The American states offer a wealth of variation across time and space to understand the sources, dynamics, and consequences of public policy. As laboratories of socioeconomic and political differences, they enable both wide-scale assessments of change and studies of specific policy choices. To leverage this potential, we constructed and integrated a database of thousands of state-year variables for designing and executing social research: the Correlates of State Policy Project (CSPP). The database offers one-stop shopping for accurate and reliable data, allows researchers to assess the generalizability of the relationships they uncover, enables assessment of causal inferences, and connects state politics researchers to larger research communities. We demonstrate CSPP’s use and breadth, as well as its limitations. Through an applied empirical approach familiar to the state politics literature, we show that researchers should remain attentive to regional variation in key variables and potential lack of within-state variation in independent and dependent variables of interest. By comparing commonly used model specifications, we demonstrate that results are highly sensitive to particular research design choices. Inferences drawn from state politics research largely depend on the nature of over time variation within and across states and the empirical leverage it may or may not provide.

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The U.S. federal government has increasingly relied on tax incentives to leverage private investment to spur economic redevelopment in poor communities. One such popular program is the New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC), established by the U.S. Congress in 2000. Community development entities transfer NMTC tax credits to private investors in exchange for equity and capital investments in qualifying projects in low‐income census tracts. Despite its popularity among private financiers and although nearly $40 billion has been allocated for NMTC, little scholarly attention has been paid to the program. We aim to close this information gap by describing the historical context under which NMTC emerged; detailing the practical elements and process of NMTC; and identifying critical, unanswered questions about this evolving relationship between the U.S. federal government and private investors. We use NMTC as a lens to consider the impact of the private sector's surging role in public redevelopment efforts in low‐income communities, and offer some suggestions for governing NMTC and similar partnerships moving forward.

The existence of fairly strong correlations between newspaper readership and socio-political variables is well known. The interesting question about these correlations is not whether they exist but why they exist. In their analysis of British political behaviour in the sixties, Butler and Stokes put forward three possible explanations.

Graduate students in political science who have spent significant time in the workforce before doctoral studies encounter different challenges than students who matriculate immediately or soon after undergraduate study. In deciding to pursue a Ph.D., seasoned professionals may face significant financial opportunity costs, cultural re-entry issues, familial responsibilities, or geographical constraints. Additionally, the academic culture at R1 universities can sometimes undervalue how prior professional experience helps inform a rich research agenda. Yet, the maturity and professionalism older graduate students bring to the classroom and in shouldering additional departmental responsibilities benefit doctoral programs. This chapter offers some suggestions for seasoned professionals thinking about pursuing a Ph.D. at the application stage, navigating graduate studies, and contributing to their academic departments. This manuscript is part of Strategies for Navigating Graduate School and Beyond, a forthcoming volume for those interested in pursuing graduate education in political science (Fall 2022 publication).