Westfield State College Ely Library

Political Science Web Resources

General
  |  U.S. Politics  | International Relations and Comparative Government |  Law 
Polls and Opinions  |  Human Rights  |  Political ThoughtPublic Administration (separate page)
  
Also see: Government Documents and Websites


General

Richard Kimber's Political Science Resources
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/
The best resource for British politics but also includes extensive world wide coverage coverage of political theory, manifestos, area studies, data archives, international relations. By Richard Kimber.

Online Resource Guide to Political Inquiry
http://zeus.uwindsor.ca/courses/ps/dartnell/index.html
Canada-based resource with extensive Directories in numerous areas including: Area Studies, International Studies, Issue based Politics, and Research and Reference.

American Political Science Association
http://www.apsanet.org/
The website for the association features information on conferences, data and reports on the profession, discussion lists, and lists of grants. Discounted membership is available for students.

Brookings Institution
http://www.brookings.edu/
The Brookings Institution is a non-profit organization dedicated to researching U.S. policy issues both foreign and domestic. Their website offers analysis in articles, testimonies, opinions, and reports. These materials are searchable by using the keyword search textbox in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage.

Political Resources on the Net
http://www.politicalresources.net/
Provides links to Web pages of governments and political parties, as well as results of elections.

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U.S. Politics

ThisNation.com
http://www.thisnation.com/
From Jonathan Mott, Political Science professor at University of Oklahoma, a website providing information and primary source documents relating to American Politics. The site features narrative sections on the branches of government, the Constitution, and Federalism. ThisNation.com's Library offers web versions of prominent primary source documents, supreme court decisions, war messages, political essays, speeches, poems and more. In the Multimedia section, Presidential Profiles include images of the presidents and the text of Inaugural and State of the Union addresses.

Cato Institute
http://www.cato.org/
The website for the Cato Institute, a research foundation for U.S. policy studies. Their website has reports, studies, and briefings on issues such as free speech, Social Security, regulation, federalism, globalization and more.

Center for Public Integrity
http://www.publicintegrity.org/
Provides "the American people with the findings of our investigations and analyses of public service, government accountability and ethics related issues."  Reports cover governments at all levels, and focus on issues like campaign financing, the influence of lobbyists, and the privatization of water resources.

Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org/
The Economic Policy Institute is a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks "to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers". The Institute's website features briefing papers, audio and video files, and policy memo's discussing contemporary issues. The site also offers statistics and statistical analyses of indicators such as the GDP, wages, and income. The site is searchable or browsable by topic area.

Policy Agendas Project
http://www.policyagendas.org/
From the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, the Policy Agendas Project "collects and organizes data from various archived sources to trace changes in the national policy agenda and public policy outcomes since the Second World War". The website features a Policy Analysis Tool which allows users to track issues over time. The data is collected from articles, congressional hearings, Supreme Court cases, State of the Union speeches, and more sources. The site also features articles and papers on the data collected. Also, Teaching Resources are available from the site, including Lesson Plans, activities, and exercises.

Images of American Political History
http://bill.ballpaul.net/iaph/main.php
Posted by William J. Ball of the Department of Political Science, a collection of images spanning the past three hundred years in American Politics. These images are in the public domain. They can be searched or browsed by time period. Open the sidebar at top left to search the collection.

Miller Center of Public Affairs
http://millercenter.virginia.edu/
The University of Virginia hosts the website for the Miller Center of Public Affairs. The site offers content such as a Presidential Oral History Program, the Presidential Recordings Program Transcripts, and archived forums of national discussion and debate. Also, the Miller Center site also hosts
American President (http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu/index.php/academic/americanpresident/) this online reference source a "comprehensive collection of material about the Presidents of the United States and the history of the presidency". Browsable by era and presidency, this resource features essays on aspects of each presidency and prominent figures in their administration, as well as presidential speeches and biographical information.

Institute for Policy Research
http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/
From Northwestern University, the Institute's mission is to "stimulate and support excellent social science research on significant public policy issues and to disseminate the findings widely". The content includes working papers, policy briefs, and newsletters. Working papers are browseable by topic area, and all publications may be searched by a local search engine.

The History of Televised Presidential Debates
http://www.museum.tv/debateweb/html/index.htm
From the Museum of Broadcast Communications, a website featuring video and media coverage of presidential debates from 1960 to 2000. A separate section is devoted to the 1960 debate between Nixon and Kennedy, including commentary from journalists and others who were present, a bibliography, and audio of the debate. The website features video, audio, and articles related to all the presidential debates from 1960 to 2000 in a separate section.

The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials, 1952 - 2004
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/
From New York's Museum of the Moving Image, a site featuring campaign commercials. User can browse the commercials by year, issue, and type of commercial, or one can search by keyword. Free registration will allow users to save the commercials. Credit information is also available to aid in citing the videos. A link "For Teachers" will list lesson plans to be used in conjunction with the videos.

History and Politics Out Loud
http://www.hpol.org/
A collaborative project of the National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching With Technology Program, Michigan State University and the National Gallery of the Spoken Word, this website offers audio files of speeches, conversations, and interviews of significant figures in political history. A search engine allows users to search the files, or browse by date, speaker, or title.

