Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Introduction to Political Science Research Methods
Josh Franco; Charlotte Lee; Kau Vue · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2020
Introduction to Political Science Research Methods, authored by Dr. Josh Franco, Dr. Charlotte Lee, Kau Vue, Dr. Dino Bozonelos, Dr. Masahiro Omae, and Dr. Steven Cauchon, is an Open Education Resource textbook licensed CC BY-NC that surveys the research methods employed in political science. The textbook includes chapters that cover: history and development of the empirical study of politics; the scientific method; theories, hypotheses, variables, and units; conceptualization, operationalization and measurement of political concepts; elements of research design including the logic of sampling; qualitative and quantitative research methods and means of analysis; and research ethics.
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Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration (With Applications in R)
Hank Jenkins-Smith; Joseph Ripberger · University of Oklahoma Libraries · 2017
The focus of this book is on using quantitative research methods to test hypotheses and build theory in political science, public policy and public administration. It is designed for advanced undergraduate courses, or introductory and intermediate graduate-level courses. The first part of the book introduces the scientific method, then covers research design, measurement, descriptive statistics, probability, inference, and basic measures of association. The second part of the book covers bivariate and multiple linear regression using the ordinary least squares, the calculus and matrix algebra that are necessary for understanding bivariate and multiple linear regression, the assumptions that underlie these methods, and then provides a short introduction to generalized linear models.The book fully embraces the open access and open source philosophies. The book is freely available in the SHAREOK repository; it is written in R Markdown files that are available in a public GitHub repository; it uses and teaches R and RStudio for data analysis, visualization and data management; and it uses publically available survey data (from the Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-geographic Network) to illustrate important concepts and methods. We encourage students to download the data, replicate the examples, and explore further! We also encourage instructors to download the R Markdown files and modify the text for use in different courses.
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Polimetrics: A Stata Companion to Introduction to Political Science Research Methods
Josh Franco · Open Political Science (OPoliSci) · 2021
Polimetrics: A Stata Companion, authored by Dr. Josh Franco, is an Open Education Resource workbook licensed CC BY-NC and designed as a Stata companion to Introduction to Political Science Research Methods. This workbook provides a tour of the Stata software, an introduction to cross-sectional, time series, and panel data, and an introduction to a variety of models. I review models where the outcome is linear, binary, ordinal, categorical, and count. Additionally, I have an interpretation chapter on survival models. Each “Models” chapter has a similar organizational structure: about, estimated time, what is the model, how are models run in Stata, how do we interpret the model results, and a real-world example of model results in a Creative Commons licensed, peer-reviewed journal article. Additionally, mini-assignment instructions and a rubric are included so students can practice their interpretation skills.
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The Exciting Dynamics of State and Local Government
Laura Wilson; Gregort Schufeldt · PALNI · 2025
This book provides readers with both a large-scale overview of state government (including its responsibilities and rights established through federalism, political institutions such as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and political behavior such as voting, interest groups, and the media) in addition to guiding individual examinations of states through case studies incorporated in each chapter. The text gives readers a greater understanding of the role and responsibilities of state and local government. Utilizing state comparisons and highlights, in content included in both the chapters and the accompanying case studies, readers delve into the intricate world of comparative government while analyzing the differences and similarities, as well as the reasons for them, between and among states.
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Public Policy: Origins, Practice, and Analysis
Kimberly Martin; Keith Lee Jr.; John Hall · University of North Georgia Press
Public Policy: Origins, Practice, and Analysis
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State and Local Government and Politics: Prospects for Sustainability
Christopher Simon; Brent Steel; Nicholas Lovrich · Oregon State University · 2018
Our book represents a unique opportunity for three generations of scholars to reflect upon and collectively consider their decades’ long research, and the meaning of that research to both the broader society and to students of contemporary politics. Nicholas Lovrich served as a graduate school mentor to Brent Steel, and Brent in turn mentored Christopher A. Simon as an undergraduate and guided him to study with Lovrich. Steel and Lovrich have collaborated on research for over 30 years, while Simon has frequently collaborated with Steel and Lovrich for nearly 20 years.
