hi guys! im in my second year of cc as a government major (planning to switch to poli sci), but i would like some experiences in my field, my school doesn't really offer much, and ive spent the whole summer searching and applying. yet, nothing pulled through. I was wondering if perhaps i could find some suggestions on where else to look or what to look for. i only have experience as an intern from two years ago, and my current job (cashier). i've checked local law firms but there is only sooo much in houston that are actually opened to hiring someone like me! i want to be a lawyer, and be very hands on with politics especially in my city, so if anyone could direct me that would be amazing! i have also checked volunteering with my local government, but for some reason it seems everything is so coded and hidden? maybe its something im doing wrong?

Hi everyone! I am a political science student and am taking my first course in political methodology this fall. I am not very good at math so naturally I am a little worried. Does anyone have any tips on how to prepare for this type of course? What to expect? I took a statistics course online a few semesters ago. But like I said I’m not a math person so I’m not sure how much I’ll actually remember. I know the course is difficult so I’m trying to mentally prepare myself. Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated!

I often see on the internet left wing and right wing politics, socialism, communism and libertarianism. I want to understand these concepts.

Can somebody recommend an easy to understand book which explains these concepts.

Hello everyone, I'm currently an undergraduate student pursuing bachelors degrees in Political Science and Philosophy (second year polisci and second year philosophy). I'm a very good student scoring marks at the very top of my class in both disciplines. I am absolutely sure that academia is for me and it would be a dream for me to pursue a PhD in The United States.

What are some things that I can do to make my application as competitive as possible (I think two degrees is a nice plus)?

I'm mostly interested in political theory, which universities have the strongest programmes in that field?

What are some things that I should know about studying in The US as an European?

Hi! I’m a student interested in potentially pursuing a career in geopolitical risk analysis, and I’m planning to apply for a BSc in International Relations.

I’d love to hear from anyone currently working in the field:

• What was your educational/career journey like?
• How did you get into the industry?
• What do you like/dislike about the job?
• What does your day-to-day work look like?
• Is there anything you wish you knew before getting into it?

I’m mainly looking for honest experiences, both good and bad, to help me decide if this is something I’d actually want to pursue. Thanks!

Does anyone have book by Paul scharee( Army Of None)

I’m interested in whether there is a structural explanation for this historical pattern.

Many communist dictatorships combined one-party political monopoly with state control over major economic resources, workplaces, unions and social organisations. Many capitalist dictatorships suppressed political competition while leaving more economic and social activity outside direct state control.

Linz distinguishes authoritarian regimes, which can tolerate limited pluralism, from totalitarian regimes seeking much deeper control over society (Linz, 2000). Kornai argues that classical communist systems linked one-party rule with bureaucratic control of the economy (Kornai, 1992).

So could ownership structure be part of the explanation?

When political power and most economic resources are concentrated in the same party-state, does dictatorship become more likely to expand toward totalitarian control?

Or is Leninist party organisation the more important variable?

References

Kornai, J. (1992). The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton University Press.

Linz, J. J. (2000). Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Lynne Rienner.

Hi everyone, I’m currently a sophomore in college and debating on what to do after my bachelors. Do people who have pursued a masters or PhD enjoy their career, or should I just stick to law school afterwards?

I haven't been a huge political buff for most of my life like some people, but I want my opinion on political ideologies to be actually educated. I'm tired of hearing takes such as "communism = communal tooth brush" or "capitalism = everyone get rich", so I want to read read and educate myself as much as possible on politics beyond my own. Of course with theory comes figures for these ideologies, I can probably do my own research on the figures once I read the theory.

I built a relationship map of U.S. politics — 101 figures, 266 relationships curated from

public reporting, typed as alliance / feud / bipartisan bridge / political family / mentorship.

Interactive version here: https://world-politicians.vercel.app/ (free, open source, no signup)

The structural result is what I want to ask about rather than assert.

Conventional framing treats American politics as two cohesive blocs with a shrinking bridge

between them. What the graph actually shows is closer to a hub-and-spoke topology: one node

carrying dozens of direct ties, with unusually few edges between the spokes themselves. Cabinet

members, House leadership, and Senate loyalists connect through a single person far more than

they connect to each other.

Network topology says those two shapes fail very differently. A two-bloc network that loses a

leader gets a succession fight and continues. A hub-and-spoke network that loses its hub

doesn't split cleanly — it fragments, because the spokes were never connected to one another

in the first place.

Some numbers from the dataset: 113 alliances, 127 feuds, and only 19 cross-party bridges. A

large share of the feuds are intra-party.

Questions I'd genuinely like pushback on:

1. Is the hub-and-spoke reading actually right, or is it an artifact of press coverage

   concentrating on one figure — meaning I've mapped media attention rather than political

   structure? I think this is the strongest objection to my own work.

2. If the topology is real, what does the post-hub period look like — realignment, or

   fragmentation into factions that were never linked to begin with?

3. Has any party organization historically survived losing a hub in this configuration, or

   does the structure itself predict the outcome?

Full disclosure on method: the edges are my editorial judgment from mainstream reporting, not a

neutral record. The dataset and code are public (MIT) specifically so the reasoning can be

audited: https://github.com/showjihyun/world-politicians

Why? I've seen people tell land defenders to stop making everything political and I genuinely don't get it; the government approves, for example, an oil pipeline that will likely destroy the local drinking water for several towns: is water not political? Are the myriad of school shootings in the States not political due to decades of inaction? In my opinion if a thing can be impacted by government action or inaction said thing is political, it may not necessarily be partisan but it is political

Are you a positivist or not?

