Intersectionality emerged from Black feminist struggles that named how racism, sexism, class domination, and heterosexism work through the same institutions. In recent political science scholarship, the concept now organizes research on representation, social movements, bureaucracy, climate governance, and security administration. This review reads selective foundational texts alongside peer-reviewed political science scholarship published mainly between 2020 and 2024. It tracks how scholars define and operationalize intersectionality, what kinds of evidence they assemble, and how their findings travel into policy tools, bureaucratic routines, and evaluative practices. Three debates recur across this literature. The first concerns method: scholars must decide whether to model intersecting positions through surveys, interviews, comparative designs, or institutional analysis, and each choice reveals different dimensions of power. The second concerns governance: intersectionality acquires political force when categories, complaint pathways, consultation rules, and administrative records register unequal exposure to harm. The third concerns political economy: fiscal restraint, labor organization, and care infrastructures shape which commitments endure in public institutions. The review closes by arguing that durable equity practice depends on the ordinary instruments of governance, including classifications, staffing patterns, accountability routines, and data systems.
Faculty are increasingly using active learning techniques in the classroom, seeking to move students from passive consumers of knowledge to active producers shaping their own learning. One way to do this is through the use of simulations. Simulations help to bring political science to life, giving students a window onto the practical applications of the content from their courses. While popular, simulations can be difficult for faculty to adopt due to the time required to develop them. Faculty may also be hesitant to adopt a simulation that takes time away from content delivery. In this article, we review the literature on simulations, including the multiple types of simulations available to faculty and examinations of their effectiveness. We show how simulations can be used to enhance durable skills – particularly metacognition, critical thinking, and collaboration. We then discuss the literature on simulations and assessments, showing the importance of clear learning objectives. Finally, we address concerns that faculty may have about including simulations in their courses and point to resources to help faculty make the leap to more active learning techniques.
Research on regime change has expanded substantially since the third wave of democratization, producing diverse theories and broader empirical coverage. Building on this foundation, this article argues that regime change is not a linear transition between discrete regime types, but a spectrum of political configurations shaped by interactions of external shocks, political institutions, and strategic actors. Reviewing recent studies, it highlights three trends: multidimensional causes of transitions, the role and impact of varied actors and coalitions, and a variety of outcomes from authoritarian resilience to democratic backsliding. The review identifies two promising avenues for future research, namely greater integration of Asian cases and closer examination of advanced democracies, as well as it emphasizes the importance of the interaction between formal and informal institutions in sustaining constitutional order.
In these politically contentious times, educators are wondering what they can do to help students navigate this period and build their futures in a democratic context. Since 2001, faculty have created innovative classes and learning experiences to bring youth civic engagement education in a democratic context globally across all disciplines and levels, using a wide variety of methods and tools to counteract a deficit in democratic knowledge, skills, and values. These educators persist despite numerous challenges, including the questioning of the value of higher education and democracy itself. This article reviews where the practice of civic engagement education stands, beginning with an evaluation of how civic virtue serves as a foundation for civic engagement education. It concludes that vibrant, multi-level civic engagement education is a necessary step to building and maintaining our democracies and that political science as a discipline should continue to lead the development of this pedagogy for all higher education around the world.
This article examines how proxy warfare has changed in the twenty-first century amid rising intrastate conflicts, fragmented sovereignty, and evolving geopolitical rivalries. It brings together recent scholarship that moves beyond Cold War hierarchical models toward relational and networked frameworks emphasizing goal alignment, agency, and multilateral sponsor–proxy interactions. The review identifies three major trends: (1) the conceptual shift from control-based to preference- and interaction-based models, including the use of neutral analytical terms such as Beneficiary, Proxy, and Target; (2) the growing importance of limited statehood, heterarchical orders, and fragmented authority as both causes and consequences of proxy intervention; and (3) the expansion of proxy politics into new domains, including small-state strategies, peacekeeping as indirect intervention, ideological competition, and AI-mediated decision-making. These shifts show how proxy warfare has become a central, multifaceted feature of contemporary conflict and international politics.
