The literature on elections and voting in the United States demonstrates that vice-presidential (VP) candidates, or "running mates," can have a significant electoral impact. However, this three-part analytical framework has not been extended to other presidential democracies to explore whether and how VP candidates' influence may vary elsewhere. We do so in this paper by analyzing their impact on Taiwan's 2024 presidential election. Our analysis finds that the VP candidates generally had statistically significant but modest direct and indirect effects on intended presidential vote choice. We discuss further opportunities to explore the impact of VP candidates in presidential democracies.

The Transfer of Power Between Presidential Administrations examines the problems that can occur when a new president enters office, with a focus on historical case studies. The transition between presidents—especially when changing parties—is a wildcard in U.S. foreign policy that often confuses or concerns nations engaged with the United States. Though there are systems in place to ensure information gets passed from one administration to another, ideas and their execution can change dramatically when a new president takes office. Using case studies of six different incoming administrations during the Cold War and 21st century, this book will explore how the successes and failures in presidential transitions have had long-term effects on U.S. foreign policy, grand strategy, and international position. Looking at transitions involving multiple presidents, this book offers a fresh perspective on how foreign policy is formulated and carried out. The book ends with an analysis of 21st-century transitions, making this work timely and important. This book will be of interest to students of modern American history, American politics and the modern presidency, and international relations.

This article examines the contours of "the public's morality(ies)", either as an aggregate of individuals' public hopes and fears or (in the plural) as particular mixes of hopes and fears stemming from individual (or coalitional) moral convictions. Our theoretical understanding of one aggregate "public morality" relies upon Derek Edyvane's presentation of a civic virtue premised upon an austerity whereby citizens value a collective sense of protection as highly as the realization of their individual public aspirations. We scrutinize Edyvane's theoretical construct in reference to a collection of citizen letters responding to Gerald Ford's 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon made available by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. These letters illustrate a conceptual typology of public morality that reflects various combinations of the public hopes and fears Edyvane delineates; this typology accommodates most of the available letters. Psychological studies pertaining to prosocial behavior, individual moral convictions, and conspiracy beliefs are reviewed to understand sectarian fears that animate current political discourse. In this regard, we offer examples of political utterances appearing to fall outside Edyvane's treatment of public fears. A final discussion considers how citizen fears arising from disparate moral convictions affect administrative decision-making. It also directs attention to behavioral public administration that offers a micro-level perspective on individual behavior that impacts governance.

This article discusses a collaborative effort between political science faculty members and a research librarian, designed to determine whether structured library interventions with students over the course of a semester yield improvement in students' information literacy skills. Using the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education as the basis for an information literacy pre- and post-test, faculty conducted a two-wave survey of students enrolled in political science courses, taken at the beginning and end of a semester, while the librarian taught an information literacy session with select political science courses. We then compared the survey results to measure information literacy gains of all students. The results reinforce findings from other studies that collaborating with a research librarian contributes positively to student learning, and the methodology used to evaluate information literacy gains here can be used to provide additional assessment in the future.

Abstract Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote for president in 2016, but lost to Donald Trump in the Electoral College. Trump’s margin of victory in several decisive battleground states was smaller than the combined vote for the two leading minor party candidates: Gary Johnson, of the Libertarian Party, and Jill Stein, of the Green Party. The perception that Johnson and Stein “stole” the 2016 presidential election from Clinton is widespread, and potentially consequential for future minor party candidacies, but it has not yet been rigorously tested. In this article, we extend the analysis of minor party voting in the 1992 election from Lacy, D., and B. C. Burden. 1999. “The Vote-Stealing and Turnout Effects of Ross Perot in the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (1): 233–55, by using data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to estimate a multinomial probit model of voting behavior—including outcomes for vote choice and abstention—and calculate the predicted probabilities that Johnson and Stein voters would have voted for another candidate or abstained from voting, had one or both of these candidates been excluded from the ballot. We then reallocate Johnson’s and Stein’s votes accordingly, to estimate Clinton’s and Trump’s counterfactual vote shares nationally and within key battleground states. Our analysis indicates that Johnson and Stein did not deprive Clinton of an Electoral College majority, nor Trump the legitimacy of winning the national popular vote. We estimate that most Johnson and Stein voters would have abstained from voting if denied the choice to vote for their preferred candidate, and that most of Johnson’s remaining voters would have supported Trump.

ABSTRACT Previous studies documented a “gender citation gap” in political science whereby women are less likely to be cited in published research and course syllabi, especially by male scholars. However, no previous study examined citation patterns among students in political science courses to determine if similar patterns are evident in their research. This article analyzes an original database of individual as well as group research assignments from an undergraduate research methods course. Our analysis indicates that male students are significantly less likely than female students to cite research published by women—whether as first authors, any of the authors, or the average percentage of authors per team. However, in a subsequent group research assignment, gender diversity had no discernible effect on group citation patterns. We discuss the implications of these findings for current pedagogical practices and the future state of the discipline.

Abstract In this article, we examine the role that campaign visits by spouses and surrogates play in modern presidential campaigns. Specifically, we analyze the strategy and effectiveness of Bill Clinton’s campaign visits in 2016. Given the former president’s widespread name recognition and reputation as a legendary campaigner, we argue that he represents an ideal test case for determining whether the spouse of a presidential or vice presidential candidate can influence vote choice, via campaign visits. Our analysis indicates that Bill Clinton was, in fact, very active on the campaign trail in 2016 – making nearly as many visits as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. However, Bill Clinton mostly followed in Hillary Clinton’s footsteps on the campaign trail, giving him little opportunity to win over voters that she could not reach. His campaign visits also had no discernible effect on county-level voting, generally, in the 10 states to which he traveled. Yet, when we examine the effect of Clinton’s visits within states, we find that he had a positive and statistically significant effect on Democratic vote share in the battleground state of Florida. He had no such effect in the two states to which he traveled most often, however (North Carolina and Ohio). Overall, we find very limited evidence that campaign surrogates – and candidate spouses, specifically – can influence vote choice via their campaign visits. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research on the role of campaign surrogates, and their relevance to the 2020 presidential campaign.