About APSE

A Political Science Experiment is a new kind of textbook designed to provide the highest quality learning materials at the lowest possible cost. Our chapters are written by over a dozen authors of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints, all experts in their fields. For instructors, each chapter also includes lecture slides, video and film recommendations, assessment questions, discussion guides, and more. Our materials are:

Affordable— We sell our book by the chapter. Each chapter costs $1. There is no order minimum.

Modular— Students can purchase individual chapters at a time instead of the full book. Instructors are free to assign whichever chapters make sense for their course.

Dynamic— Our editorial team works with authors to update materials annually, from keeping datasets up to date to discussing current events.

Convenient— Students and instructors alike access their materials directly through our site, along with more options to read via desktop and mobile apps. With the Bookshelf digital reader, you can highlight, annotate, create flash cards, and look up unfamiliar terms with ease. 

Instructors: To adopt APSE for your course simply register as an instructor on the home page, let us verify you, and browse through all our chapters. You can assign any or all of the chapters by title, then instruct your students to create their own accounts on the ASE website. 

Students: To purchase APSE for your class just register as a student on the home page, and add each chapter you’ve been assigned to your cart from the “Chapters” page. Once you purchase each chapter, you will be able to read it on that chapter’s product page.

Our Authors

S. Erdem Aytaç is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations at Koç University in Istanbul. His research focuses on electoral accountability and political participation. He is the co-author (with Susan Stokes) of Why Bother? Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Andrea Benjamin is an Associate Professor in the Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the Director of the Oklahoma Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program (OSLEP). She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2010. Her research interests include Race and Politics, Local Elections and Voting behavior, and Public Opinion. You can learn more about her book, research interests, and community engagement work on her website: andreabenjaminphd.com.

Marie Berry is Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She a feminist sociologist and writer focused on mass violence, gender, politics. She is the author of War, Women, and Power (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and the director of the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative, an effort to elevate and amplify the work that women activists are doing at the grassroots to advance peace, justice, and human rights across the world.

André Blais is Professor in the department of political science at the University of Montreal, where he holds a Research Chair in Electoral Studies. He studies elections and voting behavior, with a particular interest for turnout, electoral systems and strategic voting. His most recent book is The Motivation to Vote (UBC Press, 2020).

Damien Bol is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Economy of King’s College London. His research is at the intersection of political behavior, comparative politics and political economy. He studies how political institutions shape the behavior of voters and parties and how these actors shape political institutions in return. He is the Director of the Quantitative Political Economy Research Group of King’s College London.

Darin Christensen is an associate professor of public policy and political science at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California Los Angeles. He directs the Project on Resources and Governance. His research focuses on two related questions in international development: first, what are the causes and consequences of conflict, and second, what policies promote stability and the provision of public goods?

Jennifer Gandhi is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research focuses on authoritarian regimes and democratic transitions, with a particular focus on institutions such as legislatures and elections. She is the author of Political Institutions under Dictatorship (Cambridge University Press,2008) and co-editor of The Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions (Routledge, 2015).

Francisco Garfias is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego. He studies the political economy of development, with a focus on how states build capacity, establish institutions, and navigate civil conflict in developing countries, especially Latin America.

Miguel Alberto Gomez is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich. His area of research resides at the intersection of political psychology, foreign policy, and cybersecurity. Specifically, his interests lie in strategic use of cyberspace as an instrument of national power and the cognitive and affective factors that influence decision-​making for elites and the public.

Tim Haughton is Associate Professor of European Politics at the University of Birmingham. His research interests encompass electoral and party politics, campaigning, and the domestic politics of Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. His most recent book is The New Party Challenge: Changing Cycles of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe and
Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2020) co-authored with Kevin Deegan-Krause.

Andrea Scoseria Katz is an Associate Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. She writes about constitutional law, with a focus on the development of presidential power. Drawing from constitutional law, legal history, and political theory, her work explores questions of constitutional design, the separation of powers, and popular attitudes toward the constitution. Other work explores the origins of the modern administrative state in the Progressive Era (1890-1920), with an eye to the legality and legitimacy of administrative power.

