What is the state of debate regarding gendered political economy? Answering this question depends on the existence of a debate, who is presumed to be participating and, especially, how we understand ‘gender’. Among self-proclaimed feminist scholars we can readily identify a range of positions on ‘gender and political economy’. While disciplinary locations prompt some of the variation, the most ...

1. Why Scale Matters 1.1.Chiefdom Organization: Simple Political Scale Systems 1.2. States, Ancient and Modern 2. Growth, Power, and Cultural Process 2.1.The Sapienization Process 2.2.The Politicization Process 2.3.The Commercialization Process 3. Growth and Sustainability 3.1.Growth and Power in Washington State 3.2. Global Trends 4. The End of Growth Acknowledgments Glossary Bibliography Biog...

What factors have promoted and retarded the spread of the internet globally? The internet is one example of the diffusion of technology. Much as other technologies, the internet has diffused unevenly across countries, raising concerns over a “digital divide.” My main proposition is that its spread has been driven by neither technological nor economic factors alone. Rather political factors exer...

Recent studies of American politics evidence that political polarization of both the electorate and the political elite have moved “almost in tandem for the past half century” (McCarty et al., 2003, p.2), and that party polarization has steadily increased since the 1970s. However, existing theoretical models of political competition are not manifestly compatible with these observations. This pa...

Technology matters. Bicycles were instrumental in the political and social emancipation of women (Bijker 1995); photo and film technology induced a subtle form of apartheid (Wajcman 2005); nuclear arms and energy shaped, for example through the non-proliferation treaty, international relations since the 1950s (Smit 2005); the low-hanging overpasses on Long Island discourage since the 1920s the ...

In order to have references for discussing mathematical menus in political science, I review the most common types of mathematical formulae used in physics and chemistry, as well as some mathematical advances in economics. Several issues appear relevant: variables should be well defined and measurable; the relationships between variables may be non-linear; the direction of causality should be c...