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The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands
Erika Wolters; Brent Steel · Oregon State University · 2020
In this volume, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have brought together the experts who can explain the evolution of public lands policies and politics in all their complexities. While their subject is complex, their prose is clear, and while their subject is torn by some of the most viciously self-interested, deceitful arguments in politics today, their prose is calm, factual, and evenhanded. No one should underestimate what a rare and valuable gift this is.
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A Quick Guide to Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences
Christine Davies · University of Wales Trinity Saint David · 2020
This resource is intended as an easy-to-use guide for anyone who needs some quick and simple advice on quantitative aspects of research in social sciences, covering subjects such as education, sociology, business, nursing. If you area qualitative researcher who needs to venture into the world of numbers, or a student instructed to undertake a quantitative research project despite a hatred for maths, then this booklet should be a real help. The booklet was amended in 2022 to take into account previous review comments.
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Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice
Dana Hellman; Vivek Shandas · Portland State University Library · 2020
This reader is an Open Educational Resource, meant to accompany a graduate or higher-level undergraduate university course in climate change resilience, adaptation, and/or planning. While the material is geared toward students in urban and regional planning, it may also be of interest to students of urban studies, public health, geography, political science, sociology, risk management, and others. Each section of this volume includes (1) an introductory summary, (2) a reading list with full text articles, (3) student exercises meant to enhance understanding and facilitate in-class discussion, and (4) additional discussion prompts or activities for instructors to use in class. The format of materials is intended to convey key concepts, while leaving ample space for student exploration, discourse, and creativity. Lessons may culminate in an applied, imaginative final project, a sample framework of which is provided at the end of Section VI.
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Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy
Meggie Mapes · University of Kansas Libraries · 2024
Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy (second edition) is a contemporary, interdisciplinary public speaking textbook that fuses rhetoric, critical/cultural studies, and performance to offer an up-to-date resource for students. With a focus on advocacy, this textbook invites students to consider public speaking as a political, purposeful form of information-sharing.
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Social Justice & Advocacy in Human Services
Cailyn Green; Bernadet DeJonge; Nikki Golden; Kim Brayton · Milne Open Textbooks · 2025
Social Justice & Advocacy in Human Services delves into the complex realm of social justice, offering a deep dive into historical roots and theories to practical applications in the field. This text covers fundamental concepts, including power, privilege, and oppression, and explores critical issues like racism, gender, sexuality, poverty, religion, and disability in the context of the United States. The last section of the book hones in on the field of human services, discussing power, privilege, and bias in this context, and lastly exploring equitable distribution, human rights, and the systems and entry points within human services practice. The text provides many resources, videos, definitions, and reflection questions, ensuring readers have a solid foundation in social justice concepts. The authors also present real-world stories and examples, enriching the learning experience. The text also offers educators and students opportunities to explore, learn more on their own, and take actionable steps toward advancing social justice.
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Injustice at the Intersections: Race, Gender, Class, and Criminal Justice
Indigo Koslicki; Andrew Gray · Indigo Koslicki and Andrew C. Gray · 2025
Injustice at the Intersections is the first U.S.-based Open Textbook about race, gender, class, and criminal justice. While traditional textbooks are often expensive and require continuous publication of new editions to keep up with changing legislation and events, we wrote this Open Textbook under a CC BY-NC-SA license, meaning that instructors may revise, update, and change content as needed for changing events and different learning outcomes. We also plan to regularly update this Open Textbook and will always keep it free, as we believe that knowledge is the first step towards justice.
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A Casebook for Comparative Politics
Mark Johnson; Angela Pashayan; Daniel Pedreira; Matthew Schuster · Opendora · 2025
This book is intended to serve as a companion text for courses in Comparative Politics, Introduction to Political Science, and similar subjects. The target audience is lower-division undergraduates. Each chapter constitutes a single country (case), with material on seven (7) major topics: History, Identity, Culture and Civil Society, Participation, Formal Institutions, Political Economy, and Foreign Relations.
