This article compares the relative importance of political capital (in the form of membership in the Chinese Communist Party) and human capital (in the form of higher education) in urban China. Survey data from urban China strongly support two key elements of the intellectual New Class theory: intellectuals will have privileged access into the party, and the importance of education relative to political reliability will increase over time. The data also show how political capital and human capital are converted into high paying and prestigious jobs. There is also evidence of a separate path of career mobility: for the most socially prestigious jobs, a college degree—not a party card—is the key. Economic reforms of the post-Mao era are creating a gap between political power, on one hand, and social prestige and economic power, on the other. This gap can be expected to grow as the reforms continue.

Globally, infection and death rates from COVID-19 vary dramatically. While states had broadly the same information about the virus at the start of the crisis, responses were very different. What caused such disparity in policy actions and outcomes? While various factors may account for divergent responses, we highlight the importance of narratives employed by key policy actors. First, we review the literature on policy narratives. We suggest it can be usefully augmented with consideration of localisation and public justification. We apply this augmented framework using case studies of Germany and the United Kingdom. Chancellor Angela Merkel's narrative was more successful at persuading German citizens to embrace government policies to counter COVID-19 than was Prime Minister Boris Johnson's in the United Kingdom. This difference held important implications for policy outcomes in each country. We conclude by discussing the benefits of this augmented approach to analysis of policy narratives.

Since the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force almost 40 years ago, only four states have acquired nuclear weapons. What accounts for such near‐universal compliance? This paper argues that social psychology can help us understand the puzzle of nuclear restraint in two ways. First, nuclear forbearance should be unpacked into three outcomes: persuasion (behavior resulting from genuine transformation of preferences), social conformity (behavior resulting from the desire to maximize social benefits and/or minimize social costs, without a change in underlying preferences), and identification (behavior resulting from the desire or habit of following the actions of an important other). Second, through social psychology, we can specify the mechanisms by which the norm of nonproliferation has influenced policymakers. Indeed, the case of Japan shows that both these contributions help us better understand nuclear decision‐making and offer larger insights into regime compliance more generally.

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Although professors may be aware that rubrics shorten grading time and improve grading consistency, many are not aware that rubrics offer a powerful analytical punch. Given the demands for active learning in today's college classroom, rubrics allow instructors to focus on analytical quality while engaging students in a variety of assignments. Rubrics are useful not only in more traditional applications-for example, papers and oral presentations-but also for more creative purposes. Using rubrics in both self and peer assessment engages students more in assignments, allowing them to reflect on their own performance and their peers. Going one step further, instructors can engage students in the construction of rubrics that will be used to grade their own work. Finally, rubrics force instructors to be clear about their own purposes for an assignment, and over time, instructors can become more attuned to the analytical possibilities in even traditional "busywork" assignments.