In the early 1950s, the nascent political science subfield of comparative politics wrestled with questions of method and whether to approach comparing nation-states via abstract concepts or a problem-oriented focus. To begin addressing these concerns, the SSRC convened an interuniversity research seminar in which political scientists began to create a framework for the field that ultimately led to the formation of the Committee on Comparative Politics. Roy Macridis, in this report, summarizes the seminar’s discussion, which included the relative merits of area studies approaches to more abstract theorizing. The conversation clearly tilted toward starting with conceptual schemes independent of context, and so exemplifies the impact of behavioralism that Michael Desch illustrates in his Items essay.

As SSRC launches MediaWell—our online platform to track and distill research on disinformation, online politics, election interference, and emerging collisions between media and democracy—Items is revisiting this 1980 report on the SSRC’s Committee on Mass Communication and Political Behavior. Focusing on the impact of news media on the 1976 presidential election, Thomas Patterson highlighted the shift in news coverage from candidates’ policy platforms to candidates’ gaffes and campaign issues and how this has affected voters’ grasp of electoral issues. Patterson concludes that stronger parties are needed to provide voters with policy information.

In 1989 the Social Science Research Council sponsored two panels at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association comparing the political systems and political cultures of African and Caribbean nations, most of them former British colonies. In this brief 1990 report, Tom Lodge summarizes the key points raised during these panels, including the role the politics of patronage play in democracies and how the homogeneity of some Caribbean nations and their history of colonial representative government bolster democracy compared to African nations. However, Lodge also highlights other key issues raised by other scholars, including the importance of slavery in shaping a culture of resistance as well as being aware of the contradictions and limits of pan-African discourse by governments.

Despite years of economic strength following the end of World War II, US economists remained puzzled by the causes of continuous economic fluctuations, leaving them unable to determine how to predict and plan for future instability. Sponsored by the SSRC, 20 economists met in 1959 to assess the state of the field and imagine future research on economic instability. From this meeting the SSRC’s Committee on Economic Stability was born, focusing on coordinating ongoing research (with an initial focus on econometric modeling), integrating different research methodologies, facilitating the collection and dissemination of federal government and private agency data, and serving as an overall medium of communication on relevant research.