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The article provides evidence for a strong relationship between higher democratization and lower objective corruption levels in American state political systems. It also demonstrates that specific components of democratization thought to enhance transparency in government and probity among public officials are good predictors of lower corruption levels, whereas explicit state laws intended to reduce corruption are not. Keywords: democratization; political corruption; American state politics; American politics

We demonstrate how men and women political scientists in PhD-granting departments perceive the professional climates there. We find remarkable differences in how men and women perceive the "cultural" climates of their departments, such as the degree to which it is sexist, but not in how they perceive strictly collegial aspects of climate. We also demonstrate that these patterns characterize the perceptions of men and women at both junior and senior ranks. Contrary to some past research, we also find that climate perceptions do not have a general effect on faculty research productivity. Further, perceptions of high departmental sexism by women scholars does not degrade their research productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly explanations for comparatively low U.S. voter turnout typically point to the weakness of mobilizing institutions, restrictive registration laws and the character of the election calendar. These same factors are assumed to account for the disproportionate representation of upper-class individuals in United States electorates. Furthermore, it is assumed that high turnout generally enhances class representation. We demonstrate below that turnout is related to class representation only under certain conditions; and we show that the causes of class representation differ from those of voter turnout. Using aggregate data on turnout and class representation in state electorates, we find that mobilizing institutions have modest effects on class representation. Contrary to typical assumptions about the effects of mobilizing institutions, class representation in U.S. state electorates is largely determined by the socioeconomic attributes (most notably, income and ethnic diversity) of the state's population.

A growing body of research investigates the factors that enhance the research productivity and creativity of political scientists. This work provides a foundation for future research, but it has not addressed some of the most promising causal hypotheses in the general scientific literature on this topic. This article explicates the latter hypotheses, a typology of scientific career paths that distinguishes how scientific careers vary over time with respect to creative ambitions and achievements, and a research agenda based on the preceding components for investigation of the publication success of political scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]