Eight new members of the APSA Council have been elected in APSA's fourth contested election in recent years. The new Council members are: Lisa Baldez, Dartmouth College; Susan R. Burgess, Ohio University; Dennis Chong, Northwestern University; Michael W. Doyle, Columbia University; Kerry L. Haynie, Duke University; Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan; Anna Sampaio, University of Colorado, Denver; and Melissa S. Williams, University of Toronto. André Blais, Université de Montréal, was not elected. Under APSA election rules, the APSA Nominating Committee proposes one name per open seat and additional nominations, sponsored by at least 10 members, may be made from the membership. This year, Susan Burgess, Ohio University, was nominated from the membership and was elected. The election was conducted by electronic ballot, with a 31% turnout—similar to other recent APSA elections. Detailed results can be found at http://apsanet.org/section_710.cfm.

Activities, Administrative Appointments, New Appointments, Promotions, Retirements, Visiting and Temporary Positions, Awards

Last fall, the 150 first-year students in George Mason University's Honors Program took part in what may have been a national first. In the weeks before the election, they conducted a national survey on attitudes and participation, the unweighted results of which are available for anyone's analysis at <http://gunston.gmu.edu/sdaweb>.

This is the thirtieth year that I have been monitoring participation by women at our annual meeting. These PS reports have documented the ascent of women in our profession. (At this year's meeting I reported to the Women's Caucus tracing participation by women in our programs since the 1970s.) While there are signs that women have continued to move ahead in their participation, the picture is mixed.

The academic job market for political scientists has been relatively strong in recent years, with job listings in the last several years outpacing those in the 1980s and 1990s. The number of jobs posted for academic year 2003 was the highest in over 20 years. Listings for last year, AY2004, dipped from these recent highs. But early numbers of listings in AY2005 seem to have rebounded and are greater than those for corresponding quarters in the last few years. In AY2004, 920 positions were listed with the association, compared with 1,123 the year before. The 2004 level still exceeded all openings posted annually during the 1990s. Total numbers of academic jobs listed with APSA are charted in Figure 1.

Background

The Nature of the Problem. Some years ago, when I had the privilege of serving as a program director at the National Science Foundation, the proposals I read left me with a distinct impression: many researchers presented exciting research ideas, but in a high proportion of cases the exciting ideas were embedded in horrendously constructed proposals. In relatively few cases were the proposals well constructed, with important elements missing or underdeveloped. One would often find, for example, after a clear initial statement of the research problem and an effectively executed literature review, a thin or nonexistent research design or, without transition, a statement of the statistics to be used. Hypotheses, where present, were often not derived from the discussed literature, or from any literature.

The phrase “identity politics” has experienced a recent surge in political discourse. However, its meaning varies for highly informed political groups, leaving the term definitionally vague for the general public. Second-level agenda-setting theory can be used to explain how this phrase is communicated to the public by the mass media, a crucial disseminator of political information. We used a quantitative content analysis of major US publications to examine the frequency of this phrase’s use and how it is presented to audiences. We found a surge in mentions beginning in 2016. We also found that it is tied more to the political Left, but there also is a fair amount of linkage to the political Right. The phrase also is portrayed negatively. We advocate for using political communication theories to track emerging political terms in the future.

In this article I address the perennial lenses through which the region is studied and produced as a reality unto itself, particularly in the dominant discourse in the United States. I conclude with some contingent good news.