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Burning Issues in Classics
Rhiannon Evans; Nicole Gammie · La Trobe University · 2024
This volume addresses various ways that we interact with, refashion and reuse aspects of ancient Greece and Rome. Its studies range from the political engagement of Italian fascists with ancient Rome, to the use of ancient Greece in video games. The chapters each take on a ‘burning issue’ of identity or ownership, that is, how we identify with ancient Greeks and Romans, as well as drawing (often troubling) elements of our identity from them. In addition, they address the question: which of us feel that we own the past? Does Classics belong to everyone, or has it been coopted by an elite few?
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Comparative Politics: A Practical Guide for a Globalizing World
Holly Oberle; Sadie Kelley; Juston Robson; Trevor Cook · Colorado Mesa University · 2024
Comparative Politics: A Practical Guide for a Globalizing World is perhaps the first to be written with an emphasis on case studies from the Global South and other alternative perspectives in comparative politics. This text focuses on themes and case studies that are often missing in more traditional comparative politics textbooks, and thus is best accompanied by other resources to give students a foundation in the fundamentals.
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Government Powers and Limitations
Kimberly Clairmont; Ethan Derstine; Alexandria Metzdorf; Stella Kemp · Oregon State University · 2024
This volume focuses on constitutional doctrine and law in the areas of government powers and limitations. It includes excerpts of landmark cases related to the judiciary and executive, contracts and takings clauses, and due process. The excerpts include the constitutional issues in these cases that are related to government powers and limitations with other questions of law and dicta omitted.
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Romance Lands and Conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Jerry Johnson · Montana State University · 2023
To fully grasp the significance of this story we explore the history of the West, the development of Yellowstone National Park, something about the discipline of conservation biology and related policy sciences, Grizzly bear recovery, and eventually the contemporary economy and social setting of the region. The Greater Yellowstone is a model of how to build a regional system of international importance and local well-being.
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Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics
Dino Bozonelos; Julia Wendt; Charlotte Lee · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2022
Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics, 1st edition, is an Open Education Resource Textbook that surveys contemporary comparative politics. The textbook is organized thematically and includes chapters that cover a wide range of topics in comparative politics: how and what comparativists study; methods in comparative politics; states and regimes; democracies and democratization; non-democracies and democratic backsliding, political identity, including culture, race and ethnicity, gender, nationalism, religion, and class; political economy; collective action and social movements; comparative public opinion; political violence; and globalization and fragmentation. Each chapter accompanied by a case study or a comparative study, one of the main methodological tools used in comparative politics. By contextualizing the concepts, we hope to help students learn the comparative method, which to this day remains one of the most important methodological tools for all researchers.
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Conflict, War and Revolution: the problem of politics in international political thought
Paul Kelly · LSE Press · 2022
Violence and war were ubiquitous features of politics long before the emergence of the modern state system. Since the late 18th century major revolutions across the world have further challenged the idea of the state as a final arbiter of international order. This book discusses ten major thinkers who have questioned and re-shaped how we think about politics, violence and relations between states – Thucydides, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Clausewitz, Lenin and Mao, and Schmitt. Conflict, war and revolution have generally been seen in political thought as problems to be managed by stable domestic political communities. In different ways, all the paradigmatic thinkers here acknowledge them instead as inevitable dimensions of human experience, manifested through different ways of acting politically – while yet offering radically distinct answers about how they can be handled. This book dramatically broadens the canon of political thought by considering perspectives on the international system that challenge its historical inevitability and triumph. Drawing on history, theology, and law as well as philosophy, Paul Kelly introduces thinkers who challenge fundamentally the ways in which we should think about the nature and scope of political institutions and agents. He illuminates many troubling contemporary conflicts with a critical and historical perspective. This book is primarily intended for second year and upwards undergraduate students in general political theory and international theory, and advanced international relations students. Each chapter is also downloadable on its own for use in courses considering only some of the ten theorists covered. Written in an accessible way Conflict, War and Revolution will also interest advanced general readers with interests in the historical thought underpinnings of political ideas and today’s international politics.
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America: The User’s Manual
Benjamin Kantack · Tekakwitha Press · 2025
America: The User’s Manual is a free textbook written for introductory undergraduate courses in American politics and government, covering the creation and principles of the Constitution, the fundamentals of American public opinion and political behavior, and the basic functions of the three branches of government.