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Stonecash (political science, Syracuse U.), Brewer (government, Colby College), and Mariani (PhD candidate, Syracuse U.) argue that polarization between the Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S. Congress has significantly increased over recent decades and seek to explain why. They contend that long-term secular realignment and social change has resulted in a situation where the diversity within the electoral base of the two parties has decreased while the differences between the bases have grown. After presenting the explanatory framework for their analysis, they review the realignment changes of the parties before the 1970s. The heart of the work focuses on the enfranchisement of the black population since the 1970s, the rise of inequality, and the increase in the Hispanic population, identifying these factors as the drivers of party realignment in the past few decades. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In "See Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin Run?" we extend the work of David Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht to assess whether young women see themselves as more likely to engage in political activities in response to the presence of national-level female role models. One of the key methodological challenges facing researchers analyzing whether female candidates and officeholders have a role-model effect on individuals is the fact that the presence of women as candidates and officeholders constitutes a state-level or district-level variable rather than an individual-level variable that is independent across cases. In this case study, we describe how we incorporated hierarchical linear modeling regression to address the challenge that mixed-level analysis poses to the study of the role-model effect. A review of our research process illustrates why it is important for scholars to be transparent about their data and methods.