In “Moral Issues and Voter Decision Making in the 2004 PresidentialElection” (PS, April 2005, 201–209), D. SunshineHillygus and Todd Shields mistakenly describe the 2004 exit pollquestion as asking about “the most important issue facing thenation” (201) and “the most important problem facing the countrytoday”(202). These texts should instead read “the most importantissue in their presidential vote decision.” This correction does notaffect the analysis or conclusions of the article.

Citizenship is an increasingly important focus in political andsocial theory, as well as in philosophy, legal studies, and some ofthe humanities. It is also a vital concern in the lives of many“real people.” It figures in the assurance or denial of rights,economic benefits and social services, education, due process oflaw, and opportunities to affect political decisions; but it doesnot guarantee equality, fairness, justice, economic well-being,dignity, or the respect of public officials or fellow citizens. Weneed to engage theoretical and normative aspects of citizenship whenconsidering such topics as democracy and democratization, civilliberties, political participation, migration and asylum,nationality, culture, persistent inequalities, discrimination,identity and belonging, gender equity, race and ethnic relations,human rights, and globalization.

Modern liberal democracies owe their stability and relative successto the coming together of two ideals which originate in distincthistorical periods: the ideals of self-governanceand territorially circumscribed nation-state.Self-governance defines freedom as the rule of law among a communityof equals who are citizens of the polis and who have the right torule and to be ruled. This ideal emerges in 5th-centuryAthens and is revived throughout history in episodes such as theexperience of self-governing city-states in the Renaissance, theParis commune of 1871, the anarchist and socialist communes of theRussian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War.

In the 19th century, the greatest questions concerningAmerican citizenship were whether this new modern experiment inlarge-scale republican self-governance could work at all, andwhether its initial reliance on slavery could be overcome. Theanswers proved to be that a large-scale republic centered oncommercial, not martial aspirations could indeed endure, and that itcould achieve the elimination of chattel slavery, though not withoutenormous costs. In the 20th century, the major issuesbecame whether formally equal citizenship could be extended to alladults, regardless of race and gender. The answer proved to be thatwomen and non-whites could gain genuine possession of the franchiseand access to public office, even if only through great civicstruggles, and even if those gains still left the nation far shortof achieving practical equality in many spheres of public andprivate life. Though much remains to be explored in regard to thosepast developments, it is obviously timely now to ask, “What are themajor issues facing American citizenship in the 21stcentury?” It is also tempting to speculate about how laws and publicpolicies will deal with them, though that quest of course carries usout over even thinner ice.

Voting rights have traditionally been regarded as the core ofdemocratic citizenship. While T. H. Marshall (1965) described citizenship as a bundle of civil,political, and social rights, political philosophers from Aristotlevia Rousseau to Michael Walzer have understood citizenship to beessentially a status of full membership in a self-governing polity.This republican conception explains the central place of electoralrights: citizens are those who participate in collectiveself-government either directly or through voting forrepresentatives and running as candidates for elective publicoffice.Special thanks to HaraldWaldrauch from whose ongoing research on the rights and legalstatuses of migrants this essay has greatly benefited.

Citizenship in modern democratic states has a dual character. First,it denotes inclusion in a self-governing political community.Second, it means belonging to a specific national community, definedboth by territorial boundaries and cultural practices. Thedemocratic state appears in the guise of the nation-state, whosecitizen is also a national.Political citizenship is universalistic and inclusive, whilenational belonging is culturally specific and exclusive. Everybodyin the country is meant to belong, while the rest of the world isexcluded: foreigners cannot belong. This dualism helps explain somecontractions such as: why the age of democratic nationalism was aperiod of devastating wars based on the total mobilization ofpopulations of warrior-citizens; how democratic states could justifythe colonization of the rest of the world; and why democracy andracism are so often linked (Castles and Davidson2000).