Voting America: United States Politics, 1840 - 2008
http://americanpast.richmond.edu/voting/
From the University of Richmond, a website offering data on electoral history. The site features interactive maps for elections, with state by state data on turnout, votiing, and more. Many of the maps have accompanying commentary and are animated plotting the data over time.


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International Relations and Comparative Government

Foreign Affairs Online
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rjb3v/rjb.html
Massive site with several thousand links to sites on International law, International Relations, and U.S. Foreign Policy.  Sections include: General Reference, Map resources, U.S. Government, Foreign States, U.N. System, NGO & IGOs, International Law, Human Rights, International Relations, Think Tanks, and Media.

Council on Foreign Relations
http://www.cfr.org/
A non-partisan organization dedicated to the discussion of foreign policy issues. The content includes policy analysis articles, reports, news, interviews, task force reports, and briefings written by Council members. Council members include government officials, members of Congress, and journalists. Publications can be browsed by issue, region, or publication type.

Foreign Relations of the United States
http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frus.html
The Foreign Relations of the United States series contains official documents relating to U.S. foreign policy decisions and major diplomatic activity. Some volumes are available online at this web site.

United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/index.html
From the United Nations, a library of international legal materials, including treaties, lectures, research guides, and more. The Historical Archives has topic categories to browse for historical documets. The Lecture Series includes video and audio files discussing international legal topics such as disaster prevention, international civil aviation, migration law, and armed conflict. The Research Library povide links to treaties, jurisprudence, scholarly reports, and more off-site.

Vincent Ferraro, Resources for the Study of International Relations and Foreign Policy

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/feros-pg.htm
From Vincent Ferraro, a professor of international politics at Mount Holyoke College, a website featuring content on topics relating to foreign relations. Webpages include primary source documents, reports and speeches by Ferraro, and excerpts from books and journal articles on topics such as Vietnam, NATO, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and more.

The Stanley Foundation
http://www.stanleyfoundation.org/
A non-partisan foundation dedicated to discussing global and regional policy issues. The site offers policy briefs, articles, and reports on these issues, as part of initiatives to analyze U.S. policy and potential solutions.

Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)
http://www.csis.org/
The CSIS is a bipartisan organization dedicated to analyzing global issues and events. The Center proposes reforms and solutions for U.S. policy regarding security, energy, global health, and international economics and finance. Content includes reports, newsletters, congressional testimony, and audio/video transcripts of speeches and programs.

FIRST: facts on international relations and security trends
http://first.sipri.org/
A website from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute providing data and information on the political, economic, and military makeup of countries. The military and security data includes summaries of conflicts, maps, expenditures, and nuclear capability. The information is drawn from a number of international governmental agencies and organizations. Select a country, and then check off a topic "database" below to access documents.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/
The website for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a non-profit organization dedicated to peace and international relations among nations.
The website features analysis by "experts", including visiting scholars and scholars in residence. Users can browse the resources by topic, expert, or region. The resources include policy briefs, discussion transcripts, video, reports, and editorials.

United States Institute of Peace
http://www.usip.org/
A nonpartisan federal organization, the U.S. Institute of Peace was created to "help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, and increase peacebuilding capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide". The website for the Institute features special reports, briefings, working papers, and interviews related to the topic of peace and conflict worldwide. The publications can be browsed by region or searched by a site search engine. Most of these publications are available online from the site, while books are available for purchase.

Background Notes
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/
From the U.S. Department of State, a website featuring snapshot information on the political, economic, and foreign relations of "independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty". Browsable by country/state, each webpage contains basic statistics on health, economy, and education, as well as narrative sections on the political conditions and foreign relations of each location.

The WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources
http://www.etown.edu/vl/
Over 2000 international affairs websites grouped by country, region, organization, and topic.

United Nations Documentation: Research Guide
http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/
Guides the researcher working with various types of documents and publications issued by the UN.  Describes the different types of documents, symbols used in documents, and the structure of documents.

UNESCO Documents and Publications
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ulis/index.html
Search this database to find full text files and bibliographic records for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) documents and publications, and bibliographic records for UNESCO Library acquisitions.

Center for Global Development
http://www.cgdev.org/
The Center for Global Development is "an independent, not-for-profit think tank that is dedicated to reducing global poverty and inequality and to making globalization work for the poor". The Center's website features reports, working papers, data sets, and brief on topics such as Debt Relief, Economic Growth, Governance/Democracy, Migration and Population, Globalization, and more. A search engine is available to find documents on the site. The site also features blogs on topics in Global Development.

Canadian International Council (CIC)
http://www.onlinecic.org/
Provides links to numerous sites and focuses on examining global issues through a distinctively Canadian lens, the CIIA contributes a unique perspective on Canada's place in the world.

Transparency International
http://www.transparency.org/
A website from a global organization dedicated to fighting corruption. The site features reports on the existence of corruption in humanitarian assistance, oil and gas companies, education, and more, as well as a yearly global corruption report.