Bethany Lacina is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. She is the author of Rival Claims: Ethnic Violence and Territorial Autonomy under Indian Federalism (2017) and Nativism and Economic Integration across the Developing World (2019) with Rikhil Bhavnani.

Michael Laver is Emeritus Professor of Politics at New York University and Visiting
Professor of Methodology at the London School of Economics. Among other publications he is coauthor (with Norman Schofield) of Multiparty Politics (republished in 1998 by University of Michigan Press) and (with Kenneth A. Shepsle) of Making and Breaking Governments (Cambridge University Press, 1996)..

Hilary Matfess is an Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and a Research Fellow at the Research on International Policy Implementation Lab. Her research focuses on gender and governance, particularly in conflict-affected contexts. Her first book is Women and the War on Boko Haram (Zed Books 2017).

Jennifer L. Merolla is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on how the political environment shapes public opinion and political behavior. She is co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public (Chicago, 2009), Framing Immigrants: News Coverage, Public Opinion and Policy (Russell Sage, 2016), and Change and Continuity in the 2020 Elections (Rowman &amp Littlefield, 2020).

Monika Nalepa is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. With a focus on post-communist Europe, he research interests include transitional justice, parties and legislatures, and game-theoretic approaches to comparative politics. She is the author Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and After Authoritarianism: Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Andrew Rudalevige is Thomas Brackett Reed Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and Legal Studies at Bowdoin College. Past head of the Presidents and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association, his research centers on the U.S. presidency and its interbranch relations. Recent books include By Executive Order (Princeton University Press, 2021), the co-authored textbook The Politics of the Presidency (CQ Press 2021), and the co-edited volume Executive Policymaking (Brookings, 2020).

Laura B. Stephenson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario and co-director of the Consortium on Electoral Democracy (C-Dem). She studies elections and political behaviour. Her recent publications include Provincial Battles, National Prize? Elections in a Federal State (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019) and The Many Faces of Strategic Voting (University of Michigan Press, 2018). She was a principal investigator of the 2019 and 2021 Canadian Election Studies.

Susan Stokes is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy. Her research interests include democratic theory and how democracy functions in developing societies; distributive politics; and comparative political behavior. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, Fulbright, the American Philosophical Society, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Her most recent book, co-authored with S. Erdem Aytac, is Why Bother? Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Joshua A. Tucker is Professor of Politics at New York University, Director of NYU’s Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia, co-Director of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics, and co-author/editor of the award-winning politics and policy blog The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post. His research focuses on the intersection of social media and politics, as well as mass political behavior in post-communist countries. His most recent book is the co-edited Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Cristian Vaccari is Chair (Professor) of Future Governance, Public Policy, and Technology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The International Journal of Press/Politics and the author of Digital Politics in Western Democracies: A Comparative Study (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and of Outside the Bubble: Social Media and Politica Participation in Comparative Perspective (with Augusto Valeriani, Oxford University Press, 2021).

Brandon Valeriano (PhD) serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Marine Corps University and Senior Advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0. He has published six books and dozens of articles on cyber security and international security. Dr. Valeriano has provided testimony on cyber conflict for the United States Senate, the Canadian Senate, and the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Dr. Valeriano is the Area Editor in International Relations for the Journal of Cybersecurity and the Series Editor of Disruptive Technology and International Security for Oxford University Press.

Elizabeth J. Zechmeister is Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and Director of LAPOP Lab, where she directs the award-winning AmericasBarometer. She chairs the Comparative Study of Election Systems Planning Committee for Module 6. Her research focuses on voting, representation, charisma, crisis, and democracy. She is co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public (Chicago, 2009) and co-editor of The Latin American Voter: Pursuing Representation and Accountability in Challenging Contexts (Michigan, 2015).