Turn your degree into a career The CQ Press Career Guide for American Politics Students helps you navigate your first steps towards a career in American politics. With a focus on setting personal goals and maximizing transferable skills, author Peter Ubertaccio outlines diverse career-path options for political science majors and illuminates pathways to graduate school. Full of practical guidance on how to secure a job, including a collection of employment resources, resume-building tips, and student success stories, this guide provides an action-oriented road map for you to develop your undergraduate experience into a fulfilling career in American politics. Key Features: Critical thinking questions are designed to help you align your academic and co-curricular pursuits to skills and career readiness competencies that are in demand by employers in the field. “Staff Work On and Off The Hill” (Chapter 3) offers you a glimpse into the daily life of an entry level staff worker and provides you with guidance on how to navigate this space. “Political Campaigns” (Chapter 4) provides you with an overview of typical campaign work and shows you how to campaign for different candidates, parties, and issues. Advice on internships, nonprofit advocacy, and graduate school options help you determine your next steps and provide guidance on how these options might boost long-term career potential. A career checklist provides you with valuable insights on resume building, social media strategies, and networking.

The CQ Press Career Guide for Public Affairs Students is a powerful introduction to the job market for undergraduate and graduate students looking to take that important first step into the public sector. Written by researcher Michelle C. Pautz of the University of Dayton, this first edition guide focuses on defining the public sector and the opportunities that exist, guiding students through their curriculum choices while in school, building up career skills, supplementing schooling with outside opportunities, humanizing the options in the public sector through real-life success stories from students, and, most importantly, finding and embracing students' passion.

Even students capable of writing excellent essays still find their first major political science research paper an intimidating experience. Crafting the right research question, finding good sources, properly summarizing them, operationalizing concepts and designing good tests for their hypotheses, presenting and analyzing quantitative as well as qualitative data are all tough-going without a great deal of guidance and encouragement. Writing a Research Paper in Political Science breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students what they need to do at each stage to successfully complete each component until the paper is finished. Practical summaries, recipes for success, worksheets, exercises, and a series of handy checklists make this a must-have supplement for any writing-intensive political science course.

A practical, example-rich guide to help students master all types of public policy writing.

Turn your degree into a career Designed to help students consider their career options and opportunities, The CQ Press Career Guide for Political Science Students offers a practical collection of employment resources, career-path options, and real-life tips for how to get ahead. Providing the road map that students need to design their undergraduate experience to maximize their transferable skills, author Wendy Whitman Cobb outlines jobs political science majors can pursue; offers guidance on how to actually get the job; and illuminates pathways to graduate school.

This refreshed and dynamic Eighth Edition of Keeping the Republic revitalizes the twin themes of power and citizenship by adding to the imperative for students to navigate competing political narratives about who should get what, and how they should get it. The exploding possibilities of the digital age make this task all the more urgent and complex. Christine Barbour and Gerald Wright, the authors of this bestseller, continue to meet students where they are in order to give them a sophisticated understanding of American politics and teach them the skills to think critically about it. The entire book has been refocused to look not just at power and citizenship but at the role that control of information and its savvy consumption play in keeping the republic.

How is foreign policy in the United States really crafted? Who does the work? How are the various activites of the many key participants coordinated and controlled? In America′s Foreign Policy Toolkit: Key Institutions and Processes, Charles A. Stevenson identifies for students what the key foreign policy tools are, clarifies which tools are best for which tasks, describes the factors that constrain or push how they′re used, and provides fresh insight into the myriad challenges facing national security decisionmakers. Written in an engaging style with case examples drawn from "behind the scenes," Stevenson brings depth and dimension to the sophisticated pathways and instruments of American foreign policy, from the State Department to the intelligence agencies to the Commerce Department and beyond. In this brief text for American foreign policy and national security courses, Stevenson focuses on the institutions and processes of foreign policy, beginning with a look at the historical context and then looking in turn at the tools available to the president, congress, and the shared budgetary tools. The following part, "Using the Tools," looks at the diplomatic, economic, military, intelligence, homeland security, and international institutions instruments. Stevenson concludes with chapters that consider the important constraints and limitation of the U.S. toolkit. Each chapter ends with a case study that allows readers to connect the theory of the toolkit with the realities of decisionmaking. Highlights of the text′s coverage include: A sustained analysis of the U.S. Constitution as a response to security threats in the 1780s, providing a strong historical foundation on and springboard for discussion of this basic document in terms of national security powers; Comprehensive coverage of the congressional role overseeing all other policy instruments, showing Congress as an active player in all aspects of foreign policy; Analysis of the full spectrum of agencies and activities involved in foreign economic policy, covering the numerous organizations involved in foreign economic policy, the weak coordinating mechanisms, and the various processes (sanctions, trade, foreign assistance, direct investment) used as policy tools; A consistent framework for analyzing each instrument (authorities, capabilities, personnel, culture, internal factions, and the role of Congress), which makes comparative analyses of U.S. institutions simple and direct; An illuminating overview of the budget process through both the executive and legislative branches, acknowledging the budget process as a shared policy tool, with conflict and feedback, rather than as a linear process; A discussion of homeland security instruments and international organizations used as policy tools, highlighting the relevance of these new and often overlooked instruments; and A survey of recommendations for reform and the difficulties involved, providing possible explanations of foreign policy failures and alternative organizations and processes. This must-have text for courses on American foreign policy will be a crucial reference that students will keep on the shelf long after the last class.