Global Policy Forum

http://www.globalpolicy.org/
This organization "monitors the work of the United Nations and global policy-making". The site features policy papers, articles and statement that can be searched or browsed by categories such as Globalization, NGO's, Iraq Conflict, World Food & Hunger, Humanitarian Intervention, and more.

Political Database of the Americas
http://pdba.georgetown.edu/CLAS%20RESEARCH/PDBA.html#site-title
The database provides documentary and statistical information on Latin American politics.  It includes information on constitutions, electoral laws, governing institutions and election data.  It is intended to serve as a resource for the study of democracy in Latin America.  From the Center for Latin American Studies, Unit for the Promotion of Democracy, a joint operation of Georgetown University, Organization of American States, and Canadian Foundation for the Americas.

Center for World Indigenous Studies
http://www.cwis.org/
The Center for World Indigenous Studies is an "idependent non-profit research and education dedicated to wider understanding and appreciation of the ideas and knowledge of indigenous peoples and the social, economic and political realities of indigenous nations." The site offers newsletters, research reports, and issues of the Fourth World Journal, a periodical discussing issues such as the environment, social change, political change, the creative arts, and more.

INCORE Internet Country Guides
http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/cds/countries/
Information about internet resources on conflict and ethnicity specific to particular countries and regions.

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Law

A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/
From the Library of Congress, a site containing archived primary source documents of Congressional publications from the first 100 years. The site offers congressional journals, delegates' letters, floor debates, bills, resolutions, and statutes. These documents can be browsed by Congress and/or searched by keyword.

Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/browse.html
From the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.  An annotated text, incorporating Supreme Court decisions through June 26, 1998.

First Amendment Center
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org
News, commentary, and primary source materials dealing with all aspects of the first amendment. Of special interest are the the First Amendment Library and Congressional Research Service reports sections of the site. These provide links to significant court cases as well as research reports made specifically for Congress, arranged by topic area.

Religious Liberty Archive
http://www.churchstatelaw.com
From a law firm specializing in representing religious organizations, this site provides news, relevant cases, treatises, and applicable federal and state law regarding religious freedom in the United States. Most decisions are presented in full text, and some include legal commentary.

Landmark Supreme Court Cases
http://www.landmarkcases.org/
Developed to provide teachers with a full range of resources and activities to support the teaching of landmark Supreme Court cases, helping students explore the key issues of each case. The "Resources" section features basic building blocks such as background summaries and excerpts of opinions that can be used in multiple ways.

Also see
WWW Resources for Law
http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu/law.htm



Polls and Opinions

American Atittudes: Americans and the World
http://www.americans-world.org/
A joint program of the University of Maryland and the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA), the website conducts polls of Americans on foreign policy issues. The site provides articles analyzing and displaying the poll results. The poll results are browseable by global issue or by region. A search engine is also available to search the article content.

Latin American Public Opinion Project
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/
From Vanderbilt University, a website featuring surveys and reports on public opinion of people in the Americas on democracy and democratic values. The site offers reports and journal articles, as well as the questionnaires given to each population. The reports can be accessed by country, while the data can be accessed through online querying systems.

World Public Opinion.org
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/
From the Program on International Policy Attitudes of the University of Maryland, a website providing global polling results on international policy issues. The site contains articles analyzing and displaying the poll results. Users can browse these articles by topic or by the region polled. A search engine is also available to search the article content.

Also see
Polls and Public Opinion Web Resources

http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu/polls.htm


Human Rights

Amnesty International Library
http://web.amnesty.org/library/engindex
This is an archive of most of the reports, news releases, and urgent actions published by Amnesty International from 1996 to date.  Publications may be viewed by countries, regions, sub-regions, or themes. The site also features a search interfact for the library of documents with options and limits.

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/c1470.htm
Country reports submitted annually by the U.S. Department of State to Congress.  Reports "cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."  Areas covered include Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the New Independent States, Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, and the Near East.

Human Rights Watch
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/
This is the website for Human Rights Watch, an independent, nongovernmental organization dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. The site offers reports investigating human rights abuses in many countries in all regions of the world. The site also features audio, video, and photo essays.


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Political Thought

Political Thought
http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/romans/polsci/polthought.html
From the Jean and Alexander Heard Library of Vanderbilt University, a collection of links to websites on Political Thought. Categories of the links include Modern Political Philosophers, Conservative Thought, and Liberal Thought.

Political Thought
http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/bookspoltheory.htm
From the Department of Political Science of Oklahoma University, an encyclopedic overview of the classic works in political thought and their authors. The site is organized by era.

Marxists Internet Archive
http://www.marxists.org/
An archive of Marxist writings from the past 200 years. Publications include essays, letters, biographies, and more. The archives is searchable by author or browsable by subject. These publications are in the public domain.

The Federalist Papers
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html
Essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay written to bolster support for ratification of the Constitution.

Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability, and Change
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft0k40037v/
From the distinguished resesarch professor Harry Eckstein, an online version of his collection of essays on Political Thought. Essays include "A Culturalist Theory of Political Change", "Case Study and Theory in Political Science", and "Civic Inclusion and Its Discontents".

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Last updated May 8, 2013