This award provides partial support for three political methodology conferences in the period 1994-1996, organized by officers of the Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association. The National Science Foundation has cosponsored these summer methodology meetings since 1986. Each meeting will bring together about three dozen political methodologists, drawn roughly equally from the ranks of senior faculty, junior faculty, and advanced graduate students, to present, discuss, and evaluate new work at the methodological frontier of political science. The experience of the past decade demonstrates that these special meetings not only provide an important forum for scientific communication, but also serve to stimulate the production of new science. In most areas of political science, scholars have a choice of outlets for presenting their work. But in the field of political methodology, the summer meetings are the only forum in which a critical mass of technical expertise and support is available to scholars on a regular basis. The existence of this critical mass provides a crucial impetus to research at the frontier of political methodology.
