate the Democrats needed to reelect all of their incumbents and elect Democrats in three out of four competitive states, all of which had supported George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential elections (Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, and Virginia). Riding a wave of public discontent associated with the president's Iraq War policy, Democrats beat incumbents in Missouri, Montana, and Virginia to take a slim one-seat majority in the Senate. Democrats organized the Senate in the 110th Congress, with the support of two independents—Bernie Sanders (VT) and Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman (CT).The authors thank Doug Harris for encouraging us to pursue this project and including it in the forum. Our analysis benefits from our separate experiences as participant-observers in the Senate. While a Presidential Management Intern, Frisch served in the Senate Office of Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ); Kelly was an APSA Congressional Fellow and worked for the Senate Democratic Leadership in the Democratic Policy Committee. nominate data used in this paper are made available by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal at www.voteview.com. Data on campaign contributions were supplied by Jamie Pimlott to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.

Bennett is confused. That we advocate voter registration reform does not mean we are single-factor analysts. Bennett does not understand the distinction between our analysis of the complex causes of low turnout, on the one hand, and our analysis of the limited options for reform, on the other.

As to the first, we wrote Why Americans Don't Vote because we thought the “party behavior,” “legal institutional,” and “social-psychological” schools were each inadequate, taken alone, as explanations of low turnout. The party system explanation rests too much of its historical account on the impact of the single election of 1896 in stifling party competition and increasing internal oligarchy and fragmentation, and it is evasive on the question of why the restoration of party competition in the 20th century did not raise turnout in 19th century levels. Legal-institutional explanations fail to provide an account of the political origins of legal arrangements, and of the uneven implementation of these rules by party organizations. And social-psychological explanations do not confront the anomaly that correlations between social traits and non-voting are unique to the contemporary United States. In fact, turnout was high in the 19th century when education levels were low, and then fell in the 20th century as education levels rose.

At first glance, the political-theory classroom can seem like a “philosophy class in disguise.” How can we make our text-based classes more “political”? This article considers how three teaching formats—debate, fishbowl, and forum theater—enact different types of power in the classroom and how those enactments necessitate political judgments. In addition to creating the need for political analysis, each of these formats embodies a particular rhetorical strategy often used by political theorists. By physicalizing the argumentative, introspective, and descriptive devices that writers of political theory use, students become better readers of these often old and usually dense texts.

By now most of you are aware of the severe cuts in federal funding for the social and behavioral sciences and for the humanities proposed by the Reagan Administration.

At the National Science Foundation, while support for the natural sciences is slated to increase, the proposed budget for the social and economic sciences calls for a 65 percent reduction.

At the National Institute of Mental Health (ADAMHA), the Administration proposes to eliminate all social research, which is expected to include research on the family, socialization of children, effects of separation and divorce, evaluation of prevention efforts with children, effects of mass media on behavior of children. In addition, the definition probably will include social policy research, research on race and ethnic relations, studies of community structure and change and studies of social institutions.

Participants in this track were delighted to see a number of common themes develop during our presentations and discussions throughout the conference. Participants included faculty and graduate students from a variety of subfields who design creative exercises to actively engage their students in learning. With the wide range of simulations that already exist and the growing body of literature addressing the design of new simulations, faculty have significant resources at their disposal to incorporate simulations into their courses. Simulations are so readily adaptable they can accommodate almost any course content or learning objective.

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 August 31 as part of the 2006 Annual Meeting. It was made possible through the generous support of Polity.

Is religion being politicized in Latin America? The question is commonly asked today, but rests only in part on concern with Latin American events themselves. To be sure, religious issues, groups, and people have lately been salient in the politics of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, or Chile—to name only some of the more familiar cases. But the question has deeper roots in a general North American concern with the potential of politicized religion to spur social protest and political change in cases otherwise as distinct as Iran, Poland, Southern Africa, Lebanon, the Philippines, or Latin America itself. Much of this concern is also clearly a refraction of puzzlement here at home with the resurgence of religious issues into national political discourse. These considerations suggest that finding answers to questions about the politicization of religion requires as much attention to the meaning of the questions themselves and to the assumptions built into their posing, as to the search for specific instances of politicized religion in Latin America today.

Questions about the politicization of religion arise from longstanding intellectual traditions which make religion secondary to supposedly more immediate, real, or rational social, economic, or political forces. When religion as an issue or religiously inspired groups do appear in political arenas, they are seen as interlopers, aberrant and likely short-lived phenomena. From this vantage point, religion appears mostly as a survivor from the past, doomed to privatization and ultimate disappearance.

Spain occupies a prominent position in the teaching of comparative politics. It is a paradigmatic example of a successful transition to and consolidation of democracy, as well as an intriguing study in constitutional development, federalism, and a host of other topics. I have found that it is particularly useful when discussing electoral systems and representation.

The authors of this article advocate a new curriculum that can be applied to American government, introduction to political science, and state and local government courses. For the past half-century, high school and college general-education requirements have deemphasized civics, government, and political science. In response to the corresponding decrease in the nation’s civic health, this proposal is based on three principles. First, teaching citizenship is different than teaching civics. Second, citizenship is taught most effectively by engagement in the “real world,” with students completing projects that take them step by step through the policy-change process. Finally, the education and preparation of future high school government teachers needs to change to encourage them to teach their students the rights, responsibilities, and competencies of active citizenship.

This forum is a unique opportunity to bring social science research to bear on public policy and the practical effects of election reforms in the American states. It is also an opportunity to study America's election system, building on the research of some of the leading scholars working in this area. The American states offer a natural laboratory (a “laboratory of democracy”), with significant variation in the rules, institutions, and procedures governing elections. This forum empirically evaluates what we have learned about the effects of various election reforms in the 50 states. The papers included in this forum were originally presented at a conference hosted by Kent State University's department of political science and which had a title similar to that of this symposium. The theme is now shared by the conference and this symposium: that the 2008 presidential election will be crucial for American democracy, especially in light of the apparently related phenomena of decreasing (or flattening) voter participation rates, low trust in government and political efficacy, alleged procedural irregularities in recent elections, uncompetitive congressional elections or uncontested state legislative elections, and lapses in ethical judgment by politicians in the past decade.