Political Science

Empowering local governments with forestry decisions can help combat deforestation, but is most effective when local users are actively engaging with their representatives, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder-led study.

The newly created American Politics Research Lab, housed in the Department of Political Science, has released its first pre-election study of Coloradans.

Five years after the Arab Spring uprisings rocked the Middle East, former Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril offered University of Colorado Boulder students a front-row perspective on the protests’ genesis, their shortcomings and the lessons the world should absorb in the coming decades.

Gail Nelson has advice for anyone pondering a career in intelligence in an extraordinarily complex 21st-century global landscape: Read, read, and then read some more, particularly classical literature and foreign-intelligence histories. And while you’re at it, become an expert in the geopolitics and cultures of one region in the world, says Nelson, who earned his PhD in political science in 1979 and has had a distinguished career in the intelligence community.

What can you do with a liberal-arts degree? Beth Cross, who graduated from CU-Boulder in 1986 with a BA in political science, has an answer: Become an entrepreneur. She did this in a big way, co-founding Ariat International, a company that specializes in high-performance equestrian footwear and apparel.

Regardless of rainfall or government-built infrastructure, the availability of drinking water in rural Chinese villages varies based on villagers’ ingenuity, “circular migration” patterns, and maintenance of water infrastructure, a University of Colorado graduate student has found.