The academy and the military would seem to be radically different institutions. Militaries are fundamentally hierarchical: at the end of the day, orders must be obeyed. At least in principle—and the emphasis here is on principle, since anyone who has lived within the academy knows how far reality departs from this purported ideal—academic disciplines prize the questioning of presuppositions and foster an antiauthoritarian culture. In military units, individuals must sublimate themselves to the group. Scholarship, at least in the humanities and social sciences, is often a lonely enterprise, whose costs are borne by and whose rewards accrue to individuals. The contemporary US officer corps disproportionately identifies with the Republican Party, while academics tend to identify with Democrats, and sometimes farther to the left. Samuel Huntington (in)famously saw as inherent and necessary the cultural divergences between military and civilian life. This would all the more powerfully seem to apply to the armed forces and the academy, to uniform and gown.

This symposium is the culmination of work that began in October 2007, when fourteen scholars from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened at Case Western Reserve University to participate in the research conference Toward a Comparative Politics of Gender: Advancing the Discipline along Interdisciplinary Boundaries. The conference was funded by a Presidential Initiative Grant from the University and further supported by an ACES grant. Dr. Gregory Eastwood made available the Library of the Inamori Center for Ethnics and Excellence for our conference meetings. Many thanks to Linda Gilmore, Tonae Bolton-Dove, Gail Papay, Shelley White, and Sharon Skowronski for their expert administrative support. Professors Dorothy Miller (Women's Studies), Rosalind Simson (Philosophy, Law and Women's Studies), and Kelly McMann (Political Science and International Studies) served as discussants of the conference papers. To Theda Skocpol, who presented remarks at the opening dinner of the conference, and to the scholars who participated in the CPG conference and whose contributions are included in this symposium, I offer my deepest appreciation and gratitude.

What do we mean by a comparative politics of gender? How would a comparative politics of gender advance our understanding of politics generally? What would it take to develop a gendered comparative political analysis? In the essays that follow, Teri Caraway, Louise Chappell, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer, and Aili Mari Tripp elaborate their understandings of a comparative politics of gender. Five additional essays focus specifically on issues of democratization (Lisa Baldez, Georgina Waylen), political institutions and representation (Mili Caul Kittilson, Mona Lena Krook), and comparative sex equality policies (Mala Htun and Laurel Weldon). In this introductory essay, I discuss what I mean by “gender” in the context of comparative politics. Briefly enumerating the advantages of comparative politics as a subfield for a gendered analysis of political phenomena, I discuss how a comparative politics of gender can serve to advance our understanding of politics generally, and I provide an example of subfield research—the study of political violence—where gender as a metaconcept may be particularly useful. I conclude by considering what it would mean to our study of gender and of comparative politics to place gender as a central concept in comparative political research and to move to a comparative politics of gender.

Pierre Rosanvallon is one of the most important political theorists writing in French. Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust is a book about the limits of conventional understandings of democracy. Rosanvallon argues that while most theories of democracy focus on institutionalized forms of political participation (especially elections), the vitality of democracy rests equally on forms of “counter-democracy” through which citizens dissent, protest, and exert pressure from without on the democratic state. This argument is relevant to the concerns of a broad range of political scientists, most especially students of democratic theory, electoral and party politics, social movements, social capital, and “contentious politics.” The goal of this symposium is to invite a number of political scientists who work on these issues to comment on the book from their distinctive disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

This essay offers a conceptualization of a comparative politics of gender (CPG) and some explanations for why CPG work is marginalized in the comparative politics subfield. I delineate CPG as a field of study in which gendered dependent or independent variables are the defining feature and present illustrative examples of four different types of CPG research. I contend that institutional and historical factors account for much of the marginalization of CPG research, and I propose some courses of actions through which CPG scholars can lessen this marginalization. The failure of comparative politics scholars to engage with gendered work is also a serious problem. The essay concludes by offering some suggestions for better integrating CPG scholarship into the subfield.

Pierre Rosanvallon is one of the most important political theorists writing in French. Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust is a book about the limits of conventional understandings of democracy. Rosanvallon argues that while most theories of democracy focus on institutionalized forms of political participation (especially elections), the vitality of democracy rests equally on forms of “counter-democracy” through which citizens dissent, protest, and exert pressure from without on the democratic state. This argument is relevant to the concerns of a broad range of political scientists, most especially students of democratic theory, electoral and party politics, social movements, social capital, and “contentious politics.” The goal of this symposium is to invite a number of political scientists who work on these issues to comment on the book from their distinctive disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Good scholarship asks important questions and provides compelling arguments. Michael W. Mosser's “Puzzles versus Problems: The Alleged Disconnect between Academics and Military Practitioners” is a superb example of such scholarship. Mosser asks if a gap exists between scholars and military practitioners, and if so, what is being done to rectify it. Citing a large and growing body of anecdotal evidence, Mosser concludes that this gap is real. He identifies the source of this gap as “the oppositional nature of the worldviews that each community possesses.” Scholars are interested in explaining puzzles of interest to the academy, while military practitioners are focused on solving policy problems that employ the armed forces as an instrument of national power. However, this gap is more one of degree than scope, and is therefore amenable to reconciliation. Mosser finds that the tenure process for academics is a significant obstacle to such reconciliation. He concludes by identifying several ongoing and proposed initiatives, including the Pentagon's Minerva Project and the Army's operational design concept, to integrate more fully the efforts of academics and military practitioners.

