Nicole Mellow

The State of Gender Studies in Political Science

What effect has the study of gender had on political science? Compared to other branches of the social sciences, political science has been among the most resistant to feminist analysis. Political science scholarship generally is divided into four main subfields: political theory, American politics, comparative politics, and international relations. There are great disparities between these areas in the types and amount of gender scholarship that has been done. While feminist theory has become an accepted part of political theory, it has had a more limited impact in the other areas. Furthermore, where gender scholarship has appeared, it is often guided by intellectually conservative epistemological and methodological assumptions. Focusing on current major themes and significant works in the discipline, this article explores the differences in gender scholarship between subfields.

THE RHETORICAL PRESIDENCY AND THE PARTISAN ECHO CHAMBER

ABSTRACT The rise of a partisan Congress can aggravate some of the pathologies of the rhetorical presidency identified by Jeffrey Tulis: reckless policy production, and the resulting public disillusionment with an overpromising government. In some cases, such as the debate over the invasion of Iraq, the unified ranks of the president’s party amplify the president’s simplistic rhetoric, reducing policy deliberation and aggravating public disappointment when reality turns out to be more complex. When combined with divided government, however, partisanship can work to produce deliberative compromises that mitigate these pathologies, as exemplified by the welfare‐reform legislation enacted by a Republican Congress under a Democratic president in 1996.

The Anti-Federal Appropriation

The Anti-Federalists lost the battle to defeat the Constitution but won back through interpretation what they lost in constitutional construction. To counter Anti-Federalists’ accurate depictions of the proposed constitution as one that would radically alter the existing regime, The Federalist adopted a rhetorical structure that facilitated an opposing political tradition layered over the constitutive logic of the Constitution. Our analysis of the developmental logic embedded in founding political thought, the rhetoric used to defend that political logic, and the subsequent appropriation of Federalist rhetoric by the losers of this debate illustrates the mutual dependence of American political development and political thought.