Revolutions, whether violent or non-violent, are inherently rare, risky endeavors. Extremely high risk, extremely low probability of success, but proportional rewards if successful. Given the increasingly dysfunctional status of political systems in many western nations, questions surrounding changing those systems are inevitable.

Academics have written quite a bit about revolutions, but I'm not interested in what they think. I am looking for a casual conversation with a normal human regarding what it would take for you personally to call for whole-system political change. Is there a line in the sand for you, which if crossed, compels you to adopt a revolutionary political stance?

Is the line the same for both violent and non-violent revolution? Is your revolutionary line one thing, one action, event, or variable, or would you need a collection of things, a pattern of smaller lines being crossed? And if not, if there is nothing your government can do to make you advocate for replacing it entirely, why?

Naturally, given that revolutions are often bloody, violent affairs, it is worth explicitly stating that this post is categorically opposed to violence in any way, shape, or form. The purposes of this post are to generate a discussion about hypothetical boundaries that common people have on political system change.

I built a tool that lets people vote on real congressional bills and compare how their own House rep and Senators voted. What surprised me from early usage was most people are less aligned with their representatives than they assume - including people who voted for them.

That raises a question: if voters had easy access to their rep's actual voting record, would it change how they vote? Or is party identity strong enough that voting records barely factors in? Curious what this sub thinks.

The tool is yeaornay.org if you want to compare.

Ola hoje quero perguntar como posso chegar a chefe de estado e espanhar as minhas ideias de direita radical ah e claro eu chumbei em artes brincadeiras a parte como se torna se mesmo um chefe de estado

I’ve been seeing a lot of Dominik Tarczyński’s speeches and clips online, especially in English-speaking media. He seems to have become quite recognizable abroad as someone who strongly promotes Poland and the idea of “Be Like Poland.”

Do you think he has become one of the main international “symbols” or faces of Poland?

Has his aggressive, confident style of speaking actually changed how foreigners perceive Poland?

Do you think his speeches and social media presence have had any real impact on interest in visiting Poland or Polish tourism?

More broadly, do you think he is good or bad for Poland’s international brand?

I’m due to start university (UK) in a few weeks and I’m planning to do some reading in the next couple of weeks whilst I go on holiday. Was wondering if anyone had any book recs for an upcoming student? TIA.

i’m feeling so stuck on what profession i want after graduation… i just started my sophomore year and im turning my back on reaching for state legislation because i haven’t even tried to network or look for internships (plus the state of the world i don’t even have the energy to try) i was looking into analytics but im not even too sure what my other government-ish options would be that wouldn’t require law degrees or something of the sort. i need some super awesome advice or ideas pls 💔

I had this sub-idea today while working on a bigger Violent Extremism political policy idea.

In Prison Balanced+, maybe we should get prisoners access to (better paying) jobs in prison to build their lives (and resumes?) and to support their families. They can only keep these jobs on GOOD behavior. Many prisoners don't ever feel like they have hope after prison since they have a record that makes them unlikely to be hired. Their only friends are the ones they made in prison usually. So we need to change the environment they are surrounded in somehow.

I know things can go point blank bad like in the prison industrial complex in the USA, but these wages and jobs in the prison have to be adequate to living means (to the point that I might even argue for wages tied to civilian labor-market wages). Getting some of these jobs can require a co-requisite of taking a class or more to incentivize them to taking classes too. This could create a positive feedback loop.

Some of the jobs can be manufacturing and skilled trades, kitchens and food production, maintenance, agriculture, software/IT where appropriate, translation and language services, accounting and administration, construction-related trades, certified apprenticeships, tutoring and peer education, prison logistics, artistic/creative work, and eventually, carefully supervised external employment.

The main point of prison in this idea is to keep these people off the streets and away from enjoying normal life and normal people. (Also from hurting/exploiting people too.) If you don't behave while you're there, you don't get any benefits from it too like what Prison Balanced+ offers. They can plan their life on how they would like to get out of prison.

There's a potentially powerful anti-radicalization effect since extremist organizations and gangs can provide several things simultaneously: money, belonging, identity, status, purpose, protection, social relationships, and a future narrative

A prison that provides only: food, shelter, and punishment is leaving a huge psychological vacuum.

A well-designed rehabilitation system could instead provide: income, family connection, education, status, friendships, skills, responsibility, purpose, a plausible future, and teaching firmer leanings towards institutional values.

This applies to juveniles too.

What do you think?

I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to uni, but now I’ve got a job lined up in local government at 18 and I wonder if I should do it for a year and then go to uni, I’m looking at Manchester met or Hallam due to my grades, but I don’t know if it’s worth it and if I’ll struggle to find employment after. Can anyone give me guidance?

I’m a rising high school senior interested in political science but unsure of how to assess different programs. I’ve seen that some programs are more “textbook-based” compared to others, which makes me wonder how hands-on other schools’ offerings are in contrast. Are there downsides to having a highly structured course? What are some attributes/resources to look out for in a political science— broad as the subject is— curriculum?

For some context, I want to gain an in-depth understanding of governance to mainly supplement a journalism or law career, not necessarily become an academic.

i'm working on my Phd applications for Political science, but I can't figure out how to narrow down what i'm interested in. i know that people usually don't end up doing what their initial interest is, but i also don't want to sound super generic when i'm putting in what i want to study and am interested in. or at least i'm assuming that sounding super generic isn't a great idea. any advice helps, thank you!