This is a timely, engaging, and illuminating study of Black Nationalism. The book's “fundamental project,” Melanye T. Price writes, “is to systematically understand individual Black Nationalism adherence among African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era” (p. 60). Black Nationalism has a long history in African American politics, but with the demise of Jim Crow and the election of our first black president, we may reasonably wonder whether ordinary African American citizens are disposed to endorse it. Price's book is important because it addresses this question head-on, defending the thesis that a renewal of Black Nationalism remains a viable possibility in post-Obama America.

Moving from a “gender and comparative politics” to a “comparative politics of gender” is a challenging proposition. In this essay, I offer two mechanisms for doing this—emphasizing the comparative nature of gender politics research and encouraging greater integration of gender research into the subfield of comparative politics. I illustrate how current research generally uses a “gender and comparative politics” approach that is insufficient for advancing the field and then describe how scholars can work to emphasize greater comparison and integration in the literature. This will help to move the gender and politics literature toward a comparative politics of gender.

Writing an essay in which one advocates a viewpoint or policy position—especially if the essay is part of a symposium where competing perspectives are put forth and debated in print—should come with an advisory sticker: “Warning: Entering Intense Discursive Zone. Check Egos at Door.” The symposium surrounding the essay on “puzzles versus problems” is no exception. It was exciting to put into words many of the ideas on the perceived split between the academy and the policy community that I had developed via personal experience or conversations with colleagues. I knew, however, that to do so would be a salutary check on any inflated sense of self-worth those ideas may have generated. The notions that I had held close for so long would be exposed to the depth and breadth of intellectual critique. They would have to stand on their own.

Political compromise is difficult in American democracy even though no one doubts it is necessary. It is difficult for many reasons, including the recent increase in political polarization that has been widely criticized. We argue that the resistance to compromise cannot be fully appreciated without understanding its source in the democratic process itself, especially as conducted in the U.S. The incursion of campaigning into governing in American democracy—the so called “permanent campaign”—encourages political attitudes and arguments that make compromise more difficult. These constitute what we call the uncompromising mindset, characterized by politicians' standing on principle and mistrusting opponents. This mindset is conducive to campaigning, but not to governing, because it stands in the way of necessary change and thereby biases the democratic process in favor of the status quo. The uncompromising mindset can be kept in check by an opposite cluster of attitudes and arguments—the compromising mindset—that inclines politicians to adapt their principles and respect their opponents. This mindset is more appropriate for governing, because it enables politicians more readily to recognize and act on opportunities for desirable compromise. We explore the dynamics of these mindsets by examining the processes that led to the compromises on tax reform in 1986 and health care reform in 2010.

A comparative politics of gender offers an opportunity to consider in detail the operation of gender within political institutions. As such, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the roles and experiences of men and women within political institutions, of the policies, laws and norms that are the outcomes of these institutions, and of the relationship between these institutions and social actors. This essay proposes a multi-directional strategy for undertaking comparative gender and institutional research that includes taking account of similarities and differences within and across states, between states and international institutions, across space as well as across time. It argues that through this research strategy it is possible to gain a more nuanced understanding of gender processes and outcomes, which is valuable to those working both inside and outside political institutions to advance a women's equality agenda.

In Dreaming Blackness, I had two major goals. First, I hoped to elucidate how changes in the American racial landscape have impacted African American support for black nationalism. To this end, I used a mixed methodological approach that included both statistical and qualitative analysis and allowed me to make claims based on a national cross section of African Americans and on more intimate discussions in smaller groups. Second, I wanted to ground my arguments in a robust discussion of African American political thought. This would ensure that my hypotheses and findings were resonant with a longitudinal understanding of how black nationalist ideology is characterized. Robert Gooding-Williams, with some caveats, suggests that I have accomplished these goals. I now address his two areas of concern related to evolving definitions of black nationalism and possible alternative interpretations, and I conclude by addressing our differing impressions of the future viability of this ideological option.

The Democrats dodged a bullet on health care in the spring of 2010, but the Senate filibuster is still with us. The 60-vote pivot, the cloture strategies, Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), the member “holds,” and the rest are as basic as anything these days to U.S. national policymaking.

In this book, Robert Gooding-Williams uses the seminal work of W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks (1903) to outline Du Bois' dominant influence in defining the boundaries of black politics. Du Bois' statement about the color line, still quoted more than a century after its publication, is just one example of the enduring impact of Souls and other works on the ways in which black politics scholars conceptualize, measure, and make prescriptions for black political progress. However, his import as a dominant voice in black political thought belies the fact that there was ideological and fervent opposition to his view concerning how blacks could overcome racial oppression. Unlike Du Bois, however, many of those opponents are less known or simply ignored by contemporary black scholars.

I ask whether comparative politics of gender (CPG) can maintain its normative roots in concerns related to social justice as it moves increasingly away from its interdisciplinary moorings in gender/women's studies and gravitates toward disciplinary concerns. I call for a broad framework for CPG, examining 1) the range and relevance of the questions we ask, the utility of interdisciplinarity, and the range of methods employed; 2) the research collaborations we develop, especially outside of the US–Europe nexus; 3) the way our work is disseminated; and 4) how it engages the policy and practitioner community.