Since the 1980s, the question of citizenship has taken root as amajor theme in the social sciences and as the focus of juridical,political, social, and cultural debates in all democratic societies.In Europe, citizenship has taken different shapes and definitions inits rhetoric, ideology, and practice with regard to immigrants;incorporation into nation-states and their expansion of politicalparticipation beyond boundaries relating to home and host country toinclude a broad European space. Citizenship is also an issue forEuropean construction itself. Within nation-states citizenship hasbeen expressed in different domains extending from the nationalcommunity to the civil society, even though only “legal” citizenshipallows the full participation of individuals and groups in thepolitical community. At the European level, despite thetransnational participation of immigrants encouraged by the verynature of the European Union and its supranational institutions andde facto expansion of dual citizenship, theclaim for equal recognition as citizens that underlies the politicalstrategies of immigrants remains within the framework of thelegitimacy of the state of residence and citizenship.

The confluences of global flows, by forming new spaces andentanglements of possibilities, have a mutating effect oncitizenship. In an ever-shifting landscape configured by mobilitiesand positionalities, the idea of citizenship tied to the terrain andimagination of a nation-state (Anderson [1983]1991) is called into question. In theory, citizenship asprotected entitlements depends on membership in a nation-state. Butincreasingly in practice, entitlements and benefits are realizedthrough specific mobilizations and claims in milieus of globalizedcontingency. The movements of global markets, technologies, andpopulations interact to shape novel spaces of political mobilizationand claims. As rights and protections long associated withcitizenship are becoming disarticulated from the state, they arere-articulated with elements such as market-based interests,transnational agencies, mobile elites, and marginializedpopulations.

On Sunday, October 10th, 2004, the New York TimesMagazine featured an article with the cover title,“Really, What Does He Think? John Kerry and thePost-9/11 World” (Bai 2004). On the coverof the magazine was a serious-looking photo of Senator Kerry,superimposed with keywords such as “Terrorism,” “Iraq,” “Al Qaeda,”“Multilateralism,” “Nuclear proliferation,” and so on. While thearticle itself was intriguing, even more intriguing was themagazine's attempt to capture Kerry's core ideas on Americannational security with the use of keyword graphics—namely, thekeywords on the cover, placed in what appeared to be a random orderaround the photo of Kerry, and the underlining of “John Kerry,”“terrorism,” and “Americans” in the inside title. Catchy graphics,but hardly an accurate depiction of the keywords that might actuallyrepresent Kerry's thinking on American national security. And, forall the comparison made in the article itself with President Bush'sstance on national security, where were the graphics for George W.?(They did not emerge in the next New York TimesMagazine.) The magazine was, nonetheless, making animportant point: that words (and the ideas they represent) areemotive—particularly in the highly charged climate of the 2004presidential campaign.I am gratefulfor comments and suggestions from Andrew Bailey, Diane Maurice,David Mayhew, and Frances Rosenbluth. I am also grateful to theGeorg Walter Leitner Program in International and ComparativePolitical Economy (Yale Center for International and AreaStudies) for funding that initiated this article, and to MinaMoshkeri (LSE Design Unit) for her assistance in preparing thegraphs.

The theory of minority political incorporation (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; 2001) addressed the rise of African Americans andLatinos in urban politics through coalitions that combined themobilization of African-American communities and White liberals(Sonenshein 1993) and, at times,Hispanics. While Hispanics were important to the theory of politicalincorporation, their role was neither consistent nor central incoalitions for minority advancement during the 1970s, 1980s, andearly 1990s. However, Latinos; impressive demographic strength isnow translating into major voter registration and turnout gains, andLatinos increasingly are taking the lead in minority incorporationin some cities and states. There is, perhaps, no better example ofLatinos; increasing political clout than City Councilman AntonioVillaraigosa's smashing electoral victory to become the first Latinomayor of Los Angeles in more than 130 years. Villaraigosa's electionattracted national and international attention, and energized Latinoactivists around the country.

