2012 Articles

Editor's Note: The View From South Lawn

Bruck, Ross A.

"Since our most recent issue in the fall, much of the uncertainty surrounding the headline issues that occupied both popular and academic discourse—economic growth and unemployment in the United States, high debt burdens and the risk of sovereign default in Europe, continued U.S. military presence in the Middle East, and the success of Chinese economic planning, among many others—has, in a cursory sense, been resolved. We know that real U.S. GDP growth accelerated through 2011 while unemployment fell, that the nations of the European Union are committed to preserving monetary unity through bailouts of severely indebted members and negotiated write-downs, that Iraq and Afghanistan will soon govern themselves without the presence of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, and that government policy seems to have slowed the Chinese economy without bringing it to a halt.
While the future of these and other global concerns is by no means clear, this is a moment for more focused, rigorous scholarship—a respite from breaking news flashes during which a deeper understanding of these problems can be developed. In its twenty-fourth year of publication, the Journal of Politics and Society continues to demonstrate the extent to which undergraduate students in the social sciences are able to participate in, and more importantly contribute to, dialogues that dive deep into issues of global importance."--from page 1