The research on voter turnout in America is impressive in quantityand quality, but it lacks breadth. National and state elections havereceived most of the attention, while the myriad of other elections,from municipal contests to policy referenda, have often beenignored. As a result, we know a great deal about turnout in stateand national elections, and much less about turnout in other races.The temptation is to generalize the state and national conclusionsto other elections, but this is risky. For example, in a recentaggregate-level study of small town elections in Iowa, Rice andSchlueter (2004) report a relationshipthat runs contrary to virtually all of the state and nationalliterature: education and turnout are negatively correlated; thatis, the citizens in better-educated communities vote in localelections at lower rates than the citizens in less-educatedcommunities. This finding exposes the limitations in ourunderstanding of voter turnout. If all we want is to speak withassurance about turnout in state and national elections, then thecurrent literature is very helpful. If, however, we want to be ableto speak more generally about turnout (and speak more specificallyabout turnout in elections other than state and national contests),then we need to study more types of elections.For a copy of the data, contact Professor Tom W. Rice,department of political science, University of Iowa, Iowa City,IA 52241 (tom-rice@uiowa.edu).

Doctoral students in political science are understandably concernedwith job placement. Most students enter graduate school with an eyeto academia and want to know what they must do to secure their idealacademic position. Faculty members readily offer guidance on how toincrease students' likelihood of obtaining an academic job. AndPS has published many articles that focus onthis topic, ranging from empirical descriptions of the job market topersonal accounts of job-hunting experiences. Unfortunately,graduate students often receive anecdotal or contradictory advice.To help rectify this, we undertook a more systematic examination ofthe qualities department hiring committees seek when grantinginterviews to job applicants.Theauthors would like to thank John Coleman, Katherine CramerWalsh, Charles Franklin, the anonymous reviewers atPS, and the survey respondents.

Positive turnout rates in the United States and elsewhere are widelyconsidered “an embarrassing limitation of the economic approach topolitics” because, for any one voter, “the costs of casting a ballotin any large election are almost always greater than the potentialbenefits, which are dependent on the unlikely occurrence of castingthe winning or tie vote in an election” (Knack1992, 133). Green and Shapiro (1994), whose scathing critique of the rational choicefield centers on the work of Anthony Downs (1957), trenchantly put it: “Rational choice theoristshave trotted out an astonishing variety of conjectures about thecosts and benefits of voting, in the process generating an enormousliterature, possibly larger in terms of academic citations and sheerbibliographic length than any other rational choice literature inAmerican politics” (47–48), yet they still have no answer as to whypeople vote when, according to their arguments, reason says theyought not. Grofman (1993), paraphrasingMorris Fiorina, has referred to the failure of rational choicetheory to explain turnout as the “paradox that ate rationalchoice.”We are indebted to CloverBehrend-Gethard for bibliographic assistance.

In recent years, arriving on the job market with published work hasshifted from a desirable condition to a necessity. Even middlinguniversities can afford to ignore applications from job applicantswithout peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. Thus, it isimportant for graduate students to focus as early as possible onpublishing their work.I wish to thankBrian Brox, Jonathan Hartlyn, and Nancy Maveety for comments onan earlier draft.

As part of its mission to address issues of recruitment, retention,and integration of women and people of color in the profession, theAPSA Task Force on Mentoring periodically publishes articles on someaspect of mentoring that will help political scientists movesuccessfully through the profession. This brief symposium on“Publishing Your First Book” is just one such example of thisinitiative. For more information about the Task Force and itsongoing projects, contact Linda Lopez, APSA Director of Educationand Professional Development Programs, at llopez@apsanet.org.

Making a realistic assessment of your goals in publishing a book, andmatching a publisher with the text and with your goals is the firststep in bringing your research effort to completion. Socialscientists write books hoping to influence an election, change thepolitical debate, shift an academic focus, get tenure, or get a job.A good book, well-published, can help achieve someof these goals—but there are other ways to work toward them. Authorsand publishers will be happiest, and readers best served, if authorstake stock of the possible, and then market their books topublishers who are best suited to help with the goals they'vechosen. Beyond writing the book, the author has three clear tasks:deciding on realistic goals for the book; executing due diligence infinding the right publishing house; and making the gist of the bookaccessible to an educated, but not necessarily expert, reader bywriting a good proposal. Matching expectations to the book will helpidentify the most appropriate presses.

As part of its mission to address issues of recruitment, retention,and integration of women and people of color in the profession, theAPSA Task Force on Mentoring periodically publishes articles on someaspect of mentoring that will help political scientists movesuccessfully through the profession. This brief symposium on“Publishing Your First Book” is just one such example of thisinitiative. For more information about the Task Force and itsongoing projects, contact Linda Lopez, APSA Director of Educationand Professional Development Programs, at llopez@apsanet.org.

The right contract can make or break tenure and promotion. Thefollowing article presents pearls of wisdom from David Meyer, ClydeWilcox, Susan Clarke, Terri Givens, Carol Swain, Robert Spitzer, andPeter Labella. We divide these suggestions into two parts—those onobtaining and those on negotiating a contract.

As part of its mission to address issues of recruitment, retention,and integration of women and people of color in the profession, theAPSA Task Force on Mentoring periodically publishes articles on someaspect of mentoring that will help political scientists movesuccessfully through the profession. This brief symposium on“Publishing Your First Book” is just one such example of thisinitiative. For more information about the Task Force and itsongoing projects, contact Linda Lopez, APSA Director of Educationand Professional Development Programs, at llopez@apsanet.org.

Getting a book published represents the intersection of mutualself-interest between author and publisher. I have a few suggestionson how to combine these.

As part of its mission to address issues of recruitment, retention,and integration of women and people of color in the profession, theAPSA Task Force on Mentoring periodically publishes articles on someaspect of mentoring that will help political scientists movesuccessfully through the profession. This brief symposium on“Publishing Your First Book” is just one such example of thisinitiative. For more information about the Task Force and itsongoing projects, contact Linda Lopez, APSA Director of Educationand Professional Development Programs, at llopez@apsanet.org.

I am an acquiring editor for the Higher Education group within OxfordUniversity Press—that is, the books I am most likely to sign areexplicitly intended to be used in courses. Nevertheless, most of thefollowing nostrums are applicable in many different publishingsituations.

APSA is pleased to recognize political science faculty members whoreceived campus-wide and department awards for teaching excellenceduring the 2004–2005 academic year. APSA, Rowman LittlefieldPublishers, and Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honorsociety, recognize award-winning faculty members each year at theReception Honoring Teaching at the APSA Annual Meeting. Recognizedfaculty members receive a certificate noting their accomplishmentand their awards are announced in PS and on theAPSA web site.

What does it take to be an effective teaching assistant in politicalscience? This is a subject of interest not only to first timegraduate teaching assistants, but also to the professors who makeuse of them, the directors of undergraduate studies who must livewith their results, and the directors of graduate studies who musthelp prepare them for their first teaching jobs. But while thesubject of training graduate students to teach is of live interestto numerous people, comparatively little direct attention has beenaccorded it. While 83% of graduate students say that “enjoyment ofteaching” was one of the factors that lead them to enroll ingraduate school, a significantly smaller percentage believe thattheir departments adequately prepare them to serve as teachingassistants, much less to take up the responsibilities of full-timecollege professors (Golde and Dore 2001).And while research on teaching has exploded since 1998, the chieffocus of this research and publication has tended to be on civiceducation, curriculum development, and the use of technology in theclassroom (Kehl 2002). Indeed, no articlein PS since its inception in 1968 has ever directlytaken up the topic of what sort of characteristics and practices, ingeneral, contribute to making an effective teaching assistant.The author would like to thank the KanebCenter for Teaching and Learning at the University of Notre Damefor providing the initial spark to this article by inviting himto participate in a panel discussion on becoming an effectiveteaching assistant. He would also like to thank Walter Nicgorskifor encouraging him to turn his presentation into an article andfor reading and commenting upon several drafts. Finally, hewould like to thank Steve Yoder of PS and thetwo anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have considerablystrengthened the final product.